The MTA has doubled the ranks of private security guards posted near subway station emergency exits that officials call the “superhighway of fare evasion.”
Budget documents show that the MTA expects to spend more than $35 million through next year on increasing to 1,000 the number of unarmed security guards whose mere presence at the gates is intended to slow the stream of fare-beaters who use them as free entrances.
The MTA estimates that it takes a $700 to $800 million hit annually from nonpayment in the subways, buses and commuter railroads, as well as at its tolled bridges and tunnels.
“It does deter someone when they see someone in uniform standing in front of the gate, so I think this is a good idea,” said David Jones, an MTA board member who served on the agency’s Blue-Ribbon Panel on Fare and Toll Evasion. “And I can assure you that it costs vastly less than a fully trained police officer.”
The private guards, contracted through the security firm Allied Universal, are rotated “strategically” among stations, an MTA spokesperson said. The agency estimated in May that fare evasion fell by 20% to 30% at the 50 stations where they were initially deployed in 2022.
While the NYPD has also increased the number of officers in stations and on platforms in recent years — boosting the number of summonses and arrests for fare evasion, data show — the new, unarmed station guards lack law-enforcement authority.
Instead, the blue-shirted gate guards in safety vests stand near emergency exits. Several told THE CITY that they are instructed to avoid confrontations while directing would-be farebeaters to the turnstiles.
“If we weren’t here, there would be someone standing here literally where I am next to the gate, just allowing people to come in,” said a security guard at the Third Avenue-149th Street station, who asked to not have his name published.
NYPD officers are still using their enforcement authority, department data shows. Through the first six months of 2024, the number of “theft of service” summonses for not paying the fare has gone up 9% from the same period in 2023, with close to 69,000 issued through the end of June. The 42nd Street-Port Authority Bus Terminal station had the most among the 472 stations, with 2,072.
‘People Need to Get Places’
MTA Chairperson and CEO Janno Lieber has said complaints from regular riders about fare-beating hit him hardest.
“The people that I hear from the most, that make the most impact on me, are people of limited means who are frustrated when they see somebody else push by them without paying on the bus or push in through an exit gate in the subway,” he said after the agency’s July board meeting. “We owe it to those people who live their lives playing by the rules not to make them feel like suckers.”
After the blue-ribbon panel last year issued recommendations on how to reduce what it called “crisis levels” of fare evasion, the MTA said it has made some progress on curbing the practice.
But the agency faces an even greater challenge on the buses, where transit officials estimate that nearly half of its nearly 2 million riders do not pay to ride.
Among the new subway strategies are design changes to 1,400 turnstiles at 100 stations that prevent people from pulling the devices in the reverse direction and slide through without paying, delaying opening of some emergency gates by 15 seconds and bringing in additional security guards.
“It’s a step,” Jones, the board member, said of the guards. “I don’t think it’s going to be a panacea.”
Across stations in Brooklyn, Manhattan and The Bronx, THE CITY spotted people trying to unsuccessfully talk their way past the security guards at the emergency gates, but also observed groups of people waiting for unattended doors to be propped open so they could enter without paying while out of sight of two police officers on the platform.
“I ain’t got it,” said Antoine Brown, 38, who waited for a gate to open at Jay Street-MetroTech in Downtown Brooklyn.
At 34th Street-Penn Station, straphanger Damion Samuels said he sympathizes with New Yorkers who beat the fare.
“The city is becoming increasingly difficult to live in, people need to get places,” he said. “People have to do what they have to do.”
At the Third Avenue-149th Street stop, William Walvin, 27, stood by the turnstiles to the northbound platform waiting, unsuccessfully, for the guards to let him into the station.
“If I go through when the gates open, I’m going to get a ticket from the cops and I’m not trying to get a ticket,” said Walvin, who is unemployed. “So I have to go directly to the guards and be honest and say, ‘Listen, right now I don’t got it and I’m just trying to get a ride.’”
