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The nearest train station from my home that I usually use has no
station attendants on site. All it has are a ticket vending machine and
an emergency phone. There’s no ticket gate either. A passenger gets a
ticket from the machine and goes directly onto the platform. Upon
arrival, they put the used tickets into a box on the wall. There are
several no-attendant stations like that along this local line.
That
means it’s possible to ride free if you get on and off the train both at
those stations. It’s kind of an honorable system that whether you pay
for the ticket or not all depends on your conscience.
Of course
riding a train without a ticket is a crime. To crack down on it, a
conductor sometimes makes spot checks on the train. He or she checks all
passengers’ tickets and stamps on them. If someone has a ticket for the
minimum fare, the conductor asks the destination and collects the full
fare. Since many passengers make the payments on the train, I suspect
the honorable system doesn’t work so well.
I’ve once seen a passenger
without a ticket caught by the conductor. She received the conductor’s
severe rebuke and paid a lot of money. Some passengers try so badly not
to be caught when a conductor begins the spot check. Their common ways
are simply running away from the conductor by moving back and forth
between the cars. A conductor sometimes gets off the train and steps
onto the platform at a no-attendant station to check the tickets of the
passengers who get off there. In those cases, a passenger who cheats on
the fare walks toward the far end of the platform opposite to the
conductor. The train eventually has to leave on schedule and the
conductor doesn’t have enough time to go up to the passenger for the
ticket. The passenger waits there for the train to leave with the
conductor back on while pretending to rummage through his or her bag for
the ticket that doesn’t exist.
The most impressive passenger I’ve
seen was a young woman who pretended to sleep in her seat when the
conductor asked her to show a ticket. No matter how loudly the conductor
asked repeatedly, she wouldn’t wake up. Although he almost shouted in
her ear in the end of the persistent demands for the ticket, she was
still asleep. I thought if she wasn’t acting, she was dead. After he
went back, her acting finished and she woke up. Unfortunately for her,
the conductor was as determined as she was, and came back to her again.
She was caught this time, but pretended to look for her ticket and
declared she had lost it somewhere. A woman with an iron heart! She told
her departure and destination stations which credibility was
questionable, and paid the fare to the conductor after all.
A stingy
person like me buys a ticket each time. Even so, I feel nervous and have
shifty eyes every time a conductor walks through the train cars. That’s
because I may or may not devise some ways to save money for the ticket,
but I leave it to your conjecture…
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