Subway Chief Cites Fare-Beating In MTA Budget Woes

NEW YORK — The man who runs New York City's subways cited fare evasion as one cause of the MTA's budgetary woes on Friday, drawing fire from a prosecutor's office that has eased up on the offense.

Fare-beating is among several factors contributing to the beleaguered transportation authority's grim financial picture, New York City Transit President Andy Byford said. The MTA faces a nearly $1 billion budget deficit in 2022 even with two planned fare hikes in the next three years, the agency's finance chief said last week.

Byford pointed to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.'s move to limit prosecutions for turnstile jumping earlier this year. He said declining ridership and decreased rental income are also playing a role in the budget issues.

"The DA for Manhattan did announce that there would be a different approach taken to the prosecution of fare evaders and I think that has had an impact," Byford said on WNYC's "The Brian Lehrer Show." "We're not being passive to this, though."

Byford did not provide a dollar figure to back up his assertion, though he said an analysis of the issue would be presented at next month's MTA Board meeting.

Byford's remarks drew criticism from a spokesman for Vance, who said the subway's ridership drop is the MTA's own fault. The authority "is running out of people to blame for its monumental failures," the spokesman, Danny Frost, said in a statement.

A new policy took effect in Vance's office in February to not prosecute most people arrested for turnstile-jumping. Police subsequently recorded less than half as many evasion arrests in that month compared to January.

While fare evasion is sometimes described as a crime of poverty, Byford said "not paying isn’t the answer." He both praised the city's forthcoming Fair Fares program offering half-price MetroCards to poor New Yorkers and touted his agency's fare patrols on buses.

"Those people that need lower fares, great, we’ll give you lower fares," Byford said. "Breaking the law is not an option."

Byford's stance on the issue is akin to those of former MTA Chairman Joe Lhota and Mayor Bill de Blasio, who both expressed concerns about Vance's policy change earlier this year.

But Frost said Byford should provide evidence if he wants to continue Lhota's "shameful legacy of scapegoating low-income New Yorkers and criminal justice advocates for the disaster that has unfolded under their leadership."

Daily subway ridership has slipped by 191,000, a decline that experts agree is driven by "the MTA's own performance," Frost said.

"If Mr. Byford thinks New Yorkers are gullible enough to believe that 200,000 people per day are newly jumping turnstiles, then, well, we wish him the best for his tenure," he said.

In response, an MTA spokesman said fare evasion has increased in the last four to five quarters and amounts to a "significant source of revenue loss for the MTA."

"It’s curious that the Manhattan DA’s office is feeling so defensive about this," the spokesman, Shams Tarek, said in a statement. "The entire conversation was about the plain fact that fare evasion hurts revenue."

(Lead image: Photo from Shutterstock)