NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) -- New York City subway and bus riders who skip paying fares are threatening the fiscal health of the nation’s largest public transportation provider and its ability to improve service, the transit authority’s chief executive said Wednesday.
“This is a fundamental, existential threat to our ability to provide first-class public transit and make it better, more frequent, more reliable,” Janno Lieber said during the agency’s monthly board meeting. “And so we got to push back.”
About 65% of trips taken in December on the MTA's network of subways, buses and commuter rail lines were paid, below the transit agency’s goal of 70%, MTA’s data show. Riders paid 68.4% of subway trips in December, the sixth straight month where paid ridership fell below the target rate. Fare evasion on buses is even worse: paid bus ridership was 56% in December and missed every monthly target last year.
The MTA anticipates collecting about $5.1 billion of farebox revenue in 2024, but those receipts may fall short by $200 million to $400 million annually if paid ridership on subways and commuter rails fails to increase, according to MTA’s chief financial officer Kevin Willens. The agency in December cut its 2024 estimate of bus revenue by $100 million due to fare evasion on those vehicles.
The practice of avoiding the fare by jumping or maneuvering turnstiles and entering the system through open emergency doors soared during the pandemic and has cost the MTA roughly $700 million a year, up from about $230 million annually before 2020, according to the MTA. The agency is seeking to return to pre-pandemic levels.
The agency last year began retooling turnstiles to prohibit people from manipulating them to squeeze through without paying, a term called ‘back-cocking.’ It also plans to install new infrastructure to block riders from jumping turnstiles.
Open emergency exit doors are a major problem as streams of people walk through them without paying. The MTA on Dec. 4 unveiled new wide-aisle fare gates at its Sutphin Boulevard—Archer Avenue subway station that connects the E, J and Z lines to the AirTrain that serves the John F. Kennedy International Airport. The new design replaces emergency exit gates that allowed riders to enter the system without paying.
The MTA is learning that no solution is perfect. Some riders using those new gates have shown on social media that they can still get through without paying, an issue the MTA is working on, Lieber said. Even so, revenue is up 20% at that station since the new gates were implemented, Lieber said.
“Those particular models have coming in for some criticism, not unjustifiably,” Lieber said. “Changes are being made.”
The agency on Monday said it will begin a pilot program at three subway stations where emergency exit doors will have a new 15-second delay. The plan is to deter riders who don’t need an emergency exit to instead leave the system through its turnstiles. That would avoid an open exit door where incoming customers can easily walk through to avoid paying the fare.
“It is a huge threat to the viability of the MTA,” Lieber told reporters after Wednesday’s meeting. “And it’s also a huge threat to the morale of New Yorkers who believe in public transit and who want to be able to feel like they’re not suckers when they do pay their fares, as most do.”