How Transit Agencies Are Approaching Fare Evasion

“Fare evasion is a topic that rears its head regularly; it’s a staple of local TV news and a frequent target of high-profile crackdowns,” write John Surico and Lillianna Byington in Bloomberg CityLab. With ridership still well below pre-pandemic levels and many transit agencies facing a fiscal cliff, transit operators are cracking down on fare evasion even more severely.

But “At the same time, targeting riders with heavy-handed policing in the wake of a deadly pandemic that revealed the inequities of public transit in the US carries with it a tone that didn’t exist before. As does millions of dollars in spending that doesn’t appear to match the cost of the issue it’s trying to address.” Meanwhile, “technological solutions have been elusive, as dodger-resistant turnstiles can be both expensive to install and difficult to use, slowing boarding, limiting accessibility for wheelchair users and irritating paying riders.”

“Critics of fare evasion enforcement often cite the high expense of curbing it,” with a 2018 Streetsblog article pointing out that New York City’s MTA planned to spend $249 million to save $200 million in fare evasion. “Interactions with law enforcement can also pose physical risks, both to riders and transit staffers: Earlier this week, three members of the New York MTA’s Eagle Team, which works to combat fare evasion, were fired at by a bus rider over an unpaid fare.”

To address the problem in new ways, some cities are experimenting with diversion options in lieu of citations, allowing people to pay for transit with EBT cards, or eliminating fares—and the costs of fare collection and enforcement—altogether.