Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "NYC losing hundreds of millions as commuters jump turnstiles, refuse to pay for subway" video.

@richiehoyt8487 Around here we finally started work on our system in the late '90s and right now it's basically one line that goes past the airport and nearly to the city limits on the opposite side. Even just one line like that makes a massive difference in terms of how long it takes people to get around. The one dumb thing is that they didn't include must room for expansion of the train sizes. They just build the stations large enough for 4 cars, which means that if we need 5 or more cars at some points, we can't do that, and during peak hours we're already running the trains every 15 minutes, which doesn't leave much for expansion.
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This is smarter than how the county here is dealing with it. They stop people, they issue a warning, they are not allowed to check an ID, so people can tell them whatever name they like, and so there's never a 2nd offense to start triggering consequences as there's no way of knowing if it is a further offense. Our system is essentially on the honor system where the fare enforcement is done sporadically and when they're checking, they check everybody's pass to see that they've got a ticket or that the transit card has been used. But, since the fare enforcement officers are required to take the passenger's word as to their identity, there's effectively no way of enforcing it on the people that are most likely to not pay.
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@tbqhwyf Around here, that's more or less how it's handled on our light rail. It's a more up-to-date version of what I saw in Italy over 20 years ago. You'd buy a ticket and then get it stamped on the bus and unless the fare inspectors showed up and looked at your ticket, the ticket was pointless. The buses get basically no enforcement as the bus drivers no longer push the issue, ever since we had a driver that got shot leaving the entire bus to careen off a freeway bridge and onto an apartment building. (IIRC, somehow the only fatalities were the driver and the guy that shot the driver, both of whom died from the gunshot wounds) For a $10 fine youd have to be catching people regularly doing it. $10 is only like 3 rides around here, so if you're not checking roughly 1/3 of the time, then it's still a sucker bet to pay for the ticket on that basis.
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