I took an interview at the NYC MTA about 10 years ago to build a credit card system instead of the ridiculous ticket system. It was pretty cool. They had very s

I took an interview at the NYC MTA about 10 years ago to build a credit card system instead of the ridiculous ticket system. It was pretty cool. They had very simple and cheap solutions available, even some self-built prototypes, but ... politics. Everybody needs to make some money off of everything to pass each stage of approval. From then I started thinking always about the many revenue systems we employ that cost far more than they collect. Public transit is a big one because the cost of a customer not buying a ticket is not just the ticket price, but traffic time and road expansion and emissions and parking structures etc. It’s hard even for government agencies to capture those externalities across department budgets and mandates.