M.T.A. officials on Thursday announced an effort to curb rampant fare evasion on city buses that has cost the agency hundreds of millions in lost revenue.
Transit officials on Thursday expanded efforts to prevent fare beaters from boarding New York City buses, where one out of two passengers fails to pay.
While most enforcement efforts have focused on the subway, fare evasion is much more prevalent on city buses. According to the latest statistics from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, in 2022 the state agency lost $285 million to fare evasion in the subway system and $315 million on buses even as roughly twice the number of passengers ride the trains.
It is the latest enforcement effort by an agency facing a dire financial future, in part because of widespread fare evasion. The M.T.A. has predicted deficits of almost $1 billion by 2028, mostly because of lower-than-expected fare revenue.
The authority for years has sent groups of unarmed, uniformed employees to patrol buses and give tickets to riders who do not pay as part of its Evasion and Graffiti Lawlessness Eradication program, known as EAGLE. Last year, the M.T.A. expanded the routes the groups covered and focused on locations with high rates of fare evasion.
At the same time, the Police Department created a unit specifically dedicated to bus fare evasion. As part of that effort, the department deploys officers alongside the M.T.A.’s teams to more effectively curb fare beating and to keep the transit workers safe from retaliation.
It’s unclear how successful the latest round of enforcement will be. Past attempts to rein the problem in have failed to yield results on the subway, where 14 percent of riders failed to pay to ride during the first three months of the year. During the same time period last year, the rate was 11 percent.
Enforcement is even more difficult on the buses, where there are no turnstiles or gates to block access. Transit experts say it is much easier to skip the fare, and some riders also feel justified because heavy traffic and a lack of bus lanes means that bus service can be slow and unreliable. On buses, the fare evasion rate was 39 percent at the beginning of 2023 and 48 percent at the start of this year.
On a webpage posted Monday to announce the recent effort, the M.T.A. said that fare beaters who refuse to pay may asked to leave the bus and may receive a summons.
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
