Here's a radical concept for Bay Area governance: if you build infrastructure that actually enforces the rules, people tend to follow them. BART's upgraded fare gates — taller, harder to jump, and decidedly less forgiving — appear to be doing what years of hand-wringing and "public awareness campaigns" could not: making people pay for the service they use.

Welcome to what one Bay Area commuter aptly called "the inevitable conclusion of becoming a low trust society." When you can't — or won't — enforce basic norms through policing and social expectation, you end up engineering your way around human behavior. It works, but it's a concession. It means we've given up on the honor system because, well, there wasn't much honor left in the system.

The contrast with high-trust transit cultures is stark. In Tokyo, fare gates stay open by default and only close when someone doesn't pay — because virtually everyone does. That's what functional social contracts look like. Here, we needed floor-to-ceiling barriers and gates that slam shut like a bouncer at a Marina nightclub.

But let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The new gates are delivering real results, and the street-level reviews are enthusiastic. One SF resident recounted watching a guy in fancy shoes sprint toward a closing gate at Balboa Park, plow face-first into it, and slip on the wet ground. "It was glorious," they reported. Another rider described a new hobby: dodging tailgaters by pretending their card doesn't work and watching freeloaders awkwardly retreat.

Of course, the system isn't airtight. Riders report people wriggling underneath the gates or strolling through unstaffed security doors at stations like Millbrae. The hardware upgrade means nothing if BART can't be bothered to staff its own booths.

Still, there's a larger principle here that San Francisco's political class should internalize: enforcement works. Not cruelty — enforcement. Paying customers deserve a system that respects their contribution. Every fare evader is effectively taxing the people who do the right thing. The new gates aren't some authoritarian overreach; they're the bare minimum expectation that a public transit system should function like, you know, a public transit system.

Now, as one satisfied rider put it: "Some longer trains, pretty please."