One thing about London, and two about Italy, that kind of creeped me out

[xiphias]

Of course, not everything in Europe was wonderful.

London: is there any square inch of London you can be in where you're NOT being taped by a closed-circuit television? MAN, that's creepy. How do y'all get USED to it? I really loved the city, but I couldn't live there, just for that reason alone. WAY too much surveillance. Just. . . creepy, man. Orwell was a Brit, after all. . .

Italy: um. Doors that need a key to unlock from the INSIDE. See, I guess it's just a cultural difference, but, here in the United States, we have this thing called "fire". . . sometimes we accidentally get "fire" on our buildings, and then we need to get out of the buildings. And so, we like to be able to get out of buildings pretty easily. So we do things like have doors that you lock and unlock with a key from the OUTSIDE, but, from the INSIDE, you just use a knob or something, so that you can get out easily.

Freaked me out some, it did.

The other thing that I didn't quite get was the caribinieri. There's something creepy about having your civilian policing done by your military. I just don't like it -- rubs me the wrong way. They seem like perfectly nice, competent people (and the impression I was getting is that they're among the ONLY competent authority figures around -- c.f. my story about the woman fainting on the train to get an idea about the competence of all non-caribinieri first responders in Rome. . . ), but still -- the military is the military and the civilian is the civilian and it seems kind of worrisome to have one group do both.

Comments

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

My impression is that there's rather less CCTV coverage in strictly residential areas, with the possible exception of council estates. I don't particularly mind it on public transport; video would be a very inefficient method of tracking the movements of millions of people compared to, say, Oyster cards (this is one reason I buy a season ticket, and only touch in and touch out when I need to - many of the stations and times I travel it isn't necessary because the gates are open).

The data quality of cameras in private establishments such as department stores and office buildings is often so poor that nobody can be identified by it at all. At least one bicycle thief in Canary Wharf knows this.

It's been a while since I've been back to North America, so perhaps I can't comment, but the main difference to me seems to be that here there are lots of signs that say you are on CCTV, and cameras are placed quite obviously. This was not the case a few years ago, but there were still quite a few cameras. I think what's happening is that the government is trying to deter petty crime and violence by warning that people WILL be on camera, only it doesn't work too well because most repeat criminals know that the cameras are pretty much useless.

I'd be interested in walking around a few major cities in the US and counting the number of surveillance cameras there. I'm willing to bet there are more than most people notice, and possibly more given the generally lower population density. I don't see myself traveling to the US anytime in the near future, though.

Would I prefer to have fewer surveillance cameras? Maybe. I'm more concerned about things like biometric ID cards and the national ID register, the mental health register, and so on. I see these as much more threatening than a few crappy cameras.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I agree with you on all points.

For what it's worth, Boston recently moved to the "Charlie Card", which is pretty much exactly like an Oyster card, except we don't tap out.

We used to have simple token-operated turnstiles, and we spent millions of dollars to upgrade.

Did you know that there is absolutely zero improvement from a user perspective from using a card than a token? I mean, I STILL can't figure out WHY we switched.

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

I find Oystercards easier than the old paper tickets; it is a little bit faster and this means less crowding in rush hour. Also the plastic Oyster cards are much more durable than the paper tickets, which means they don't get munged so easily in pockets and so on. With paper weekly and monthly season tickets I was forever having to get the gate attendant to let me in and out because even keeping it in a little plastic wallet, I managed to wreck the paper ticket enough that the machines would not read it.

I can't compare to the token system you were using as I have never used it.

[ceo]

So they don't have to maintain the obsolete token machines any more, of course. It is also quite convenient to be able to load a bunch of subway fare onto your bus pass.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

What made the token machines "obsolete"?

Re: Smile!

[ceo]

The fact the nobody makes them anymore, and they're complicated mechanical beasts that required a lot of maintenance.

I have my own complaints about the way the T implemented automated fare collection, mostly related to the execrably badly designed UI on the fare machines and the one-coin-at-a-time fareboxes on the buses.

[ron_newman]

Charlie cards allow for free transfers from subway to bus, and 45-cent transfers the other way (so either kind of trip costs $1.70). That was impossible to implement with the tokens.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Is that benefit worth the hundreds of millions of dollars we spent on the system? What if we'd changed to $0.85 bus and $0.85 subway fares?

Was there any reason we COULDN'T have done that -- making subway fare cheaper to match the bus fare? If we CAN do $1.70 bus+subway rides WITH the added overhead of the new system, why couldn't we do $0.85 each WITHOUT it?