That’s a fair observation. I never did see the inspectors; just assumed that part of the process would work as well as the rest. It sucks that one of them would lie to you about it.
Could I ask which city that was in?
I’ve seen plenty of inspectors in various countries, and can assure you they exist. OTOH
One wonders that there weren’t signs all over the ticket + train station/bus stop reminding you to validate your ticket:
https://i0.wp.com/oxyi.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/bvg-u-bahn-on-twitter-this-is-not-an-1-day-ticket-throughout-berlin-ticket-bahn.jpg
It’s not like it’s a secret, and a headscratcher that anyone would lie about it…
The ones in Nürnberg weren’t entirely obvious. It was a long, thin strip of paper with room for ten timestamps. If you were just travelling in one zone, you’d fold the strip so just one section was exposed, and then stamp it. If you were travelling in two zones, you’d fold it down a little farther to skip over one section and stamp the next.
At least, I think that’s how it worked. The instructions weren’t super clear, and I never got stopped by an inspector to find out if I was doing it right. I even started to wonder if I needed to get it stamped at all; I never saw anybody else stamping their tickets when they got on the tram. I figured they were all locals who had monthly passes.
In some places (I think New York or San Francisco), you can get a two- or three-day unlimited ride pass for the mass transit system. That might be better than expecting a visitor to learn how to stamp tickets.
Yeah, but the awll-day passes are usually more expensive. I’m not sure if they were available from the vending machines I usually used, and if I bought them in advance they’d need to be timestamped, too.
It all worked out for me while I was there. I don’t think it’s any more confusing than getting a subway ticket and bus transfer in Boston, and it’s a better experience for riders.
Yes, the all-day pass costs more, but if I’m a tourist and unfamiliar with the local process and the mass transit system, it’s worth it to me not to have to worry about being caught not having paid out of ignorance, and able to switch trains or buses as necessary.
Venice on the way to Trieste.
My ticket looked nothing like the one DPRK had (more like a cardstock airline ticket) and I did ask the person I bought it from whether I had to stamp it. I didn’t notice anyone using a stamping machine. On the return, I knew better and had to hunt around for the machine. It was not centrally and clearly located and labelled. I also didn’t see anyone else (but me) using it. And when I looked at my ticket after shoving it in the machine and hearing a click, I couldn’t tell the difference between what it was before or after. (I might not have stamped it right. But there were no inspectors on the way back - so ??)
I’ve taken public transportation in many countries (including ones where I can’t even sound out anything, much less read the language) and never had that kind of trouble. In other systems, you pay, you do what everyone else is doing, and it works. This system is confusing and stupid and feels pretty much designed to screw people over.
That was one of the good things about the timestamped tickets. You stamped it at the beginning of your trip, and it was good for 90 minutes after that. You could go from bus, to tram, to subway without bothering with any transfers.
Coming to the US from the UK one of the things that bugs me (other than big obvious stuff everyone else is sane about but the US is bonkers, like health care that’s not a sick joke, and not letting anyone walk round with a military weapon designed to kill as many people as possible), is the lack of a footpath system.
The US has some of the most breathtakingly amazing scenery on the planet, and amazing parks. But the culture is based around having small* ring fenced areas of land packaged up with car parks that you can drive to, enjoy the outdoors, and then drive back. The UK has the idea of footpaths criss-crossing the countryside and connecting towns and villages, so to enjoy the outdoors you can start at a town or village (ideally at nice country boozer IMO, but that’s another issue) and head off along a footpath. Not just big famous long distance trails which do exist in the states (e.g. Pacific Crest Trail), what the US is missing IMO is just a means to access any patch of nice countryside that is not part of a park (or, in many cases, just a means to get access to park that is not “drive to it and park at the visitor center”)
It seems a fairly trivial difference, but it makes a huge difference on how accessible the countryside is. Where I am at the moment in the DC Metro ironically there is a pretty good network of trails in the urban areas, but once you get out in the countryside in Maryland (where my in-laws live) there is very little. There is some really beautiful countryside particular when you get out by the Chesapeake, but really no way to enjoy it except admiring it from distance in a car (or a boat). Additionally I think it leads to the attitude of the outdoors as some kind of amusement park that must be tightly regulated and controlled (e.g. parks with opening hours WTF is that about? the outdoors doesn’t shut. it’s not Disney World!)
I think there has been some movement in the right direction in recent years, and I am seeing more long distance trails connecting parks. But its very hard to do retrospectively as there is a lot of private property involved, so generally you end up with seperate patches of trail that aren’t actually connected.
This is obviously a US/UK centric view. Most places I’ve visited are somewhere on the continuum between the two, with some long distance footpath but not to the extent of the UK (I’d be interested to know if this is a reasonable assessment for other countries)
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- Small by some definion, in some cases the size of a smallish country.
Like our “health care system,” I suspect, it may be in part because:
- There’s no money in healthy people
- There’s no money in dead people
- All the money is in the middle
If we all ate better and got more exercise (and had less overall stress), maybe health care wouldn’t be 18% of the US GDP.
(“And we can’t have that, now can we ?”)
We have both systems in (some) mall lots in South Africa. They work well, have been around for years, and I doubt South African maintenance ethic is better than the USA’s. The onus is all on the separate private company running the mall parking.
It does seem like some cities go out of their way to make public transport as confusing as possible, probably makes sense to the locals but definitely not intuitive for a tourist. I do look for the unlimited rides passes if it’s a confusing system, if it costs a little more, oh well. It’s a tiny amount in the overall cost of an intentional trip. I don’t mind reading up on local transportation before a trip, but if it requires multiple YouTube videos to figure things out….
Right across the river from Nyawk.
I like how “world wide” is a synonym for the US. Quintessential SDMB.
Generalisation: most European roads that are wide enough for more than one lane in each direction will have separated carriageways for each direction anyway. And most drivers can tell whether they’re on the right or wrong side of the centre of the road anyway.
I can confirm this for Canada. Yellow lines that separate opposite lanes of traffic on two-laners; and on freeways, yellow lines on the left side, by the median.
For the most part, the US and Canada use the same road markings and signage rules. White on green letters in the same font, using anchor cities (some exceptions apply, especially in Toronto, where the 401’s collector lanes use white-on-blue, while express lanes use white-on-green); “Maximum” in black on white followed by a number below; sharp curves delineated by a black arrow on a yellow background (except in Quebec); and so on. There is so much road traffic between the two countries that it just makes sense to use the same signs and road markings.
As an aside, it blew me away when I was driving I-15 north from Great Falls, Montana; to find that the next anchor city was Lethbridge, Alberta. There was the sign, at Shelby, MT: “I-15 north, Lethbridge.” Kind of nice to see that the sign didn’t say, “Sweetgrass MT/Canadian Border,” as if little to nothing existed north of Sweetgrass.
If we’re talking crazy public transport systems…
Moscow subway back in the 80’s was often a painful experience.
The barrier was open and remained so as long as you put a valid ticket in the slot before you crossed the magic eye beam. Failure to do so would lead to the barrier snapping shut at testicle height. In theory this meant less movements of the barrier and less wear and tear. In practice, the ticket validation process would often take slightly longer than you thought and you’d be whacked in the groin!
Along much of I-87 in upstate New York the anchor city for northbound is Montreal.
Not seen, but I’d heard about a group working in the “international” part of my company - people in the group were from all over the world. The people got together and decided that everyone would learn Esperanto in order to talk to each other.
And then - my school had the beginning foreign language requirement in High School - just when the “open window” (for most people) to learn another language had passed.
So I would like: Worldwide classes in primary schools for a common secondary language. One that doesn’t require special verb cases, etc.
Classical Chinese is the language for you!
Esperanto still has noun and verb inflection.