Can confirm that I bought blueberries in Denmark (WA town) last month in a cardboard punnet. I thought it was just what the local farm that sold to the IGA did. I’m glad to hear it’s more widespread and potentially rolling out to everyone.

This sounds like a misunderstanding of economics.

I’d give this more weight if other commenters hadn’t already helpfully cited studies in this very thread on the topic at hand. The story from Miami in particular was very telling. I also liked the European method where they made fares themselves free, but still enforced people using their smart tickets to record journeys.

Making people pay a token amount isn’t about preventing unnecessary travel. It’s about keeping everyone with a little ‘skin in the game’, where they feel they are paying for a service. Even if the amount itself is negligible. It also provides data where journey projections and trends are revealed.

I’m no expert on this topic, but I’ve previously read that when a thing is made free people stop valuing it. I don’t know how much weight to put on this, I certainly valued my hospital visits for my children and I and those were free.

I think the simple fact is people evade fares because they believe they will face no consequences for it. If transit authorities put Coles style cameras on the entrances and flagged evaders who were then picked up every single time, evasion would drastically drop. And we’d hate having Big Brother watching us.

I think a token amount is reasonable. It costs me more than 50c to ride my bicycle or walk/run 50km. When a train fare is cheaper than wear on your shoes for walking that distance, I can’t see how you can complain about it.