About Service Infractions

Understanding Service Infractions Basics

Service Infractions is designed to help transit agencies manage and enforce policies related to their individual codes of conduct. It is structured to help transit agency clients become more aware of what constitutes misuse of agency policies and to help them learn how to use services responsibly before losing their riding privileges.

Code of Conduct policy violations are typically referred to as infractions. Service Infractions allows you to manage three types of policy infractions:

• No-shows and cancellations
• Unacceptable behavior
• Non-payment of fare

Service Infractions policies describe a series of infraction thresholds and the desired response when a client reaches each threshold. Policy flexibility allows transit agencies to mirror their Code of Conduct provisions using policy stages and phases. For complex situations, multiple policies may be created.

Two types of threshold time periods can be used for policies: fixed duration periods and rolling window periods. Policies that use fixed durations refer to a static period (e.g. month, quarter, or year). Policies that use a rolling window do not use set periods. Instead, every day the analysis period moves forward, adding the most recent (current) day and dropping the oldest day from the policy's analysis period.

Policies can be set up to base sanctions on one of the following:

• Total number of infractions within a period
• Number of points associated with infractions in a period.

  Points allow policies to overweight certain types of infractions, which is a common practice when late cancels are considered infractions. Typically, no-shows and cancel-at-door cancellations would be given twice the weight of a late cancel.

• A minimum percentage of the client’s overall activity for the period. This option also requires a minimum number of infractions or infraction points accumulated by the client.

  For example, if the client has three no-shows and seven completed trips in the period, then they have a 30% no-show rate. If, however, they have three no-shows and forty completed trips in the period, then they have a 7% no-show rate. For a 7% no-show rate, it is rare that a sanction would be imposed.

After policies have been activated, clients who incur their first infraction are assigned cases. Cases keep track of any subsequent infractions until all applicable infractions have been dealt with, no new infractions have occurred, and the case is closed.

In order to understand how policies can be configured, it is important to first define some terminology regarding the life cycle of a case:

• The sanction level consists of a progression through one or more warning levels, followed by a violation level.
• When the sanction reaches the violation level, a suspension will occur. The suspension level will be determined based on a defined progression through one or more levels of suspensions, typically but not necessarily of increasing length.
• Suspensions may be appealed. If an appeal results in forgiving one or more infractions, the suspension may be reversed. Suspension policies may apply to all of a client’s rides or only for trips of a specific paraservice type.

In the Trapeze4 Workstation, a dialog box accessible from Task > Clients, on the Certification tab lets PASS users see a history of all suspensions generated by Service Infractions for the client. If the violated policy only applies to specific paraservice types, this will be noted. Also, when a reservation agent sets up a new client trip, PASS lets them know if there is a Service Infractions suspension that prevents creating the trip. If the suspension only applies to certain paraservice types, other types of trips can still be booked.