In piloting its “European” model of bus fare enforcement, the MTA will test handing out summonses while the vehicles are in motion, a top agency official said on Wednesday.
During a press Q&A following a May 20 MTA board meeting, NYC Transit President Demetrius Chrichlow updated reporters on the agency’s pilot of handheld devices that check if bus riders paid with OMNY when hopping on board — issuing tickets to those found to have evaded the fare.
The rollout is an effort to better enforce against rampant fare evasion on city buses as the MTA has shifted fully from the MetroCard to the OMNY tap-and-pay system. However, while MetroCard sales ceased at the end of 2025, the payment method is still accepted, as are coin payments on buses.
The NYC Transit boss revealed that civilian fare agents — with the MTA’s Evasion And Graffiti Lawlessness Eradication (EAGLE) Teams — will experiment with checking payments while buses are moving, in addition to their current model of doing so when the vehicles are stationary.
“Part of the pilot will be doing it while the bus is in motion as well as what it takes to take people off,” Chrichlow said.
The goal of the trial period is to gather data on both methods, he said.
“Can we do it successfully while the bus is in motion?” Crichlow said. “How much time does it take with a person that’s actually holding, taking the customer’s identification, entering the information, and issuing the summons back? And how does that affect altogether the customers not yet on the bus?”
Chrichlow’s comments come several months after MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber said the issue is being “examined” by NYC Transit, when asked if the summonses will be handed question by a reporter. The question is based on the notion that in European countries that use a similar form of fare enforcement, which Lieber has said this model is based upon, agents approach riders while the buses are in motion.
Doing fare checks while buses are moving would in help mitigate against further slowing down the city’s buses, which are already the slowest in the country. MTA brass has repeatedly said that speeding up city buses is a top priority for the agency and revealed on Wednesday that they plan to publish a report along with Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Department of Transportation on how to do so.
Brian Fritsch, associate director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Council to the MTA advocacy group, said that it makes “complete sense” to conduct checks whilst buses are in motion.
“I think that, riders are not going to appreciate being delayed to have their fare checks,” Fritsch said. “I think it makes complete sense to do it while the busses are moving and operating normally. And I hope that’s the way, ultimately, that the vast majority of the checks are done.”
The NYC Transit boss’ revelation comes after he last month said the MTA would finally begin deploying EAGLE teams, equipped with the handheld fare-payment checkers, onto local bus routes. Previously, the agency had only tested the technology on its Select Bus Service (SBS) lines.
The devices, which include a scanning apparatus built around a smartphone, are being used by the EAGLE teams to verify whether riders paid by scanning OMNY cards, phones, or credit/debit cards. They then can issue a summons to fare beaters on the spot.
However, Streetsblog reported that the technology has malfunctioned in some cases, showing that riders had not paid even though they said they had. Riders in that situation have to go to a hearing to prove they paid.
The MTA says that fare evasion is an acute problem on its buses, as riders can duck on through the back door or scurry past the driver without tapping the OMNY readers. The agency lost $568 million in unpaid bus fares last year, according to a September report from the Citizens Budget Commission watchdog group.