>>1688903>It's pretty obvious why a bum or junkie would skip fare. But why do you?OP here. Let me try to explain again why I do it.
Of course it's obvious why a bum, junkie, or the small groups of minority kids who try to steal shit do it. That doesn't make it okay for them to do it. Subway systems (especially mine) get a bad rap for being walking homeless shelters full of piss, shit, and needles and rampant crime. I know this isn't accurate. But the fact of the matter is that the reason subways get this bad rap is specifically because the bums, junkies, and criminals are allowed in WITH ZERO RESISTANCE AND THEY ARE THE ONES MAKING SUBWAYS TERRIBLE. If subway systems made it impossible to fare evade, subways would suddenly jump to near the top of public transportation options because I can GUARANTEE that the absence of fare evading bums, junkies, and thieves would plummet the crime, piss, feces, horrible smells, loud music, etc. from the system.
I paid my fare every day both ways for 5 years. I was always pissed off seeing bums and blatant fare evasion in public but I gritted my teeth and paid anyway because half a million people a day ride the subway system and it would be too hard to stop them all.
Then when covid hit, the subway became a ghost town, yet the trains and stations still had plenty of bums and junkies on it. Despite 10% of normal ridership, I still watched the agent sitting at the faregates watch as bums went in the side gates and they did nothing, not an announcement, call to the subway police (my home station literally is the subway police meeting point), they barely even looked up from their phones. Even in a global pandemic, they would allow filthy fucking bums into the system, unmasked despite regulations requiring them, who could have covid or god knows what disease to mingle with paying riders.
THAT is what made my stop paying on April 1, 2020 after watching that shit for 2-3 weeks into covid and it still hasn't changed.
