PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — SEPTA is testing new subway gates at 69th Street Transportation Center that are designed to deter fare jumpers.
“We need people to know that you must pay to get on SEPTA,” Leslie Richards, the transit agency's general manager, told reporters at a Wednesday news conference. “We are losing about $30 to $40 million a year on fare evasion.”
Five of the new taller gates were unveiled at the Upper Darby transit hub. Under a $1 million pilot, SEPTA expects to install 20 of the new nearly full-length, dual-panel gates at 69th Street by the end of April.
The gates include an imaging system that can sense when a fare evader is “piggybacking” by rushing through behind a paying rider. SEPTA Transit Police Chief Charles Lawson said the new gates will provide better data on fare evasion, by alerting police to fare jumpers and tracking each instance.
“Not only is it harder to get through, physically get through, but it has an audible alarm for every non-fare paying customer,” Lawson said. “We're automating every instance of fare evasion.”
“WMATA [Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority] has reported a 70% decrease in fare evasion since they've installed gates,” Richards said. “We are hoping to see those numbers.”
SEPTA police issued 2,500 citations for fare evasion last year, Lawson said. “We're on pace to completely obliterate that this year without this tool,” he explained. “With this tool, that's going to go up by orders of magnitude.”
Commuters who saw the new gates Wednesday were encouraged by the effort to discourage fare jumpers. “I think that's a definite help. I actually saw a gentleman last week jump over the turnstile,” rider Mary Carrol Delaney of Ardmore told KYW Newsradio.
“I'm so glad they got this up here,” said commuter Mary Franks of West Philadelphia. “I come up here every day and I'm seeing all types of stuff.”
Richards said if the pilot is effective, the transit agency will look at installing the gates at five or six more subway stations in the next several years.