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Comment by eru | Hacker News Reader

> Yeah comments like the parents are typical from people that don't use public transit. The people who can't/aren't going to pay that some people "don't want" on public transit are always going to not pay and still use it, so why not make it free for everybody?

Huh? I never owned a car and taken public transport all my live, and it's never been much of a problem kicking non-paying people off. What kind of lawless hellholes are you guys living in?

(I lived in Germany, Turkey, Britain, Singapore and Australia.)

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Just New York City.

The bus driver's union doesn't want drivers engaging in fare enforcement -- they're hired to drive, not to get into physical altercations. This was especially after a bus driver was stabbed to death in 2008 in a fare dispute.

There are fare enforcement teams that partner up with cops to catch people evading the fare, that are trained for this kind of thing. But obviously the chances are miniscule you'd ever encounter them on any single bus trip, and all that's going to happen is you get a summons with a $50-100 fine. So it's quite rational not to pay.

And I mean, as a bus rider, the last thing I want is my bus being delayed by 15 minutes while the driver stops and waits for the cops to come to evict someone who didn't pay. I just want to get to where I'm going.

So how do they handle it in the cities you've lived in? How do they kick them off without putting the driver in danger and without massively delaying the bus for everyone else? (And to be clear, we're talking about buses, not trains where monitoring entry and exit turnstiles is vastly more realistic.)

In the subway in NYC I see some people go out the emergency exits (alarm sounds but who cares?) while other people are queued up waiting for somebody to come out the emergency exit so they can come in. It’s a kind of antisocial social behavior like torrenting pirate files.

I actually had a dude yell at me and basically say “are you stupid? Why would you pay?” While holding the gate open.

I told him my boss is an asshole and was paying. That made him happy, he said “f that guy” and wished me a good day.

> And I mean, as a bus rider, the last thing I want is my bus being delayed by 15 minutes while the driver stops and waits for the cops

There's absolutely no need to wait for the cops. They can drive to a stop in front of the bus.

You have an extremely optimistic view of the level of timely and accurate communication and coordination required for that.

Not to mention, you know, the person might have gotten off by that point since they got to their destination already.

It's about the same level of coordination as waiting, just deployed differently.

If they get off the bus right away then no big deal in the first place.

No it's not, because the cops get there and the bus already left. Or the cops wait around but the bus is stuck in traffic and another call comes in so the cops give up and leave. Trying to pick some arbitrary bus stop somewhere between 10 and 30 minutes ahead based on how fast they think the bus is going and how long some cop (and which one?) will take to get from where they are to that bus stop depending on traffic is just a recipe for missing each other. And cops are a scarcer resource than buses.

Like, if there's a serious crime is being committed in a moving vehicle then sure they'll have someone constantly monitoring and redirecting in order to intercept. It's possible, with high enough priority. But someone not paying a fare does not have that priority.

And the point is the person refuses to get off the bus right away. They stay on it till they get to their destination and then get off.

The most visible enforcement I’ve seen was in Rome. They have people issuing tickets on the bus at random.

It was noticeable in that as a tourist, it seemed like a chill place, but there are lots of police of various stripes and they seemed very serious when enforcing things.

I live in Italy and this is common on the trains and busses. I ride the train a lot and have my ticket checked maybe 1:10 times. The tickets are cheap (~2 euro) and the fines are high (50-200 euro), so it makes sense to buy them. I have seen people get fined though.

See my answer to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46031217

What level of punishment should somebody who is trying to move between place to place receive for their lack of paying $1-3? The service was already going to operate, regardless of their lack of payment.

Some public transit has a much more rigid fare collection structure - trains are typically much more controlled entry points. But buses? It's in their best interest to get everyone on as quickly as possible and get everyone off as quickly as passive. Are you going to have gates that block you if you don't scan your card/phone from exiting? Same for boarding. Do you dedicate policing resources to ensuring the collection of what is certainly less than the cost to employ the police officer? Seems wasteful until you hit a very high ridership.

When I was last in London, I took the tube. Officers were at the exit gates, I presume to arrest anyone jumping the gates. I didn't see any fare evaders.

That was definitely an exception. Enforcement is low. You will occasionally see a team deployed to hot spots but they are spread thin

I see fare evasion almost every time I take the tube

I suspect people want fare enforcement basically because it helps keeps the aggressive/crazy/assholes off. Not because they want to collect more money.

Anecdotally, the bart gates seem to have improved the riding experience.

Some data from LA:

> Of the 153 violent crimes perpetrated on Metro between May 2023 and April 2024, 143 of them — more than 93% — were believed to be committed by people who did not pay a valid fare and were using the transit system illegally.

https://ktla.com/news/local-news/metro-violence-largely-perp...

> I suspect people want fare enforcement basically because it helps keeps the aggressive/crazy/assholes off. Not because they want to collect more money.

Well, it's also a matter of fairness: I'm a law-abiding citizen, and I pay for my bus fare. It's the Right Think to do. But if I'm paying, I want the other guys to pay as well.

I get that; the cost of enforcement makes that likely negative (possibly even very negative) to the system.

My claim is letting trash act like, well, trash and street people wild out on the system drives lots of commuters off. And ime, the worst riders are disproportionally fare thieves.

> I get that; the cost of enforcement makes that likely negative (possibly even very negative) to the system.

Depends on prevailing social norms, I guess?

Oh it certainly does. America has let the requirements for behavior in our larger cities decay to openly allowing criminal behavior. It's wild.

> What level of punishment should somebody who is trying to move between place to place receive for their lack of paying $1-3? The service was already going to operate, regardless of their lack of payment.

In Germany it's typically something like max(2 * regular fare price, 60 Euro).

I know you asked a 'should' question and this is an 'is' answer, but I hope it's still useful.

Google Translate on https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bef%C3%B6rderungserschleichung... might be useful.

It's fascinating seeing your questions about something that's an everyday thing in all of the places I lived.

So in Germany it's typically the (public) companies running the transit systems that have teams that check that you've paid. Gates are almost unheard of for neither bus nor train. (I couldn't name one place in Germany that has gates for public transport at the top of my head.) The police would only get involved, if a passenger is getting violent or threatening to get violent, or won't get off the bus.

In Britain (and Singapore etc) you board the bus at the front, where the bus driver checks your ticket and otherwise will kick you off the bus. The bus driver itself won't get into a physical fight with you. But the bus driver can definitely call for backup and will (presumably) stop the bus and refuse to drive until a recalcitrant passenger has been dealt with. The social contract seems to that all the other passengers will blame the would-be fare evader for the stoppage and back up the driver. But I've never actually seen that acted out completely.

Trains in Singapore and many parts of Britain have gates, and there are usually either some people monitoring the gates for jumpers or at least cameras.

> Do you dedicate policing resources to ensuring the collection of what is certainly less than the cost to employ the police officer? Seems wasteful until you hit a very high ridership.

It's all pretty similar to how parking regulations are enforced: there's some dedicated people who write tickets (not police officers), and the tickets are typically a few dozen dollars.

I can't tell if you're feigning not realizing the thread about San Francisco under a post referencing "Iowa City" is probably referring to the US.

Feels like a coy way of getting to say something as inflammatory as "the US a lawless hellhole" on HN: which is fine enough... but there's also a reason YC isn't a Singaporean or Turkish or British or German institution.

It very well might be genuine surprise. Most people from other countries have an extremely hard time understanding why most U.S. cities allow people to openly break the law in front of authorities with zero consequences.

The U.S. is a pretty far outlier in this regard. It's strange how many people in the U.S. don't realize this at all, and become appalled at when foreigners are shocked by the way things are done in U.S. cities.

Shit HN says....

American exceptionalism is just as silly when it’s “America bad.”

The US is pretty average I'd say, not an outlier at all.

It's obvious nowhere near e.g. Switzerland or Singapore, for example.

But then on the other hand, people obey the rules a ton more than in places like Brazil or India.

Just as many foreigners are shocked at how polite and orderly Americans are, compared to back home.

The world is a vast and diverse place.

I suspect the US is an outlier amongst rich countries. Especially amongst the richest countries (as measured by GDP per capita).

Well I now I think it might be genuine ignorance because you managed to read my pretty clear comment ("everyone is mentioning US cities, so obviously they're talking about the US") and contort it into whatever you're on about.

Once might be a coincidence, twice might be me overestimating how carefully people read other comments before jumping into conversations.

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