[smileysteve]

> but a small fare can add money in the system

That's the above poster's point; A small fare can easily cost more for infrastructure and enforcement than it brings into the system.

To the extreme, consider fare/ turnstile jumping. Requires

1. Ticket Sales (requires cash management, or credit card fees; $0.25 is a significant amount of $2.50)

2. Video or Person watching from turnstyle booth

3. Turnstile (that must be ADA, emergency, traveling with a roller bag, traveling with children compatible)

4. An officer to identify and ticket the offender.

5. A District Attorney to pursue charges

6. A judge to hear a defense

7. a courthouse bursar

8. a warrant officer to arrest someone charged with a $2.50 fare jump

9. a jail cell.

The real cost though, is criminalization of the poor, in a high income inequality country.

[packetlost]

Idk, every public transit system I've been on operated on barely above honor system for fares. Nearly every time someone gets on a bus where I live and their card doesn't work, the driver let's them on anyways and they just shrug. Seattle's monorail system doesn't have any apparent enforcement from what I could tell (I can't speak for their busses, haven't used them in quite awhile).

Most of the systems/employees you mention will be employed or paid for/installed anyways. Do you think that people go to jail or even get anywhere near the DAs desk for a parking ticket? Why would jumping a turnstile be treated different from the legal standpoint.

[smileysteve]

> Do you think that people go to jail or even get anywhere near the DAs desk for a parking ticket?

A parking ticket has an identification system via a license plate (or VIN number); so they can be identified later.

Jumping a fare, you've not given any identifying information until detained.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fare_evasion#Civil_and_crimina...

But it is criminalizing the poor; Someone who isn't paying $2.50 may not have $50, unless they're doing it for the fun. At best you block them from the transit system which stops them from their job, a place to sleep; at worst, it's another fee when they get arrested for something else

[nine_k]

You give the poorest a low-rate ticket (NYC subway and buses have half-price tickets, at the very least). You can even give them a free ticket.

The point is to avoid normalizing the turnstile jumps at stations, where everyone sees them. See broken windows theory.

[smileysteve]

But to give a free ticket, you still have to have the enforcement; you still have to use resources from the local government (to collect fines).

If you don't pay for enough enforcement (see NYC, Atlanta, Bart, etc that aren't free and have plenty of broken windows), then you still have a "broken window", only it has cost the system significantly more than your other opportunities, ie, armed security on the trains instead of staring at turnstiles; some positions may even be cheaper than your credit card fees on your profitable customers, less ridership (tourism, can't find card, uber competitor) because of fees and complexities reduces effectiveness of the system.

[soco]

Points 1-3 are the real investments there and they don't just exist. The other points do indeed exists but with a different workload, which again you could do without. Now the only point forgotten in the other comments is that a small fee, regardless how small, is making the users more responsible - I think at coin-operated shopping carts. But again, you need a level of security anyway, so they could better focus now doing their job: to sort out the disrupters whatever they are - drunks, litterers, vandals.