In Nuremberg, most of the time you never have to show any ticket at all. It’s not quite the honor system, though. There are roving teams of inspectors who will travel around at random. When they ask to see your ticket, you have to show them a pass (monthly, weekly, whatever) or a paper ticket with a recent time stamped on it (you stamp it when you board the tram). If you don’t have a valid ticket, the inspectors will issue a fine which is much more than the fare would have been,
I always bought tickets and stamped them, but in three months I never saw any ticket inspectors.
They should be. A lot of cities are struggling with their tax bases right now, because people who live in the suburbs but work in the metropolis are a significant part of the metropolis’s tax base. Or at least, they used to be, but now, a lot of those folks are working from home, and so have no taxable connection to the metropolis. Free public transit would be an incentive for those suburbanites to come downtown to the office again, and hence resume paying taxes.
I’ve ridden the Boston subways. The downtown stops have gates as you enter the station, and when the train arrives, people just crowd on. The outer stations do collect fares at the door, but at rush hour the conductor opens the side doors as well as the front door, and anyone with a pass can just hold it in view and board through the side doors, while the tiny number of people actually paying for a single ride do so in the front.
Making the train free would not substantially improve the experience. Except for the being free part, of course.
The buses do have front-door verification that can take a while. Free bus service would be an improvement in the speed of the service, and probably feel less crowded.
If you want to go even further out, there’s a commuter rail. There’s enough time between stops that the conductor checks fares after everyone is aboard and seated. If it’s too crowded for everyone to sit, they often don’t bother to check fares at all. That’s a separate system, and probably not covered by the politician’s platform.
The big benefit for the state could be fewer people on the roads. I wonder if the suburbs could be persuaded to pay for that.
So have I, many times. I didn’t have any particular complaints about the T, until I travelled a bit and saw how much better a transit system could be.
Maybe the European model wouldn’t work here. The T has definite technical limitations, it’s old and needs a lot of maintenance. And there could be legal issues with inspectors levying fines like I described. I still think there’s room for creative changes and improvement. I’m curious to see what the Green Line extension is like once it opens.
Although Montreal bus drivers check fares/cards, and the Metro has ticket barriers, there are still roving inspectors that check for proofs of payment. They still catch a lot of fare-evaders.
If free fares meant a huge increase in patronage, who would pay for the extra equipment and personnel to take care of it? And some of that increase would be from the homeless - riding all day.
Presumably the additional money would come from suburban tax payers who would benefit from less traffic and cheaper labor.
I don’t see why the homeless would especially want to ride in circles, they can already sit indoors in libraries, and other government buildings. And some private buildings, as well. Or just hang out in the train stations. When i lived in Manhattan my regular station became a de facto homeless shelter every night. They would give the fluorescent bulbs a half twist to turn them off, except in the “wait here when it’s empty” area, and sleep on the benches. At the start of rush hour, a cop would come by and turn on the lights, and the homeless would all get up and leave.
Last time i hung out in a large public library there was a guy sitting near me who was very disheveled and wasn’t reading, nor doing anything that needed a library to do. But it was cold outside, and he was quiet and minding his own business. I assume he was just taking refugee from the weather.