[sysadmindotfail]

>There are occasional ticket checks with big fines for non-compliance.

I'll likely mangle the explanation but this sort of policy does not fair well when there is a large divide between have/have-not and little/no social safety net.

If you are poverty level you will be forever stuck in this cycle: Ticket/fine, court, loss of income, etc. What might work is simply granting free access below a certain income threshold.

[dfadsadsf]

What many people do not realize is that one function of tickets is to prevent access to public transportation to people below a certain income threshold. If you do not, you have people using public transport as homeless shelter, urinate, smell badly, openly doing drugs, etc which leads to normal people stopping using public transport and then happily defunding it (as nobody reasonable uses it anymore - too dangerous and unpleasant).

[mcdonje]

Then make those activities against policy and have transit police.

The solution to bad behavior shouldn't involve cutting off poor people from basic services they need to improve their condition.

[dfadsadsf]

Those activities are mostly against policy already but current political environment makes it impossible to enforce nuisance laws. Ticket price is a reasonable alternative even if it hurts a few deserving poor people.

[bluGill]

There should be a program for the poor for sure.

Also a program for free rides to places like abuse shelters (for all genders - battered women is sexist talk!), voting booths and others similar locations should be in place - if you are going to one of them the checker verifies that are on the direct route to such a place and gives you a ticket - once you get there they validate your ticket - while if you don't arrive they send the police looking for you (in the case of abuse not arriving is a sign of urgent trouble, in other cases the police can arrest you when they feel like it)

[TheNewAndy]

How does putting NFC in the tickets prevent this?