I’ve just got back from a very pleasant weekend in the Bavarian city of Munich. It was interesting to see how some things are done very differently on the continent.
Take train travel, and what we euphemistically refer to as “revenue protection”. In the UK these days there are on the spot fines for travelling on buses or trains without the necessary ticket. And in London in particular, the threat of fines had been seen as not enough and we also now have complex software and hardware infrastructure to control access to stations and to charge passengers for their travel. Our transport is some of the most expensive in the world, which in turn is probably what makes the revenue so worthwhile investing to protect. Everyone, however, is treated as a potential fare dodger.
Compare this to the Munich system; on arrival, we purchased a 3-day ticket which cost less than a return fare from London to Luton airport, and gave us both (and up to three other adults, and then up to two children per adult) unlimited travel on the greater Munich transportation system for the whole time. And after initial validation on a time stamping machine, that was the last time we used the ticket physically for the whole trip.
There are no automated gates, no Oyster cards, no burly revenue protection officers (at least that we saw), because there is a level of trust that assumes that the vast majority will comply, and fares that are reasonable enough that means that you don’t begrudge the costs.
Now I’m sure that they have loss as a result of this comparatively laissez faire approach. I overheard one stag party group of British blokes heading back to the airport proudly bragging about how they hadn’t bought tickets. We’ve become accustomed, it seems, to not be trusted – and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But this is more than just train tickets. Think about the way in which so many business systems work: they take the same draconian Theory-X view of the world, and if you treat everyone like they can’t be trusted then pretty soon you’ll find you are right.
mmitII 
Matt – on a family holiday last year in Germany, I noticed the same laissez-faire attitude. It even extended into taboo areas like smoking – I’ve never seen so many cigarette vending machines on the streets yet their smoking rates are comparative with the UK and lower than Spain, France, etc. Beer is consistently cheap, and of high quality (both sources of national pride!), yet they have nothing like the alcohol problems in the UK.
I summed it up thus: they treat people like adults and low and behold, they act like adults.