Turnstile Jumpers: Subway Fare Evasion in NYC Cost $690 Million Last Year

With riders’ return to mass transit systems post-pandemic, fare evasion has soared, costing cities millions of dollars and threatening the solvency of already struggling systems. In New York City, a study found fare evasion cost the Metropolitan Transportation Authority $690 million in 2022.

According to the NY Daily News, the study was released by a 16-member MTA panel that found fare evasion cost $190 million more than the previous year's loss of $500 million.

The biggest fare evasion came from buses, where a third of riders failed to pay the fare, costing $315 million, the panel found. Another $285 million came from subway riders jumping the turnstiles and not paying, while commuter rail fare evasion came to about $44 million.

Finally, drivers with obscured or counterfeit licenses plates cost $46 million in lost revenue from the MTA's bridges and tunnels, the report says.

While individual fares may seem small, the frequency of evasions results in large budgetary impacts for the MTA. Fares were expected to bring in $7 billion in 2022, which would account for about 37% of the cost of operations. With substantially decreased revenue, New York will have to divert resources from other budget areas to account for the shortfall.

Other cities are also struggling to combat fare evasion, although to lesser extents. In Washington, D.C., fare evasion cost the Washington Metro Area Transit Authority $40 million in 2022, with 13% of riders not paying fares. Bay Area Rapid Transit is also looking into strategies to deter increased fare evasions.

The solution is not obvious. Many cities are investing substantial resources in new gate designs to make them more difficult to evade than the current turnstiles. These are still largely experimental, and are costly to implement, with San Francisco investing $90 million into new gates.

Increasing lawlessness in cities is bad for citizens and budgets, and everyone will suffer from reduced service and higher fares if cities can't get fare evasions under control.

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Originally published on api.realclear.com, part of the BLOX Digital Content Exchange.