Italy does this and I've always wondered how much they must lose over it. Even as a tourist, every time I saw a ticket agent get on the bus/tram, a good number of people would instantly get off.

I do like the system better, it's faster in every way. But lost fares would definitely be a concern.

Also not sure how that has anything to do with making public transit free honestly.

I've lived in a place with a system like this. The people who jump off were mostly students and people for whom tickets represented a significant expense.

The lax rules and clearly uniformed agents were seen partly as progressive price discrimination, giving free access to public transport to those who really need it.

That sounds like the worst possible outcome - you're literally teaching that poor people either don't have to be honest or are expected to be dishonest.

I would hate to live in a society formed by that ethos...

In a more broad way — it’s also a tax on conscience. Bonkers.

The ticket usually covers only a fraction of the true price while the rest is subsidized anyways, so it shouldn't matter much

As far as I remember, in the bigger cities in Germany farebox recovery ratios are usually somewhere in the 30 to 80 % range, in some cases even higher. (According to https://www.vdv.de/vdv-statistik-2019.pdfx#page=35, the average might actually be around 75 %, it seems.)

So completely abolishing fares would mean a considerable, definitively non-trivial increase in spending requirements on public transport for cities – and if you're seriously prepared to spend that much money (or create some sort of additional tax to raise that money, or whatever), I'd rather prioritise spending it on service improvements first, because even in big cities there are enough examples of service offerings that are only borderline attractive.

They actually did some (admittedly smaller-scale) experiments in that direction recently, and as I understood it, the takeaway was that service improvements were indeed somewhat more effective in generating additional passengers than lower fares.

In Berlin, they usually enter the train in groups of 3-4, so they are able to check every person in one wagon in between two stops. You also see them pretty often at a station collecting the details of someone who didn't have a ticket.

I think both of those factors push most people in Berlin to buy a ticket. With a fine of 60 EUR the staff already pays for itself if they pick up ~2 people/hour, which sounds very realistic. If they then on top also have the effect of increasing the percentage of paying riders by a tiny amount, the whole program is quickly turning a profit.

You forget the cost it incurs when someone gets caught (and sometimes jailed!) for chicken-shit like this.

Edit to add some context:

https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/haft-nach-schwarzfahren-u...

Consider this article from Berlin where a sizeable number of people in jail are there for riding without a ticket. The cost of that needs to be taken into account here.

In germany, they'll put you in jail for fare evasion? I've always seen it done as a fine and they kick you off the train at the next stop.

It's extremely rare that that happens. It's typically considered a criminal offence if you are caught twice in two years, but rarely anyone is following up on that. Only really frequent repeaters are really prosecuted.

That is what I see as well. Not sure why they just don’t give free passes to students and people with low income instead.

The downside is that visitors who are unfamiliar with the system--especially if they don't speak the local language--can end up riding illegally by mistake.

I’m convinced that many transit/rail systems give Minimal thought to the use of the systems by occasional users some of whom may not speak the language natively.