MetroSimGermany wrote:But ticket gates - I don't get the point.
They are ment to keep people without a valid ticket off the platforms and out of the trains. Aside from the revenue loss, these are the people who cause the most violence in public transport, especially when they are about to be fined by a conductor.
I'm always using paper tickets in Berlin with normally no need to ever get it out except on the bus. Yes, we do have smartcards, but the scanners on the busses only work like 30% of the time, and even then I only saw 2 people ever using it in the I think 3 years the system is in operation. Nearly everyone ignores those.
In the Netherlands, the OV-Chipkaart (public transport chipcard) is valid on all public transport. The rule on busses is; if the checkin/checkout scanners do not work, you ride for free.
The last time we got a new bus company in Leiden (Arriva took over from Connexxion), not all busses where replaced with new ones; Arriva took over the Van Hool hybrid busses from Connexxion. But the change to Arriva was overnight, and Connexxion had taken out all their checkin/checkout scanners before handing over. I could take the bus for free for two weeks until Arriva was able to build in their own equipment
Actually I had such an experience in Paris few years ago where the barriers operate with paper tickets, the barriers often don't work at all. Now when the museum shut at 17:30 and hundreds of people got to Louvre metro station
Then you would really need those barriers. They would act as a valve preventing hundreds of passengers all entering the platfoms at once, creating dangerous situations (on stations with no platform egde doors, which are installed on the Paris metro on an increasing number of stations).
And also; when hundreds of people enter a station at the same time, a very high percentage of them probably tries to do so without a valid ticket ("it will be so busy, the chance of a conductor checking my ticket is near zero"), causing massive revenue loss.
So its basicly everyone jumping over them anyways of pushing them into emergency mode there.
At Rotterdam Central Station, they are using low gates (not the standard used high ones):
http://treinenweb.nl/uploads/image/poor ... terdam.jpg
When they where first closed in 2015 (they only open when you check in or out with your OV-chipcard), reports came in people jumped over them. Security people started handing out some pretty heavy fines for anyone who did that (90 euro's for jumping over the gates, plus 35 euro's for not having a valid ticket, and another 90 euro's if you are rude to the person who gives you the fine).