The NYC MTA has reported that it loses $100 million every year from people who don’t pay the fare on a NYC subway or NYC bus. At $2.25 per ride, that’s nearly 44.5 million rides! The MTA supports 1.6 billion rides annually.
According to The Wall Street Journal, ‘NYPD’s patrol services bureau arrested 1,228 people for fare-beating between Jan. 1 and June 24, an MTA spokesman said on Monday, compared with 609 arrests in the same period last year. That represents a 102% jump in fare-beating arrests, which have risen in every borough except Brooklyn.’
So what about the other 44,444,000 free-loading riders?
What’s so very odd is that the MTA had recently estimated the loss at $14 million a year. How did it jump to a whopping $100 million?
Anecdotally, I regularly take the new Select Service Buses on 1st and 2nd Aves, where you buy a ticket on the street and board the NYC bus. It’s the honor system, and I’m sure there are folks who aren’t buying tickets and are willing to take a chance they won’t get caught. Only twice in the last year have there been any NYPD Officers checking for tickets when I got off the bus.
