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There are several guarantees when it comes to the NYC subway. It will always be “Showtime!” when you want it least, the C train will go express and zip you straight up to 125th Street the second you stop paying attention, and there will always be turnstile jumpers doing some little fare-evasion acrobatics across those subway gates. But it looks like their days are numbered.
On Wednesday, May 17, the MTA released the Final Report of the Blue-Ribbon Panel on Fare Evasion, a group of education, social justice, and law enforcement experts who came together in May 2022 to do a deep dive into the causes of rising fare and toll evasion across New York City's transit system. The cost of evasions lost the transit agency an estimated $690 million in unpaid fares and tolls in 2022 alone. The main culprit, however, was bus riders: "Roughly 700,000 bus riders do not pay the fare, comprising 37% of all bus riders on an average weekday," the report found.
To combat fare evaders, the Blue-Ribbon Panel has put forth a comprehensive plan aimed as reducing fare and toll evasion rates by half within the next three years. The "four-prong plan" will focus on the "E's" a.k.a. "Education, Equity, Environment, and Enforcement," which includes modernizing subway fare gates, support programs for low-income transit customers, and "a generational refresh of enforcement," whatever that means. The MTA has already kicked off several activations to boost paid ridership this year, including the expansion of OMNY vending machines at all NYC subway stations.
The prototypes for the newly designed subway gates were unveiled at Grand Central Terminal on Wednesday, looking less like the NYC subways of yore and more like those more commonly found in Europe, with a pair of glass doors that slide open after a rider has paid their fare. The new tech will replace the emergency exit doors found in all subway stations, announced MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber, which are said to be the main source of fare evasion underground.
“Fare and toll evasion isn’t just an economics problem: it tears at the social contract that supports mass transit in New York City. New Yorkers are sick of feeling like suckers seeing their neighbors beat the fare or cheat the toll while they pony up their fair share,” said Lieber. “The report findings address this emerging crisis with a comprehensive plan across all MTA services, while also acknowledging that enforcement alone will not solve this problem. The MTA will look to implement some of the Panel’s key recommendations, and we thank them for their tremendous work.”
