TheBus
Sunday morning. The night had been hot and rather sleepless. Some neighbors had begun to fight, somebody called the police, and finally it died down. We decided to make a trip to Honolulu and went through the checkpoint to tell the safety guard.
Oahu is the only Hawaiian island where you do not have to have a car. You can take TheBus. They charge a standard rate, wherever you go, provided you do not change direction and do not carry a suitcase or other heavy things. This means, you can go with TheBus practically around the whole island, more than 60 miles, for just some cents.
You drop your fare into a transparent plastic box next to the driver. The right amount, if possible, because if you pay too much you will not get any change. Bad luck. You cannot pay too little because the driver would notice. You don't get a ticket. When everyone has paid and boarded the bus, the driver pulls a handle, and the money vanishes from the box into some invisible depth.
Thanks to this ingenious system, not unlike the flushing of a toilet, the driver doesn't have to worry about money nor tickets. Also, it is quite impossible to dodge the fare. And last but not least: bad guys needn't try to steal the money, because nobody can get at the box - not even the driver.
So easy life could be - if we would not insist on making it complicated with single way fares, multiple way fares, scholar fares, senior citizen fares, holiday fares, excursion fares, luggage fares, baby carriage fares, fare zones, fare controls and controllers to control the fares.
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