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Every city that has public transportation has fare jumpers, people who sneak on to the subway or the bus without buying a ticket. In Sweden, fare dodging is a movement with a name and a philosophy and a logo. And fare jumpers do not hide as NPR's Ari Shapiro discovered in Stockholm.
ARI SHAPIRO, BYLINE: We're at the entrance to the university subway station in Stockholm. Students are streaming out in their backpacks and winter coats. Some people have set up a booth here. It has a hot pink logo of a man jumping a turnstile. The sign says Planka.nu. In Swedish, that means dodge the fare now.
CHRISTIAN TENGBLAD: We're distributing some leaflets about free public transportation - our free public transportation - some stickers. We have coffee and some biscuits.
SHAPIRO: This is Christian Tengblad, one of the founders of the fare-jumping movement. He's 33 and his infant son is asleep in the baby carriage next to him. Tengblad explains that his group, Planka, has basically set up an insurance system.
TENGBLAD: We have a fund and that's like the membership of Planka. And people pay 100 krona each month.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: That's about $10 a month, roughly.
TENGBLAD: Yeah. And then if they receive any fines, the fund finances this mutually.
SHAPIRO: The fine is about $120. This group has enough income from its members to pay everyone's fines with money left over. It started 14 years ago as a protest movement. Now it's evolved into something Tengblad describes as almost a think tank.
TENGBLAD: We write serious stuff like reports. We made a book about the traffic hierarchy as we call it.
SHAPIRO: The members of this group believe that public transportation should be paid for by taxes with free tickets. The idea may not be so far-fetched. Nearby Tallinn, Estonia recently went that route, and a handful of other cities in Europe and the U.S. have experimented with the same thing. These fare jumpers complain that subway tickets in Stockholm cost 75 percent more than they did a decade ago, so members of the group just don't pay. Kristoffer Tamsons is Stockholm's commissioner for public transportation.
KRISTOFFER TAMSONS: I would consider them thieves.
SHAPIRO: He says free riders cost the system about $30 million a year.
TAMSONS: Most people in Stockholm agree that you should pay for yourself and you should contribute to society. And if you are not contributing, then you have actually no right to use our public services.
SHAPIRO: But back at the university subway station, we found a good deal of sympathy for the movement, even from some people you wouldn't expect, like a subway driver, who wouldn't use his name because he could get fired for talking to us.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: (Laughter). Yes, it's so expensive.
SHAPIRO: He likes that this group is doing something, not just complaining about ticket prices. Lots of people told us that while they might respect the movement, they are not about to join. Annika Ylamaki and her friend, Fanny Vallen, go to school here.
ANNIKA YLAMAKI: I think I'm kind of nice person so I couldn't do that.
FANNY VALLEN: Yeah, that's illegal...
SHAPIRO: Finally, it's time for a demonstration. Christian Tengblad and his friends go into the station.
TENGBLAD: (Foreign language spoken).
SHAPIRO: He waves his coat to trick the system and it opens the gates.
TENGBLAD: I can get through.
SHAPIRO: No jumping. No shouting. Nobody even seems to notice as the fare dodgers blend into the crowd and disappear. Ari Shapiro, NPR News, Stockholm.