It's true that Berlin public transit has no physical fare enforcement (e.g. there are no ticket gates at subway stations), but the state operator of public transit is anything but lax on fare dodgers: the tickets are being checked randomly by undercover ticket inspectors, and every so often there's news of an inspector being violent [0]. The reality with ticket inspectors stands in stark contrast to the witty and playful online identity maintained by the BVG. Additionally, repeated fare dodging is treated as fraud by the German law and repeated offences can land you in jail [1].

[0] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/bvg-berlin-strassenbahn...

[1] https://taz.de/Haftstrafen-fuer-Schwarzfahren/!5529577/

Yes generally, but during this €9 fare summer, I haven’t seen any checks at all. They just assume you all paid for it.

As much as maybe fare evasion is a secondary concern, I think the main reason they're cracking down on the subways in NYC is because people weren't feeling safe on the trains anymore.

As much as I love a free and open and fair society, you can see why people not my size might be uncomfortable next to people growling, sleeping with trash bags filled with their belongings, drinking out of brown paper bags, rolling and smoking blunts and cigarettes. (I mostly bike these days but I saw all of that in recent subway trips during the early summer).

And then there was the rash of incidents on the subway with people getting shot at stations, the guy who tried to set off a smoke bomb and pulled out a gun on the car and started shooting, the guy who smeared shit on someone's face, the people who've been pushed onto tracks.

These incidents are _incredibly_ rare, but the way humans work doesn't let a lot of us shake off that perception of the subways being less safe than they used to be.

I'm not one of those people, I base my fears on statistics, but you can't expect every human being, especially smaller people, the elderly, and women to be as carefree.

in new delhi, india, metro is "actually amazing"....

you have mandatory baggage x-ray checking and a physcial patdown, both for men and women EVERYTIME you enter the station so you cant have weapons of any sort.

the stations are guarded by trained police (cisf) whole job profile is to only secure highly sensitive operations and they are trained to actually do their job.... you have full CCTV coverage of stations and trains and it is generally safe. for women, the first carriage of every train is mandatory for women only and any men who board that carriage are fined and removed from the train...

you cannot eat or even "sit on the floor of the train" so its very clean even when many thousand passengers ride it every single day...

tickets are enforced so you cannot just freeride the stations and cars. you need a card/ticket to enter and exit and are charged by the time between these two entries so there aren't panhandlers, beggars there...

india has a generally dirty habit of doing chewing tobacco and the city stinks with the stink of red stains on every building, wall, road, vehicles but spitting is an offense in the station/train permises so its also clean by that way.

if you are in india and in delhi, try it once. you will enjoy the ride

I've just had a look at the pictures:

https://www.livemint.com/news/india/delhi-metro-average-wait...

It looks very nice, even nicer than in some European cities.

I don't have an issue with tougher policing of the fare with actual doors and police presence but a patdown is kind of ridiculous. I'm afraid people too easily give up their freedom for a tiny increase in safety

nope. a patdown to prevent any concealed weapons is a good thing.... may i ask, what kind of freedoms do you loose if you are 100% sure that in a train station or in a train that no one is carrying a knife or a gun or something lethal?

>tiny increase in safety

yeah, right... guns don't kill people, it is people who kill people. same for cigarettes i suppose.

I dunno, that seems like a lot to me living in NYC where we have basically none of that and life is fine. We all get on the train and go our ways and peak ridership is millions a day (prepandemic was almost 6 million on the MTA trains alone (not including the LIRR, Metro North, and NJ Transit, and Amtrak)).

I don't think anyone in NYC wants that. Talk about a police presence sheesh.

And yea I just talked about the perception issues, which is why they're cracking down on fare evaders. Basically increasing police presence to make people feel like it's the safe system they've been using for years before the pandemic.

NYC subway is said to be stinky, with homeless people and people dying and such, people throwing fights and stuff...

>And yea I just talked about the perception issues, which is why they're cracking down on fare evaders.

why should that not be a problem when they are running a public utility? oh, did i mention that women just have to carry an empty "card" with no balance and they can "actually freeride" the whole train for as long as they want ?

so only men have to pay for their rides and everyone is happy with the arrangement in delhi so why should they NOT enforce men not paying?

I see people jump the turnstiles all the time, and they're usually not the type that growl at you. Usually (at least in my area) it is young, teenage or early 20-something brown/black males who blend back into the crowd immediately.

I agree the types of people you described are a problem, but they aren't the farejumpers.

lol brown/black males. Isn't that a bit passive aggressive version of racism hidden under "just pointing out what I noticed"? Is that because you are biased that you notice or is it the actual reality?

Please expand on what was racist about my message. Was it where I said that fare jumpers just blended in with the crowd and didn't growl at people, and were not the problem makers that OP was describing?

Was I also sexist in pointing out it is mostly males I see doing it?

I’ve been to Berlin once in the last 10 or so years. Took the bus. Had to pay with a 20€ bill. The driver looked at me as if I’m trying to hand him something poisonous and waved me through.

It got better. Now you can use Android pay in the buses and at train stations. The ticket app is decent too.

Only the old machines in the tram remain. Those only take coins.

I live in Dresden and can’t remember exactly what when the last time my ticket was checked in the bus or tram. IIRC last time was July and I ride the tram and bus daily

But I always have my ticket with me; as another mentioned, there are undercover control checks that will surprise you

You can add Seattle to your comparison. Fare enforcement is almost non-existing at the moment, and more and more groups are traveling for free. However transit quality is not nearly on the same level as in New York or Berlin.