To know that you've used transit.

Not sure how it works in SF, but many cities across the world have moved to "in-card tickets." You tap your card on the way in, and the bus "knows" that this card number has a valid ticket attached to it. Depending on the particulars of the city and system, you might need to tap out too.

In some cities, this is done entirely offline. For cards which cannot guarantee offline payments (which many low-income / under-age individuals have, and such people are far more likely to use transit), this is done "on trust", with failed payments getting your card blacklisted until you go to the transit agency's office and get the situation rectified.

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lxgr 8 hours ago | parent [-]

> with failed payments getting your card blacklisted until you go to the transit agency's office and get the situation rectified.

At least in the NYC MTA's OMNY, unblocking actually happens automatically in the background, either on a nightly reconciliation job that attempts to collect your fare or triggered by the next tap (which will be unsuccessful once more but trigger the collection attempt, and then you can tap again after your card's blocked status has cleared in the system). They also have a website to manually repay without having to wait at the turnstile.

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mitxela 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Ugh, turnstiles. Proof-of-payment systems have so much lower friction. You buy a ticket before getting on; there are no barriers between the street and the train; sometimes there's a ticket inspector team on the train who verifies you have a ticket. If you don't have a ticket you're arrested on the spot.

It will never work in a punishment-oriented society because you're very likely to get away with riding for free if you don't do it regularly, and these societies feel that catching the bad guys is more important than working well for the good guys.

It's compatible with a card payment system but then proving criminal intent to free-ride is harder because the system gets complicated for the user. It's great with a paper concession ticket.

	▲	supertrope an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The biggest benefit of fare gates is keeping out troublemakers. For whatever reason there is a large overlap between those who don't pay their fare and those who sexually harass other passengers, leave large messes, or vandalize. The other method of suppressing quality of life crimes and fare evasion is lots of transit cops. It's probably cheaper to install the gates than hire lots of transit cops and arresting people over fare evasion makes the city/transit agency look like bad guys. https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2026/news20260518
	▲	skybrian 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Arresting people on the spot is punishment too, more arbitrary and less effective. It just seems worse? Also, the experience of riding Bart seems to have improved quite a bit since they installed better turnstiles, and that likely will affect ridership numbers.
	▲	trollbridge 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		BART wasn’t punishment based but before they installed turnstiles, many people simply refused to pay. It doesn’t make sense to run a transit system this way.