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Comment by bombcar | Hacker News Reader

One of the "don't say the quiet part out loud" with transit fares (which would NOT apply to school lunches) is that transit fares are a convenient way to remove unwanted transit enjoyers.

It is somewhat hard to define "being disruptive on the subway" but it's easy to define "doesn't have a ticket".

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A solution that I have seen implemented and discussed is a flat, very low fare. High enough to keep people off public transit that are disrespectful of it, but low enough to allow almost anyone to take it thus increasing ridership. An added bonus is when using a transit card to tap on and off, the statistics of ridership are still readily available for governments to better plan infrastructure.

If you pick a low enough price you even decrease the number of fare dodgers, which means that enforcing is not as important or costly.

Even a very low fare still needs a huge and costly infrastructure around to enforce it

Here in Queensland we just paid $400 million for a ticketing system that is now used entirely for 50c tickets. The marketing line is that the fee is necessary for analytics, but the cynic in me says that it's probably a combination of secret contract negotiations with a pay-per-tap component, and sunk cost fallacy.

I liked it when the ticketing systems were the simple ticket dispensers and maybe some transit cops checking for your ticket.

Millions and millions for apps and taps and other worthless junk is annoying, and the recovery barely pays for the machines, let alone the lines.

I've not been in a place with a functional transit system where fares were high enough to prevent disruptive people from boarding. I've seen rich people get onto Acela trains obnoxiously drunk.

I have, on the other hand, seen transit operators (bus drivers, mainly) kick people who had paid fares off for being disruptive. The definition of "being disruptive on the subway" does not seem to be the barrier you think it is.

    > I've seen rich people get onto Acela trains obnoxiously drunk.

Were they disruptive?

I thought that was implied, but I guess I underestimated the classism of HN.

We need votekick, but in real life. Clearly this is a concept that could have no practical downsides...

You're reminding me of Team Fortress 2 server nightmares from last year with all the hackers and bots

Even before the bots, I remember MvM being unplayable if you weren't with enough friends to make votekick impossible (and that wouldn't stop them from trying, but they'd ragequit themselves when no one votes yes, and leave you down a player).

Don't you already have that? They get kicked to El Salvador IIRC.

That's not VoteKick, that's AdminBan.

We(1) vote Him in. He kicks them out.

(1) not actually me, since I'm not a US citizen just a pro-Russia bot.

It'd probably be cheaper to pay for guards to remove disruptive passengers than it would be to implement a ticketing system.

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