Blue-ribbon panel offers solutions for MTA's fare evasion issues

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) last week released a final report from a blue-ribbon panel on fare evasion.

A group of education, social justice and law enforcement experts convened in May 2022 to better understand the causes of increased fare and toll evasion across New York City’s transit system and recommend certain actions. The panel’s mission is to reduce the MTA's lost fares and tolls by half within three years while boosting paid ridership.

Over the past year, panel members conducted nine site visits at subway, commuter-rail, bus and bridge/tunnel facilities and held six meetings to develop a final report. They determined that the situation has reached crisis levels that threaten the economics of mass transit in the New York metropolitan area. Last year, the MTA lost an estimated $690 million in unpaid fares and tolls.

A comprehensive plan to combat fare and toll evasion is key, including efforts to modernize subway fare gates, better support low-income transit system riders and refresh enforcement, the panel concluded.

"The report findings address this emerging crisis with a comprehensive plan across all services, while also acknowledging that enforcement alone will not solve this problem," said MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber in a press release.

For example, fare evasion in the MTA New York City Transit’s subway system cost the authority $285 million in lost revenue last year. Each day, approximately 400,000 riders enter the subway without paying.

The panel proposes replacing the existing turnstiles with modernized fare arrays, removing the existing emergency gates — which account for more than half of all evaded subway fares — and adopting new technology and data sources to pinpoint evasion hotspots.

Meanwhile, the panel found that fares not collected or collected incorrectly on the MTA Long Island Rail Road and MTA Metro-North Railroad systems cost the MTA an estimated $44 million in 2022. Ongoing issues that contributed to fare evasion include persistent delayed activation of e-tickets, an ineffective invoicing system for those caught not paying, and passengers who avoid purchasing a ticket before their trip or gamble on a conductor not checking for payment, the panel found.

To curb evasion, panel members recommend new strategies to encourage — or even mandate — pre-boarding activation of e-tickets, a reimagined penalty system for nonpayment and exploring the feasibility of physical gates at appropriate stations. 

"The MTA will look to implement some of the panel’s key recommendations," said Lieber.