On Wed, 5 May 2004 at 16:01:52, Ian Jelf
wrote:

I can only assume that they've had a lot of fare evasion on that
route, and wanted a few prosecutions as a deterrent.
That makes sense, I suppose, especially since the "honesty" policy of
not checking every ticket/pass now being adopted is so "foreign" to the
average UK passenger. Certainly up here on Midland Metro the fare
evasion before the introduction of conductors appeared to reach dizzying
proportions, if the number of people caught when they *did* do check was
anything to go by.

Years ago (about 1972, I think), when they first abolished the
"tricoteuses" on the Paris Metro - the people, usually women, who would
clip a hole in your tickets as you passed through - they replaced them
with a system whereby you introduced your ticket into an automatic
machine which just printed a stamp on it, and then the gates would open
to let you through.

Within six months, they were replacing it by the magnetic-strip system
familiar to us today! They hadn't realised, unlike the punters, that
you could use the same ticket over and over and over and over
again.......
--
Annabel Smyth
http://www.amsmyth.demon.co.uk/index.html
Website updated 8 March 2004