Photo: Jonathan riley (Flickr)

New York’s transport authority loses US$700 million from fare evasion

09 August 2024

by Christopher Carey

Almost half of passengers on New York’s bus network don’t pay fares, according to a report from the Citizens Budget Commission.

The watchdog group found that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has lost more than US$700 million to people who skipped the agency’s transit fares or evaded tolls at bridges and tunnels in 2023.

Along with fare evasion, the report found that the MTA’s budget gap for 2023 had widened to US$2.6 billion largely due to “declining ridership [and] the decision to skip the 2021 fare increase”.

“We let people get out of the habit of paying for buses during COVID because we were trying to protect the drivers at the front and everybody got in the back door and nobody paid and it’s hard to put that genie back in the bottle,” MTA Chair Janno Lieber said.

“We all have to share this burden because the system needs to be there for all of us. It won’t be fair to the people who are most dependent on transit if the system has to reduce service or become much more expensive because some people say I don’t have to pay.”

Funding shortfall

The issue comes at a time when the MTA is facing a huge funding shortfall, which has become even more pronounced since New York Governor Kathy Hochul scrapped a proposed congestion charge in June.

Like most transit agencies in the US, the MTA is heavily dependent on fares to make up its US$19.29 billion annual operating budget.

Ridership on buses and the subway is still at just two-thirds of pre-pandemic figures, and fares are down 26 percent when compared to early 2020.

The agency estimates that the transit system lost US$200-300 million to fare evasion before the pandemic but by 2023 that number grew to over US$700 million.

Image: Jonathan riley (Flickr)

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