Transit Ticketing Systems

How is this better than having something like a clipper card (nfc transit card)?

Same thing going on with public transit replacing tickets/passes with credit card scanner entry

The magnetic stripe tickets don't have a unique ID so your journey can't be tracked.

In most major cities you swipe a metro card that calculates the fare where you got on and got off, or applies zoned travel on a daily, weekly, monthly, or annual rate. In some cities you can just swipe an NFC bank card. To have a 'ticket to ride' seems ridiculous.

Works as an oyster replacement, for 'pay as you go'. Not if you have any kind of travelcard, AFAIK.

Every subway gate should be a ticket checker

They expect travelers to use the cards in good faith...so why all those turnstiles?

I think having tickets at all is antiquated. In the Netherlands, there are terminals at the stations you tap your bank card against to "check in". When you get off, you tap it again at that station and your card gets charged. Sometimes the conductor comes around with a device to make sure people have checked in.If you don't want your travel to be associated with your bank account, you can get a chip card which can be topped up using cash.

I think metro trains in countries like The Netherlands and Singapore use this approach where in you tap your cards and entry and exit and you are billed usually somewhere at the end of the day.

Here it's paper tickets by default. There is one primary kind of ticket which you have to stamp at your origin point and it entitles you to move away from that point, anywhere in the city, for the next 2 hours.The value of having just one kind of ticket (for most uses) with a fixed price is surprisingly high, since you can even pre-purchase a bunch of them if you're an occasional rider. Then riding on the train without a card is: get ticket from wallet, stamp it, wait for train, get