Second Ave. Sagas

Fare-beating a bus problem too

Written by

Benjamin Kabak

in

,

The Daily News continued its week-long series on fare-beating and the MTA today with a look at how the problem plagues the city’s buses. According to today’s report, 6.7 million bus riders hopped aboard without paying a fare, and the delinquent riders cost the MTA approximately $8 million in lost revenue. Meanwhile, the cops aren’t too active in stopping the bus fare-beating. They arrested or summonsed 1826 people on buses last year. “You have better odds winning Lotto than you do for getting caught by the NYPD for evading the fare on a bus,” Gene Russianoff said to the News. “This lack of enforcement by city police costs the MTA millions of dollars, money the MTA could use badly to meet a crippling deficit.”

The problem is compounded by the fact that bus drivers are explicitly told to do nothing about fare beaters. They keep track of those who don’t pay via a clicker but due to valid safety concerns, are told not to confront those who skip out on the fare. The vast majority of those sneaking on do so through the back door, but until cops ramp up enforcement efforts, this bus-based fare-beating will continue. For more on the issue of fare-beaters, check out the coverage from Tuesday and Wednesday.

Comments

20 responses to “Fare-beating a bus problem too”

  1. Duke87

    You have better odds winning Lotto than you do for getting caught by the NYPD for evading the fare on a bus

    1826 people caught out of 6.7 million offenders is about 1 in 3669. According to the New York Lottery’s website, the odds of winning first prize are 1 in 45,057,474.

    Nice soundbyte, Gene, but the statement is nowhere near statistically valid.

    Reply
    1. Benjamin Kabak

      Mathematically invalid numbers from the Straphangers? I’m shocked.

      Reply
    2. KPL

      Before I read this post, I was about to write “Which prize?” There’s a better chance of winning 4th and 5th prize in LOTTO or the 6th – 9th prize in Mega Millions than getting a ticket for fare-beating.

      Reply
  2. noah

    this is more complicated than they make it out to be as always. what about the people who leave the bus when they don’t have the fare, at the next stop, or next two stops. then there are the times when the bus driver stops the bus and tells them to leave, the times when the bus driver doesn’t. I love how the big bureaucracies will have us believe that all problems have simple fixes with easy statistics rambled off, it reminds me or the taxi scam numbers when in most cases that button is only pushed at the very end of the ride and it charges not one extra penny.

    Reply
  3. noah

    i’m sorry i went way off track on that one.

    Reply
  4. Alon Levy

    $8 million! That’s huge! If the MTA cracks down and it costs nothing to enforce, then it’ll cut its deficit by a full 1%!

    Reply
  5. AK

    Also, bus drivers have been expressly told to be very careful in terms of not allowing fare beaters to board, seeing as would-be fare beaters have been known to kill bus drivers (happened late last year-> http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/st…..id=6532712)

    Reply
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  8. rhywun

    2008 bus ridership was 746,977,406. 6.7 million divided by that is approximately 0.9 percent — not bad, all things considered.

    Reply
    1. petey

      i still find 6.7 million fare beaters on buses a figure too high to believe.

      Reply
      1. rhywun

        One of the favorite things I read about NYC, long before I moved here 12 years ago, was something along the lines of “NYC is so big even a tiny percentage results in a huge number of people”. The book was a sort of travel/transit guide to the city from I think the 70s. The author was talking about the numbers of immigrants from various countries, like 500,000 from Haiti or 700,000 from the D.R. or whatever. Anyway, the same effect applies here. 6.7 million sounds like a huge number. That’s why I sought to calculate the percentage–which turned out to be tiny. Less, even, that cities which practice proof-of-payment.

        Reply
  9. Steve

    Are there stats on farebeaters on the SBS? With SBS, entering by the back door is encouraged. Is enforcement any more (not) vigilant for checking if riders have the fare receipt?

    Reply
    1. Alon Levy

      Yes, and there are random fare inspections. It’s exactly the same way it works in Zurich, or Calgary, or Singapore.

      Reply
      1. rhywun

        My guess is the loss is much higher than for the regular bus–but yeah I would like to see the numbers, too.

        IMHO fare-beating is a cultural effect. The US has a relatively high crime rate for a “Western” country, so it’s sort of heartening to see that the fare-beating is no worse in NYC than in more, uh, “obedient” cultures like, say, Switzerland (someone mentioned in another thread that the figure was 2% in Zürich–which admittedly has proof-of-payment, like most cities in Europe, but still).

        So I would expect the fare-beating to be at least 2% on the SelectBus–probably more.

        I do recall living in Buffalo for many years, the subway has proof-of-payment, and I rode it very frequently, yet I was proofed very rarely. If I was of a different nature, I could have gotten away with paying very little 🙂

        Reply
        1. Alon Levy

          The high US crime rate is somewhat of a myth. I read a few years ago that when they did an OECD-wide crime survey, the US turned out to have a middle-of-the-road crime rate, comparable to France. I don’t remember whether it’s overall or violent crime, though.

          However, because of tough-on-crime policies, Americans are more attuned to crime, and report it more – in fact reporting rates are rising. So if you look at reported rates, the US ranks first. And in murder the US is first because of high gun ownership.

          But it’s not that cultural. Singapore has no culture of obedience: people there break the law if they think they can get away with it. But the private bus operators there still think POP is justified. (I have no idea what the fare evasion rate there is.)

          Reply
        2. John

          You have to think of it this way: Even though farebeating probably increased to 2%, the ridership increased by almost 5% from last year and almost 20% in the past 5 years. That means that, all things being equal, SBS was a success, and produced even more revenue than before.
          About the fare, you have to consider that out of all of those people, how many would’ve paid if they knew for a fact that they weren’t going to get away with it? There are farebeaters who look like they are capable of paying (I once saw a teenager wearing ear buds get onto the bus, and once on the bus, took out his cell phone and started playing with it), and then there are those that mighr not be. I’m sure that if our Student MetroCards were to be cut, the students who farebeat would find another means (such as walking) of getting to school.

          Reply
  10. Allan Rosen

    Allan Rosen Says:

    Noah, you are correct. The problem is more complicated than they make it out to be. I don’t know if the 6.7 million figure is accurate or not, but assuming they lose an average fare of $1.20 per farebeater is wrong as the MTA is doing. The figure should be closer to $2.00

    $1.20 would assume that a fare beater is just as likely to buy a 7-day or unlimited pass as a typical passenger, or that a typical passenger is a fare beater.

    While some typical passengers may enter the rear door at heavily used transfer points because the bus is too crowded for them to enter the front of the bus, this still does not account for the vast majority of farebeaters since bus drivers are instructed not to jeopardize their own safety by challenging anyone who does not want to pay the fare.

    This is a much bigger problem in poorer neighborhoods and includes passengers boarding through the front door as well who just walk past the driver without paying according to an African-American Hispanic (Roto Rooter) who commented on the Daily News article that people of color who do not pay are never questioned by the bus driver, (only Caucasions are) when they walk in without paying. She said that this is a routine occurrence in some neighborhoods.

    The problem also has gotten worse as the MTA eliminated some extra runs that used to operate only from major subway stations to the end of the route forcing people to enter the back door if they do not want to face another additional long wait for a bus. Many of those people are really not beating the fare since they would be entitled to a subway bus transfer anyway.

    Reply
  11. rhywun

    The vast majority of fare beaters that I have observed were teenaged or young adult males who appeared (based on clothing and/or the accessories they were carrying) perfectly capable of paying but too lazy and/or rebellious to bother. The ride is priced so that anyone with a job (or benefits) can afford it.

    Reply
  12. Donohue: Time to crack down on fare-beaters :: Second Ave. Sagas

    […] really worth it. It’s true that the bleed rate is up slightly from 2009 when the MTA lost $8 million to fare-beaters, but the overall percentage of those skipping out on the fare is under two percent of all bus […]

    Reply

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