{"id":221373,"date":"2025-09-12T17:04:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T17:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/221373\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T17:04:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T17:04:11","slug":"mta-lost-1b-to-fare-beating-and-our-nyc-leaders-do-nothing-to-stop-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/221373\/","title":{"rendered":"MTA lost $1B to fare-beating \u2014 and our NYC leaders do nothing to stop it"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wonder why the MTA is facing a whopping $800 million budget hole, despite millions in congestion-pricing bucks? <\/p>\n

Look no further than a bombshell new report on fare-beating from the Citizens Budget Commission.<\/p>\n

The budget watchdog found the agency lost a jaw-dropping $1 billion to fare-beaters last year.<\/p>\n

And though losses are now starting to decline<\/a>, the CBC nonetheless predicts freeloaders will cheat the MTA out of a hefty $900 million this year, assuming \u201cpositive\u201d trends continue.<\/p>\n

The CBC\u2019s fare-loss figures are truly shocking \u2014 far higher than the $700 million to $800 million the MTA admits was lost, and three times the amount that vanished in 2019.<\/p>\n

That was the year before COVID struck, but also, not long after city district attorneys opted to stop prosecuting most fare-evasion cases.<\/p>\n

\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n

On average, the CBC report finds, people hopped on the subway without paying 330 times and on buses 710 times \u2026 every minute of 2024. \u00a0<\/p>\n

By the way, the $1 billion in lost fares is twice the congestion-pricing revenue projected<\/a> for this year: Cut fare-beating to 2019 levels, and the MTA could ditch congestion pricing and still he ahead $100 million or so.<\/p>\n

True, it\u2019s hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube; the agency itself opened another pit by announcing it wouldn\u2019t collect bus fares during the pandemic.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

But CBC figures show that evasion rates began rising well before COVID \u2014 namely, after then-Manhattan DA Cy Vance (worried about lefty challenges to his future re-election hopes) kicked off the no-prosecution madness in late 2017.<\/p>\n

Vance pretended these cases just weren\u2019t cost-effective to bring, but that meant ignoring a huge cost: Winking at fare-bearing encourages far worse behavior all across the system, so his craven decision is a key reason the subways and buses feel, and are, less safe than a decade ago.<\/p>\n

Tellingly, the stats also show an uptick in arrests in 2024 (finally!) that might explain why evasion rates fell 28% for the subway and 8% for buses during the first quarter this year (over Q1 in 2024).<\/p>\n

Still, 43% (nearly half!) of all straphangers on buses and 10% on subways aren\u2019t paying, even now. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The MTA has also experimented<\/a> with various other ways to cut fare-beating: The report credits unarmed guards with an estimated 36% drop in fare-beating at locations where they\u2019ve been used.<\/p>\n

At modified turnstiles, it\u2019s down 60%.<\/p>\n

But maybe nothing beats enforcement: Make these crooks face real consequences for cheating fellow New Yorkers. <\/p>\n

Yet that means electing prosecutors who\u2019ll, well \u2026 prosecute.<\/p>\n

Progressives pretend that penalizing fare-beaters amounts to criminalizing poverty.<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s always been utter rubbish: Many turnstile-jumpers and bus-hoppers aren\u2019t the least bit poor, and the MTA and the city offer plenty of discount and free-ride programs to low-income residents and others who qualify.<\/p>\n

MTA chief Janno Lieber knows mass fare-beating is stealing not just agency revenue, but the sense of safety so vital to a healthy system; Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and Mayor Eric Adams know it too. <\/p>\n

Too bad the city seems stuck with multiple DAs who won\u2019t admit the truth \u2014 and seems poised to elect in Zohran Mamdani a new mayor who\u2019s a committed truth denier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wonder why the MTA is facing a whopping $800 million budget hole, despite millions in congestion-pricing bucks? Look…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":221374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,18394,13845,17261,120447,12329,4691,120448,9904,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,1269,56002,92787,28715,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-221373","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-buses","10":"tag-congestion-pricing","11":"tag-coronavirus-in-ny","12":"tag-cy-vance","13":"tag-district-attorneys","14":"tag-editorial","15":"tag-fare-hikes","16":"tag-mta","17":"tag-new-york","18":"tag-new-york-city","19":"tag-newyork","20":"tag-newyorkcity","21":"tag-ny","22":"tag-nyc","23":"tag-opinion","24":"tag-prosecutors","25":"tag-subway-fare","26":"tag-subways","27":"tag-united-states","28":"tag-united-states-of-america","29":"tag-unitedstates","30":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","31":"tag-us","32":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115192416274970423","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}