don't scare people :) it's not a criminal offense if you forget your purse or buy the wrong ticket. It's a criminal offense if you enter the public transit knowing that you don't have a ticket and willing to break the law. That said, the increased fee is usually 60€ and criminal charges are usually only pressed for routine offenders and those not paying their fines.
That said, I fully support Buschmann's initiative. Best minister of justice since a really long time.
Using public transport without the correct ticket is a criminal offense (Straftat) in Germany. It's not just a matter of paying an increased fee (that's the 5 Euro) when caught.
The current minister of justice is considering to analyze if the law can be changed to make it just a misdemeanor (Ordnungwidrigkeit).
My ticket gets checked less then monthly and I commute to work daily. The monthly ticket costs at least 50€, the penalty is 40€. From a mathematical point of view, it makes no sense to buy a ticket.
There are a couple of caveats. When I don't have a ticket, e.g. because I forgot my wallet, I'm on a constant lookout and the train ride becomes really stressful. If you get caught several times they might press charges against you, so it is not feasible to go without ticket on a regular basis anyway. And last but not least, I'm using a service, so I pay for it.
When I was a kid, Brussels public transport was purely proactive payment. Hop on a bus/tram/subway, scan your card. I didn't ride enough for it to matter, and it was cheap (1 euro per trip), so I didn't game the system but many of my friends just decided it was either going to cost them $500/yr in fines or it would cost them $500/yr in tickets, so they just rode without a ticket.
Last year there was a brief period where the same ticket cost 9€/month. It was a success but discontinued for mainly political reasons.
There is a fund however where you subscribe for 9€ and if you get caught riding without a ticket they pay your fine. Unfortunately, the threat of prison makes this idea not sustainable. But it is a nice display of hacker spirit.
You have a very small chance of being caught if you ride the subway without a ticket. If you are caught some countries will work out what to fine you by multiplying the chance of being caught by the price of the ticket you didn't buy. So if they check your ticket once every 100 times you catch a train the fine for not having a ticket will be more than 100 times the cost of the ticket. That way not buying a ticket works out more expensive than buying one.
If you actually want to deter this kind of crime you need to fine the people who are caught the amount of money they stole multiplied by the number of people who don't get caught. So you should probably be thinking 20 or 30 times the amount stolen.
Of course such large fines might take entire industries down with them so you're unlikely to ever see corporate crime punished as excessively as it should be.
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].
Ticket checks are incredibly rare in most cities already, Germans tend to buy tickets because it's illegal not to, not because it's more economical given the fine you pay without one.
And selling tickets will be an extremely minor overhead, probably <5% including re-programming machines.
In Copenhagen, Denmark the penalty is between 500 and 750 DKK ($82 - $123) -- while you can use the same ticket on all types of public transportation, the light rail and real rail are run by different companies and charge slightly different penalties.
A basic ticket is 13.50 (if you buy 10 in advance which can then be activated at any time, as is most common) to 23.00 DKK (if you buy a single one in a machine or via a text message); it lets you travel for an hour and change as much as you wish. If you travel every day between home and work you'll usually buy a flat-rate subscription.
(The prices get higher if you travel through multiple fare zones -- there are almost 100 different zones that cover Zealand and its 2 million inhabitants; it can be a somewhat confusing system sometimes resulting in travel from A to B not costing the same as travel from B to A; if you didn't buy enough fare zones you're also liable for that 750 DKK penalty above)
Bus travel require you to show a ticket at the entrance, so there's rarely secondary control, but the light rail system you have to buy or stamp a ticket yourself I guess has perhaps a 15% chance of being checked. I'd estimate at least 98% people have valid tickets on the lines I use.
It has been my impression, having spent a significant amount of time in Germany, that German ticket checkers aren't primarily trying to detect people who have made a mistake, but those who intentionally ride without paying.
It’s a fantastic step forward, making commuting with public transport much more affordable for many. But another nice thing about the 9€ ticket was that it got rid of all other tickets for occasional users, too. If you’re using public transport just a few times each month, 49€ is too high, and you will still have to deal with 4x tickets short tickets, AB/BC/ABC zones, day tickets and whatnot. Which is unfortunate, as that’s annoying, and they have to keep the complicated ticket vending infrastructure in place as well.
I suspect you bought a ticket that can be made active any time, so you could buy it in advance if you wanted. To make the ticket "active" you have to stamp it using the pillar thing with the automatic date stamp at the station. Common mistake, but understandable you got an earful because you might as well be pretending you didn't know how things worked and are actually just riding again and again using the same pretend-ticket.
Similar with bringing a bottle of a brand that the store sells into the store - how are they supposed to know if you brought it in or if you just took it in the store and opened it there on the way to the cash register? (which, by the way, is not super uncommon either and generally tolerated)
German police are not allowed to collect fines on the spot, it's a corruption prevention measure.
Germany is the only country I ever visited where i feared the ticket inspector. I've seen them put fines. They go undercover in the metro: sometimes its just a dude sitting there suddenly takes the gadget out and yells out a control. I've had foreign friends, as tourists having to pay the fine.
In SF you can simply not pay,there is no control. In argentina, the bus driver might not start the bus if you don't pay, turning the whole bus people against you. In germany, you get a damn ticket very fast, which you can pay with credit card.
I once didnt pay the ticket and felt like Jason Bourne.
> Disclaimer: I don't live there, I don't know the details.
exactly
it's digital available in a app _or chip card_
in both cases it's not tracking where you go, you don't check-in/out when you enter leafe a train, their are no "gates" in (most?all?) of Germans public transportation systems. Instead it's a trust based system where sporadically randomly personal will check if passengers have valid tickets. At which point you have to show your ID and card, but that's it. And that you where checked also doesn't get recorded. But even if they would this checks tend to be somewhat rare to a point that some people decided it (was) cheaper to not buy a ticket but pay the fine from time to time.
You'll also have to account for the money saved that you no longer have to spend operating the ticket machines or have people patrol the public transports and checking for tickets. That alone should be tens of thousands of euros saved.
One thing this article doesn't really talk about is that ticketing systems are designed to keep the staff honest, not the passengers.
> In London, where riders face fines as high as $1,300, the fare evasion rate on buses is only 1.5 percent.
You'd have to go some to get a fine that high. The penalty fares are £80, or about $100, but if you're prosecuted for the criminal offence the Sentencing Council guidelines for evasion of train fares are here: https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Rail...
Switzerland uses the honor system in their public transit and it works.
There are random checks on small routes and long distance routes have a conductor checking tickets.
About 800 are caught each day with invalid tickets which is a very small percentage of total travelers. There are about 1 million travelers on rail per day. The fine is 'only' 100 CHF for the first offence which is very small if you compare it to ticket prices. However subsequent offences have higher fines and you are added to a database which you will stay in for at least 2 years.
About half a million out of almost 8 million residence have a year pass for the entire rail system (General-Abonnemente). Over 2 million have a year pass for half-price tickets (Halbtax-Abonnemente) so any ticket they buy is half price.
It is very nice to just walk in and out of trains, buses, boats without having to go through turnstiles etc.
No, please. I bought a "ticket" that wasn't actually a ticket (had to use the red box to "convert" it?) for a train and got an earful. Also walked into a Rewe with a bottle of water and the cashier was really displeased.
In the UK and some other EU countries, you'd just pay on the spot (either the fine or the ticket price). Some things aren't worth that much policing.
This is quite a good solution. It reminds me of public transport in some European countries. Yes, you can get on board without a ticket. But there will be a guard who will be on board maybe 1 in 10 times and the fines are substantial.
The problem is you can't really issue substantial fines in this instance. I suppose you could pay less for the first few runs where verification is more likely.
I really want this to succeed, and I think these problems can be overcome.
That said, I fully support Buschmann's initiative. Best minister of justice since a really long time.
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