In some places, like Oslo's metro, tram & bus systems, the solution is that there are no ticket barriers, you're trusted to have bought a ticket for your journey. There are occasional ticket checks with big fines for non-compliance.
Yes, in high trust societies, you can do things like this.
Today we have to lock deodorant and toothbrushes behind bars in our pharmacies so it's not looted. We are not the same.
I was on a plane recently and two people in the row behind me were having a lengthy moan about their respective travel experiences / disasters. They stopped escalating when one of them said "That's nothing, we were just coming in to land when the volcano started to erupt."
I was really tempted to stand up and pitch in with a line about landing in Tokyo when Godzilla chose that precise moment to attack, but the fasten-seatbelts sign had just lit up, so I didn't.
Last year I bought a friend a ticket from Avon (just south of Paris) to Charles de Gaulle. I rode along and we stopped for lunch in Paris.
He carried on to the airport, met mr. Ticket man, and got a €100 fine for taking the route printed on his ticket, but too slowly.
I can’t understand what they’re trying to incentivise by doing this to tourists.
IMHO, if you have fare gates they need to be tied into a parent control system so that parents to limit where their kids are allowed to go alone. I've never seen the implemented and the details are important to get right.
I didn't use it that much, but did see ticket checks on one of the trips, nobody was without one.
I'll likely mangle the explanation but this sort of policy does not fair well when there is a large divide between have/have-not and little/no social safety net.
If you are poverty level you will be forever stuck in this cycle: Ticket/fine, court, loss of income, etc. What might work is simply granting free access below a certain income threshold.
Also a program for free rides to places like abuse shelters (for all genders - battered women is sexist talk!), voting booths and others similar locations should be in place - if you are going to one of them the checker verifies that are on the direct route to such a place and gives you a ticket - once you get there they validate your ticket - while if you don't arrive they send the police looking for you (in the case of abuse not arriving is a sign of urgent trouble, in other cases the police can arrest you when they feel like it)
The solution to bad behavior shouldn't involve cutting off poor people from basic services they need to improve their condition.
I have visited Prague in 2019 and their subway had no barriers, ticket machines were tucked somewhere in the corner so that I had to actively look around. Interestingly the metal poles where sticking out of the floor up to waist height with a spacing like that they used to have validators on them before.
Since I had a 3 day ticket and I validated it on the bus when going from the airport I didn't need a validator. Their trams and buses had validators in usual places, so subway probably has them too but not in an obvious place or the ticket machines already print ticket with time on it so you don't need to validate it.
Differentiate nomal daily sales rates within the test day, observe the trend year by year. Sounds naive, would be lovely if it works.
It's not necessarily a matter of education: just the feeling of "not worth freeloading (at the price), I'm likely to get caught anyway" is sufficient.