Proof of Payment: Metro systems with No Fare Gates?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ก.ค. 2024
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European "proof of payment" systems have usually a large amount of people with subscription tickets, it's rather uncommon for residents to pay per ride. that's why a gateline would be an useless obstacle.
In Paris a lot of people have subscription passes, but there are gates _everywhere_ on the metro, which is highly annoying on bigger stations especially (Châtelet for instance)
@@chilledfrogs the case of Châtelet-Les-Halles (which is the case of all metro stations that features RER lines) is due to the annoyingly complex design of our fare system where the RER and the metro have two completely different fares.
That's terrible design...
@@LoskLive I know, that indeed combined with the position of the entrances makes it complete hell, and even then the gates don't guarantee you have the right ticket (since they can't really) and inspectors are not the most pleasant or forgiving usually...
@@LoskLive i cant confirm that. i was in Paris as a tourist and everything (with the metro and rer)was fine and smooth. the chatelet station is the largest Underground station of its kind. but the signage was very clear and well made.
@@RWFAN184 signage is indeed well made but a lot of tourists are lost because they don't understand that they can board RER trains with a T+ ticket but only up to Zone 2.
The fare system is complex.
I work at Disneyland Paris and commute by RER to go working and I often have to help tourists to understand why their tickets won't let them get out of the station.
About Châtelet les Halles is that like many stations with RER and Metro, you may have to tap multiple times to go to one platform to another.
And worst case you can have to tap 6 times in a row if you go from Metro 7 to RER A...if you don't know where to go. Some signs are here to make people turn around a bit as a safety measure again crowdshakes.
Since we have our new 3€/day public transit ticket in Austria now, it's great that the Vienna subway doesn't have turnstiles. Most of the time you don't even think about it and just walk down the stairs and get on a train. I think that also makes transit a bit more convenient.
3€? I Pay 33 € per Month for the Annual Ticket, and i Live in Vienna too.
@@sandschi I'm talking about the Klimaticket, which is like 1085€ per year. Afaik the year ticket for Vienna public transit alone is 365€
I'm so jealous about the Klimaticket I wish Germany would do it to, I want it so badly 😔.
Wow that's really good. In my Canadian city. It would cost me the equivalent of 4.84 euro's. $6.00 Canadian, every day. So the monthly pass cost is half that, so I get that.
@@WILD4X4D The Klimaticket ("climate ticket") includes (almost) every single public transport in all of Austria for 3$ a day. For Vienna only, it only costs 1$ a day.
Funny story, I actually got stuck in Queen Street Station in Glasgow because of this.
Couldn't buy a ticket at my station because it shuts early in the afternoon.
No problem, I'll just buy one from the Heckie on the train.
There was no Heckie on the train.
No problem, I'll buy one from the Heckie at the Queen street fare gates.
There was no Heckie at the fare gate.
No problem, I'll use the ticket machine.
The ticket machine hadn't been programmed with my home station in it, so I could not buy a ticket....
Eventually some staff came out, let my buy a return ticket for a different station, then hand wrote me a note explaining that I was allowed to go all the way home should I be challenged...
10/10 anecdote for my very angry friends who had to wait so long for me.
Shenzhen metro back in 2014 used a token that was to be inserted back into the fare gate upon leaving the system. I was goofy enough to lose my token along the way. Getting out of the station was not easy.
Saw that some rural stations in Japan have a simpler ticket dispenser that prints a ticket just by pressing a button; if you board a train from there you're supposed to pay at your destination station instead of your originating station
In Czech trains, when there is no ticket office nor ticket machine, you just buy ticket from ticket inspector in train, when ticket inspector doesn't visit you (and it happens sometimes) you just go for free or you can buy it in some mobile app if you want, but just wait for ticket inspector and buy it from him is standard here. In big city public transporation, you can mostly use at least SMS ticket as the last solution when everything else fails and you don't want to use some complicated app connected to your bank card. But in trains, buying it in app is not mandatory, they can't force you to do that, so no ticket inspector in train = you can go for free, it's their fault that they don't do their work properly or you was just lucky
@@Pidalin There are few lines (usualy local ones) that doesn´t have person on train to control tickets but have automat for that. You can potencialy go for free if you are sure non of other passenger is not revisor that will chek you after the train. And you can´t be sure cause they sometimes bring them from other part of country.
Living in central Europe, I always thought proof of payment to be the the normal way... Of the metros I rode, the majority have it (Prague, Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Budapest, Rome, Helsinki), while I encountered turnstiles only in London, Paris, Amsterdam (there, they have them even on trams!!!) and Stockholm.
Amsterdam does not have turnstiles on trams. What you might have seen are some gates that are used to enforce that doors are one-way: some doors are only used for boarding passengers, whereas other doors are only used for alighting passengers. But the system itself is proof of payment by tapping in with your OV-chipkaart. The only "enforcement" there is that you will get a dirty look from the conductor if you skip that step 😉
I think it's worth pointing out that Amsterdam (or rather the Netherlands in general) has more measures to counter fare evasion has to do with the fact that it's active policy. A few years back there was a huge increase in incidents. While fare evaders made up a very small amount of passengers they made up well over a majority of incidents.
To combat this they installed more turnstiles/gates, and kept conductors on some tram lines (especially because some incidents/delays happen due to tourist as well) as well as introducing some other measures.
On trams🤣🤣🤣 wtf
Buy and ride=easy
When ride and no ticket in an controll = 105€ instead of 8€ per day for 24 hours with Metro, Tram and Bus all in one.
Greetings from Austria
Warsaw metro has gates.
@@brick6347 But they are de facto useless, since you can reach the elevators without passing through the gates
I think the thing you're missing is there is also a highly cultural aspect to Proof of Payment systems. I've spend most of my life between Germany and England and proof of payment works in the former, but I don't think would work in the latter. In Germany I almost never had my tickets checked (unless I was on ICE), because the assumption in Germany is kind of "if we give you a rule you'll stick to it." while in Britain I'm used to not only having a fare gate, but also a proof of payment system on top of it, the expectation is that people will try to get out of payment or get around the rules. And yes, anecdotally I've found that this is very true, when I was living in a British Ex-pat community in Germany they violated the trust of the proof of payment system frequently, while to myself and my german raised friends the thought of doing so was rather alien. To some degree I think it's a self reinforcing cycle: "We dont' trust you to pay so we'll make sure you pay." Encourages fair avoidance. While "We treat you like an adult and do spot checks once in a blue moon." encourages payment, but there definitely is a cultural element to it too.
In Britain, some of the more rural train stations don't have pay gates unlike in urban stations, so I think that is why national rail still needs to check tickets.
@@tomdodds9457 if you're not in London I'd say it's a large majority of rural stations, and a not insignificant amount of urban ones that don't have gates
I don't think this "cultural" thing is static. It is just the way it is because it is like that, currently.
You just have to make sure that the statistical chance of being controlled and the gravity of the fines are set to a point where never having a ticket and paying fines gets considerably more expensive thant just paying the fares (and make sure that checks can happen everywhere and are not predictable). The thing is, if fines one can expect from controls are substantially higher than if you simply pay the fares, the large majority will pay the fares. And if they don't they contribute even more to the systems than those who do. So just as fine.
@@richec4486 Yes I would agree I only notice gates in fairly major stations.
In Berlin A LOT of Germans (mostly young) ride without tickets. It’s true that it’s less common in other German cities, but everywhere some people try to ’save’ the money. Still, I believe that open system like in Germany is the only right solution - public transport must be simple and accessible.
I had no idea not having gates was "an honesty system." Here in Sydney, most of the core stations and key interchanges on the heavy rail network are all gated (same with the metro). But every light rail and virtually 90% of the rest of the commuter stations are just "here's a ready, tap on when you turn up." (Oh, and the lovely "Transport officers checking Opal cards" is always a fun one at 5am in the morning commute 😴😨😠).
Can't wait for the next video Reece, and well done on this one!
Because it kinda is, especially with the other British Rail quirk (even more an "honesty system" than PoP) of the "Permit to Travel" which was basically a honesty box where you insert a random amount of coins and get something looking like an old-style pay and display car park ticket which you can use to part-pay your fare if an inspector finds you. (The point was to prove the start of the journey. Northern have revived this with the "promise to pay" which is similar but does not involve the need for coins.)
Thanks so much for watching!
Come to Melbourne. Nobody taps on when there's nobody to check.
I'm in Sydney, and one evening I was going to meet my wife, and was so preoccupied I forgot to tap on at a station without barriers. Of course, 2 transport officers come along, and I explain my mistake. They asked me where I was going (Parramatta, where I would have to go through the barriers), and let me off with a friendly warning to be more careful. With the light rail, there is nearly always at least 1 person caught on every trip I make where the ticket inspector gets on. The less said about the buses, the better. Revenue protection isn't the concern of the drivers.
@@RMTransit Please do a video on Mumbai suburban railway
My first encounter with this was on the DLR in London - we watched the guard catch someone who hadn't paid, and the guard was trying to cut them some slack by writing them down as a tourist (which had a lower fine) while the person they had caught insisted they weren't one (because apparently a higher fine was worth not being a tourist).
I think the biggest benefit of barrier-free transit systems is it seems to change the mindset of users. Instead of getting a driver's license, you get a yearly transit pass. Then you can go anywhere in the city and transit is just there for you. You pay once for something and use it all year, rather than being forbidden entry until you pay for the benefit of using someone else's transit system.
But that's not the same thing in London you can get season oyster cards to go though London Underground barriers or use the barrier less DLR pay as you go,
Its just for almost all people the cheapest option in London is bank card or oyster card pay as you go
That's exactly how it works like in Prague and that's the reason why Prague public transportation is so good and everyone is using it. You just buy a year pass, which is really cheap and travel, nothing bothers you, except you meet ticket check once in few weeks. Some people don't even believe in ticket inspectors because they never saw them. 😀
A little off topic but your trams in Prague are superior! They are so damn fast compared to the ones in Vienna.
I think that's more a benefit of seasonal passes rather than proof of payment. A yearly pass could give you a ticket that opens fare gates for free and it'd still give the same mindset.
@@staryoshi06 It would still be less convenient though. I don't want to reach for my annual ticket every time I get on or off public transport. That's annoying af, compared to showing it like three times a year in random checks within the city limits and maybe once per trip outside.
The fare evasion issue is pretty much a non issue in Vienna which is entirely "proof of payment". Non-paying riders are in the low single digit percentage. Turnstyles in metros are absurdly expensive because they bloat up stations which are the main cost factor in metro systems. So I am pretty convinced having a turnstyle system in the U-Bahn would actually reduce the income of the Wiener Linien rather than increasing it because additional fares would be eaten up by additional costs.
The vastly superior operational features of proof of payment systems just make them my clear preference. One can create very efficient transfer stops, short and direct. Flow of people is much more efficient too as there are no big obstacles hindering the flow of people. Also as no tapping is required at bus and trams, boarding works faster and more efficient too.
Most regular riders in Vienna have time cards. So you don't have to care about validation or anything. In fact, with the the "Klimaticket" an increasing number has now a yearly pass not just for Vienna but basically all PT in all of Austria. So you can go from any point to any point in Austria without having to bother about fares or tickets. Just check the connection and which lines to take and do it. This sytem does not only save the companies a lot of time and money but also the customer.
That sounds a bit like Oslo. The longest fare is a monthly ticket, which is applied to your metro card (which every citizen has) and bada-boom, you can ride on any public system within that month and you only needed one validation at any station or bus within the city. No gates, no bars, no anything.
To be fair, Vienna hires a lot of people to check tickets randomly, and the ticket for not paying is rather large (my friend had the wrong ticket on accident and they made her pay). We have the proof of payment system in Seattle, and non-paying riders are a huge problem. Something like 30-40% of people not paying. It's crazy how similar yet different the systems can be
Loved using transit in Vienna when I visited. Happy travels!
@@lindsiria It's not that many people actually, probably less than one needs to operate and maintain systematically implemented turnstiles and/or tapping systems.
The thing is that it is a no mercy, no excuses and no escape system. Also for tourists. Tourists trying to rig the system are either uninformed or stupid. After all, they'll be not using the system a lot yet risk a fine worth using the network for 3 months straight.
If you have a high share of non-paying riders, controls are self paying, as controllers can be kept busy cashing in the whole time they are working. Makes me wonder how it can pay off to evade fares in Seattle. Is Seattle not having proper enough fines or is it not enforcing them?
@@sagichnicht6748 An issue could be, that people who cheated the system don't provide those controllers their real name, adress and the fine money when caught. These controllers aren't police officers and are usually not allowed to "strip them naked" and check for id cards, or something like that against the will of their subjects. Those controllers might be forced to call the police, but even than it's possible, that they carry no id card with them and still give them a wrong name and wrong adress, maybe that of a neighbour or someone they know.
It's actually pretty amazing where I live (Vienna), I have a year ticket which was only 365EUR and all I have to do is show the fare controller my app, and it's all good. No stress on having to pull out my wallet/card every time I want to get onto the U-Bahn, S-Bahn, or the tram 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼
Side Note: The fare evasion fine here is very hefty (around 110EUR) so fare evasion isn't really a problem in Vienna :)
Same in Prague and majority of Czech cities. In Prague, you buy a year pass for 3650 CZK and then travel without any barriers, this system is the best. When I visited Vienna, I think we bought some 5 day or week tickets or something like that, it was pretty cheap even for us, in Prague, you pay 120 CZK for 24 tickets or 40 for 90 minutes, so it can be very expensive when you don't have month or year pass, with year pass, you have 1 day for 10 CZK which is literally for free, that's not even 50 euro cents. I think you even pay lower fine when you buy a year pass from ticket inspector when they catch you, so it's very fair system, you pay the full fine only when you don't pay fine immediately to ticket inspector, which is like 60 eur if I know, but I am not sure now, when you pay directly to ticket inspector, fine is just half.
@@Pidalin That tapping card thing he talked about in video confused me since only time I show my lítačka (in app) is when I met revisor (which happens rarel on routs I take) or to conductor in train.
And what do you do when your phone turns off because drained battery? No physical card as backup?
@@PascalGienger there is a physical card as well
Literally the first thing I did on my trip to Vienna was buying a three-day ticket. The luxury of not having to think about fares was definitely worthed.
There is a further advantage of not having fare gates, which is often used in Germany. Your public transportation fee is often included in other stuff, which would be pretty tough to combine all into a machine readable form for the fare gate. Examples are Long distance rail tickets (including some international ones), parking tickets (P&R), tickets for music or sport events, plane tickets or multiple other.
I think it probably wouldn't be too difficult to implement such a system nowadays with QR codes, if they wanted.
@@tobyk.4911 There are practical difficulties. Often ticket sales for events start without such agreements. Assume you organize an event. If your event doesn sell too well, the parking spaces are sufficient. If you event sells well, the money is available but you run out of parking spaces. Then you give some money to the transportation agency for such an agreement, but many of the tickets are already sold and printed.
Don't forget there are places which has FREE public transit, like Luxembourg, for exeample. (2nd class)🤗
Here in the netherlands we actually use both systems which is quite interesting. Generally all the large stations have rows of gates while smaller stations have proof of payment systems. I definitely much prefer the proof of payment system, since in almost all cases the shops and facilities are in the 'regulated' section which is an absolute pain if you just need to use a toilet or want to buy some snacks
Saw that Japan lets you into their stations' 'regulated'/paid area/section for a smaller fare (¥130/~€0.90) if you're just buying things from the stores inside & not boarding any train
In Switzerland we have EasyRide, you open the app on your phone, swipe right to check in and swipe back left to check out they will collect your phone location info and gather all your routes throughout the day and charge your payment method overnight. The advantage is that i.e. you don't have to consider if you want to take a day pass or a single ticket that is valid few hours before buying because it will calculate the better option for you. Most of the times it can give you a cheaper fare than if you were to buy the ticket yourself.
Berlin is actively trying this system as a beta in 2022, it's pretty cool checking after a day of travel and seeing what combination of fairs it came up with. E.g. a single ticket here isn't supposed to cover a round trip, so when I did a round trip the FTQ beta app used a short trip ticket to fill in the gap instead of just two full-price tickets. Regardless I hope the post-paid concept catches on so I can stop deciding whether I should spring a day ticket in the morning. 👍
@@DanielLamando Very cool. Well as far as I know BVG has no ticket gates for the U-Bahn, right? Because I imagine people take longer to scan a code than to tap or slide in a ticket... And is BVG alone in this beta? I hope for the average infrequent travelling public in Germany that DB adopts the Fairtiq system as well because it can combine zone tickets and point to point tickets. A huge advantage of such system, especially as infrequent users tend to not understand the different ticketing systems making this approach much more accessible and at the same time less expensive to install and maintain in stations than for example the ov-chipkaart in the Netherlands but you could make a gate with it by using the barcode (probably that even works with "clear window" reader chipkaart gates by NS)
@@gentuxable Right, fair gates aren't really a thing in German systems (that I've seen at least). So FTQ is still working as proof-of-payment and I have yet to be inspected anyway since the FTQ beta invites were sent out March 1st. I've been using traditional app-based tickets for a couple years and really prefer it when there's no fair gates. As you say, with fair gates it probably would be easier to use tap or something.
I understand that Berlin tried a card-based system a couple decades ago and dropped it because people kept forgetting to tap out.
BVG is alone here in offering tickets with FTQ, but the code offered is a normal Berlin AB ticket. So presumably accepted on S-bahn and regional rail just like a paper ticket.
It would be really cool if FTQ spreads and results in a more unified digital ticket system. I recently did a trip to 4 different German cities and every single city had its own quirky mobile app, and its own different fair plans. I had to keep researching what a short-trip was each time. Check-in-check-out on one app would've been lovely!
Terrible privacy though
@@jan-lukas of course that's true it's the price for comfort. Normal tickets can be bought on the phone or internet without location sharing but you have to buy in advance.
As a transport systems engineer (who just recently started working on AFC systems projects for rail and bus projects) one interesting thing that I never realized before working on these projects were the complicated back-office and payment systems that we also don’t see or think about as a typical user as we only ever interact with fare gates in stations, but don’t think about behind the scenes of these complex systems, especially in places like London who take both smart card payments as well as external contactless payments. I think it would be interesting to have a follow up video relating to that, as the “behind the scenes” of transit infrastructure is what got me into the career path to begin with :)
Can we please connect... I have a project on AFC
I’d love to see a deep dive on case studies and whatnot, where we look into money gained per method *vs* initial installation costs + physical maintenance cost/time + beurocratic costs/time
some politics here in Czechia think that public transportation for free would be actually cheaper for city budget, maybe there is some truth about that, especially ticket machines cost a lot of money and many cities removed them, but that's a massive problem for older people who don't have smartphones and many of them don't even have bank card, so they can't buy a ticket easily then
Random enforcement that's just frequent enough but not either too rare or too frequent feels like it should be enough. I've ridden extensively on proof of payment systems and the thought that I could be checked at any moment and have to pay 60 Euro for a 2 Euro trip is enough to keep me in line. It's a small thing, but I don't need the extra stress in my day, and I'm sure this also makes it so that most people follow the "honor" system as well.
A downside that occurs in German cities is that it can make paying for fares complicated. German cities also have distance based fares, and if you're not careful to pay for every fare zone you traverse regardless of whether you get off the train at any point, you can get caught and fined the same fine for having the wrong ticket and sometimes even if ticket machines let you select between two specific stops to determine your price, you can end up still getting fined since sometimes you have multiple modes to chose from when traveling between those two stops and you need to account for which mode traverses the fewest zones (this is genuinely rare, but possible). On the plus side, having prices be entirely distance based, means that there are always free transfers between modes.
In Portugal, the line Lisboa-Cascais, major stations have fare-gates, but the majority doesnt. I allways find it weird when I get in the train in one of those stations because I feel like I'm doing something wrong.
in some trains you will catch a person that we call the "pica", translated to "stinger" that will check if your pass is valid. if it is not valid or you dont have a ticket you can be fined with 120€. that's a very heavy fine (1/7 of the average salary), and is 24-60x the price you would pay for the ticket.
So, there is random enforcement, but its not that random, because I find the "pica" day-yes, day-no. and I use the train at very diferent hours
In recent time, I learned to like the DB App (Deutsche Bahn) for buying tickets. It works quiet well and you always get the right ticket for the right price.
Exactly. It has to be just often enough that the fines are more expensive than having a ticket in the long run.
Also you can emply different types of checks to make evasion more complicated. E.g. here in Vienna the checks one the subway are usually done by ticket inspectors riding the trains, but ever so often they basically block all exits from the platforms with a row of 10-20 inspectors. On average I get checkes about 4-5 times per year. The fine would be 105€ each time; a one year ticket is 365€.
The advantage of this system is that it's barely an incovenience for paying customers. Just pulling out your ticket and showing it while walking through the line of inspectors usually takes less time than on some of the more elaborate ticket gates I've encountered in my travels. Plus they get rather accurate numbers on fare evasion. In Vienna it's less than 3% of passengers (which already includes a quite large proportion of confusied tourists with wrong/invalid tickets), so basically the trust system is actually working.
Although i usually take my bike instead of using transit, in the rare occasions i take the metroish train i have noticed four different problematic situations with proof of payment.
1) Inexperienced users - when not being used to a system it is easy to make honest mistakes. Although i managed to take my way out of it i would had been pissed if if i had to pay a hefty fine dispute trying to do the right thing.
2 Guard spotters - Being honest i have never done it but i believe it many occasions would be possible to avoid guards by knowing when and where they are present and getting of the transit if you spot them. And people i think are doing just this.
3 Sweet-talkers. I have seen a few times youths validating their phone tickets to late and talking themselves out the ticket. My skeptic immediate response has bin that on this time and ride, it seems unlikely this is be the first time they have done that. It must be hard being a guard, trying to make fair judgments, trying to have a bearable work-environment and not out of fatigue giving in o constant pleads of innocence.
4 Sport free riders. I have seen a gang of youth free riding the transit, excitedly chatting about if there is a guard, where in the train he is in that case, how long they dare to stay on the train. It might just be harmless youth mischievous thing, but in some case I fear it is way of youths in the risk of entering the gang-world behaving in a way that pushes them closer and closer to that environment. And if a guard catches a gang of youth it is a situation that can end i violence.
Indeed one of the big justifications for smart cards in Japan was just making the ticketing less complicated iirc
This is an absolutely superb video which covers the subject very comprehensively. I would just emphasize that payment by smartphone App is now very common in many parts of Europe, including the UK. Unfortunately, some British experts think that APPS make smartcards like OYSTER or OV Chipkaart redundant. This is rubbish. Even in high-tec Sweden where everyone seems to own a smartphone, many passengers prefer the regional smartcard over the smartphone app.
In the UK, you can pay just about everywhere using Apple Pay or Google Pay, even on rural bus services.
@@katbryce What about the people who don't have/use Apple/Google Pay?
I hate the systems that expect me to use a chipped credit card to pay, especially when such use would involve additional forex charges.
I want to use the smartcard fare cards, not an app or a bank card.
I do not want to be waving a credit card or worse my phone around at a fare gate.
Yeah apparently sydney is considering getting rid of physical Opal cards but I think they're still very important for cash users.
I just visited Stockholm and Oslo in September for three weeks. I put the Stockholm transit app on my phone and bought and used the tickets from there. I was traveling with my 84 year old mother. Although she has an iPhone, I knew that having her fumble to use it while getting on the bus (and also being on a cane) would be too much. I got her a physical card. If I didn't have unlimited data on my phone plan I would have opted for a card as well. It's definitely helpful for tourists, so in large cities I think having a non-phone/credit card option is still a good idea.
It would be interesting to compare the share of longer term subscriptions in the proof of payment and fare-gates systems. I would expect the proof of payment systems to have more of them. And maybe also more zones, tickets for time interval and not for individualt trip, etc. whereas the fare gate systems will probably have more of different prices according to trip length, and so on.
If you have large share of "subscriptions" you don't have to install so much tap points / stampers, etc. In fact when visiting another city, the first thing I look for are whole day and several day tickets. If they have them I usually buy them if the price is at least comparable to the expected number of individual trips. It eliminates the problem of forgetting to pay/validate before each trip and it removes the hesitation to use transit for short rides that are technically walkable on their own, but can add to too much walking for the day.
> In fact when visiting another city, the first thing I look for are whole day and several day tickets.
İzmir went in the opposite direction as far as possible and can be said to have made this a long-term policy: not only they lack subscription tickets, they also avoid creating express routes as far as they can.
@@erkinalp And how does it work for them? Is the system good and well used?
In Helsinki the residents get much cheaper monthly season tickets and so almost everyone on the metro has a season ticket (pre-covid anyway). Having fare gates which are mostly there to cancel single use tickets isn't that worthwhile in such a case and slows down the majority who do have season tickets. Season ticket holders don't even tap in/out on the metro, just walk onto the train.
Singapore has both stored-value cards from which distance-based fares are deducted (& more recently you could pay them from credit cards too e.g. PayWave) & time-based subscription public transport cards. With the latter you don't legally have to tap you card when alighting from buses; that's needed only when boarding (unlike stored-value cards), but more recently our gov't has been encouraging subscription cardholders to tap when alighting too, since it lets our fare computer system more accurately calculate the number of passengers on-board each bus (+1 passenger for each card tapped at the entrance fare machines & -1 passenger likewise at the exit machines). That data is used by some 3rd party apps to show passengers how crowded each bus is, & with subscription card holders not tapping when alighting, the data has tended to be an overestimate
Yes, almost all native people in Prague have month or year pass and something like single trip ticket doesn't even exist, the cheapest ticket is 30 minutes ticket. In the past, you could not change vehicle with 30 minutes ticket, it was only for one use without changing, but thankfully, all time tickets are just time tickets now.
There was also an interesting system in Prague (and probably in other cities too) in the past. Before the stamping machines able to stamp date and hour, the tickets had fields with numbers from 1 to 9 and the validator punched holes through three (later sometimes four) of them. The ticket inspectors had the correct code for the given vehicle (got it from the driver) and checked the tickets according to it. Which meant the number of variants was quite limited (especially if one regularly used just several lines) and thus some people (including one of my classmates) made themselves "ticket archives". They simply punched a blank strip of paper, got the pattern and found the corresponding ticket in the archive and prepared it in case a ticket inspection came.
I did not see this system in Prague, but I do remember it from Košice, where it existed a bit longer.
@@matejlieskovsky9625 In Prague it was phased out in the early 90s. I remember them as a pre-schooler who was angry not to have his own ticket, not recognizing the worth of the privilege of riding for free :D
I love the ingenuity of this. I think that kind of deviousness would actually tempt me to do something like this
The space thing is really important. I love the stations in Berlin and Munich where you just have an island platform on a cut and cover line accessed by a stairwell in the road median. Super simple and cheap to build.
Reece: Fairgates
Me, a German: What is that and Why would you want that?
in portugal we have a mixed system. some stations have, others dont. and its not a problem. takes literally less than 10 senconds, even in rush hour. and allows you to be bothered less times on the train. now I only find the person in charge of validating my pass every 2 days
@@Duck-wc9de What you don't count is the less efficient and longer station design because those gates plus lots of space around them needs to be accomodated too. Transfer paths need to be more complicated too. Even if the gates work perfectly you are wasting more than 10 seconds on that. If a system can work perfectly fine without those gates and the revenue be just as good or even better, why would you want gates?
Checks in Vienna are actually rare but they are unpredictable, ie can happen anywhere on the system at any time. If you get caught 4 times without a ticket you have paid already more in fines than for a full annual pass for the entire network.
@@sagichnicht6748 I like our system. the stations that have the gates are and were already important stations. and this reduces the amout of times you are bothered in the train to present your pass.
I would like to give the example of the station I use the most, Cais do Sodré. Its the station that sees the most passengers in lisbon. and it has 3 sets of gates, those to get in the metro, to get in the suburban trains and those to get in the ferries. as this 3 modes are in 3 diferent levels, the gates are before the stairs, so it doent need a special building for it, it was already there.
the gates also can recieve more people with eficiency than those that use the sation, so its very fast. it takes literally 2 seconds during the majority of the day and can get a maximum of 10 senconds in rush hour, but you are already going to wait 5 minutes for the metro, 30 minutes for the boat and 10 minutes for the train.
I think I made the case! There is one, it’s not perfect and doesn’t apply to all transit though!
Being currently in Oslo but having lived in Paris for a while, I really appreciate how much they could integrate the metro into city infrastructure due to having no fare gates; as mentioned in the video, metro stations here are frequently just 2 or 1 platforms and some stairs and ramps (of course, tram and bus stations are very simple as well), since on top of it there is platform sharing everywhere. Pretty much no one even uses the validators anymore since tickets are available very conveniently on the public transit app (even discounted ones, yet again essentially on the honour system), so I always just walk (or run) in for instance. All this said though, Norway is an incredibly trusting country, even more so than Germany I think, so it's definitely a very cultural thing to do it this way as well
The issue with PoP on SkyTrain was that the powers-that-be neglected to provide any way of enforcing the tickets the fare inspectors wrote. Once word got around that was that.
Crammed fair gates. Woohoo!
Prague used to have fare gates, but removed them in the 1980s, or something. Debates about their re-installation usually led nowhere. Instead, they use ticket inspectors, who are a problem of their own (psychological factors, language barriers etc.).
I don't know about language barrier. Many ticket inspectors I met in Prague knew either English or German language, which are the most common foreign languages you'll meet in the city. Actually, I daresay that language knowledge of Prague ticket inspectors is way better than language knowledge of train conductors in Czechia, with exceptions of those riding international trains.
8:00 totally normal in Germany! In some cities there are even "universal" Apps where you can also use E-Scooters or Carsharing and Ridepooling All with one Account.
The concept is called "Mobility as a Service" (MaaS)
In every German city with a S-Bahn network you can also buy a ticket via the DB app, which is better than most regional providers apps.
in moscow we have union card Troika, u can pay by it in museums, pay rent Electric Scooters, pay in all public transport in moscow. And how i know u can use this card in other regions of russia.
Los Angeles has kind of a weird hybrid model. There are physical fare gates at the entrances to the underground stations. At the surface and elevated stations, and the transfers on underground stations, there are boxes you're expected to tap to validate fare. You COULD walk past them without paying if you wanted, but there are random inspections at the exits of stations to make sure you validated properly. When I lived there I'd be stopped maybe once a week or so by one of these random inspections. I guess you could call this "proof of payment lite." Whether your trip is enforced by a faregate or proof of payment ends up depending on where your origin and destination are.
Most systems do this. Because the majority of trips are to major stations in the city, it means that as long as you give them at least one fare gate you can weed out most of the people that aren't willing to pay. Where I live you would be stupid to travel to the city without paying, most of the people that don't pay are those who only travel on the outskirts of railway lines.
There used to be more TAP Card validation boxes, but I know LA Metro has been installing closed system fare gates on their light rails (most notably the Expo Line). One of the aspects though that makes fare evasion so easy (and prominent) in LA is that you only have to tap into the system and not tap out. I do though remember seeing staff validating tickets at certain stations on exits, but from what I remember it was mostly at high traffic stations and during peak times
LA used to be completely "Honor System." The fare gates only started showing up around 2009, and they were just "open" for quite a while until they could get people to develop the muscle memory of tapping through the gates.
@@coastercrutchfield I like how they have it in Warsaw, they have gates which can check your paper ticket and let you in, but then you ten leave without inserting ticket again, so you don't have to constantly look for ticket at all exists like in some other countries, that's super annoying and I would say even pretty dangerous in rush hour in those crazy crowds. Most of european bigger cities have time tickets, so when you have 24 hour ticket, it makes no sense to checking it again on exist when you validated it 5 minutes ago. But I don't really understand why they have gates in Warsaw metro when trams, buses and trains don't have them and their system is just honor system everywhere, except metro for some reason.
@@archie4oz Oh god, here in Prague, people would destroy those gates if city decided to switch to some gate system, we are just not patient enough for opening some gates and like 95% if native people have month or year pass, that would be super annoying to have gates.
4:35 "Systems like the Berlin U-Bahn" - it's not just the U-Bahn, it's all of Berlin's rail-based public transit (trams, U-Bahn, S-Bahn, regional trains), as well as in the surrounding region Brandenburg. And you can even use the same ticket in all of them, which might be a reason to not have separate systems of checking. (In buses, the bus driver is supposed to check, and sell tickets if needed, but that was paused during the pandemic, and even before was not too reliable.)
Yep not exclusive, but the U Bahn is POP!
Not just the region, the entirety of Germany.
@@leDespicable This is not true. The typical ticket you buy in the BVG region is only valid there. You cannot ride an ICE train with a BVG ticket to Hamburg.
I was talking about the proof of payment system, not the tickets.
A few years back, I got off my first plane ride in Seattle and had to use the light rail which used this system and was completely confused when I didn't see a gate to pay anywhere nearby. The closest people also didn't have any clue how to pay so I just hopped on thinking that it was completely free. Luckily, for me, no one came by to check my ticket. About a week later, a local explained to me how the system actually works.
This made me realize how every single part of my region transit uses this system, along with the national railway system. That explains why i find the stockholm subway so strange.
Does MTR improve service?
Thanks for video! For me the choice is clear - no barriers at all. Fences in cities are so XX century… Berlin system for metro is almost perfect - I’d only put the validators inside the trains - you won’t miss the train when in hurry. Buses, trams, etc. also should have validators near all doors. This system is simple, cheap and comfortable. It requests a bit of control means, but I find this acceptable.
Fun fact: in Warsaw metro there are turnstiles/gates, but they cannot read more and more popular mobile tickets from your phone so next to the turnstiles you will find dispensers with free to take multiple use ’open the gate’ paper tickets… theoretically you should use them only with proof of payment, but in fact they just make the turnstiles totally pointless. Similarly, elevators to the platforms are not gated aswell. It also shows that limiting access is not the right way to go.
Ah yes, when I was a kid and didn’t have monthly passes for Berlin’s transport I had to use single tickets for my ride home from school. Several times I came onto the platform and the train was standing there, having just arrived. I scrambled to get the ticket out of my bag and validated, even looking directly at the drivers to let them know I wanted to board. I got the ticket validated and the drivers shut the doors in my face and left. If I could have validated onboard, that wouldn’t have happened.
To sidetrack, shopping malls & other buildings in my country are also becoming more enclosed & less accessible as the pandemic has led to new legislation requiring people to log into an app whenever they enter a building (to facilitate contact-tracing), & with this mostly not working by the honour/'proof-of-payment' system it means you've to employ staff at the building's entrance(s) to check that people do log in. Probably to reduce the number of staff needed, buildings have had their number of entrances reduced. 1 or 2 shopping malls that begum construction before the pandemic & opened only after its onset might thus see some of their entrances never opened, if living with the virus means that some pandemic-related restrictions/regulations will become permanent
If the pandemic lasts for long it could also influence building design to have less entrances, since with the need to man them to ensure visitors log in their pandemic contact tracing app, landlords might not want to have so many entrances anyway. So perhaps instead of building carparks & shopping malls on the same floor (with entrances connecting the 2 on every floor), with each taking 1/2 of each floor of the building, the carpark might be built entirely above/below the mall. Then instead of using the same lifts to connect the carpark & the mall, separate lifts might be used instead, since with the former, the carpark floors might be locked out anyway (or some lifts may be programmed to serve only the carpark levels & others to serve only the mall's levels), to force people entering the mall from the carpark through a single checkpoint (via escalators/travelators) to check that they log in when entering the mall
I would love a video on Japanese fare gates. It’s the type of nerdy stuff I love and it might be useful since I plan to visit eventually.
One thing that I noticed was that while the fare gates in other countries I visited were closed, and opened when you present a valid ticket, most of the gates I encountered in Japan were open, people presented their tickets, and they only closed when the ticket was not valid. (And I guess there is also a sensor that closes them when you try to go through without a ticket, but I never tried.)
Most fare gates in Japan are open, with motion detectors.
Due to the amounts of traffic, the gates are left open and slam shut when someone tries to move through without tapping or when the tapped card isn't valid (not enough yen on the card, or some other problem).
Most fares in Japan are distance based, so it is possible to tap in to the system with enough on the IC card to go one station, but not enough to get to where you want to go. Stations tend to have top up machines in the paid area which allow you to add more to the IC Card as needed before exiting. Many stations also have little help offices at the gate lines where you can get staff to help with any payment issues.
The fare gates in the larger Japanese networks can also handle 2 different ticket types in the same gate. Magnetic tickets, which are normally per trip from ticket machines, which can be different sizes depending on where you got the ticket (ticket office or ticket machine) and what sort of ticket it is, and the IC smart cards. (There are a large amount of the IC smart cards, from different areas of Japan and issued by different transit companies. Many of them are interchangeable. For example, you can get an IC card issued by JR West in Osaka [ICoca] and use it on the private rail lines in Tokyo instead of the Pasmo card)
There are also some gates which have additional complexities, such as transfers between different operators. For example, in Tokyo at Nippori station, there is a transfer point between JR East and Keisei. This is a popular transfer point to Keisei's Narita Airport SkyAccess express train. The transfer gate line requires that you tap out of the JR network and tap in to the Keisei network (and vice versa), at the same fate gate. This transfer could be any combination of IC card or magnetic tickets.
@@magical_catgirl In addition some of the gates(Or maybe all?), you can insert more then 1 ticket of any size at the same time to be read.
@@Shinycelebi yep, like the gates leading to express trains which have an additional "express" and/or "reserved seat" fee. There is a ticket for the train fare, *and* a 2nd ticket for the seat/express fee.
The gates can take both tickets at the same time.
This is most common with the Shinkansen gates, but the normal gates can handle it as well since the normal lines also deal with reserved seat/express trains.
A lot of the newer fare gates in Seoul are also of the default-open type
Here in Hungary, no fare gates at all, instead everyone need to buy ticket or "travelcard". Inspector persons check your ticket and "travelcard" at the metro entrance and you can't go further if one of them is not valid or used previously or you not have one of them. Also, inspector persons can randomly appear on busier tram/bus/trolley lines, so always be prepared with a validated ticket or a valid "travelcard".
Eskişehir is another city with turnstiles at tram stops: in addition they also have PSDs to further enforce the paid zones at each stop. It's also a wacky system in other ways, as it is one of the only newly built unidirectional tram systems, but that's another story...
Adelaide's train network solves the tap point problem by having the card readers on the trains like trams and buses, which also allows for seamless cross-platform interchanges to buses at some stations.
Yeah I’m not sure I like the on vehicle tap points for large vehicles, feels bad for capacity
@@RMTransit Does it? At least here in Finland, it's just a little box in the corner of every vestibule. You need that open space at the doors for accessibility reasons anyway.
Well, most people use an app and tapping off is not a thing in Finland, so the card readers are eventually becoming obsolete, but I'd almost be willing to put my head on the plate that no capacity would be gained from removing them.
I like the Japanese Pasmo/Suica systems. It's SO convienient.
how does it work?
@@Pulpswo it's a pretty standard contactless payment card -- though older than most as it was introduced in 2001 -- and the "doors" are really just direction indicator (they're small green paddles), their goal is mostly that you don't walk the wrong way through a gate as direction can can switch depending on needs (since some stations have very different traffic flows depending on time of day).
One of the nice bits is the gate is quite long and the doors are far away, so even walking fast there's more than enough time for the doors to open before you go through them.
@@BlairdBlaird Aren't the gates always open, but will close quickly if they sense someone trying to get through without tapping or has no credit on their card.
Been to Japan twice now and love the system. It's so easy to use, I used mine in Tokyo and Kyoto, without having to get a card for each citty, was great.
@@maximushaughton2404 Yup. If you don't tap and try to pass through the small doors close and slap your shins.
The Proof of Payment system in Germany is a major reason why it is nice to use. But then again Germans are for the most part rule followers. Ordnung muss sein.
When I used to live in the Netherlands (1980s-2000s) there were no gates at any of the stations and it used to be a breeze to rock up from whichever direction/entrance you arrived and dash for a train going in the right direction. Then you could sprint off the train for the bus or use a cut-through to walk immediately in the right direction. There would be a couple of conductors checking tickets on every train.
Now when I visit it's much more of a pain as the airport has tiny little tap points (which I completely missed the first time - very easy to catch out tourists!) but then the town where I stay now has a reduced number of narrow exits with different gates for different rail services - and my dad can't come to greet me or wave goodbye at the platform any more...
Living in scandinavia i find it very weird that you dont have ticket-apps. In the very rare case that they are checking tickets here, everybody just shows a qr-Code on their phone making it very fast to check
Germany at least is slowly getting there. We have them as an option for rail in the Deutsche Bahn App but most people still go for paper. I'm guilty of that too unless I buy a ticket on the go and not weeks ahead.
The local trams/bus services haven't really reached the digital age quite yet (at least outside the bigger cities)
Finland does that too. Helsinki's transit has basically no checks you just get on from any door cause you already have the card on your phone or you bought the ticket with a swipe or two while walking to the stop.
@@MissDatherinePierce Depends on the city, I suppose. At least bigger cities or towns that belong to a bigger city's tariff zone usually have an app where you can buy tickets for all modes of transport.
@@shroomyesc Agree! both VR’s and HSL’s apps are very easy to use, and the VR app even shows and gives information via push when trains are late. I was on a train between Turku and Helsinki not long ago and everyone used that app.
@@magnuskongskov3532 Yeah, I'm on a VR train as we speak and I just got a push notification that the train is back on time.
Larger grocery stores in northern Europe often use faregates (minus the fares) as a form of loss prevention. You either have to scan your receipt on the way out or talk to the security guard. I only bring this up to point out that faregates are not limited to transit applications.
In Germany in addition to some validation points at stations there are always multiple validation machines in the vehicles (which seems like the obvious solution), validation is generally possible through the app where applicable and tickets that are purchased for immidiate departure or for a specific train don't have to be validated at all. This makes it basically impossible to forget to validate your ticket and decreases congestion on the validation machines.
So if hard to find or congested validation points are a problem that's not because of proof of payment but because of poorly implemented proof of payment.
Hamburg doesn't have any kind of validation machines or gates.
Another great video, as always. You could do a whole series of videos on the different ways the different operators of public transit in the San Francisco Bay area collect fairs. It's very unusual if for no other reason there are so many different transit authorities throughout the region. Although it's mostly based on the Clipper payment system which not only you can pay by tapping a card but you can also as of recently pay by tapping your phone, or still pay cash in some cases. There are some proof of payment systems, there's fair gates, most of the buses have readers as you get on them that you tap on. Systems like Muni which are a single fair for the whole system you just tap your card when you get on the bus and you're good to go, or like I have where I live up in Marin County where we have zones so you have to tap when you get on the bus and off the bus similar to what you have to do with Caltrain. If you're interested and you don't know anybody in the San Francisco Bay area I'd be happy to chat with you about it, it can be quite befuddling for some folks the different ways to pay on different systems
I think one of the most seamless pop transit systems I have experienced is the system in Porto (in Portugal). While not particularly special, I am sure, they had a pretty good system for this. Payment centers (automated ticket booths, essentially) we're located near the entrances of the stations, or in an obvious central location. However, the tickets were actually NFC cards, so instead of a bulky machine, you could simply tap them at a what is essentially an electrified bollard, or in alot of cases, just a little object no larger than a light bulb. There is no chance of forgetting to pay, because there are two places for "checking in" little tap points on the station, right next to the platform, and some on the sides of door, allowing seamless payment (or check-in really) at the moment of entry.
As two non Portuguese speakers trying to figure it out, it was incredibly intuitive and fun, and saved us sooo much walking.
I live in Germany. In the city I was born, the public transit is all busses, and mostly long, articulated busses at that. Great for boarding lots of peoplein a short time... except everybody has to use the front door to show their ticket to the driver. This is a change they implemented in the last 15 years, and it slows everything way down.
Also, the only time I got caught without a valid ticket was in one such bus, when you didnt have to show your ticket at the front door, but instead had a little box that validates your ticket. Problem was, the bus was so extremely overcrowded, I couldnt get to the box. One stop later, the tickets were checked, I just then managed to stamp it, but they wouldnt accept it, and I had to pay 20x the ride fare.
I really hope they introduce a smarter way of paying soon...
Meanwhile in Japan buses that charge distance-based fares require you to board from the middle/back & alight at the front, so that the driver can check that you pay the correct fare (done on alighting so that it's more obvious if you try to underpay by paying a few stops before the 1 you alight at). You collect a ticket from a machine upon boarding, which has a number that increases the further down the bus's route you board. Then when you alight, the smaller the number on your ticket, the higher the fare you're charged (since that means you've travelled a longer distance)
They should have fare evasion fine court for those circumstances.
2:55 not always! In some cases the Date and time (and Station you bought the Ticket at) are printed onto the Ticket. In that case you don't need to validate it
It seems to me that in Central Europe, the proof-of-payment system is almost universal. Here in Vienna, many riders will have a yearly pass anyway. If not, there are various options: you can buy paper tickets at machines in every subway station and in many newspaper / tobacco shop throughout the city. There is even a ticket machine in every tram. Also, you can buy an electronic ticket using an app. If you do not buy one, you will get caught sooner or later. I am pretty sure that in the long run, your expected cost is actually higher than just paying in the first place, because the fine is pretty substantial.
Yes. I love paying directly with my card. And here in Romania, on the Bucharest metro we have fare gates, that work with both pre-paid tickets or by sumply tapping a card. Same for surface transport, like trams and buses. Saves a lot of time if you go to another city to only have to tap your card on the ticket validator(multiple placed in each vehicle), instead of looking for a ticket booth or machine.
As a metro user in Berlin, I love the fact that they don't have gates! And I really hate the hassle in other big cities with gates, which creates congestions and doesn't allow you to move freely within stations, like going the other way than you want because you must use the exit gates. It's also a tourist trap sometimes, because a ticket can become invalid if you leave a station without entering a train because, for example, you entered the wrong station.
The current system in North America where most roads are free at the point of entry but transit charges at the point of entry puts too many barriers for transit use. We should implement congestion charges for cars and find other ways of funding transit to remove barriers to adoption.
Exactly, people don't want a single penny of their taxes spent on passenger rail, but god forbid anyone who tries to stop the 8-lane freeway developments. Why should we eliminate traffic with rail when we can sit in our choice of any 5 lanes while traffic remains the same?
8:00 - That's how it is in Prague, there's one app, and card that integrate both city transport and regional rail ticketing, you can easily purchase the ticket you need straight from your phone on the go, and no barriers in the stations both city and regional rail make any journey seamless. The app also allows activation of said tickets on the go thus eliminating the risk of riding without an active ticket.
Good points being made. In China I was a very frequent user of public transport. Buses were tap-on. Unfortunately buses in Chengdu only had a tap pad at the front. This meant that passengers relied on fellow passengers passing their cards to the front of the bus. So stacks of cards traveled from the back door to the front and back. That was when I realised why at many points throughout the city street vendors where selling adhesive stickers the standard size of bus cards.
2:11 is how the NJ Transit Hudson Bergen Light Rail works. The ride’s all quiet until the fare inspectors conduct their raid at a random subsequent stop. 😆
Yikes!
Having lived in both Berlin and the Netherlands, I can see the benefits of both systems. Aside from monthly or yearly contracts, I generally prefer an ePurse-based system (which obviously requires some kind of smart card or credit/debit card to implement).
The system in Berlin requires you to have a pretty thorough understanding of the ticketing scheme before you're even able to use public transport. That is unless you want to run the risk of paying way too much or getting fined. I don't think using public transport should require so much studying on a passenger's part.
The chip card system in the Netherlands allows you to just hop on or off any mode of transportation whenever you want. Absolutely no worrying about zones or time limits or arguing with ticket inspectors. As long as your card is topped up and you're checked in, you're good.
An added benefit is that it calculates the fare using a per-kilometer formula in lieu of using a fixed fare per ride. Traveling 4 subway stops to pick something up and then going back 5 minutes later would set you back €6 in Berlin. It would be a fraction of that in the Netherlands. A monthly plan would offer a similar degree of flexibility, but it's ridiculously expensive if you don't end up using public transit that much one particular month. Pay-as-you-go doesn't have that issue.
Remember buying a day pass when holidaying in Berlin a few years back but not knowing if it covers only local buses, S & U Bahns or whether DB Regio trains (skips more stops than S Bahn) within the city limits are covered too, until I asked the station's travel centre (the answer was yes). Costs the same as a day pass in Amsterdam (€7) but the latter excludes commuter & regional rail (unless you pay another €10 daily, which was a bit more bothersome as I remember Amsterdam also had less route duplication of its commuter rail by its subway/metro)
I like actual gates. That way, I don't have to stress about checking in, I just know I can't have possibly forgotten it.
Houston has the app based fare system on its now reimagined bus system. It was one of the reasons that it won several APTA awards for most innovative public transit in the US in recent years.
One of the strategies Montreal has to counterbalance the fact there are few fare machines in the Metro stations is to have a great number of pharmacies, magazine and commodity stores sell fares as well. The long lineups you see in the stations are usually comprised of people who buy their single fare or monthly pass at the last minute.
Plus, you can reload an OPUS card online with a standard smart card reader. That's what I do every time I have to get more fares.
A halfway measure is also possible, with only major destination stations having fare gates, so a lot of journeys only have one turnstile to go through, and not at the start of your journey, so it feels easier to hop on.
In Toronto, it's fare gates at the subway AND proof of payment, it seems like ... plus those little fare enforcement stickers all about, like saying "we don't care if you just came through a gate that requires payment, we still don't trust you!"
The way the oyster system on tfl works is quite interesting, with the zones some stations have a different coloured terminal to tap if you have made a journey that could have gone from a more expensive zone, but instead went the longer way around
"Imagine if you could buy a fare for your transit system on a high quality app."
Europeans: Why would we have to imagine that?
As someone who grew up with proof of payment systems, I always considered the gated systems to be a bit bizzare, so this video gives an interesting perspective. These days I live in a city which does have barriers in metro and commuter trains - but we still have a ticket app, you simply scan the QR code at the gate and off you go.
The biggest issue with gates is that their only benefit is preventing fare evasion but I see people getting through them without a ticket all the time. This is less of an issue when turnstiles are used but this is less and less common these days, especially in Europe.
As for data on PT usage, there are many many systems these days that can count the amount of passengers on board. This has been a non-issue for years.
In Edmonton we don't have fare gates either. We also have no idea what they're thinking in Toronto and New York.
Proof of payment systems do not work in very large metropolitan areas or on very crowded lines simply because it is not enforceable on very crowded trains or at stations.
I don't think it really needs to be that enforceable. At least not by authority. In my experience people get a lot of social pushback from not paying for stuff. And if some people don't that's probably due more to economic factors than just wanting free stuff.
What is more expensive: the fare dodgers or the introduction of fare gates? It might be economically viable to accept a few people not paying, if the missed revenue is smaller than the costs of fare gates.
In Hamburg on crowded lines often all exits are blocked off by a group (6-10 people) of checkers. Including a plainclothes one some distance before to catch those turning around.
Actually, with Corona this has become rare.
Seems to work fine in Frankfurt, which gets extremely crowded with commuters and travellers during the day. You can just do the checks outside the doors or at the platform exit if the trains are too full.
Well, it works OK in fairly large metropolitan areas (Berlin, Wien). Control at stations (metro and similar) is totally possible and frequently done. Cecking all the people on a very crowded train is of course harder, but as you can check most of them at stations, it's not so necessary.
I would also expect, that the proof of payment systems may have much larger share of weekly/monthly/year subscriptions, which makes it much easier to enforce. In Prague the price of one year ticket is less than three fare avoiding fines, so they really don't need to control everybody every trip.
The video was nice from a technical point of view, but it does not really gives enough weight to the social, cultural and economical reasons to choose one or the other. Specially true for low quality systems or poor cities where factors as evasion, intolerance or overcrowded systems are main issues to tackle
I basically only ever got used to not having the fare gates in the Porto Metro. So surprised when I actually had to deal with them.
Berlin seems to work well as an open system based on the cutural factor, a very high probability of being checked, and a penalty fare system which is high enough to deter but is not punitive.
Thanks to Nazi laws the BRD never bothered to change not being able to afford the fare on public transport in Germany can literally get you into prison for months. The penalties here are far from "justified"
@@serendripity2498 Calm down honey, what you're saying is nonsense. You can land in prison, but only after repeatedly and blatantly dodging fares and getting caught again and again multiple times in a row. Don't make it sound like you'll be behind bars for not having a ticket once. If you're that butthurt about someone trying not to pay for stuff suffering consequences (which is the same as stealing), then maybe re-evaluate your personal values?
@@leDespicable has nothing to do with "blatantly" dodging if unemployment benefits do not provide enough money for transport costs (in most German states the calculated transportation costs included in unemployment benefits is lower than a monthly public transport ticket, meaning its literally impossible to afford one). How do you think people on welfare get around, having mobility needs just like you and me? So ofc they will be caught more then once, then going through multiple levels of jurisdiction, where, guess what, they still can't afford the progressively higher fines put on them, so their only option is to go to prison. Has nothing to do with stopping "theft", it's literally classism. Mobility should be a right given to all citizens. Even just from an economic viewpoint these laws make zero sense, as putting people in prison is vastly more expensive then to just provide adequate welfare. Idk if you're German/speak German, but I can highly recommend you watch Jan Böhmermanns recent take on this issue, he did a pretty good explanation of what the problem is. And just saying it again: these are literally Nazi Era laws.
@@serendripity2498 That does not justify fare dodging.
@@jonathanma2741 as I said, most cases of "dodging" aren't actually "dodging" since people literally just can't afford transit. Tickets here are expensive. Too expensive. Transit should be usable by anyone. As long as it isn't, it's ridiculous to criminalize not buying a ticket.
The proof-of-payment system indeed speed up things. However, in my first few years living in a city with proof-of-payment system, I always feel nervous when I am on board of a bus or a train, that I could have possibly bought an incorrect ticket. One always has to worry about the fare zone, for how long the ticket is valid, etc., and it really makes the journey more tiresome. While in the city where I lived before, you can board a vehicle "without your brain", and only need to be approved by the driver / staff / machine at the very start.
Another example that the proof-of-payment system is frustrating: There are two towns, called Dietikon and Dietlikon, to the east and north of Zurich, respectively, and they belong to different fare zones. I know a lot of new-comers get confused and then get fined because buying a wrong ticket. If it is a tap-in, tap-out system, these people would have no chance to buy a wrong ticket (OK, they are developing a tap-in, tap-out system based on location-tracking of cellphones in recent years). In a proof-of-payment system, the transit companies are throwing all these responsibilities to the passengers, and then say "you should have spent an hour studying our ticket system before you come to our city!".
That's the scary part in Germany: the tickets have so many intricacies that lead tickets to be invalid, even though the passenger thinks he did everything right.
Some tickets need to be validated, while others don't. Some vending machines will validate those tickets automatically at the time of sale, while others won't. The Länder-tickets often have random exeptions that buyers cannot possibly be aware of unless they downloaded and thouroughly checked the 10 page PDF outlining the specific ticket's validity and exeptions.
We have this in Melbourne to most extent. There’s barriers at the central city CBD stations; but at pretty much every other suburban station just has tap on/off machines. And of course we have them on our trams. We also have a huge team of roving compliance officers in groups of 5.
Austin, TX has an app for buying tickets and you can show your phone to ticket inspectors that you bought the ticket, whether it's single ride, round trip or a monthly pass. If you're a university student, a student ID is needed, which doubles as a bus or train ticket.
I think one factor in Germany and other Central European countries in being uncomfortable with fare gates is traceability. Countries that have experience with past political systems that really enjoy looking at what their citizens do all day, the idea of a public transport agency being able to see at which station one gets on and off, at what times, maybe who else gets on and off at the same station at the same time… that’s actually some good data points to create individual movement maps for people.
Instead, cash paid fares from machines straight on the platform are a lot more anonymous.
P.S. came to the point in your video where you mention this while typing my comment.
Welcome to The Netherlands, also in Europe ;) , where you can only travel with OV Chip card (RFID) or QR code in all of the Public Transport. Most Rail and Subway stations have fare gates.
I’m actually from Central/South Eastern Europe and I think you’re overestimating our paranoia. I think that proof of payment is popular because it was always used on tram systems, which are really extensive in this part of the world. So naturally agencies didn’t bother with changing the payment system so they just installed an already existing one.
@@justsamoo3480 my perspective is very German admittedly but at least in Germany the idea of data protection and data agency is very important.
As a German, I never thought about that while traveling abroad but now that you mention it, yeah I'm not too comfortable with a company or even the government tracking my movements. I don't have anything to hide but it is also none of their business as long as I am not a threat.
Haha I’m happy I hit this point!
Make a video on Israel's Transit System
Yes 👍
You need a transit system to make such a video 😉
Just kidding but the current state of the transit system is not very good but the future is pretty bight. There are many ongoing projects for rail (electrification, implementation of ETCS Level 2, new lines and station), mas transit (3 lines in Tel Aviv - first is set to open in November 2022 and 2 in Jerusalem + extension of the existing line), a new line in the north and a huge metro project that is on the final stage pf approval (an underground 150km system with 3 lines and 109 stations).
I would ask for a slot on the system in Israel for a year or two from now.
Here in Portland Oregon we have proof of payment with light rail covering 5 line and 60 miles, there’s also an extensive bus network too.
Portland had the biggest U.S. experiment with POP on an entire U.S. system, including buses. One problem was that checks on outlying routes were so infrequent that people stopped paying. There also were technical problems that undercut the project. In Denver when fare inspections were reduced as an economy measure more people stopped paying. There is a delicate balance between receiving complaints about being checked too often and letting things get out of control.
These gates are quite an annoyance if you have something like InterRail too. When I was in Ireland, you could not get through the gates with your valid paper ticket, so skipping these gates was required.
Proof of payment only works where there is rule of law. Ironically Japan would be one of the best places for PoP everywhere, but they actually *like* having the faregates as it gives people very clear feedback that their payment has gone through. The "gate line of tap points" is basically what Japanese faregates are.
In places with poorer civic responsibility, PoP just invites evaders. That isn't necessarily a problem on a purely financial level, as transit is still a public service, but there's also the unfortunate truth that the kind of people who ruin transit (people who defecate on the train, masturbate, mug other riders) are also the type of people who evade fares.
On most US transit systems, you'll find that the majority of the people committing crimes on public transit are also fare evaders. Good unhoppable turnstiles like the meat-masher ones help reduce this. It doesn't prevent crime, and it really just pushes it back out to the stations, but it does make things safer on the actual vehicles.
It's not that criminals can't afford a $2 fare to mug somebody on the train, it's just that they don't really want to BOTHER with paying a $2 fare when they could mug someone somewhere else for free. The whole basis of their lives is taking things from others without having to pay for it.
Spot checks seem to work fine in Germany, as far as enforcement goes. Having to pay 60€ or whatever if you get caught is a deterrent to begin with, and if you get too many strikes it becomes a crime and you can go to prison for it.
A train seems like a risky, inconvenient place to mug someone though. They're under video surveillance, there's a driver who can call the cops or lock the doors if they notice anything, you never know if more people will get on at the next stop, you can't get away if your victim turns out to be dangerous...
The meat mashers are bad...there isn't a ton of room for large bags to fit through.
@@HeadsFullOfEyeballs Here in the US I've seen fights, muggings, people basically setting up camp, people masturbating and ejaculating on the seats, people shooting up, people leaving their needles on the seats... It's pretty bad in places.
@@NozomuYume As far as I can tell, this is because public transport in most places in the US is seen as a last resort for poor people who can't afford a car. So it tends to be underfunded, dirty, unsafe etc. because no-one who would have the influence or lobbying power to effect improvements uses it.
Whereas Frankfurt's subway is used as a matter of course by everybody from hobos to European Central Bank officials, so it's generally a better-maintained physical and social space.
Turnstiles inside buses are literaly the norm in Brazil. I had to travel to Canada to see a city bus without a turnstile for the first time in my life.
I guess our countrymen's honesty just cannot be trusted.
that sounds crazy, but probably better than waiting in line where all people who ticket or buy ticket from driver like they do in many cities, that's so slow and annoying, we have this system only for village buses
I used to live in a small town 2h from Tokyo. My local train station was part of a regional line that had just recently started accepting IC cards. The trains I took to and from there were either one-car or two-car long trains, so rather small trains on a rather small line. There were two methods of payment when getting off at my station: IC card or ticket. If you had an IC card, you would show it to the conductor as you got off the train. Then, they'd expect you to validate your card at a machine on the way out. You could technically just walk straight out. There's no gate, and, more often than not, no staff at the station. You had to make sure you had enough money on your IC card prior to starting the trip because there was no fare adjusting machine either. The ticket payment method is done inside the train car. When you get on the train, you push a button on a machine that gives you a ticket with the station you got on at printed on. Before getting off the train, you insert the ticket into a machine overlooked by the conductor and pay the required amount for your travel. A screen shows the names of all the stations and the current costs from each of those stations to where you currently are. I always used my IC card and planned ahead, so I never had an issue going through my station. I'm back in Montreal now, and I like it here, but I miss Japanese efficiency and convenience.
In my city all proof of payment machines are located inside of the trams.
That way you validate your ticket (30, 60 or 90 minutes) after boarding and they simply have to be valid when there is a ticket inspector in a tram.
Once inspectors enter the tram these machines get turned off to prevent people from simply validating their ticket when they see an inspector (who is in civilian clothes to avoid detection).
The argument for fairs in general really only make sense for Bus type systems, where most of costs are operational (Labour, fuel, maintenance) and where you're likely traveling through less dense areas at some point. Once a rail system is in place, charging any significant fare is a drag since most of the cost are upfront capital and you want to maximize social return and use of that Capital. Countries like Japan can get away with this due to large car ownership forcing usage, but NA cities need to do far more to induce demand.
Studies have shown free fares are actually not as much of an incentive to transit use as high fares are a disincentive - service is the biggest incentive. You’d also be surprised how much the opex for rail is, it’s still significant!
@@RMTransit Saw a Polish transport YT channel (forgot its exact name) a few years ago that estimated that free fares make more sense for smaller systems e.g. within a village as the cost of fare equipment (which has more fixed than variable costs I think) would exceed the fare revenue
Edmonton has a proof of payment system, but recently its lost some of it's popularity due to safety concerns, especially in the core LRT stations. Issues such as homeless using stations to shelter from the cold, people openly doing drugs (meth is actually the most common drug here, more than elsewhere in Canada), and violent incidents have resulted in a loss of confidence both in transit and in downtown. And the loss of commuters due to the pandemic, useless private security, and officers no longer being able to remove people for loitering hasn't helped. Of course the main problem here is lackluster social supports, but in the short term there is an increased interest in bringing back fare gates to make stations safer, though not all stations have the space for fare gates.
Hope you enjoyed the "Ralph Bucks."
In Victoria, Australia, major metro stations have fare gates but outside of that, there is readers at the entrances of all station until leaving the zone then it paper ticket
8:00 Chicagoland has Ventra which I’ve found to be really handy. All of the money that I add to the Ventra app can be used on Pace, The L, and CTA buses. Additionally, I can purchase Metra tickets on it for regional rides. Every station / bus has NFC points that I can just swipe my phone at, which pays for the fare. I only had to fumble at a fare kiosk once to get my initial card before I loaded it all into my phone.
Public services should all be publicly owned and free at the point of use.
As Reece mentioned in a previous video, this generally doesn't make that much sense. There are 2 major problems that this tends to create:
1) Lazy travelers. If you make a system free, then people will naturally try to use the transit whenever they can, even when they can just walk. This is a problem as it results in systems getting clogged up and face capacity issues. A fine example of this is in Melbourne, Victoria. A few years ago they decided to make the entire tram system free in the CBD. What this resulted in was the trams becoming SO popular that the trams would spend more time exchanging passengers at stop rather than actually traveling - to the point where it was simply faster to bike, and in some cases to just walk rather than take the tram.
2) Financial Incentive. Now you can spend a lot of money offering free transit, but that money can arguably be spent in better places. Instead of making transit free, why not spend that money to build more transit? Expand whatever trams you have, increase service to attract more riders, pool money for a new metro line. Expanding the system is arguably far more important than making what already exists free.
Finally, if the point of free transit is to benefit lower class folk, just give them the ability to apply for a concession card that allows them specifically to have free transit - as long as you make less than x per year.
Fare evasion is out of control in the Washington DC (wmata) metro system, especially at certain stations (I got permanently booted from DC Reddit for pointing that out about my local station). Anyway, wondering if a PoP system with proper enforcement would just be a better way forward, converting rather sleepy "station managers" into enforcement jobs.
One of the very few things we do right transit-wise in Quebec City is allowing to purchase and validate tickets on a smartphone app! At the moment, we still have to show our smartphone to the bus driver, but I'm looking forward to see how this evolves as we get our first tram line in a few years.
Kind of the opposite of POP, but the trams in Amsterdam are rather interesting (at least in 2018). They have fare card readers at all exits and you tap on and tap off at any door. However, in addition, they had a full collector's booth at the waist, with an attendent selling all fare products and providing information.
A real problem is most US Cities is that the fare evaders tend to be dangerous people. If challenged by a "ticket checker" they may well physically attack him.
This is blatantly false. Please back up statements like this with sources.
Many system's fare checkers are armed police or transit officers, and if not, the fines and possible jail time for attacking transit workers are severe. The vast majority of fare evaders are non-violent (e.g students, those in poverty, cheapskates), and rarely do you see reports of fare checkers being attacked.
This is not a real problem backed by real statistics.
@@ChoKwo -- Gad. The "payment checking" system isn't used on "inner city" systems BECAUSE even urban officials know better. I've seen it used on commuter trains because the riders tend to be civilized; there the "conductors"/ticket checkers aren't armed.
Getting rid of fare gates could dramatically reduce station construction cost. I know of DC stations that simple out-door at-grade stations. Sounds super simple and cheap right? But no...an elaborate expensive underground station was needlessly created to connect the surface parking lot to the surface platform. Part of the reason is the gates are electronic and need to to be protected from the weather. Without the need for gates, you could simple walk to the platform. No need to fence off the paid customers from the unpaid customers. Privacy is a concern, but there should be workarounds so we can get rid of gates AND still retain privacy. Somebody needs to design a transit planning game where you can play with concepts like this to see how much space/money/time can be freed by improvements like this.
A few years ago I was chatting on-line with a friend from England. He was talking fair gates... It took me quite a while to figure out what he was talking about. Here in Denmark we have proof of payment in all trains (and now a day also at busses).
In the Czech Republic, everyone will try to game any system. Even if it's just for a marginal gain. Yet, proof of payment works across the whole country. We used to have gates in the metro in Prague and the city got rid of them. Most people, of course, use subscription tickets. But you can buy single tickets with a tap of a card on any metro/tram/bus, plus there's a decent app and machines for paper tickets that are validated ON the tram/bus or at the entrance to a metro station. It's very similar with trains - if you want to encounter a barrier, you need to go all the way to Amsterdam.
I really feel that if this can work in a post Eastern block country, where gaming the system is considered the good thing to do for your social status (exaggerating just a tiny bit), it can work, and increase ridership, almost anywhere.
I’m a data scientist working for a transit agency, and I have to say that a major downside of proof-of-payment systems is the lack of data. One of our best ways (although it’s of course not foolproof) to track ridership is through our fares, and because of that we can compare individual bus routes against each other and do other fine-grain analyses that allow us to better use our limited resources to serve our customers.
I honestly believe fare gates are what inspired Rage Against The Machine's band name. Like, instead of stopping fare increases or investing into a better system, they're going to prey on those least able to pay.
I have no idea if that's true. But now? Now, I want to believe it is.
I mean again the gate doesn’t set the fare policy!
@@RMTransit Of course, but when I said 'they' I meant the people who decided to install the gates.
I use a transit system that uses tap points for pop. I rarely forget to tag on to the system, but in the short time between arriving at the station and the train arriving I often get nervous that I haven't paid. Having a way for the user to check pop is an underrated option imo, and one that is lacking here.
The network I work on also noticed a significant increase in fare revenues when ticket Gates started being installed at major stations.
Another benefit of tickets Gates and 'closed' or partially closed systems is that it makes it easier to regulate the flow of people into the system, allowing you to prevent platform overcrowding. It's also much easier to remove disruptive or dangerous passengers who have been refused travel or prevent such passengers from entering the system in the first place. If they're drunk and disorderly you can simply take their ticket off them (as conditions of carriage permit you to do, and that's assuming they have one) and either not let them through the barriers or have them escorted by police back through the barriers away from the platforms and trains. It keeps them away from moving trains and tracks and better protects passengers and staff from attack.
They very rarely use fare gates to stop entrances into a station, because it will normally just confuse people when their tickets won't open the gate.
The Mumbai local (suburban) also has a proof of payment system. Its the most used transit transit system in Mumbai with a daily ridership of 6.2 Mn. Would be so cool if you could do a video about this.
The biggest problem with having a proof of payment system in a lot of places is that it requires a high trust society and a lot of major cities these days have had that eroded. A perfect example is NYC where depending on the study 10% to 25% of New York Subways are gate hoppers. As with all things it's one of those things that is situational based on location, and unfortunately most of North America doesn't have major cities that have the type of high trust culture that makes it viable.
Well if 10-25% of NYC is gate hoppers already, you have to wonder whether a proof-of-payment system will make a big difference in this regard.
The thing is though, is that citizen distrust is usually fueled by politician distrust, which is fueled by donor distrust. An example would be joe manchin calling survival services "an entitlement mentality". Many political donors and their politicians believe in social darwinism, and thus many behaviors on behalf of the poor and powerless to escape these nonsurvival mechanisms is a legitimate form of self defense. I believe that if you took a sample of those gate hoppers, a majority of them would be in the poverty bracket.
@@nictheperson6709 Given that many are willing to do it already, the answer is pretty simple that we know the number will only go up if you lower the barrier. Given the current state of NYC the solution frankly is to have NYPD officers at every station handing out fines as they spot them. People who forget things after less then 8 years will think this won't work but it's not as if Broken Windows Theory has yet been debunked no matter what sophists who've never looked into the matter want people to believe.
Easily solved with more frequent ticket checks.
Also you can't compare gate hopping with evading a fare in a proof of payment system.
With gate hopping you have no human interaction and it only takes a few seconds. So only a few seconds where you can get caught.
Whereas in a proof of payment system you have the human interaction with the ticket inspector (we humans really don't like negativ public interactions) and on top of that you can get caught during the complete trip (adding more stress to your travel)
So I have no doubt that in a proof of payment system the number of fare dodgers would drop significantly.
Even in a "low trust" society.
I think a lot of that could be fixed by increasing the income of riders, which as a transit system you can't really do ofc. But as far as I'm aware fare evasion is usually done by those who either can't or can barely afford it. And since a much larger percent of transit users in the us are poor compared to Europe(?) more fare evasion happens.
Ik riding on a European metro and the New York were vastly different experiences for me. In New York most local commuters seemed to be in extreme poverty whereas Paris and Vienna had a LOT more middle and upper(?) class people
I'll say this, having a mix of proof of payment systems and fare gates (9:41) can be a real double edged sword. It's something really common here in Melbourne is that all the major interchanges or destinations have fare gates, while all the smaller ones on the Suburban network will just be two opposing smart card readers at the entrance to the station.
If you're going out from the city, generally you'll get the gates first, so you generally don't forget to scan with your Myki (our smart-card) at the outlying station (combined with the fact that there are like 2 PSO's at every station (thanks ted baillieu)). On the other hand, going in, you can face the problem where you essentially have to face fare gates if you're trying to get off, say if you forget to tap on at the outlying station.
I'll admit, I've done that a couple times myself, one was just a brain fart where thinking adding money at the myki machine counted as tapping on. That required jumping the gates behind a friend which was close. The other was where I thought my tap one failed to register running for a train, which then required me sheepishly having to go to the payment officer saying that the tap on didn't work which did a number on my self conscious!
uh, so in conclusion... there are benefits and drawbacks? i guess?
In London, we have a range of ways and it depends on the system. The Underground is fully gated from memory but the DLR, Overground & National Rail (within London) are mainly just Oyster tap points on platforms or by the entrances bar the bigger stations and those who have Underground services as well. Tramlink is fully just oyster tap points on the platforms except for Wimbledon where the tram terminates at the main line station so requires passing through a gate
At Wimbledon is really odd and your meant to tap on the platform after the gate line to tell the system your leaving on a tram. The DLR just uses the gate lines at the underground stations.
I think Waterloo station doesn't have gate for Waterloo and City line
@@ats10802b but it does for the other lines so Waterloo itself still has gates
Amsterdam actually has turnstiles on their trams, meaning that behind the door there's another gate you need to go through. Personally I'm not a fan of this, as it takes away a lot of space and slows boarding significantly.
WTF! this is so stupid 😂 just let people tap with their cars
No, Amsterdam does not have that. Those gates are used to enforce that the doors are one-way: Amsterdam trams use half the doors for boarding passengers and the other half for letting passengers exit. The gates also just open for everyone in the right direction without requiring a ticket check.
Only on some trams, and those lines usually have (had) problems with fare evasion, which, until serious measures were taken, caused a lot of incidents
Only on some trams and not for fare payment
London is an interesting case imo because our Oyster system is used on all modes across the capital, and different modes have different ratios of PoP and fare gates. Living in Kentish Town, an inner urban area just north of Camden, I have a combi tube-national rail station, buses, and an overground station. Buses in London have an oyster reader by the driver at the front door, its pretty standard to pay at the front door in the UK, but when we had Bendy Buses, there were oyster readers throughout the bus. At the Overground station, there are no fare gates, they use validators at the entrance. The multimodal station is unique. The national rail service runs 24 hours, but the tube does not. When the tube is running, everyone goes through the tube fare gates, when the tube is closed, a separate entrance is used, which uses PoP validators.
i used to live in a city that only do proof of payment (light rail, trams and busses) where they have the fare machines on board of all the vehicles (by all doors), though there is also an app that most ppl use to purchase their tickets... it works, except for the fact that the ticket prices were rly rly high aaaand barley anyone would pay. they have inspectors getting on random vehicles all hours of the day but everyone knew what they wore and whenever a bunch of them would get on you could often hear someone shouting to warn everyone on board, which then would lead to half of the passengers getting off (since none of them paid and getting off simply means they don't get caught). ppl would catch earlier transit than needed when going to work just to have a bit of extra time to escape any potential inspectors. today they've reduced the prices by a hefty amount and a lot more ppl would rather just pay the lower price than go through the extra struggle. although ofc not everyone and esp on trams a lot of ppl just still don't pay at all. it's interesting bc that city is the only one in the entire country that ever had such a huge problem, yet they're def not the only ones doing proof of payment
And some places are hybrid. In London, the Tube and Overground, and many other commuter stations, have faregates. But the Docklands Light Railway, and certain commuter stops, lack them. But in the UK faregates apply to people exiting as well as entering, and even on the Tube and Overground they have random P.O.P checks!
The UK uses this system everywhere. Loads of London stations (tube, DLR, overground, national rail, I believe even crossrail) just have oyster validators not gates. And across the country the national rail network only has gate lines at major stations if you board anywhere else you have to prebuy a ticket online, at a machine or ticket office but only sometimes will they be checked onboard usually when it's a longer journey.
There are some lines where a guard can sell you a ticket onboard but those are normally on very rural lines where the stations have no ticket facilities at all.
This is so weird. I grew up in Hamburg, which used to have ticket barriers in the middle of the 20th century, but got rid of them - and does NOT use a system where you need to invalidate your ticket! You buy the ticket when you're at the station and it's already invalidated for your ride or the time you've bought it for. However, if you are present within the system's area (there is a golden bar on the floor at the entrances that shows where the border is) you need to have a valid ticket with you (or else!).
This can also be a platform ticket, that simply allows you to enter a platform for an hour, but does not allow you to enter any trains.
Greek here. Up until 4-5 years ago we had a proof of payment system in the Athens metro system. We switched to a gated system. If the operator is to be believed it didn't reduce fare dodging all that much, one could say changing the old system didn't even pay for itself.
We have our first electric BRT line in Indianapolis. You can either pay with your phone, a tap card or purchase fare at the station prior to boarding. Since the fare inspectors are never at the stations or on the BRT many people simply don’t pay. They just hop on. The BRT is pretty full but the regular buses aren’t that busy since you have to pay when you board with either phone, tap card or cash into the fare box. Once we’ve transitioned to mostly BRT it should free up a number a fare inspectors who’ll be able to put a stop to the freeloading.