According to the MTA’s newest fare evasion survey, nearly 30% of NYC bus riders don’t pay their fee, costing the transport authority $56 million in the last three months of 2021 alone.
For those final three months, 29.3 % of riders on local bus routes failed to pay the fee, increasing 25.2 %.
A source familiar with the agency’s survey methods reported that local bus fare evasion had reached its highest level in at least a decade.
“The high rate is mostly being driven by [an approximately] 50 percent non-payment rate in the Bronx, and a jump in non-payment on Staten Island,” the source said.
During the fourth quarter of 2021, bus fare evasion cost the transit system more money than subway fee evasion. Despite having approximately three times the number of subway riders as bus riders, the evasion rate underground was less than 8% during the same period, costing the authority $41 million.
“If you can get away with not paying your fare on the bus, chances are you’ll also try it on subways,” warned MTA board member Andrew Albert. “We’re talking about massive fare loss on buses, which hurts the people who need it the most — the poor and those who cannot afford massive fare increases.”
Since 2017, MTA executives have warned about fare evasion, but with little success. Farebeating had climbed since the $24 million-per-year enforcement operation began, according to a report released last year by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli.
In 2018, two of the city’s five district attorneys in Manhattan and Brooklyn discontinued prosecuting “theft-of-services” cases related to public transportation.
However, the NYPD still issues tickets and occasionally arrests for subway violations; bus enforcement is nonexistent; the Transit Bureau issued not a single bus fare evasion summons in 2021.
In 2021, transit inspectors issued 39,055 summonses to bus fare beaters, of which “the vast majority“ carried $100 fines, an MTA representative said.
“By starving the public transportation system of funds, fare evasion is a crime against ordinary New Yorkers who pay their fare,” spokesman Aaron Donovan said in a statement. “That’s why NYC Transit deploys enforcement teams to combat bus fare evasion daily. It’s easier to pay a $2.75 fare than a $100 fine.”
During testimony before the State Legislature last Tuesday, MTA Chair Janno Lieber acknowledged the existence of bus fare evasion.
According to Lieber, the increasing noncompliance can be traced in part to five months in 2020 when buses were fare-free to restrict interactions between drivers and riders as COVID-19 spread.
“There’s no question that we had a very confusing fare payment period with the bus system in particular, where we closed down the front door to protect the drivers, and then everybody got on the back, they didn’t pay for a while,” he said. “The whole fare payment system has slightly broken down on buses, in my view.”
JP Patafio, Vice President of TWU Local 100, who represents Brooklyn bus drivers, sees little hope of enforcement solving the problem.
“I don’t know that there’s a police solution to 29 percent fare evasion,” Patafio said. “They should look at making local bus service free. As we saw during the pandemic, it’s an essential public service — like, the most essential of the essential.”
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