This is what “social justice” masquerading as “sound public policy” gets you – the mess that is the transit system in the City of Seattle.

Are you listening, Port Authority of Allegheny County?

As Fox News reports, nearly 70 percent of all Link light-rail riders are refusing to pay their fares. That’s up from an estimated 30 percent just at the end of January, other media outlets report. And it could be higher, say officials of Sound Transit, the region’s version of the Port Authority.

Fares are paid through either buying ride tickets or buying pre-paid fare cards. But because enforcement has become such a “social justice” lightning rod, there’s a paucity of it.

And that has left fare-paying riders covering a mere 5 percent of the cost of operations, official say. The mass-transit agency says the bare minimum needed to cover the fare-share of the costs is 40 percent.

In fact, as Fox News reports, Sound Transit “did away with fare enforcement officers” after a study claimed “people of color were disproportionately getting fined.” Officials insist fare scofflaws represent a very wide spectrum of the populace.

So, you fine no one?

“Instead,” Fox, says, “the system now relies on fare ambassadors. There are only a handful for the whole light-rail system, so riders will rarely encounter them. They currently engage only 2 percent of all riders.” 

“Enforcement” this is not. But wait, it gets worse. Again, from the Fox report:

“When fare ambassadors do board a train, they ask passengers if they have paid their fare. Most have not. But instead of removing fare evaders from the train, fare ambassadors ask a series of questions starting with a request for identification. About 76 percent of the free-riding passengers refuse to produce valid ID, which makes it impossible to issue a warning. 

“Sound Transit allows two warnings before even the first fine is issued. But with so few people providing identification, fines are infrequently given and even more rarely paid. 

“Fare ambassadors may not get many scofflaws to pay, but they do collect data on them. They ask non-payers for their address, race and gender.”

Have no fear in Seattle; theft of services – which is what this is – is A-OK in its book. “We just need to understand why so many of our riders are thieves,” transit officials appear to be “reasoning.”

King County Councilwoman Reagan Dunn tells Fox the lack of fare enforcement is, no kidding, part of a larger problem:

“What we’re seeing here in Seattle is the systemic decriminalization of everything, all the way from fare box recovery to failure to register as a sex offender and using the guise of equity and social justice so that there isn’t any enforcement of laws,” said Dunn, “And what you get is higher crime and more evasion.”

Or, as Jake Haulk, president-emeritus of the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy notes, “This is how dystopias start. Flagrant violations that go unpunished for fear of … some perceived slight.

“(It is) the death knell of civilization,” the Ph.D. economist says.

As evidenced by a Seattle transit system that uses no turnstiles to thwart fare-evaders.

As evidenced by a system that says it relies on the “honor system” to collect fares.

As evidenced by a system that employs 2-percent measures to “enforce” collections.

That is, it’s no way to run a railroad – a railroad for which most Seattle-area taxpayers, outside of fares, already pay a steep premium of higher property, vehicular and sales taxes.

This, of course, is not sound public policy. It is, however, public nose-thumbing.

Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).