The MTA faces an existential crisis that deepens with every passing day, derailing the central nervous system of how New Yorkers live, work and play. Headlines tout violence towards straphangers and MTA workers, deep infrastructure needs, hullabaloos about the enactment of congestion pricing, and we are days into 2025. Something comprehensive and thoughtful is desperately needed to right the ship.
New Yorkers love to shout from the rooftops about what’s wrong with the MTA. Politicians have made MTA funding and safety challenges a proxy war for media gotcha moments and false narratives about what’s really going on. But I think we can all agree: at the root of NYC’s transit challenges, there’s a fundamental lack of respect for our transit system.
That’s why I found the recent uproar around the majority-federally funded efforts to help the MTA better understand and curb fare evasion astounding. Fare evasion may feel like the least of our problems, but it puts a straightjacket on our ability to invest in our transit system and address the interconnected issues that plague it.
We aren’t talking about chump change — private industry groups, including the Partnership for New York City, supported the MTA with a 2022 report on fare and toll evasion. The report estimated the MTA lost $600 million on bus and subway a year. Bus fare evasion has reached 50% — pre-COVID, fare evasion was 13%. If you want a better MTA, funding has to come from somewhere, and one first and easy step we can take is to ensure everyone is paying their fair share.
New Yorkers like to play armchair psychologists, but there are a lot of misunderstood and interrelated factors that enter into fare evasion. Many point to the economy, mental health issues, homelessness, a lack of affordable housing, systemic inequity, and people without means driving these high numbers, but hard data says otherwise.
The same evasion report and filmed evaders show well-heeled New Yorkers are equally guilty. Some send their kids under the gate, jump gates themselves, or use open emergency exit doors to enter the system. On the roads, high-end vehicles cover their license plates to avoid paying tolls.
Some may use fare payment to express dissatisfaction with the system, underestimate their individual impact, or have safety concerns. It isn’t one choice by one person; all of it feeds the beast, and understanding how factors relate and interact with each other is essential to changing the behavior of the masses.
Some point to better enforcement as the solution, but this also becomes complicated. Increasing oversight, issuing tickets, or boosting law enforcement requires personnel and will. The sharp increase in violence against transit and frontline workers forces people to decide between advocating for fare payment or ensuring personal safety for the matter of $2.90. You can’t even get a Happy Meal at McDonald’s for that amount.
For other riders, a similar cost-value proposition enters when holding the exit door or sharing weekly/monthly pass swipes when they find themselves on the same side of the turnstile after saying no.
There are underlying behavioral and psychological issues that play into each aspect of fare evasion. If there were simple answers, New York would have $600 million to spend on its system ASAP.
As much as we like to be different from anywhere else, New York isn’t the only place in the country with these struggles. It’s why the federal government wants to fund 80% of this effort, in the hopes of helping us while learning something to help other systems. New York has the opportunity to recover much-needed funds before other systems even get a handle on what is going on. Spending these dollars to generate revenue seems like a worthy investment.
Transit is the lifeblood of New York. It drives our economic bottom line. The MTA has the opportunity to avail themselves of federal resources. We can help ourselves and others understand motivations and how they interrelate in systemic behavior. We all deserve better; let’s work together to get it. $600 million is a lot to leave on the table when we have so much to do.
Wathen Finn is the president of the Wathen Group and served in many executive roles at the region’s transit agencies, including NJTransit as a founder, the Port Authority, and the general manager for transit services at the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority.