The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is stepping up efforts to crack down on fare evasion on the bus system after it was revealed that nearly half of all riders are not paying. The MTA announced Monday that new unarmed fare inspectors will be deployed on the city’s buses to enforce fare payment. Fare evaders will be asked to leave the bus and face a citation or arrest. The city’s bus system has the worst fare evasion problem of any major city in the world, costing the transit authority more than $300 million each year.
The problem of fare evasion in New York City has worsened since the pandemic. In 2022, the MTA lost $315 million in revenue to bus fare evasion and $285 million to subway fare evasion, according to a 2023 MTA report.
According to the New York Times, the fare evasion rate in 2018 was around 18 percent.
Under the initiative, inspectors will monitor passengers who do not pay the fare and escort them to bus stops staffed by NYPD officers, who can issue a $50 to $100 citation or arrest them in certain cases, Gothamist reports.
NYPD officers will assist ticket inspectors, part of the MTA’s “EAGLE” fare enforcement unit, on bus routes considered particularly vulnerable to fare evasion.
This action builds on a similar action last year that deployed EAGLE members on local bus routes and stationed NYPD officers at 20 stops across the city. Despite these measures, bus fare evasion rates rose from about 35 percent in 2023 to 47 percent earlier this year.
The Transport Workers Union Local 11 said MTA bus drivers are not encouraged to enforce fares for fear of harassment, assault or worse – a policy influenced in part by the fatal stabbing of a bus driver in 2008 who asked a passenger to pay the fare. In April 2023, a bus driver was grazed by a bullet fired by a man who was thrown off the bus after refusing to pay the fare, according to Gothamist.
Stopping fare evasion is critical for the MTA, which is still struggling to secure funding for numerous transportation projects that were originally supposed to be funded by a congestion charge before Governor Kathy Hochul paused the program.
The new measure will continue until the MTA sees evidence that more riders are paying the fare. The NYPD will assign new officers to the new initiative, an NYPD spokesperson told Gothamist.
During his tenure, Mayor Eric Adams has led a system-wide crackdown on fare evasion, with a particular focus on the subway system, although most cases occur on buses. According to Gothamist, arrests for fare evasion on the subways increased by about 250 percent between 2022 and 2023, while police issued 160 percent more tickets for fare evasion.
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