Last year, we co-chaired the MTA’s Blue-Ribbon Panel on Fare and Toll Evasion — a diverse group of leading New Yorkers with backgrounds in education, social justice, transit, and criminal justice. We came together out of growing concern about the threat that evasion poses to the future of our all-important transit system.
This year, the state Legislature has the chance to step up and give the MTA important new tools, proposed in our report, to help roll back the tide of evasion. We urge the Legislature to do so.
The stakes could not be higher. Our panel’s report showed that fare and toll evasion is a huge threat to the stability of our transit system: $700 million of red ink a year, and growing. That’s money that is desperately needed to pay for better transit service for all of us, and to continue making the system safer for riders and transit workers. Fare and toll evaders are not just helping themselves to free rides; they are picking all of our pockets.
Evasion is also a huge threat to our sense of ourselves as a New York community. It drives paying customers crazy to see their neighbors brazenly walk in through the subway exit gate, breeze past the farebox on the bus, avoid the conductor on the LIRR and Metro-North, or mask their license plates to avoid tolls at the bridges and tunnels.
That’s why our report called for a system that is both fairer and firmer. Fairer, because enforcement should never result in the criminalization of poverty. Firmer, because without real consequences for evasion, the problem will just keep growing and New Yorkers of all income levels will pay the price in the form of worse transit service.
The fairer-and-firmer innovations we called for included:
- A “warnings first” approach, where most first-time fare evaders would receive a documented warning rather than a monetary fine.
- For second-time offenders, maintaining the current $100 fine but returning half of that fine to the offender in the form of a pre-paid OMNY card — using the enforcement process to turn evaders into paying MTA customers.
- Increased fines, maxing out at $200, for recidivists who continue to evade despite these warnings and incentives.
- For the commuter railroads, moving evasion cases away from the criminal courts and into the MTA’s Transit Adjudication Bureau.
- For the bridges and tunnels, giving the MTA the power to crack down on drivers who use illegal plate covers and who refuse to pay their tolls.
All stakeholders must come to the table to make these recommendations a reality. That’s why we were glad to see the City Council and Mayor Adams respond to our report last year by increasing the eligibility standard for New York City’s Fair Fares program to 120% of the federal poverty level.
That’s a good first step toward what we hope will be further increases to our report’s recommendation of a 200% eligibility standard. Enrollment in Fair Fares is up more than 40,000 in the past year — a good sign that low-income New Yorkers are embracing half-fare transit.
We’ve also been glad to see the MTA embracing our report, moving to implement dozens of our recommendations that are within the agency’s control: things like expanding the use of non-police enforcement tactics (Eagle Team inspectors on the buses; contracted “gate guards” in the subways), and experimenting with physical changes to the subway fare arrays that make evasion harder and payment easier.
Now it’s the Legislature’s turn. Many of our key recommendations can’t become reality without changes to state law. Gov. Hochul has done her part and put forward legislation that would implement our package of fairer-and-firmer recommendations: steps like “warnings first,” rebating a portion of fines, tougher fines for recidivists, “civilianizing” commuter rail evasion, and empowering the MTA to take stronger measures against toll evaders.
We urge the Legislature to embrace these ideas and enact our panel’s recommendations into law. A well-funded transit system is the ultimate engine of equity: inexpensively and quickly connecting all New Yorkers to school, work, family, and opportunities of every kind. Giving the MTA the new legal tools it needs to fight the tide of evasion red ink will benefit us all.
Pierre-Louis is the executive director of the NYU McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research. Maldonado is a partner at Smith Gambrell & Russell LLP and past president of the New York City Bar Association. They co-chaired the MTA’s Blue-Ribbon Panel on Fare and Toll Evasion.
