MTA combats fare evasion with AI surveillance as price hike and free bus program set to arrive

By TANDY LAU

Amsterdam News Staff, Report for America Corps Member

Stand clear for rising fares, please. MTA bus and subway ride prices are going uptown by 15 cents later this month: Each swipe will cost $2.90 starting Aug. 20. The current fare is $2.75.

For power riders, a physical seven-day Metrocard will cost a dollar more, pushing the price from $33 to $34. One Metro New York (OMNY) fare-capping will soon start from the first digital tap rather than on Monday midnights—rides will not be charged after the 12th ride (or $34 cumulatively spent) on the same contactless method within seven days of the first payment.

Is the fare increase a fair increase? MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber argued that not too long ago, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli warned the agency potentially needed a 30% fare hike—along with other cost-saving moves like slashing service—to avoid a “fiscal cliff” due to debt and lower ridership post-pandemic lockdown. But a “record investment” in Gov. Kathy Hochul’s FY 2024 budget for the MTA and other state-run transit agencies prevented such drastic measures.

“We’re voting on a 4% fare increase,” said Lieber at a July board meeting. “It’s a resumption of the historic pattern of small fare increases every second year so people can plan on it.”

Subway and bus fares have not been raised since 2015, when the price hopped from $2.50 to the current $2.75. But back then, ridership was up, and there was no COVID-19 pandemic.

Free bus program is on schedule

Sharing the road with the price hikes is the recent announcement of fare-free buses, a pilot program of five free routes spread between each borough. Bronx’s Bx18 A/B, Brooklyn’s B60, Manhattan’s M116, Queen’s Q4 LCL/LTD, and Staten Island’s S46/96 will be free starting late September. Those five bus routes serve almost 44,000 daily riders during the workweek. The program stems from the “Fix the MTA” legislative package sponsored by New York lawmakers State Sen. Michael Gianaris and Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani.

“We do not subscribe to the false binary that you have to pick either one of reducing/stabilizing the cost or increasing service,” said Mamdani to the Amsterdam News. “We reject the crumbs mentality that we’ve been fed for so long in the chambers of power…This pilot program will run for six to 12 months for each route. And these routes were picked with attention to serving a disproportionately low-income ridership that deserves and needs that economic relief in an urgent manner.”

Routes were chosen based on multiple criteria, including fare evasion and equity for low-income and economically disadvantaged communities.

“Picking the route along 116th Street is a wise choice that shows that our state is pinpointing areas where affordability for basic services is becoming more and more difficult,” said State Sen. Cordell Cleare, who serves Harlem. “Most of the residents in my district, and throughout the city, rely on public transportation. While there is more to be done, this is a welcome step in the right direction.”

An MTA spokesperson confirmed that the fare hikes and the free buses were not linked. The pilot program stems from the state budget’s Education, Labor, and Family Assistance (ELFA) bill, in which $15 million went toward making the five lines free. The MTA aims to recoup $305 million by raising costs on fares and tolls. The key sponsors initially pushed to freeze fares, before settling with reducing the amount raised from

5.5% to 4%.

The money comes from a payroll tax on the city’s biggest businesses, along with state aid and further transit funding by the city. Along with free buses and a lower fare hike, more subway service on nights and weekends is included in the funding.

Beyond affordability, Mamdani also sees the pilot as a public safety measure for bus drivers—a slice of the New York City Transit workforce that is 47% Black. The Northern Queens lawmaker recalled conversations with a local transit union rep, who told him half of the assaults his operators faced were over farebox disputes.

MTA employing AI technology to fight fare evasion

But not every ride is free, so the MTA keeps a close eye on fare evasion. A very close eye, according to the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.), whose Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) public records request revealed a transit authority contract for AI technology to monitor unpaid entries into subway stations.

“We were quite concerned by the MTA’s deployment of new cameras facing the turnstile, and that’s when we started asking for information related to their different camera systems,” said S.T.O.P. founder and director Albert Fox Cahn. “That’s what led us to this information about AI fare evasion enforcement technology, something we’d never even known was a concern prior to launching the FOIL.

“It really highlights one of the structural concerns here: that a program like this, as invasive and potentially biased, could be deployed without any public notice or comment or real oversight.”

According to the MTA spokesperson, the AI tool will “quantify the amount of fare evasion without identifying fare evaders,” serving as a loss prevention measuring stick. Seven stations currently are imple- menting this technology, although they were not identified. The agency maintains the data is not shared with the NYPD, which reportedly arrested 2,500 people for fare evasion this year. But Cahn pointed to the court-ordered surrendering of MetroCard trip data to police and prosecutors as a potential precedent to the AI tool.

Between bus and subway fare evasion, the MTA reported $600 million in losses last year. The agency said levels have spiked in these two transit categories since the COVID-19 pandemic and “show no signs of dropping.”

Fare evasion still enforced by police

The NY Post recently reported that 1,136 of the roughly 2,500 people arrested by the NYPD for fare evasion this year—as of late July—had active warrants. But arrests make up only a tiny fraction of all fare enforcement by police so far this year. An NYPD spokesperson did not confirm that statistic but pointed toward the department’s fare evasion reports, which most recently tallied up this year’s first quarter arrests and summons.

Those first quarter numbers pointed to 923 fare evasion arrests made, compared with the 28,057 fare evasion summons issued. Transit District 4—headquartered in the Union Square Subway Station—was responsible for 6,116 of those summons, by far the most, but only 28 fare evasion arrests. For comparison, the Bronx’s Transit District 12 or Brooklyn’s Transit District 33 saw 200 fare evasion arrests made but fewer than 2,000 summons issued.

Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member and writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1