It just seems like a terribly inefficient system to verify someone’s right to access the train once they are already on the train…..
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So your question is little backwards. The thing is “why use turnstiles at all, they are easy to get around or fool.” That’s because there is such a high volume of people who use a metro or subway every day that the system would get clogged up if a human had to check every pass. Compare a subway to an amtrak car. The amtrak car is not carrying 3,000 different people in 1 hour.
It’s a completely different scale of operations. Amtrak will carry double digit millions every YEAR. A large metro/subway in a somewhat major city will carry a million in a WEEK. And I’m not even going to count the ones that carry a million in a DAY.
And another effect of the scale difference is just, well, the scale. We can’t expect ticket checkers to get every single person in a subway/metro when the car stops every 5 or 10 minutes unless we have teams of them covering every car.
Our train boards outdoors. There’s no internal area to restrict with a turnstile. you walk 10 feet from the parking lot to the door of the train and they check your ticket as you step on.
Eli5: there are too many remote stations with too few staff to implement such a rigid controlled method of passenger control.
Many of these railroad lines rely on distance traveling rather than volume traveling.
Typically the tickets are priced according to your zone or destination, while a turnstile type of rail is typically a flat price throughout the network.
If a regional rail implements something like this, it would require major infrastructure and staffing changes that would be cost prohibitive.
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So just FYI, I grew up on Long Island and took the LIRR frequently.
Where would you install the turnstiles? There are multiple entrances and exits, some of them don’t even have designated entrance and exits because they’re just on street level.
There are no employees at most of these stations, only the ticket vending machines.
Many platforms for the LIRR, are just a concrete platform with nothing there, maybe a set of stairs leading up to the tracks.
Major stations, like Mineola, you could probably get this implemented… but then where would you install the turnstiles because it’s a pretty congested and crowded station to begin with.
Then you have stations like country Life press, or Port Jefferson… Pretty remote and the trains only come once an hour.
If they did that half of the passengers of these far more costly trains would get away without paying. (See the turnstile jumping issue with NYC transit, SF’s BART, Philly’s SEPTA, Chicago’s CTA, DC’s Metro etc. )
It’s not just long distance train systems.
The public transportation in calgary uses transportation “officers” that *occasionally* check tickets.
Occasionally enough that it’s not worth the risk to not have a ticket.
IIRC it works out that the fine for not having a ticket/not having the correct ticket is less than the price of a years pass. I think you could get caught 3x a year and you’d break even if you bought the years pass.
That said, a single ticket was $3 when I lived there, so it the fine worth it? Plus that train system had “free downtown transit” so as long as you were downtown you didn’t need a ticket. As soon as you left downtown you needed a ticket.
The enforcement agents were often standing on the first platform outside of the city and would check everybody who got off then step on the train and check everybody else. (Not too many people on the trains most days.)
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