Fare evasion is undoubtedly a real issue. However, half of the people in this thread seem to be under the impression that they are the only honest bloke left in the world and everyone else all around, from the zoomers to the boomers to the poor and the rich and the police and the politicians and what have you, are evil, dishonest, antisocial, selfish assholes. With the utmost possible respect, that doesn't make you a lot different from the people you have just accused of being self-centred exceptionalists.
Yes, culture is a real issue. The NYC metro, for example, is quite notorious for nobody ever paying any fare (the justification I was given is that it's all rubbish anyways, so no point paying for it). When I was visiting with a couple of friends a year or so back, I insisted on buying a ticket. Everyone else, of course, jumped the gate. And while I was fumbling with coins at the ticket machine, one of them held open a ticket barrier for a full minute and kept shouting for me to come through. During this minute, no less than a hundred people of all ages, genders, appearances and races passed through the open barrier, not a single one of them paying anything. Eventually, it simply became too embarassing to keep attempting to pay for the ticket (didn't help that the machine was half broken and laggy, of course).
No, it isn't the zoomers, being influenced by TikTok/the liberals/the SJWs/the nationalists/[insert political position popular among younger people you're angry at at the moment]. Counterculture movements have been a thing since at least the 1700s, and to be honest if someone is fare evading for political reasons, they're far less likely to continue to do so later in life, whereas someone fare evading for monetary gain will continue to do so when given the opportunity until kingdom come. Ideology does not play a role here. We can have legitimate arguments about to what extent social conditions, stagflation, (lack of) enforcement, the education system, negative public image of the police, etc. have on petty crime, but it is extraordinarily unlikely that "these people have been brainwashed into thinking it's okay" is a legitimate answer. This seems to be something of a recurring problem on this forum. <rant>At risk of going off topic, I've seen in multiple other threads claims by certain forum members along the lines of "young people are selfish and don't care for the country anymore", "young people are self-centred, have no respect for others, think anti-social behaviour is okay", etc. and while I fully understand (and agree) that nobody wants to argue politics on a forum about trains, I don't think this kind of BS gets enough pushback. If you do hold this stance, perhaps it would be prudent to think about why "young people" don't get the sense of belonging and responsibility you apparently have, rather than moaning about it. Is it because they have "no stake in society"? (Those who know, know.)</rant>
No, pumping money into the police alone won't work. I would've thought we learned this lesson in the US already. There are many other places in the world, including where I come from, where there are no RPI at all on trains, no staff on the gateline, and no enforcement measure of any sort. And yet, nobody fare dodges, or even really ever contemplates breaking the smallest of rules (no eating/drinking on the metro, etc). The reason for the difference in behaviour can be multifaceted (including the aforementioned cultural issues, customer satisfaction, the cost of the public transport system itself, design of the turnstiles, social security and education, general levels of societal frustration and repression), but it is abundantly clear that having lots of cops in one place might deter people from jumping at that place at that time, but it won't fix the underlying motivations of petty crime. Enforcement is generally a highly ineffective and inefficient method to prevent criminal activity, as opposed to prevention.
