NEW YORK.–Every minute, last year, 330 passengers On the New York City subway they jumped, dodged or dodged the turnstile.
In a 24-hour system with 472 stations, this amounts to 174 million unpaid trips -More than a third 1 billion dollars It lost out on toll and toll evasion in 2024, according to the Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscal watchdog group.
As ridership continues to recover from declines during the pandemic, the cost of unpaid subway and bus trips has risen Tripled: came to $918 million in 2024Andrew Wren, chairman of the committee, said the amount had risen from $305 million in 2019.
That’s nearly double what congestion in Manhattan is expected to collect this year. Enough to pay 180 new subway cars. also 630 new buses. also Nearly 60 kilometers of new signaling systems.
“It’s a huge amount of money left on the table,” Ren said, noting that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), the government agency that runs the city’s transportation, could face a deficit as soon as 2027. The MTA expects an operating budget of 21 billion of dollars For next year, including More than a quarter It will come from the rates.
To help curb losses, the authority conducted tests Devices and strategies to neutralize the most common ways passengers avoid paying. Includes Serrated metal sections, longer turnstiles And some less obvious changes that modify the operation of access doors.
Although The subway is not the main source of evasion — this place is occupied by buses — has become a powerful symbol of dysfunction for critics of New York’s public transportation. The Trump administration described the system as “lawless.” Although underground crime rates are approaching historical lows.
MTA Executive Director Jano Lieber called evasion “the perfect solution.” “Existential Threat No. 1” for the subwayan act that erodes civility on trains and makes passengers pay the price ‘They feel like fools’. Lieber and the police chiefs confirm this Anti-evasion also helps reduce crime in the system.
This effort may seem futile, but the trend is changing. And in the first three months of this year. Evasion on the subway decreased to less than 10%.This is its lowest level since 2021.
To date, the MTA has installed the best physical barriers in over 110 stations.
The goal is not full compliance, Lieber said in an interview Eliminate “opportunistic evasion” – For example, when someone passes through an open emergency door because five people have done so before.
For years, one of the most common tricks has been “backcocking“, a maneuver in which the rider pulls the crane’s rotating arms enough to move his leg across the gap.
The last time the MTA replaced its turnstiles en masse was in 1992a year before the MetroCard was introduced. But since 2023, transport crews have been quietly modifying the decades-old equipment, piece by piece, each weighing up to 26 kilograms.
“It sounds very simple, but it took months of work,” said Steve Ilardi, deputy director of automatic fare collection. Ilardi and Ajay Singh, MTA Superintendent, are the architects of the solution.
For two years, a small team of technicians removed almost every one of these parts 3800 revolving doors From the subway and took them in vans to a secret warehouse in East New York, Brooklyn. There, MT mechanics. They cut six new slits in the circular plates hidden inside the pinwheels to limit their range of motion and make the gap between the arms more difficult to pass through.
Domitilla Delacha
The subway turnstiles are about 86cm high, a completely avoidable obstacle for many passengers. The MTA is betting that adding a 10cm barrier on each arm will be enough to deter many jumpers. barely 300 stations The agency said these creatures already have sleeves, fins, or both, and the entire system is expected to have them by the end of the year.
Opinions are divided.
“I don’t see any purpose for them.”“It’s a huge problem,” said Siobhan Campbell Soper, 39, a dog walker during a recent trip to Harlem, adding that she saw several passengers jumping over the bumpers. I would rather this money go to improving the service.
MTA spokesman Mitch Schwartz declined to say how much the fins and sleeves cost, but said that at the stations where they were installed there were 60% reduction in jumping on the Ferris wheel. Extras “They pay for themselves within a few months.”He mentioned.
Adding spiked metal panels between access doors is an example, critics say “Hostile architecture”designed for Curb bad behavior through discomfort.
But for the MTA, they are the subway’s defense walls. “As much as the public makes fun of the things we try, it works,” said Chantel Cabrera, project leader for Anti-Evasion Initiatives.
Brandon Jones, 30, a businessman who lives in Harlem, said he is selling Discounted MetroCard passes are an illegal practice. Before the new measures, it earned approx $30 per day. Since fins and sleeves are installed, you can earn nearly twice as much, partly because some dodgers give up.
“I’ve seen people get hurt” as they try to overcome new obstaclesHe said. “It’s a security risk.”
Every subway station has emergency doors that departing passengers can access, and they are one of the most abused entry points. To reduce the number of hackers, the MTA Installed devices that delay the door opening until 15 seconds.
The idea is to reduce the time doors remain open, said Demetrius Crichlow, president of New York City Transit. “New Yorkers don’t like to wait at all,” he added.
Nails 190 stations They are already late in opening doors, exceeding the goal set by the governor’s office this year. (For security reasons, each amendment must be approved by the New York Department of State.)
Installation costs approx $11,000 per door (two million so far). The MTA states so Stations with these doors have a 10% lower evasion rate..
The last line of defense is patrol About 1,000 unarmed guardsspread over more than 200 stations.
But their job is not to stop or pursue evaders. Instead, they should “Direct all customers to exit through the turnstiles.”This is according to a booklet distributed to workers.
“We are not security guards, we are customer service.”said a woman at the emergency door in Times Square. He refused to mention his name.
Last year, the MTA’s budget was included 70 million dollars for these guards, and expects to spend a similar amount this year. Allied Universal, the company that provides the employees, declined to disclose salaries, but similar positions on its website range from $18 and $20 an hour.
Since the initiative began in 2022, stations with guards have seen their number decline 31% The MTA said the evasion.
Over the next five years, the MTA expects to spend $1.1 billion To add modern corridor doors with tall doors and other features 150 stationsabout a third of the system. The agency will begin testing different models at different stations this month.
In Washington, D.C., which begins upgrading more than 1,200 entrance gates in 2023, the evasion rate in the rail system has fallen by 82% since its installation.According to a local authority spokesman.
Additionally, the MTA has supported the expansion of Fair Fares, a city-funded program that offers half-price fares to low-income residents. Some transportation advocates want to raise the income threshold so that evasion does not become a “crime of poverty” at all.
After MetroCard retires later this year, the authority hopes its digital replacement, the OMNY contactless system, will allow workers to more easily verify whether a passenger has paid.
Sylvain Haun, senior director of the International Public Transport Union, a global federation, said the MTA’s progress is remarkable. He added that the evasion rate remains high compared to other major cities, including Paris. Where the metro and regional train can escape in between 4 and 5%.
New York’s new doors will help, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution, Haun said. “It’s not one or the other. It’s both.”