MTA reveals farebeating cost $690M last year as it rolls out plan to cut losses
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority revealed Wednesday that fare evasion cost the agency as much as $690 million last year — as it announced plans for dramatic changes to the systems designed to cut losses.
The plan to beat the farebeaters — who the MTA said make up a third of bus riders and about 13% of subway straphangers — includes new high-tech subway gates, escalating penalties for not paying, boosted enforcement on buses, simplification of student MetroCards and a public awareness campaign.
“We have found that fare evasion is at crisis levels across the transit system and the problem is much bigger than anyone thinks,” said the panel’s co-chairwoman, Rosemonde Pierre-Louis. “Without fares and tolls, the MTA could not provide anywhere near the quality of mass transit service that New York demands.”
The report from the MTA’s ‘blue ribbon’ panel detailing the recommendations to combat fare evasion is more than 120 pages long and nearly a year in the making.
“We can’t put at risk of working class and middle class New Yorkers to get where they need to go,” said MTA chairman Janno Lieber. “That is money that could be used to provide more service, more frequent service, more reliable service. It could be used to invest in infrastructure.”
The report shows that the bulk of the MTA’s losses from fare-beating come from buses in the five boroughs, where agency data shows that one-in-every-three passengers are boarding without paying the fare, costing the agency as much as $315 million annually — nearly half of all the money that was lost.
Under questioning, agency leaders conceded that some of those riders may have paid the fare earlier when boarding the subway but then failed to swipe their MetroCard or tap the card they used for OMNY again on the bus, meaning the free transfer was never logged and the actual losses could be lower.
Additionally, drivers commonly wave passengers onboard during the rush hour or when buses are particularly packed so they can keep to their schedules, likely exacerbating the losses.
The report found that one-in-eight subway riders skip the fare too, costing the MTA an estimated $285 million annually.
Roughly half of the fare evasion comes from straphangers flowing through emergency exit doors that are either propped open or unlocked, while the rest comes from riders either jumping, slipping through or ducking underneath the turnstiles.
The MTA demonstrated four new potential fare gates designs at the press conference, which they say would replace the iconic turnstile with pairs of large plastic doors that are several feet tall and sit just inches above the floor, making it vastly more to slip inside without paying.
The new high-tech system also has the ability to open the gates automatically in the midst of an emergency, which MTA officials hope will allow the new designs to permanently do away with the emergency doors they’ve described as the “super highways” of fare evasion.
Officials would not provide a timeline for when they hoped to begin installing the new gates, even as agency officials, including Lieber, publicly demonstrated four models brought by manufacturers from which MTA may purchase.
However, the 124-page report included a tantalizing hint of the stations that officials may be eyeing as first in line for the overhaul — featuring renderings of how the new fare gates may reshape the main concourses of the Jay Street/Metrotech and the 34th St./Hudson Yards stops.
One of the models, made by Conduent, was developed in conjunction with the French national railroad with the goal of cutting fare-beating on their suburban Paris routes in half.
The model is currently used at one of their largest stations, which handles more than 1,600 trains and 400,000 passengers daily.
Officials in Philadelphia have recently okayed spending nearly $1 million to test-drive the model by installing it at two of their elevated metro stations in a bid to reduce fare-beating, too.
Another manufacturer, Easier, brought two models, one of which a Post reporter put to the test by attempting — and failing — to jump over the higher barrier. One of the models appears to be nearly identical to the gates commonly used by the Paris’s express rail network.
The fourth model, made by Scheidt-Bachmann, appeared to be nearly identical to the versions manufactured by the firm that are already use in the London Tube system and at Boston’s major commuter rail stations.
The MTA’s report also chalked up some of the fare evasion to the extraordinarily complicated student MetroCard system, which it says should be simplified and expanded.
Currently, students can qualify for one of nine different types of cards, which the MTA says should be standardized to just one student card when the system moves over to OMNY.
Additionally, the agency said it will ask the city and state to pay for expanding the number of free rides provided by students from three rides a day to five and to allow those rides to be used any day of the week, whereas the current program typically restricts them to weekdays.
The panel also recommended that MTA officials ask state lawmakers to okay tweaks to statutes that would allow the agency’s fare enforcement agents to issue formal first warnings without a summons — but seek the power to escalate the fines against repeat offenders.
There were significant losses on the commuter railroads, too. The Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North lost a combined $40 million to fare evasion and riders using incorrect tickets for the train they’re on and the conductor doesn’t collect the difference.
The report determined that fare-beating and undercharging was more common on the LIRR than on Metro-North last year, despite the LIRR’s practice of putting more conductors on the average train than its sister railroad does.
The panel recommended that the MTA consider cutting down on the number of ticket types sold by the LIRR and Metro-North as one way to address the problem and that it “explore” the feasibility of installing fare gates at major stations, like Boston and Philadelphia have done.
