Analysis

In its perpetual war on fare evasion, the government points out that freeloaders cost the public transport system almost $50 million a year, which could be spent on new trains, trams and buses.

What they don't mention, and what is made painfully obvious in a searing Ombudsman's report, is the huge amount of money and time that is squandered by the bureaucracy as it pursues fare evaders in court cases that are destined to fail.

What they also don't mention is that most people caught without a valid myki are not freeloaders in any deliberate sense.

Less than 2 per cent of penalised fare evaders are known recidivists, and this small minority of genuine cheats is responsible for 68 per cent of myki revenue loss, the Ombudsman's report said.

The rest are mostly honest people who have either made a mistake or been snared by a myki glitch.

Or they are too poor to pay, but still get lassoed into a legal morass that in many cases clogs the courts for years, costing tens of thousands of dollars in legal costs over a single unpaid trip worth a few gold coins.

More than 40,000 of these cases have gone to the Magistrates court in recent times and the Department of Transport has won about 20 per cent of them.

As Ombudsman Deborah Glass notes, the state recoups a very small fraction of its costs in pursuing these matters.

Enter the $75 on-the-spot penalty fare, a Coalition innovation in 2014 aimed at reducing paperwork and avoiding the courts.

As Ms Glass notes, these quasi-fines have achieved their intention of reducing fare evasion rates.

Revenue lost dropped by more than half between May 2014 and October 2015.

But in an unintentionally perverse outcome, penalty fares have also made life easier for those who deliberately don't pay.

A recidivist fare evader could get busted 20 times in a year and pay less than a full-fare commuter on a yearly ticket.

And there would be no record of their behaviour, which undermines the department's ability to target them.

Ms Glass' report did not recommend scrapping penalty fares, but the Andrews government will do so from January 1, and says authorised officers will instead be given greater powers of discretion.

This will hopefully keep one-time and accidental fare evaders, and those who cannot afford to pay $75 on the spot, out of the courts.

But whether this new system will better target hardcore fare evaders, while allowing the rest of the commuting public to travel in peace, as the government claims it will, remains to be seen.

Many of those inadvertent infringements stem from problems with the myki system itself: the lack of short-term tickets or top-up machines on trams, cards that suddenly fail or expire, readers that are scratched or unreadable in the glare of the sun.

Some of these problems will be with us until the day myki follows Metcard into the dustbin of history.