This is where uber progressive US cities, in particular the West Coast, differ from Europe.

You can get away with almost anything that isn't assault. Smoke pot and drink on the street -- no problem. Urinate anywhere you like. Pitch a tent on a sidewalk and stay for weeks. Shoot up in parks and just throw your needles on the ground. Even things like shoplifting are not prosecuted.

I love German transit because it is so quiet and peaceful. Meanwhile in the US, I've seen people bring stereos onto transit and play them at full blast. I've seen people pee on subway platforms in full view of everyone. I've seen people fight on busses. I don't even know how crazy you'd have to act to actually get arrested, because it never seems to happen.

Enforcing laws against the homeless is not the done thing in Seattle. The problem is not thinking of ways to detect their law breaking, but rather that the city chooses compassion over order and consequently ignores their lawlessness instead of enforcing the law.

If you do come to Seattle, you'll find the streets teeming with the homeless who are completely undisturbed by the police. Just walking around the city, and trying to avoid the homeless, I've witnessed multiple instances of homeless shoplifting, hard drug use (injecting themselves, crack pipe, etc), bodily functions on the street, threatening behavior (homeless people simply screaming invective and threats at passersby), to say nothing of people camped in sleeping bags on sidewalks and tents.

You can absolutely get on buses without paying. Simply ignoring the driver and walking by is all that's required. The police will not be notified, nor would they respond if they were, nor would their response be effective deterrence if they did.

First visit to Seattle: dinner date at a restaurant downtown, step outside and within minutes a homeless guy crosses the street and tries to jump-kick me, then he falls down and just lays there unresponsive. One of the most bizarre/confusing things to ever happen to me.

Its strange how the American version of compassion is to totally ignore homeless people rather than do anything to help them.

Including medical, police, benefits, and so on, there's approximately a billion dollars a year spent on Seattle's homeless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Seattle#Respon...

I honestly appreciate this; its probably one of the reasons I have a subconscious appreciation for Seattle.

As I mentioned, I don't know enough about the area/situation.

But I am genuinely pleased that people at least give a shit.

I suspect it's easier to appreciate from afar. Personally, I found it quite distasteful and frustrating to live in a dirty and dangerous city. The city's permissive attitudes are a major reason I left.

No, it's pretty easy to appreciate as a resident of the city. I do, and so do a ton of other people who still live here.

This sounds like a recitation of hyper-conservative Sinclair Broadcasting's Seattle is Dying program from earlier in 2019.

Here's a response to that: https://www.realchangenews.org/2019/11/06/no-seattle-isnt-dy...

Also: I've lived in Seattle since 2003, and in Capitol Hill since 2005. I've worked in Pioneer Square, in the 'core' downtown area, and on Capitol Hill. Currently, my commute takes me 1.7 miles on foot or bus through Capitol Hill.

I see plenty of homeless people on my daily commute. The housing affordability crisis is worsening, and the city is simply not doing enough to solve it. I occasionally see needles laying on the ground or people shooting up. They don't have anywhere to go to shoot up, so they do it on the street. I'm not sure what their alternatives are when our supposedly progressive city council and mayor restricts options to create safe injection sites.

All that said, the most unsafe I have ever felt in Seattle has been when I've been in the presence of alt-right protestors and counter-protestors openly carrying firearms.

>> not to collect fares from anyone that declines to pay

In LA, the bus driver doesn't want confrontation so just stays silent. People just board without tapping their card, although sometimes in rush hour you can't get to the tap reader so it's not always malicious. Security is only present at larger subway stations, not all, and is just there to break up fights. They don't ride the busses or trains, either.

Actually, SDOT has a pretty good security system. They have a number which you can text so you don't have to make a call on the bus, and they do fare checks on the lines where people can pay on the platforms and board at the rear. But if a passenger isn't being aggressive or intrusive, the worst they're likely to get is a summons for not having a valid fare.

And put yourself in a bus driver's shoes - if someone just walks on the bus, what are you going to do about it? Best case, you cause a major delay for something that is unlikely to be prosecuted. Anyways, from a practical standpoint, I think that Seattle's transit only gets about 1/3 of its funding from fares; at the end of the day their mandate is to move people around with as little friction as possible. Also, even if there was an incentive to be strict, the 'one RFID card to rule them all' system is pretty recent; plenty of people just wave some sort of ID or the paper transfer ticket that you get from paying cash. Checking all of those carefully would mean longer delays.

I guess it might sound odd, but Seattle is not what you might call an ideal city. Evading a bus fare is less criminal than plenty of petty things that the police have a stated policy of ignoring, such as actual theft, and it seems like the public transit agency makes do because it's not their job to deal with that sort of thing.

I live in DC so this might not be comparable, but our bus drivers are too focused on driving to worry about fare collection. How do you keep someone off a bus who refuses to pay the fare, and stay on schedule? There's really no way to make someone cough up $2 on a bus like there is on the Metrorail.

In London, drivers turn off the bus entirely and rely on peer pressure to solve the problem. I’ve seen it happen multiple times. Sometimes it works out, sometimes passengers turn on the driver. But not paying? The bus just won’t leave until you do.

Fair, I am in Europe, and at the stop, the bus will stop to accept the fares, one by one, there are NFC cards which make a particular noise if you want to fast pass - bad noise if you don't have the money on the card, nice noise if you do.

But I will be the first to admit our public transport would not be the most punctual!

- EDIT: And if someone wont pay, and it delays the driver leaving, the other people on the bus start shouting at the person who wont pay! Or in certain times, pay for them :)