Also, no fare gates (there are occasional ticket checks on the trains, and heavy fines for non-payers).
A lot of this has to do with construction techniques. If you cut and cover, this is manageable.
But when you tunnel, you need to go as deep as you need to get tunnelable ground conditions.
If you're building on marsh (and I think Berlin largely is?), tunnelling may be totally impractical.
Yep:
The name Berlin has its roots in the language of West Slavic inhabitants of the area of today's Berlin, and may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- ("swamp").
In Germany, fare evasion can in theory carry up to one year in jail. (In DC, max is 10 days, and we’re getting rid of even that.)
you seem to say this as if it's a bad thing. it's silly to think fare evasion is worth jailing someone, nevermind paying the administrative and enforcement costs of doing so. even holding someone for an hour is more than enough punishment (which is typically what happens anyway due to bureaucracy involved).
but for the sake of argument, an hour lost would mean being late to work, to an appointment, or to another likely time-sensitive activity. additionally, there's the embarassment of being caught evading the fare (why is everyone staring? how do you explain your tardiness to family/friends/coworkers?). most people would avoid these penalties in and of themselves.
regardless, the penalty isn't what deters most fare evasion (or shoplifting) except at the margins. mostly, adherence (that is, paying fares) is due to social cohesion, self-image, and social responsibility.
that's why berlin, LA, and other transit systems have open transit gates. the cost of enforcement at the margins isn't worth it.
no need to punish such folks more with jail time because they're already being punished by circumstance. being detained and fined is more than enough additional punishment here.
Next time you’re in the store in a less than perfectly clean and safe area, look at what kind of stuff is specially protected against shoplifting. In my experience, it’s usually washing liquid, shaving razors and hair products. Hardly the domain for the most desperate.
You have quite a pollyanish view on society, where there are no wrongdoers: shoplifters never do this for profit, they are just desperate people forced by circumstance. This doesn’t match my experience.
Fare evasion was 5%, or about $4m per year on the pre-existing ungated rail-portion of the system.
And certainly fare evasion didn't go to zero after the install.
Not a great ROI.
Because Germany.
There's no need to evade when many/most employers give their staff free/discounted passes, the aged get discounted passes, students get discounted passes and the disadvantaged get free/discounted passes.
There's heavy motivation for employers since it's not a taxable benefit.
The economist in me doesn't like unlimited passes for transit, but if it doesn't bog down their system, then it's hard to argue against them.
Some nice pictures about this: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unterpflasterbahn
Note that not all U trains in Berlin are like that, some are deeper (with a mezzazine) and some are partly on elevated tracks or outside the city they go overground just like normal trains.