More than 2 million people ride the MTA’s buses every weekday — but nearly half of them don’t bother to pay, transit officials said on Wednesday.
Roughly 47% of bus riders evaded the fare during the first three months of 2024, according to MTA estimates. The agency’s leaders warned free rides on buses cost the MTA $300 million last year, and say the growing problem is worsening the MTA’s bleak financial picture.
The MTA plans to respond aggressively by deploying more NYPD officers and additional MTA fare enforcement agents onto buses, spokesperson John McCarthy said. He also said the MTA needs “to come up with a new enforcement mechanism to deal with” the problem.
MTA Chair Janno Lieber said it was too early to lay out what those new methods would entail. He noted bus operators are not allowed to enforce the fare because of a policy put in place following the 2008 murder of Edwin Thomas, a Brooklyn bus driver who was stabbed by a rider who did not want to pay to ride.
“There are all kinds of things we use in law enforcement and in general society to reinforce behavior,” Lieber said during a news conference. “It’s signage, it’s education, it’s some enforcement, it’s changing the environment. … We’re looking at all of them.”
For now, Lieber said, he wants the NYPD to “strategically” deploy officers on buses.
“You can’t have a cop on every bus and frankly we don’t want to have a situation where every bus has to be policed,” he said. Lieber said the high rate of fare evasion “demoralizes” those who pay the fare.
MTA officials have for decades griped about fare evaders raiding the agency’s coffers. Before the pandemic, in 2019, they estimated 25% of bus riders skipped the fare. Lieber said it’s worsened since then, and partially blamed the trend on the MTA’s temporary move in 2020 to eliminate fares on all of its buses while making riders board through the back door as part of an effort to keep bus drivers safe from COVID-19.
An MTA pilot program to make five bus routes completely free to ride since last year may have also led to more fare evasion across the system, transit officials said. That program is scheduled to end in September.
The problem comes as MTA Chief Financial Officer Kevin Willens projected the agency will face a $400 million deficit in 2027. He said the financial hole was spurred by fare evasion and a drop in tax revenues that fund the MTA — and that it could grow even worse if congestion pricing does not launch.