I assume they are referring to systems like TPG in Geneva. Basically you buy a pass and when you get on an off a bus or street car there is no checking of payment it is just assumed everyone is "honoring" the agreement to pay. Every once and a while transit cops will board and check that everyone has a pass/has paid somehow and if you get caught not paying it can affect your ability to rent housing etc.
If you are caught, you get a big fine, 150$-ish and if you pay it nothing will change.
However, if you get caught again or don’t pay the fine, it’s not a misdemeanor, it’s a felony. You will be caught at the Schengen border and flagged as a fugitive and get a Schengen ban. Or if you are a CH or EU resident you will be summoned by the court for a court case and you could go to jail. Most likely you’ll get a 1000$+ fine.
The housing comes in when you try to rent a new place and the landlord asks „are you a felon?“ and you can’t say no anymore.
This is insane, but I guess it fits the Swiss (and Geneva more specifically) quite well. And before anyone starts babbling here about the Swiss's rectitude, Geneva itself is host to this giant international money-laundering abomination:
> Geneva Freeport (French: Ports Francs et Entrepôts de Genève SA) is a warehouse complex in Geneva, Switzerland, for the storage of art and other valuables and collectibles. It is the world's oldest and largest freeport facility, and the one with the most artworks, with 40% of its collection being art with an estimated value of US$100 billion
But yeah, not pay the tram ticket once or twice and suddenly you're not worthy of renting in that shithole called Geneva, meanwhile the city itself launders hundreds of billions of dollars.
Just wait until you learn of other countries' "Freeports" (Zollfreilager) like i.e. Vienna's vie:artport. It's common practice.
Adding to that, the airports and the freeports are sometimes privately run. It's not like the municipal government could do something even if they wanted to in some cases.
But sure, be angry at things you don't fully understand. That's surely healthy.
It's incredibly common all over Europe, not just Switzerland. Not only the metros but the trams and even buses often rely on this system where there's no turnstile or barrier, you just walk in.
Not sure it's about being a high trust society or not, there's frequent inspections where they block the doors, and you get a hefty fine if you're caught without a valid ticket. I certainly wouldn't call Prague or Rome or Dublin high trust societies on par with a Swiss city.
And it is common to cheat, as it is cheaper to pay the fine than to buy a pass annually. Naturally, this is done more by the foreigners I know than the natives. But the foreigners are not Japanese...
Buy a ticket and get on was the standard everywhere for trams and trolleys because you didn’t have enough enforcers and you didn’t have controlled access.
Spot checking kept people honest but it only really works when most people are honest.
In Vienna, where there is not a single automated check for public transport tickets (annual passes are analog plastic cards, one-way tickets are paper), there is consistently a less than ~2% fraud rate. So over 98% of users have a valid ticket at any time.
The City of Vienna has concluded that the cost of building such checkpoints combined with the reduced quality of service and the destruction of the city image could never be worth it. I wonder how other cities justify this without implicitly calling their denizens morally inferior to ours.
> the destruction of the city image could never be worth it
This is a pretty bold claim. It sounds like some local politican talking down their nose at the petty fare dodgers of other Europeans cities with fare gates. For what it is worth, both Korea and Japan are insanely high trust by European and North American standards, and all of their mass transit has fare gates.
I assume they are referring to systems like TPG in Geneva. Basically you buy a pass and when you get on an off a bus or street car there is no checking of payment it is just assumed everyone is "honoring" the agreement to pay. Every once and a while transit cops will board and check that everyone has a pass/has paid somehow and if you get caught not paying it can affect your ability to rent housing etc.
"if you get caught not paying it can affect your ability to rent housing etc"
What's a realistic outcome for someone who gets caught, they have to pay more for housing or they become homeless?
The comment was exaggerated.
If you are caught, you get a big fine, 150$-ish and if you pay it nothing will change.
However, if you get caught again or don’t pay the fine, it’s not a misdemeanor, it’s a felony. You will be caught at the Schengen border and flagged as a fugitive and get a Schengen ban. Or if you are a CH or EU resident you will be summoned by the court for a court case and you could go to jail. Most likely you’ll get a 1000$+ fine.
The housing comes in when you try to rent a new place and the landlord asks „are you a felon?“ and you can’t say no anymore.
Doesn't really sound like high trust, more like high risk to reward ratio.
> it can affect your ability to rent housing
This is insane, but I guess it fits the Swiss (and Geneva more specifically) quite well. And before anyone starts babbling here about the Swiss's rectitude, Geneva itself is host to this giant international money-laundering abomination:
> Geneva Freeport (French: Ports Francs et Entrepôts de Genève SA) is a warehouse complex in Geneva, Switzerland, for the storage of art and other valuables and collectibles. It is the world's oldest and largest freeport facility, and the one with the most artworks, with 40% of its collection being art with an estimated value of US$100 billion
But yeah, not pay the tram ticket once or twice and suddenly you're not worthy of renting in that shithole called Geneva, meanwhile the city itself launders hundreds of billions of dollars.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Freeport
Just wait until you learn of other countries' "Freeports" (Zollfreilager) like i.e. Vienna's vie:artport. It's common practice.
Adding to that, the airports and the freeports are sometimes privately run. It's not like the municipal government could do something even if they wanted to in some cases.
But sure, be angry at things you don't fully understand. That's surely healthy.
It's incredibly common all over Europe, not just Switzerland. Not only the metros but the trams and even buses often rely on this system where there's no turnstile or barrier, you just walk in.
Not sure it's about being a high trust society or not, there's frequent inspections where they block the doors, and you get a hefty fine if you're caught without a valid ticket. I certainly wouldn't call Prague or Rome or Dublin high trust societies on par with a Swiss city.
And it is common to cheat, as it is cheaper to pay the fine than to buy a pass annually. Naturally, this is done more by the foreigners I know than the natives. But the foreigners are not Japanese...
Buy a ticket and get on was the standard everywhere for trams and trolleys because you didn’t have enough enforcers and you didn’t have controlled access.
Spot checking kept people honest but it only really works when most people are honest.
In Vienna, where there is not a single automated check for public transport tickets (annual passes are analog plastic cards, one-way tickets are paper), there is consistently a less than ~2% fraud rate. So over 98% of users have a valid ticket at any time.
The City of Vienna has concluded that the cost of building such checkpoints combined with the reduced quality of service and the destruction of the city image could never be worth it. I wonder how other cities justify this without implicitly calling their denizens morally inferior to ours.
This is a pretty bold claim. It sounds like some local politican talking down their nose at the petty fare dodgers of other Europeans cities with fare gates. For what it is worth, both Korea and Japan are insanely high trust by European and North American standards, and all of their mass transit has fare gates.
Could be https://www.myswitzerland.com/en-ch/experiences/metro-lausan...