MTA Must Make Plan To Tackle Fare Evasion Under State Budget

NEW YORK — The MTA says it is working to combat fare evasion, but now officials will have to put their battle plan on paper. The state budget passed last week requires the transit agency to develop a plan to fight fare-beating with input from Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city's five district attorneys.

The budget gives the MTA until June 30 to put the scheme together. It must incorporate enforcement tactics, penalties, changes to station design and "other actions as deemed necessary and proper," the legislation says.

The provision is meant to get officials on the same page when it comes to addressing a problem that's depriving the MTA of much-needed cash, according to Counsel to the Governor Alphonso David.

"You can’t say, 'the MTA doesn’t have funding,' and then at the same time say, 'no one should pay to get on the trains,'" David told reporters Friday. "So we have to come up with a solution that addresses both points."

The mandate essentially codifies a plank of a 10-point MTA overhaul plan that de Blasio and Cuomo announced in February, which also included congestion pricing and other new funding streams for the beleaguered agency.

The MTA has said fare evasion cost it $225 million last year, with about one in every five bus riders and 3.2 percent of subway riders skipping the fare. New York City Transit President Andy Byford has called for putting police officers on buses and surveillance cameras in more subway stations to combat the problem, among other steps he's taken to address it.

Other ideas include placing staff at stations to ensure straphangers don't jump turnstiles and reinforcing the station doors that straphangers sometimes slip through to avoid paying, David said.

"If we have more people (who) are refusing to pay to get on the train, we have less funding dedicated to the trains," David said. "So we have to address this problem in some way."

But advocates have raised concerns about coming down too hard on what is often a crime of poverty. Research has shown that fare evasion arrests in Brooklyn have hit poor neighborhoods especially hard.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.'s office has declined to prosecute most fare-beating cases since last year. That policy will continue even amid efforts to develop the state-mandated plan, Vance communications director Danny Frost said.

"We meet frequently on this issue with our government and law enforcement partners and expect such meetings will continue," Frost said in an email. "We do not intend to change our decline-to-prosecute policy."

Neither the MTA nor de Blasio's office responded to requests for comment on the budget mandate. But the mayor recently called fare evasion " not acceptable," though he noted the NYPD has moved toward the use of summonses for the crime rather than arrests.

"We want to make sure that fare evasion is addressed across the board," de Blasio said in February on the day he and Cuomo announced their MTA plan. "So the plan talks about physical measures to help stop fare evasion, and what the DAs need to do, what the police need to do, what the MTA needs to do, what the state needs to do, what the city needs to do."