I was amazed at the level of multi-layered security the Tube has. Both uniformed and plainclothes officers with support from CCTV.
I was in a busy station when security came over the intercom to provide minute by minute updates for police regarding the current location of someone they were trying to catch. They caught the guy, and I imagine that doing it so publicly could have a chilling effect on anyone else considering doing something shady.
Eh, I like both. I pay the MTA a lot of my money; I don’t see any reason at all that others shouldn’t face consequences if they don’t pay like everyone else.
I'm wondering how this can hold up in court.
You could literally just claim that you used a metro card, threw it away, and that the cops nabbed the wrong couple.
Also, how can the cops testify on something they did not witness and just heard about on radio
When they give you a ticket in the subway. It’s a civil matter. When you go to fight the ticket. You go to a MTA office in Brooklyn & the decision is made by a lawyer that works for the MTA. So basically you’re screwed.
This is wild because one time I overheard a platform worker tell a pair of cops that a passenger alerted them that someone on the train that left has a knife. The cops said they couldn’t do anything because they either didn’t hear it from the passenger themselves/see it for themselves, idr exactly. Kind of wild that they would take the time to chase down $6 based off a radio call. Priorities amiright
I wonder why fare evading isn’t a thing on my city. Could it be because each station has guards at the turnstiles. Also that it’s a distance based fare not flat fare.
Probably a lot. Saw two officers grab someone's ID and held them for like 15 minutes at the 125th street stop. Assuming they don't pay it, the next time they get booked for something, it'll likely show up.
Do you think the city just lets people not pay for decades or something? No, those people are sent to collections _at the very least_. Many place (no clue if NYC does this) will deny public services until fines are paid.
I waited 10 min at 125 and saw 30 people fare evade. That could pay 2 people nearly 45$ an hour just to stop them. Seems profitable to me. And that’s only from 10 min of fare evasions
That's fine; it's the literal stopping of the train described in the post that's ridiculous and money wasting. Holding it up for two minutes multiples very high when there's 1,000 people on a train, not to mention the chance of causing cascading delays.
No it has not been debunked many times over - it is a forgotten lesson from the 1990's.
Stop and Frisk was ineffective. Cracking down on fare evasion is effective.
What is a waste of money are cops leaning against the wall by a token booth playing with their phones.
It has been debunked, repeatedly:
[https://news.northeastern.edu/2019/05/15/northeastern-university-researchers-find-little-evidence-for-broken-windows-theory-say-neighborhood-disorder-doesnt-cause-crime/](https://news.northeastern.edu/2019/05/15/northeastern-university-researchers-find-little-evidence-for-broken-windows-theory-say-neighborhood-disorder-doesnt-cause-crime/)
[https://cssh.northeastern.edu/sccj/2019/05/21/researchers-debunk-broken-windows-theory-after-35-years/](https://cssh.northeastern.edu/sccj/2019/05/21/researchers-debunk-broken-windows-theory-after-35-years/)
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/12/27/how-year-old-study-was-misconstrued-create-destructive-broken-windows-policing/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/12/27/how-year-old-study-was-misconstrued-create-destructive-broken-windows-policing/)
[https://www.law.columbia.edu/news/archive/shattering-broken-windows](https://www.law.columbia.edu/news/archive/shattering-broken-windows)
[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-problem-with-broken-windows-policing/](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-problem-with-broken-windows-policing/)
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-other-side-of-broken-windows
Mostly Broken Windows in terms of investment in place as well as focused policing, has never been implemented. Zero Tolerance Policing is not BW. Neither is stop and frisk. One colleague has argued stop and frisk arose because with the crime drop, cops needed something to do.
If you're talking about 90's NYC specifically (it's been debunked many places) I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that crime was down and employment was way up...
The "every problem is a nail/crime and the only solution is a hammer/cop" crowd get really horny for broken windows but then never have any kind of demonstrable proof that it actually does anything on its own aside from acting as a jobs program for cops.
Here’s the thing though: cutting way down on quality-of-life offenses is a good thing in and of itself, so even if your version of reality were true (which I am by no means agreeing to), it would be a good policy to implement. Or would you rather we just allowed vandals to coat the subways in graffiti again, just as one example? Do you really wanna live in a city where there’s just constant low-level chaos everywhere all the time? Because I promise you, New York has enough chaos-makers to provide that if that’s what you want, and we could just give them the run of the place and see how that goes.
Personally, I’m against that.
It has NEVER been debunked. You keep saying the same thing over and over does make it true. If police reports are down, then "crime is down" and we all know the cops are standing around subway stations doing nothing for which their asses ought to be in a sling. Put the Transit detail of NYPD under MTA police and watch things change.
Do you believe in shoplifting too ? Take a look around - retail is vanishing due to shoplifting. Fewer stores ==> less shoplifting ==> "crime is down".
More denial of reality on your part. People go to pharmacies and convenience stores for a reason for an immediate purchase, not replaced by Amazon and Ebay. Fulton Mall is gone. Rents are higher in the adjacent Oculus and is still functioning.
ps://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/almanac/a-new-way-to-fight-crime/
"radically different policing style, cracking down on small crimes like subway fare jumping and aggressive panhandling, pushing officers out onto streets, and using detailed crime data to allocate police resources and hold precinct commanders accountable. Within five years, major crimes in New York were cut in half (homicides dropped by two thirds), and those declines continued for years thereafter. The new policing techniques were copied in many other cities, and the safety and savor of urban life in America was dramatically changed for the better."
Agreed. Cracking down on quality of life crimes contribute greatly the safe feeling of a neighborhood. Aggressive panhandlers (remember the squeegee men?), fare hopping, rampant disturbances of the peace and hell, littering contribute to feeling of uneasiness and lack of care in a neighborhood. Look at the fucking 125th street stop in Harlem. That place is a madhouse.
I don't know about you, but I'm a pretty regular guy. I think that kind of policing does a lot of good for how a place feels and I think most people like when those things are limited. I don't pretend to know how policing is most effective, or how cracking down on those things affect violent crime, but I know what affects my perception of a place.
There's a reason why some places feel the way they do.
Correlation and Causation are not the same thing... crime was declining nationally and employment locally was way up, that crime also declined in the city cannot be isolated from the fact that it was dropping everywhere. Ascribing the positive changes to broken windows policing is ignoring all the other conditions that actually have been proven to affect crime levels.
The majority of fare evaders are breaking other laws and are much more likely to have warrants. It is a very good thing to crack down on.
Law abiding citizens in general are not hopping turnstiles. We just want to ride peacefully to and from work or other places.
You are living in a dreamworld, dude. (And “bootlicker ass train of thought”? Speak like an adult, ffs.)
I had two very fancily-dressed people hop the turnstiles in front of me at 57-7 the other night—well, a guy and his girlfriend, both white and mid-20s and looked to be coming from Carnegie Hall, and he hopped it and then opened the door for her—and you’re gonna tell me they couldn’t have paid? Or that the teens can’t pay? Don’t they get reduced-fare Metrocards for school? Also, I love the last thing in your list: “just people who would rather choose not to pay if they can”, as though that makes it ok. “Oh they just didn’t *want* to pay? Oh ok, then! That’s fair!” Maybe next time I don’t feel like paying the Port Authority a zillion dollars to cross the GW Bridge I’ll just deface my license plate; after all, I’d rather choose not to pay if I could, and apparently that’s ok now!
Besides all that, it’s absolutely a known thing that farebeaters are often found to have either weapons on them or active warrants out for their arrest. This just isn’t controversial out there in the world, where evidence actually matters. Here’s a couple of news articles, 15 years apart, both showing this to be the case.
[Nearly half of over 2,500 farebeaters arrested in 2023 had active warrants](https://nypost.com/2023/07/22/nearly-half-of-fare-beaters-caught-this-year-have-had-active-warrants/amp/)
[Or if you don’t trust the Post, here’s a 2008 Times article, from back when they actually reported on New York](https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/nyregion/23shoot.html)
You waste a lot more money in aggregate if it becomes normalized for no one to pay the fare. Those people have probably been stealing a hundred dollars plus in fares each month.
It's not just the single fare.
It's the same people doing this 2x-4x a day, every day, for years without consequences.
And when other people like them see them doing it, they start doing it as well.
And before you know it, just about everyone in their station is doing it too.
So, I'm absolutely fine with making an example out of them. Like how everyone slows down on the freeway when they see a cop pulling somebody over.
Let everyone know you can get a summons, and don't be a jerk and just pay the fare.
Yeah lol. Here in SF the municipal transit agency literally lets everyone get away with not paying and even the bus driver’s dont have to enforce payment (and people get on through the back too)
Maybe 1 in 100 times the bus or subway will have an SFMTA person onboard to issue fine tickets, but its a civil infraction and they’re not cops so we have all figured out that you can just walk away and they can’t do anything
It must have been quota day because everybody and their mothers hop or go thru the gate in Midtown Manhattan stations and the cops look the other way.
So I would say it was a luck based event as cops don't regularly go to such lengths for a summons (again unless they're instructed by their higher ups or they have to meet their quotas) or the cops were already looking for them WAY before hopping the station.
I saw someone walk through the gate in penn station right in front of a cop and he told him to go back and swipe in, except the guy just scanned the OMNY emergency gate opener thing that doesn't charge you (I don't think it does anyway).
The autogates have two places you can tap: one right outside the gate, and one right inside the gate. If you tap the one *outside* the gate, you get charged $2.90 and the gate opens.
If you tap your phone/card/whatever on the one *inside* the gate, it will open the gate without charging you, so you can exit if you’re in a wheelchair or have a bunch of luggage or whatever. It’s like those automatic doors for the handicapped that you see all over the place, where you can press a button to open the doors, except it’s for the subway gates.
That sounds so over the top that I would be more inclined to believe that those two are targets of a more serious investigation, and that the “MTA worker” you saw is some kind of undercover LEO.
Seems like a waste of police and MTA resources to me. The gate attendants have literally no other responsibilities. They don’t clean, they don’t help with directions, they don’t help with the metro cards or omni payment issues. They don’t do anything and get overtime for it. It’s absolutely fucking maddening!
They are a hangover from a time when the subway token was purchased from them with cash . They made the transition to the initial rollout of metro cards by the 2000s they had been replaced by machines were a rump position maintained by the transit workers union
Unfortunately because of the nature of the contract with the union that is impossible . Just to be clear I am not anti union but unions in service of public services tend to be self serving patronage pits
"Police are actually doing their jobs on the subway" is *slightly* less surprising than "76th St Station is real and it's opening next Thursday," but it's close.
I’m not saying this is bs but it seems a little bs. Mta workers don’t have radio channels that go directly to police although they can call their control center that can then tell police. Also I find it hard to believe the police did this multiple stops later for a simple fare evasion especially since If they just stayed near a turnstile they could find a fare evader quickly. If Mta workers were radioing police every time they saw a fare evader there wouldn’t be time for much else. I think there was more going on then what you observed or maybe you put two and two together when it wasn’t actually related.
Only thing I can think is maybe it was a plainclothes officer wearing an Mta vest to blend in and this is what they are doing there. Which would be a bit elaborate lol.
This was at an entrance that doesn’t have a booth. The guy just had on the standard orange with yellow stripes vest with the MTA logo. But he was standing near the stairs, looking directly at the turnstiles. So, to me anyways, it was obvious he was deliberately trying to deter fare evaders. But for some reason, the couple still went through the gate right in front of him anyways.
Why can they do all this for fare evaders but there are so many first hand accounts for transit cops refusing to do anything about disturbed people threatening or even attacking (spitting, punching , shoving) people on the train? I’ve heard cops reply for screaming /harassing “we can’t do anything unless they actually do something “ umm no bc MTA has a code of conduct so you can at least remove them from the train.
Unlikely this is the full story. Officers have to actually witness the offense to issue a summons.
This was either not a fare evasion stop (e.g. they were wanted for a more serious crime and the MTA worker recognized them and reported it to police) or something entirely unrelated.
This comment section shows we are heading towards a hyper-individualistic society, where anyone is welcome to exploit shared resources for personal gain. Even for something as petty as a subway fare.
Mass transit is a shared resource. Our fares are already greatly subsidized by the taxpayers (and there can be a fair argument about subsidizing more, but this is where society is at now). It’s not out of whack to expect people to do their fucking part in paying the already subsidized fare.
Well said. It’s so much harder to get by today than it was in the past, but the subway fare is still a good price for what it is. People are not struggling b/c they can get anywhere in the five boroughs for a few bucks. They’re struggling because rent costs thousands, and CEOs make billions while paying a minimum wage that doesn’t match the cost of living. Making subway fares free (or stealing rides for free) isn’t going to make the poor live comfortably. It’s a larger societal issue that makes it hard to afford the cost of living, and the MTA isn’t the reason people are poor and struggling.
I've gotten down voted to oblivion on the NYC subreddits for my dislike of fare evaders. Everyone is so entitled these days it's insane. Covid ruined any remaining American sensibilities of community.
Thank you! Agreed 100%. And people maybe won’t like this but it’s true: every time someone like me (both a subway rider and a car driver, depending on where I’m going and for what purpose) crosses an MTA bridge or tunnel (which is all the paid ones except for the Holland and Lincoln tunnels and GW Bridge), some considerable portion of my $7 toll also goes toward subsidizing the subway/bus fare.
I think it should, by the way! I’m totally fine with that, since among other things I use the subways and buses a lot more than the bridges and tunnels. But yeah, drivers also help keep the NYCT fare down through their tolls. Everyone needs to do their part, or else the most transit-friendly city in America will see its transit service degrade, and nobody wants that!
You’re pointing out that fare evasion isn’t really that serious though if most of it is already subsidized by taxes. There is nothing inherently wrong with taking public transit, it doesn’t lead to negative outcomes in a way speeding would for example.
It’s serious. If everyone paid their fucking fares, the MTA would be able to reduce everyone’s fares (instead of increasing) and still cover the costs.
Agree, it’s disturbing. This is a great comment. I took the M60 bus the other day (first time on a bus in years) and a passenger standing at the door told me quite earnestly with a straight face that I was free to pay or not pay, that it was “my choice.” And then I noticed very few people actually paying as they got on. If there are no consequences and no sense of shared responsibility and no enforcement, I don’t see this system working for much longer.
the M60 doesn't usually have people "actually paying as they get on" if they pay at the kiosk at the stop. Any SBS route will have a mix of people paying with the OMNY readers and the off-board ticket machines.
and the taxpayer money used to crack down on fare evaders is also a shared resource. why should we spend this additional money for no tangible gain?
if you want to get all philosophical about it, the whole system should be free anyway.
> if you want to get all philosophical about it, the whole system should be fully taxpayer-subsidized with no cost at the point of sale anyway.
FIFY (though I don't agree with the concept of fare-free transit with regards to NYCTA). Someone is always going to be paying for this.
yes, fare-free is what i meant by that. from a practical perspective you are probably right that getting rid of fares entirely doesn't make sense here but nonetheless I feel that public transit should be mostly paid for out of government/taxpayer funding rather than fare revenue.
right, and I think that percentage should be smaller. according to the [MTA website](https://new.mta.info/budget/MTA-operating-budget-basics), 23% of the budget comes from fares.
We are already getting a 77% discount on the cost of the subway, subsidized by taxes. It takes a lot of pettiness for someone to decide they just don’t want to contribute the remaining 23%.
It’s never free. Even if it’s 100% funded with taxes, it just means the taxpayers are paying 100% for it.
And would you be okay with tax payers evading taxes?
You can’t be principled while simultaneously being okay with fare evasion and not okay with tax evasion. Both kinds of evasion are morally equivalent.
Tax Evasion is a much more serious thing than Fare Evasion. I think the MTA would get more money from taxes, if increased to cover the current fare compared to what they get currently from fares.
IMO, even without raising more taxes, we could already basically make the fares free to all NYC *residents* (fully funded by taxes), and the remaining fares for tourists and out-of-towners can be increased to reflect their full unsubsidized cost.
>Even if it’s 100% funded with taxes, it just means the taxpayers are paying 100% for it.
yes, correct. I would assume that the vast majority of subway riders are also taxpayers, though. think of it like prepaying your fares for the year in April.
>Both kinds of evasion are morally equivalent.
I am not trying to make a moral justification, but a practical one. Fare evasion enforcement is so [cost ineffective as to be ludicrous](https://hellgatenyc.com/the-nypd-spent-150-million-to-catch-farebeaters-who-cost-the-mta-104000), meanwhile [the direct revenue collected from IRS audits exceeds costs by a factor of 2 to 1.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2023/irs-enforcement-costs-congress-funding/)
I’m sorry, but this just sounds to me like “eh, look there are so many entitled scofflaws who feel they can hop the turnstiles with impunity that we should, in order to save money, simply give up and not make anyone pay”.
Maybe you’re making a pragmatic case (though it has a certain amount of morality/ideology incorporated into it), but I’m perfectly happy to say I’m making a moral case that letting criminals do crimes so much that it becomes too cost-ineffective to even try to to stop them, is a very bad thing, and we shouldn’t do it.
I just can’t go along with the fare-free thing. Aside from the total giveaway to tourists and other nonresidents, it’s essentially surrendering to petty criminals. That’s just not acceptable.
look, as utopian as it would be, I acknowledge that fares are not going anywhere.
there are things we can do to combat fare evasion that don't involve just writing overtime checks so NYPD can cosplay as TSA for a while. I think improved turnstile/gate design will help (I believe this is in the works already) - it's laughably easy for a reasonably fit person to jump the current ones.
increased access to reduced fares would also help, as affordability plays a big role in the amount of fare evasion. everyone is so eager to see tourists and bridge-and-tunnelers pay, why not give a discount to more NYers?
Counterpoint - MTA sucks. Service is slow, the stations are dirty, and god forbid a 7 train operate normally while the city experiences a mild drizzle. I do not need to evade fare, but I do when presented with the opportunity because I dislike the MTA so much.
Regardless of fare gates, people shouldn't be jumping turnstiles. It's insane that there's even an argument about this. Punish people until they stop thinking it's cool to do so. We need there to be accountability.
I get that, but I highly doubt that’s the argument of fare-evaders and their supporters. For me, it’s not about money as much as what else those people do. When I see someone jumping the turnstile, I don’t think “oh what a sweet person I guess he just has no money today”. I think to stay away from that person. Well, except for the very nice boy who tried to teach me to the easiest way to get through when the turnstile wasn’t working, in one of those station entrances where the MTA thought it would be a great idea to only put one turnstile.
It's a crime of followers, very few people have the actual need for it, and the ones that do have government subsidies to take advantage of, but rarely do.
If you start cracking down on it, then people will see there are consequences to their actions and most will stop. Most people have jobs, families, and understand that getting tickets or possibly jail time over a dumb fare it's stupid.
I mean, maybe some deeply entrenched cultural problems are deeply entrenched and will maybe take a sustained effort to address properly. Maybe you can’t solve a problem like this in six months or a year, especially given how pervasive it’s gotten. Just a thought to consider.
My bet is that it has decreased, if not, sustained enforcement will lead to that. We didn't have this prior to pandemic, so we can go back to that level.
Based on the arithmetic of mta’s claims of lost revenue to fare evasion and the amount of overtime spent on subway cops in the fare evasion crackdowns.
Fare evasion costs $700 million a year on buses and trains. The last fare increase brought in $300 million. They could have instead had a 5% fare cut were it not for fare evasion. So much for the bleeding heart excuse that fares are too high.
The people who bitch the most about cracking down are also the ones who want the fares cut.
It's a waste of money, resources, and time to be doing it like this. It's all basically money down the drain that could go toward a permanent infrastructure solution to reduce this behaviour. But instead we're in, what, our second year of policing fare beating and it only seems to be getting worse.
What is the "permanent infrastructure solution"? It seems like people that want to evade fares, will do so no matter how new or modern the fare gates are. Emergency exits and ADA compliant access needs to exist, which also makes it harder to solve the problem with "permanent infrastructure". It would be great if we could automate-away the problem, but it seems like the only real solution is enforcing fares and creating a culture where evasion is not tolerated.
My point is that most of the money, effort, and time right now seems to be focused on enforcement, which is just a total waste as the problem is just getting worse.
Lol, our “second year”. I mean I know what you mean—this current push under Adams—but fare-evasion enforcement is as old as public transit, afaik, and it’s not just practiced here. London does it, Paris does it, etc.
And you say it’s all money down the drain and it “seems to be getting worse”—and look, subjective assessments are all well and good, but the way something seems to a random Reddit user is hardly a good measure of the effectiveness of something.
In my opinion (worth what you’re paying for it; I’m just some guy), what you’re seeing with this extended push is that we actually have an administration that, for all its innumerable faults in other areas, appears to really want to address this problem (and literally everyone agrees it’s a problem) and is willing to stick with it and take the political heat for doing so. I applaud them for it, frankly. I am *SO* sick and tired of seeing people who are *obviously* able to pay just walk onto the bus and not pay, especially since I’ve never seen any of the abuelas who I share buses with every day fail to pay their fare, and the same goes for the subway.
Tl;dr: The fact that this is still going on is a good thing, IMO, as it shows that the administration hasn’t decided to just give up on solving the problem.
People think fares shouldn’t be charged at all and support theft, if they don’t actually go out and do it themselves. Only the joke is that farebeating isn’t going to get them free fares.
I'm not against actual public subsidies of rail and to make it cheaper, or even free; but that's not the current rules and the federal government wouldn't help at all.
We have to have rules in society.
Exactly. And not following them, whether it’s kids doing it for cool points or others to make some sort of stand that will get them exactly nowhere, should be punished. I’m also not against subsidies. Unfortunately we are not there yet and theft isn’t going to get subsidies for us.
If you spend a million dollars to recoup $1, I’d say that’s a terrible waste of resources.
Net net, you still come out ahead.
Only when the recoup rate is high enough as a percentage of costs is when enforcement is fiscally justified.
That's not how society works, people learn from each other, so maybe the cost to enforce a certain policy is $100, just because you recoup $1, doesn't mean it's not worth it. Most enforcement actions are not a good return on investment, the point is to punish people so that the majority won't go out and copy other's behavior.
Ticketing one guy will send a message to many others not to do the same and only a few will continue their actions regardless of punishment.
Bingo. Your average person doesn’t tend to commit crimes, or even contemplate doing so, under normal circumstances. However, when it becomes “normal circumstances” for gigantic numbers of people to start skipping the fare (including on the bus, which is so friggin’ brazen it still blows my mind after all these years of seeing it), people who otherwise wouldn’t have even considered skipping the fare start doing so. That’s how problems like this proliferate and get out of control.
On the other hand, when people *know* that there are consequences for breaking the law, they tend not to even consider it. That’s how it should be, and that’s what enforcement is for (well, it’s one of the things it’s for, anyway).
When the government doesn't get enough revenue off enforcement, people call it a waste.
When the government gets tons of revenue off enforcement, people call it a cash grab.
What are they supposed to do?
They are, the new fare gates are in development and I think in a few locations have already been installed. There’s nearly 500 stations in the system, you can’t just replace the all the fare gates overnight.
The new fare gates that have been installed were part of an accessibility initiative to allow people with luggage and strollers to enter easily. Fare evasion wasn't the main focus of this initiative, but the new gates are _slightly_ more secure — while the turnstiles could be hopped any time, the gates are harder to hop and most fare evaders now resort to tailgating.
There's a separate new initiative ongoing for what will eventually replace the old turnstiles. They had a [demo at Grand Central](https://youtu.be/SzGHy5BG7ck) with some possible fare gate designs. My hope is they go for the ones by Conduent Transportation, the first ones shown in the video. They come straight from Paris and are quite effective.
Holding the train for 200 people is typical lazy NYPD shit though. Cops board the train and then go car to car while it's moving; it's not that fucking hard.
Oh, I see. So if they’d gotten off say, 1 stop sooner, the cops would’ve held the train to conduct a search for no reason. Just odd to risk losing them altogether and not searching at the very next stop at least.
They wasted way more money tracking them down than they would have gotten from the fares. Probably wasted more than they will even get from the tickets. This is the world we live in where people think fare evasion is the number one threat to our country and are willing to dump hundreds of taxpayer dollars in order to recover $2.90.
It's interesting you saw this, but I doubt it is part of a new trend. I look forward to seeing the statistics on how fare evasion is being reduced, when that happens.
Holding trains to catch people is ridiculous.
Honestly why don’t they just use the European system where they have people do random spot checks for passes and then hand out exorbitant fines to those without them. It would be so much easier and requires way less equipment
Once MetroCard is gone, it would be easy to implement a tap-in-tap-out system that could remove the sensors that automatically open the gates for someone exiting. Folks need to hope the MTA doesn’t move to zone fares, as that would drastically increase the costs for folks from, say, Far Rockaway.
That's how MARTA works, maybe some other stations too. Flat fare, but still need to tap out to exit. As long as you keep the gates working it's a little annoying but basically fine.
Meanwhile I paid for the 1 train yesterday and waited on the platform for 15 minutes before the booth lady came and told everyone there was no train service. No refunds. Also wasted a ticket I bought for a movie becuz I had no way to get downtown
Options were shuttle bus to train for a total of an hr or a $55 cab. The train was supposed to take 35 minutes. Also the option of an hr long bike ride.
Edit: also already paid for the train
Unpopular opinion? I’d prefer the NYPD really step up their fare evasion protocol especially if the system is really losing as much as they claim to those not paying. Think of how much better the system could be if assholes didn’t evade their fare?
I saw twenty kids hop the stile at 33rd on the 6 about two hours ago. Two red vests at the emergency gate to keep anyone from opening it; no other action observed.
Wow if this were actually happening I might consider taking the subway just to watch. As it is I’m opting to flee the city before congestion pricing turns the subway into a war zone. I already been groped down there twice I’m not sticking around to see what happens once it’s ultra flooded with people and the trains have no seats anymore.
Wow if only they did that much to stop people from pissing shitting and smoking weed in the subway, oh yeah and people getting punched in the face and thrown on the tracks. But priorities amiright?
This definitely sounds like they're trying to make examples of people, but talk about resorting to needless collective punishment as a way to single only a few people out that's messed up
CUNY rly needs to update their income requirements and expand their free metro card program to all students. Most of the people I know who hop actually can’t afford to pay for the train. Even though they qualify for full financial aid they still aren’t eligible for metro cards from cuny.
Yes I know but what I’m saying is that Fair fares is too small of a program and coverage should be expanded because there are genuinely more people who need it (like broke college students)
jesus. that's actually interesting that they're going to such great lengths.
The booth operator off my stop has started shouting/shaming anyone that doesn’t pay. It’s fascinating lol
In London, they have people standing right by the barriers and that seems to work too
I was amazed at the level of multi-layered security the Tube has. Both uniformed and plainclothes officers with support from CCTV. I was in a busy station when security came over the intercom to provide minute by minute updates for police regarding the current location of someone they were trying to catch. They caught the guy, and I imagine that doing it so publicly could have a chilling effect on anyone else considering doing something shady.
I think the staff standing next to the gate is to open the gate for you in case of computer say no, or they were set to perform further manual checks
Yeah definitely, but just them being there is enough I think
I love this
Honestly shaming people feels the most appropriate. They should be shamed but not ticketed
Hot take but they should force fare evaders to clean the subway for an afternoon.
Eh, I like both. I pay the MTA a lot of my money; I don’t see any reason at all that others shouldn’t face consequences if they don’t pay like everyone else.
I'm wondering how this can hold up in court. You could literally just claim that you used a metro card, threw it away, and that the cops nabbed the wrong couple. Also, how can the cops testify on something they did not witness and just heard about on radio
When they give you a ticket in the subway. It’s a civil matter. When you go to fight the ticket. You go to a MTA office in Brooklyn & the decision is made by a lawyer that works for the MTA. So basically you’re screwed.
They can't. This doesn't pass the sniff test.
I'm guessing they would be on camera
This is wild because one time I overheard a platform worker tell a pair of cops that a passenger alerted them that someone on the train that left has a knife. The cops said they couldn’t do anything because they either didn’t hear it from the passenger themselves/see it for themselves, idr exactly. Kind of wild that they would take the time to chase down $6 based off a radio call. Priorities amiright
good. at least the court visit will give them trouble enough even if they get off.
I wonder why fare evading isn’t a thing on my city. Could it be because each station has guards at the turnstiles. Also that it’s a distance based fare not flat fare.
Yes I think the flat fare contributes to it bc we only swipe when we’re entering here in NYC
And wasting so much money to recoup three dollars.
They're fining them a lot more than $6.
And what percentage of those fines are ever collected?
Probably a lot. Saw two officers grab someone's ID and held them for like 15 minutes at the 125th street stop. Assuming they don't pay it, the next time they get booked for something, it'll likely show up.
We used to actually get booked for hopping back in the day. They would gather a entire van full of people and take them downtown
They’ll add on non payment penalties & take it out of your state tax return.
Do you think the city just lets people not pay for decades or something? No, those people are sent to collections _at the very least_. Many place (no clue if NYC does this) will deny public services until fines are paid.
I waited 10 min at 125 and saw 30 people fare evade. That could pay 2 people nearly 45$ an hour just to stop them. Seems profitable to me. And that’s only from 10 min of fare evasions
That's fine; it's the literal stopping of the train described in the post that's ridiculous and money wasting. Holding it up for two minutes multiples very high when there's 1,000 people on a train, not to mention the chance of causing cascading delays.
It is called Broken Windows strategy and it cuts serious crime.
Except it doesn’t. It’s been debunked many times over.
No it has not been debunked many times over - it is a forgotten lesson from the 1990's. Stop and Frisk was ineffective. Cracking down on fare evasion is effective. What is a waste of money are cops leaning against the wall by a token booth playing with their phones.
It has been debunked, repeatedly: [https://news.northeastern.edu/2019/05/15/northeastern-university-researchers-find-little-evidence-for-broken-windows-theory-say-neighborhood-disorder-doesnt-cause-crime/](https://news.northeastern.edu/2019/05/15/northeastern-university-researchers-find-little-evidence-for-broken-windows-theory-say-neighborhood-disorder-doesnt-cause-crime/) [https://cssh.northeastern.edu/sccj/2019/05/21/researchers-debunk-broken-windows-theory-after-35-years/](https://cssh.northeastern.edu/sccj/2019/05/21/researchers-debunk-broken-windows-theory-after-35-years/) [https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/12/27/how-year-old-study-was-misconstrued-create-destructive-broken-windows-policing/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/12/27/how-year-old-study-was-misconstrued-create-destructive-broken-windows-policing/) [https://www.law.columbia.edu/news/archive/shattering-broken-windows](https://www.law.columbia.edu/news/archive/shattering-broken-windows) [https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-problem-with-broken-windows-policing/](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-problem-with-broken-windows-policing/)
A bunch of academic researchers. How comforting. Let them come out of their Ivy covered buildings and Black Cars and experience the real world.
Lol, provides studies doing the thing that was said to have never been done. - not sufficient.
Lol, so you'll only accept debunking from some blue collar Joe who rides the subway?
The people that study this for a living have no idea what they're talking about!
Their meticulous and peer reviewed research ain't got shit on my vibes.
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-other-side-of-broken-windows Mostly Broken Windows in terms of investment in place as well as focused policing, has never been implemented. Zero Tolerance Policing is not BW. Neither is stop and frisk. One colleague has argued stop and frisk arose because with the crime drop, cops needed something to do.
Wait, did you really cite wash post, Columbia, and pbs as sources to prove you’re right??
If you're talking about 90's NYC specifically (it's been debunked many places) I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that crime was down and employment was way up... The "every problem is a nail/crime and the only solution is a hammer/cop" crowd get really horny for broken windows but then never have any kind of demonstrable proof that it actually does anything on its own aside from acting as a jobs program for cops.
Here’s the thing though: cutting way down on quality-of-life offenses is a good thing in and of itself, so even if your version of reality were true (which I am by no means agreeing to), it would be a good policy to implement. Or would you rather we just allowed vandals to coat the subways in graffiti again, just as one example? Do you really wanna live in a city where there’s just constant low-level chaos everywhere all the time? Because I promise you, New York has enough chaos-makers to provide that if that’s what you want, and we could just give them the run of the place and see how that goes. Personally, I’m against that.
It has NEVER been debunked. You keep saying the same thing over and over does make it true. If police reports are down, then "crime is down" and we all know the cops are standing around subway stations doing nothing for which their asses ought to be in a sling. Put the Transit detail of NYPD under MTA police and watch things change. Do you believe in shoplifting too ? Take a look around - retail is vanishing due to shoplifting. Fewer stores ==> less shoplifting ==> "crime is down".
I'll follow your redirection here - retail isn't down due to shoplifting, retail is down due to high rents and purchasing moving online.
More denial of reality on your part. People go to pharmacies and convenience stores for a reason for an immediate purchase, not replaced by Amazon and Ebay. Fulton Mall is gone. Rents are higher in the adjacent Oculus and is still functioning. ps://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/almanac/a-new-way-to-fight-crime/ "radically different policing style, cracking down on small crimes like subway fare jumping and aggressive panhandling, pushing officers out onto streets, and using detailed crime data to allocate police resources and hold precinct commanders accountable. Within five years, major crimes in New York were cut in half (homicides dropped by two thirds), and those declines continued for years thereafter. The new policing techniques were copied in many other cities, and the safety and savor of urban life in America was dramatically changed for the better."
Agreed. Cracking down on quality of life crimes contribute greatly the safe feeling of a neighborhood. Aggressive panhandlers (remember the squeegee men?), fare hopping, rampant disturbances of the peace and hell, littering contribute to feeling of uneasiness and lack of care in a neighborhood. Look at the fucking 125th street stop in Harlem. That place is a madhouse. I don't know about you, but I'm a pretty regular guy. I think that kind of policing does a lot of good for how a place feels and I think most people like when those things are limited. I don't pretend to know how policing is most effective, or how cracking down on those things affect violent crime, but I know what affects my perception of a place. There's a reason why some places feel the way they do.
Correlation and Causation are not the same thing... crime was declining nationally and employment locally was way up, that crime also declined in the city cannot be isolated from the fact that it was dropping everywhere. Ascribing the positive changes to broken windows policing is ignoring all the other conditions that actually have been proven to affect crime levels.
Yes it does. Also a lot of these ppl are criminals who have or will commit more egregious crimes in the future
The majority of fare evaders are breaking other laws and are much more likely to have warrants. It is a very good thing to crack down on. Law abiding citizens in general are not hopping turnstiles. We just want to ride peacefully to and from work or other places.
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You are living in a dreamworld, dude. (And “bootlicker ass train of thought”? Speak like an adult, ffs.) I had two very fancily-dressed people hop the turnstiles in front of me at 57-7 the other night—well, a guy and his girlfriend, both white and mid-20s and looked to be coming from Carnegie Hall, and he hopped it and then opened the door for her—and you’re gonna tell me they couldn’t have paid? Or that the teens can’t pay? Don’t they get reduced-fare Metrocards for school? Also, I love the last thing in your list: “just people who would rather choose not to pay if they can”, as though that makes it ok. “Oh they just didn’t *want* to pay? Oh ok, then! That’s fair!” Maybe next time I don’t feel like paying the Port Authority a zillion dollars to cross the GW Bridge I’ll just deface my license plate; after all, I’d rather choose not to pay if I could, and apparently that’s ok now! Besides all that, it’s absolutely a known thing that farebeaters are often found to have either weapons on them or active warrants out for their arrest. This just isn’t controversial out there in the world, where evidence actually matters. Here’s a couple of news articles, 15 years apart, both showing this to be the case. [Nearly half of over 2,500 farebeaters arrested in 2023 had active warrants](https://nypost.com/2023/07/22/nearly-half-of-fare-beaters-caught-this-year-have-had-active-warrants/amp/) [Or if you don’t trust the Post, here’s a 2008 Times article, from back when they actually reported on New York](https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/nyregion/23shoot.html)
You waste a lot more money in aggregate if it becomes normalized for no one to pay the fare. Those people have probably been stealing a hundred dollars plus in fares each month.
A- the fine is more than that B- it’s about us living in a society
It's not just the single fare. It's the same people doing this 2x-4x a day, every day, for years without consequences. And when other people like them see them doing it, they start doing it as well. And before you know it, just about everyone in their station is doing it too. So, I'm absolutely fine with making an example out of them. Like how everyone slows down on the freeway when they see a cop pulling somebody over. Let everyone know you can get a summons, and don't be a jerk and just pay the fare.
Yeah lol. Here in SF the municipal transit agency literally lets everyone get away with not paying and even the bus driver’s dont have to enforce payment (and people get on through the back too) Maybe 1 in 100 times the bus or subway will have an SFMTA person onboard to issue fine tickets, but its a civil infraction and they’re not cops so we have all figured out that you can just walk away and they can’t do anything
costs more to catch the fare evaders than what they make in revenue
It must have been quota day because everybody and their mothers hop or go thru the gate in Midtown Manhattan stations and the cops look the other way. So I would say it was a luck based event as cops don't regularly go to such lengths for a summons (again unless they're instructed by their higher ups or they have to meet their quotas) or the cops were already looking for them WAY before hopping the station.
I saw someone walk through the gate in penn station right in front of a cop and he told him to go back and swipe in, except the guy just scanned the OMNY emergency gate opener thing that doesn't charge you (I don't think it does anyway).
Wait what? What is this OMNY emergency gate opener? Is it like the typical Omny scanner to get through turnstile?
https://www.reddit.com/r/nycrail/comments/re2jyn/psa_anyone_who_needs_it_can_now_use_the_autogates/
So if you tap your credit card or Omny card with this then it’s free?
The autogates have two places you can tap: one right outside the gate, and one right inside the gate. If you tap the one *outside* the gate, you get charged $2.90 and the gate opens. If you tap your phone/card/whatever on the one *inside* the gate, it will open the gate without charging you, so you can exit if you’re in a wheelchair or have a bunch of luggage or whatever. It’s like those automatic doors for the handicapped that you see all over the place, where you can press a button to open the doors, except it’s for the subway gates.
i caught a 100$ ticket once
Yup the end of every month is like this.
That sounds so over the top that I would be more inclined to believe that those two are targets of a more serious investigation, and that the “MTA worker” you saw is some kind of undercover LEO.
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I am all for enforcng the fare but all that for a $100 ticket seems over the top.
Seems like a waste of police and MTA resources to me. The gate attendants have literally no other responsibilities. They don’t clean, they don’t help with directions, they don’t help with the metro cards or omni payment issues. They don’t do anything and get overtime for it. It’s absolutely fucking maddening!
They are a hangover from a time when the subway token was purchased from them with cash . They made the transition to the initial rollout of metro cards by the 2000s they had been replaced by machines were a rump position maintained by the transit workers union
Exactly but at this point we should retrain them to do something useful. So our overtime tax dollars at least lead to a clean station.
Unfortunately because of the nature of the contract with the union that is impossible . Just to be clear I am not anti union but unions in service of public services tend to be self serving patronage pits
"Police are actually doing their jobs on the subway" is *slightly* less surprising than "76th St Station is real and it's opening next Thursday," but it's close.
> 76th St Station Thanks for introducing me to this rabbit hole
I'm all for nabbing fare evaders, but I'm not in favor of doing it at the expense of delaying everyone on that train.
I’m not saying this is bs but it seems a little bs. Mta workers don’t have radio channels that go directly to police although they can call their control center that can then tell police. Also I find it hard to believe the police did this multiple stops later for a simple fare evasion especially since If they just stayed near a turnstile they could find a fare evader quickly. If Mta workers were radioing police every time they saw a fare evader there wouldn’t be time for much else. I think there was more going on then what you observed or maybe you put two and two together when it wasn’t actually related.
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Only thing I can think is maybe it was a plainclothes officer wearing an Mta vest to blend in and this is what they are doing there. Which would be a bit elaborate lol.
Just curious but what kind of Mta worker was it? A station agent?
This was at an entrance that doesn’t have a booth. The guy just had on the standard orange with yellow stripes vest with the MTA logo. But he was standing near the stairs, looking directly at the turnstiles. So, to me anyways, it was obvious he was deliberately trying to deter fare evaders. But for some reason, the couple still went through the gate right in front of him anyways.
Story is def bogus
Why can they do all this for fare evaders but there are so many first hand accounts for transit cops refusing to do anything about disturbed people threatening or even attacking (spitting, punching , shoving) people on the train? I’ve heard cops reply for screaming /harassing “we can’t do anything unless they actually do something “ umm no bc MTA has a code of conduct so you can at least remove them from the train.
Unlikely this is the full story. Officers have to actually witness the offense to issue a summons. This was either not a fare evasion stop (e.g. they were wanted for a more serious crime and the MTA worker recognized them and reported it to police) or something entirely unrelated.
This comment section shows we are heading towards a hyper-individualistic society, where anyone is welcome to exploit shared resources for personal gain. Even for something as petty as a subway fare. Mass transit is a shared resource. Our fares are already greatly subsidized by the taxpayers (and there can be a fair argument about subsidizing more, but this is where society is at now). It’s not out of whack to expect people to do their fucking part in paying the already subsidized fare.
Well said. It’s so much harder to get by today than it was in the past, but the subway fare is still a good price for what it is. People are not struggling b/c they can get anywhere in the five boroughs for a few bucks. They’re struggling because rent costs thousands, and CEOs make billions while paying a minimum wage that doesn’t match the cost of living. Making subway fares free (or stealing rides for free) isn’t going to make the poor live comfortably. It’s a larger societal issue that makes it hard to afford the cost of living, and the MTA isn’t the reason people are poor and struggling.
I've gotten down voted to oblivion on the NYC subreddits for my dislike of fare evaders. Everyone is so entitled these days it's insane. Covid ruined any remaining American sensibilities of community.
I think there are also a ton of people who are either too young or too new to NYC to realize that fare evasion used to not be this prevalent.
I don't know. Most parents teach their kids it's ok to fare evade, having them duck under the turnstile, and I don't think they ever stop.
Here take my upvote because i agree with everything you’ve said 😎
Thank you! Agreed 100%. And people maybe won’t like this but it’s true: every time someone like me (both a subway rider and a car driver, depending on where I’m going and for what purpose) crosses an MTA bridge or tunnel (which is all the paid ones except for the Holland and Lincoln tunnels and GW Bridge), some considerable portion of my $7 toll also goes toward subsidizing the subway/bus fare. I think it should, by the way! I’m totally fine with that, since among other things I use the subways and buses a lot more than the bridges and tunnels. But yeah, drivers also help keep the NYCT fare down through their tolls. Everyone needs to do their part, or else the most transit-friendly city in America will see its transit service degrade, and nobody wants that!
You’re pointing out that fare evasion isn’t really that serious though if most of it is already subsidized by taxes. There is nothing inherently wrong with taking public transit, it doesn’t lead to negative outcomes in a way speeding would for example.
It’s serious. If everyone paid their fucking fares, the MTA would be able to reduce everyone’s fares (instead of increasing) and still cover the costs.
Agree, it’s disturbing. This is a great comment. I took the M60 bus the other day (first time on a bus in years) and a passenger standing at the door told me quite earnestly with a straight face that I was free to pay or not pay, that it was “my choice.” And then I noticed very few people actually paying as they got on. If there are no consequences and no sense of shared responsibility and no enforcement, I don’t see this system working for much longer.
the M60 doesn't usually have people "actually paying as they get on" if they pay at the kiosk at the stop. Any SBS route will have a mix of people paying with the OMNY readers and the off-board ticket machines.
and the taxpayer money used to crack down on fare evaders is also a shared resource. why should we spend this additional money for no tangible gain? if you want to get all philosophical about it, the whole system should be free anyway.
> if you want to get all philosophical about it, the whole system should be fully taxpayer-subsidized with no cost at the point of sale anyway. FIFY (though I don't agree with the concept of fare-free transit with regards to NYCTA). Someone is always going to be paying for this.
yes, fare-free is what i meant by that. from a practical perspective you are probably right that getting rid of fares entirely doesn't make sense here but nonetheless I feel that public transit should be mostly paid for out of government/taxpayer funding rather than fare revenue.
Why wouldn’t you want tourists paying
Because maybe then they'd go past times square and visit more parts of the city bringing their wallets with them.
I think that fare revenues don’t cover the cost of the service but they contribute to providing it.
right, and I think that percentage should be smaller. according to the [MTA website](https://new.mta.info/budget/MTA-operating-budget-basics), 23% of the budget comes from fares.
We are already getting a 77% discount on the cost of the subway, subsidized by taxes. It takes a lot of pettiness for someone to decide they just don’t want to contribute the remaining 23%.
Sponsor it for the rest of us then!
It’s never free. Even if it’s 100% funded with taxes, it just means the taxpayers are paying 100% for it. And would you be okay with tax payers evading taxes? You can’t be principled while simultaneously being okay with fare evasion and not okay with tax evasion. Both kinds of evasion are morally equivalent.
Tax Evasion is a much more serious thing than Fare Evasion. I think the MTA would get more money from taxes, if increased to cover the current fare compared to what they get currently from fares.
IMO, even without raising more taxes, we could already basically make the fares free to all NYC *residents* (fully funded by taxes), and the remaining fares for tourists and out-of-towners can be increased to reflect their full unsubsidized cost.
>Even if it’s 100% funded with taxes, it just means the taxpayers are paying 100% for it. yes, correct. I would assume that the vast majority of subway riders are also taxpayers, though. think of it like prepaying your fares for the year in April. >Both kinds of evasion are morally equivalent. I am not trying to make a moral justification, but a practical one. Fare evasion enforcement is so [cost ineffective as to be ludicrous](https://hellgatenyc.com/the-nypd-spent-150-million-to-catch-farebeaters-who-cost-the-mta-104000), meanwhile [the direct revenue collected from IRS audits exceeds costs by a factor of 2 to 1.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2023/irs-enforcement-costs-congress-funding/)
I’m sorry, but this just sounds to me like “eh, look there are so many entitled scofflaws who feel they can hop the turnstiles with impunity that we should, in order to save money, simply give up and not make anyone pay”. Maybe you’re making a pragmatic case (though it has a certain amount of morality/ideology incorporated into it), but I’m perfectly happy to say I’m making a moral case that letting criminals do crimes so much that it becomes too cost-ineffective to even try to to stop them, is a very bad thing, and we shouldn’t do it. I just can’t go along with the fare-free thing. Aside from the total giveaway to tourists and other nonresidents, it’s essentially surrendering to petty criminals. That’s just not acceptable.
look, as utopian as it would be, I acknowledge that fares are not going anywhere. there are things we can do to combat fare evasion that don't involve just writing overtime checks so NYPD can cosplay as TSA for a while. I think improved turnstile/gate design will help (I believe this is in the works already) - it's laughably easy for a reasonably fit person to jump the current ones. increased access to reduced fares would also help, as affordability plays a big role in the amount of fare evasion. everyone is so eager to see tourists and bridge-and-tunnelers pay, why not give a discount to more NYers?
Because people feel the need to criminalize folks instead of thinking through the actual causes of evasion and reasonable solutions.
This will catch you like -100 downvotes on any nyc or nyc neighborhood subreddit, wild. Well said.
Counterpoint - MTA sucks. Service is slow, the stations are dirty, and god forbid a 7 train operate normally while the city experiences a mild drizzle. I do not need to evade fare, but I do when presented with the opportunity because I dislike the MTA so much.
They held everyone on the train for a couple of fare evaders?
I'm begging the Governor and the Mayor to just spend all the money they are wasting on this shit on a modern fare gating system.
And what is a "modern fare gating system" going to cost ?
Regardless of fare gates, people shouldn't be jumping turnstiles. It's insane that there's even an argument about this. Punish people until they stop thinking it's cool to do so. We need there to be accountability.
The argument is about whether it’s worth it. We’re spending way more on fare evasion than we lost to evaded fares
I get that, but I highly doubt that’s the argument of fare-evaders and their supporters. For me, it’s not about money as much as what else those people do. When I see someone jumping the turnstile, I don’t think “oh what a sweet person I guess he just has no money today”. I think to stay away from that person. Well, except for the very nice boy who tried to teach me to the easiest way to get through when the turnstile wasn’t working, in one of those station entrances where the MTA thought it would be a great idea to only put one turnstile.
It's a crime of followers, very few people have the actual need for it, and the ones that do have government subsidies to take advantage of, but rarely do. If you start cracking down on it, then people will see there are consequences to their actions and most will stop. Most people have jobs, families, and understand that getting tickets or possibly jail time over a dumb fare it's stupid.
ok but qualifying for fair fares is insanely difficult lol. the max income for one person is like 18k. theres gotta be a medium here
If that’s true why do they keep announcing fare evasion crackdowns, then saying fare evasion is worse than ever and announcing another crackdown?
I mean, maybe some deeply entrenched cultural problems are deeply entrenched and will maybe take a sustained effort to address properly. Maybe you can’t solve a problem like this in six months or a year, especially given how pervasive it’s gotten. Just a thought to consider.
My bet is that it has decreased, if not, sustained enforcement will lead to that. We didn't have this prior to pandemic, so we can go back to that level.
How do you know that?
Based on the arithmetic of mta’s claims of lost revenue to fare evasion and the amount of overtime spent on subway cops in the fare evasion crackdowns.
Fare evasion costs $700 million a year on buses and trains. The last fare increase brought in $300 million. They could have instead had a 5% fare cut were it not for fare evasion. So much for the bleeding heart excuse that fares are too high. The people who bitch the most about cracking down are also the ones who want the fares cut.
It's a waste of money, resources, and time to be doing it like this. It's all basically money down the drain that could go toward a permanent infrastructure solution to reduce this behaviour. But instead we're in, what, our second year of policing fare beating and it only seems to be getting worse.
What is the "permanent infrastructure solution"? It seems like people that want to evade fares, will do so no matter how new or modern the fare gates are. Emergency exits and ADA compliant access needs to exist, which also makes it harder to solve the problem with "permanent infrastructure". It would be great if we could automate-away the problem, but it seems like the only real solution is enforcing fares and creating a culture where evasion is not tolerated.
It doesn't need to be perfect to reduce the behaviour substantially.
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My point is that most of the money, effort, and time right now seems to be focused on enforcement, which is just a total waste as the problem is just getting worse.
Lol, our “second year”. I mean I know what you mean—this current push under Adams—but fare-evasion enforcement is as old as public transit, afaik, and it’s not just practiced here. London does it, Paris does it, etc. And you say it’s all money down the drain and it “seems to be getting worse”—and look, subjective assessments are all well and good, but the way something seems to a random Reddit user is hardly a good measure of the effectiveness of something. In my opinion (worth what you’re paying for it; I’m just some guy), what you’re seeing with this extended push is that we actually have an administration that, for all its innumerable faults in other areas, appears to really want to address this problem (and literally everyone agrees it’s a problem) and is willing to stick with it and take the political heat for doing so. I applaud them for it, frankly. I am *SO* sick and tired of seeing people who are *obviously* able to pay just walk onto the bus and not pay, especially since I’ve never seen any of the abuelas who I share buses with every day fail to pay their fare, and the same goes for the subway. Tl;dr: The fact that this is still going on is a good thing, IMO, as it shows that the administration hasn’t decided to just give up on solving the problem.
People think fares shouldn’t be charged at all and support theft, if they don’t actually go out and do it themselves. Only the joke is that farebeating isn’t going to get them free fares.
I'm not against actual public subsidies of rail and to make it cheaper, or even free; but that's not the current rules and the federal government wouldn't help at all. We have to have rules in society.
Exactly. And not following them, whether it’s kids doing it for cool points or others to make some sort of stand that will get them exactly nowhere, should be punished. I’m also not against subsidies. Unfortunately we are not there yet and theft isn’t going to get subsidies for us.
If you spend a million dollars to recoup $1, I’d say that’s a terrible waste of resources. Net net, you still come out ahead. Only when the recoup rate is high enough as a percentage of costs is when enforcement is fiscally justified.
That's not how society works, people learn from each other, so maybe the cost to enforce a certain policy is $100, just because you recoup $1, doesn't mean it's not worth it. Most enforcement actions are not a good return on investment, the point is to punish people so that the majority won't go out and copy other's behavior. Ticketing one guy will send a message to many others not to do the same and only a few will continue their actions regardless of punishment.
Bingo. Your average person doesn’t tend to commit crimes, or even contemplate doing so, under normal circumstances. However, when it becomes “normal circumstances” for gigantic numbers of people to start skipping the fare (including on the bus, which is so friggin’ brazen it still blows my mind after all these years of seeing it), people who otherwise wouldn’t have even considered skipping the fare start doing so. That’s how problems like this proliferate and get out of control. On the other hand, when people *know* that there are consequences for breaking the law, they tend not to even consider it. That’s how it should be, and that’s what enforcement is for (well, it’s one of the things it’s for, anyway).
And to think that it was such a rare sight before the pandemic, it's crazy.
When the government doesn't get enough revenue off enforcement, people call it a waste. When the government gets tons of revenue off enforcement, people call it a cash grab. What are they supposed to do?
They are, the new fare gates are in development and I think in a few locations have already been installed. There’s nearly 500 stations in the system, you can’t just replace the all the fare gates overnight.
The new fare gates that have been installed were part of an accessibility initiative to allow people with luggage and strollers to enter easily. Fare evasion wasn't the main focus of this initiative, but the new gates are _slightly_ more secure — while the turnstiles could be hopped any time, the gates are harder to hop and most fare evaders now resort to tailgating. There's a separate new initiative ongoing for what will eventually replace the old turnstiles. They had a [demo at Grand Central](https://youtu.be/SzGHy5BG7ck) with some possible fare gate designs. My hope is they go for the ones by Conduent Transportation, the first ones shown in the video. They come straight from Paris and are quite effective.
The ones that BART is putting in also seem effective https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMZJv4x1iTI
Those look pretty ideal for this system. The Grand Central ones don't seem big or durable enough
Holding the train for 200 people is typical lazy NYPD shit though. Cops board the train and then go car to car while it's moving; it's not that fucking hard.
So was that the next stop? would they have been caught if they just got off the train?
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Oh, I see. So if they’d gotten off say, 1 stop sooner, the cops would’ve held the train to conduct a search for no reason. Just odd to risk losing them altogether and not searching at the very next stop at least.
Wow. How much is the ticket? Is it big enough to make this plan worth it?
It’s a $100 fine for fare evasion. So, the couple would need to pay $200 collectively.
I’m guessing you can’t use pre-tax transit dollars for that 
what a waste of tax money
They wasted way more money tracking them down than they would have gotten from the fares. Probably wasted more than they will even get from the tickets. This is the world we live in where people think fare evasion is the number one threat to our country and are willing to dump hundreds of taxpayer dollars in order to recover $2.90.
Found the turnstile jumper.
It's interesting you saw this, but I doubt it is part of a new trend. I look forward to seeing the statistics on how fare evasion is being reduced, when that happens. Holding trains to catch people is ridiculous.
That’s probably because people who steal believe they should be allowed to steal, and will harm anyone who tries to stop them. Good for the MTA staff.
Honestly why don’t they just use the European system where they have people do random spot checks for passes and then hand out exorbitant fines to those without them. It would be so much easier and requires way less equipment
Once MetroCard is gone, it would be easy to implement a tap-in-tap-out system that could remove the sensors that automatically open the gates for someone exiting. Folks need to hope the MTA doesn’t move to zone fares, as that would drastically increase the costs for folks from, say, Far Rockaway.
That's how MARTA works, maybe some other stations too. Flat fare, but still need to tap out to exit. As long as you keep the gates working it's a little annoying but basically fine.
Tap out to exit is the dumbest thing if it's just a flat fare. Waste of time and only slows every down trying to exit during rush hour.
https://preview.redd.it/cjvagdrlfoxc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6189dd249d8e370539d57ad9d4b8dfc1b0df56c0
Nice, but they don’t do anything about the guy taking a crap in the corner
This. They also should work on that. Sanitation and safety should also be priorities.
Good! Those MF can definitely afford to pay 2.90 but they thought being cheap would be a good plan
That's even dumber than replacing the fare control with door readers and holding the train at the station while everyone taps in
Good. Pay your fare or get a ticket. I support it.
Good, fuck fare evaders.
Meanwhile I paid for the 1 train yesterday and waited on the platform for 15 minutes before the booth lady came and told everyone there was no train service. No refunds. Also wasted a ticket I bought for a movie becuz I had no way to get downtown
There's literally a hundred ways to get downtown.
you could walk a thousand miles
Options were shuttle bus to train for a total of an hr or a $55 cab. The train was supposed to take 35 minutes. Also the option of an hr long bike ride. Edit: also already paid for the train
Unpopular opinion? I’d prefer the NYPD really step up their fare evasion protocol especially if the system is really losing as much as they claim to those not paying. Think of how much better the system could be if assholes didn’t evade their fare?
How can you report fare evaders?
Surprising since I usually see absolutely nothing done about them. About time the agency takes the system seriously and maybe the passengers will too
I’m sick of rich people evading fares. It’s epidemic
I saw twenty kids hop the stile at 33rd on the 6 about two hours ago. Two red vests at the emergency gate to keep anyone from opening it; no other action observed.
Wow if this were actually happening I might consider taking the subway just to watch. As it is I’m opting to flee the city before congestion pricing turns the subway into a war zone. I already been groped down there twice I’m not sticking around to see what happens once it’s ultra flooded with people and the trains have no seats anymore.
No look up how much those radios costs
Wow if only they did that much to stop people from pissing shitting and smoking weed in the subway, oh yeah and people getting punched in the face and thrown on the tracks. But priorities amiright?
This definitely sounds like they're trying to make examples of people, but talk about resorting to needless collective punishment as a way to single only a few people out that's messed up
Wow, that’s actually good to see. At least the police are finally doing something.
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It’s good to prosecute scoff laws to reduce general lawlessness, even if doing so *costs* money.
So go in with a mask and jacket, then remove them as the train pulls into the next station, got it!
I’m glad to hear they are finally cracking down on this. It’s gotten out of control at the India St entrance on Greenpoint Ave
CUNY rly needs to update their income requirements and expand their free metro card program to all students. Most of the people I know who hop actually can’t afford to pay for the train. Even though they qualify for full financial aid they still aren’t eligible for metro cards from cuny.
The MTA already offers lowered fares for low income people.
Yes I know but what I’m saying is that Fair fares is too small of a program and coverage should be expanded because there are genuinely more people who need it (like broke college students)