Joe Patrick wrote:
On average, every year LU pays £10million 'correcting'
vandals' work.

This is a useful statistic. Thank you.

Now, it would cost about the same to employ 400 extra people. They
probably wouldn't stop it all, but they would also make money by
reducing ticketless travel and increasing ticketed travel by making the
tube less frightening to use at night.

Let's have 200 people operating an extra shift at stations that are
currently unmanned some of the time. 75 can be roving ticket
inspectors/deterrents. Another 50 can watch screens and direct the
others to signs of trouble. and the last 75 can be extra BTP policemen.
I think that lot would show a profit, make the tube a much nicer system
to use, and probably cut vandalism and ticket evasion by about 80% each.

Of course, you'd then have to stop the bean-counters saying "Look, we've
only got a little vandalism and evasion now - let's get rid of these
people again."

This is the sort of argument that all but eliminated the beat policeman
- the crime prevented by their presence didn't get counted.

The ONLY way to stop vandalism is to increase the chance of getting
caught. The severity of the punishment is of secondary importance.

Surely they could find a building and link up the trains for
about £100million. Or, have someone in the back of the train and make use of
the current platform monitors.

See above. We want revenue expenditure, not capital, to give permanent
benefit.


Colin McKenzie