NEW YORK (WABC) — At the same time Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants free buses in New York City, the city’s losing close to $1 billion dollars in fare evasion a year.
Eyewitness News captured just how often fare evasion on buses is happening. It’s costing the city tens of millions of dollars a year – about twice as much as subway fare evaders.
Despite Mayor Mamdani’s free bus plan, the city’s taking new action to make sure people pay.
When you get on an MTA bus, you’re supposed to tap the electronic OMNY payment system with your phone or credit card. When passengers pay, a green “go” screen displays and they board the train.
Eyewitness News rode two of the busiest routes, the Bx12 in the Bronx and the M15 from Harlem to Manhattan and found many people are not paying to ride transit.
In some cases, more than half of the people entering the packed buses ignored the payment system and walked in without appearing to pay.
It’s not just happening when people enter at the back of the bus, it’s also happening when passengers enter at the front next to the driver.
Our cameras captured dozens of people not paying over a two-hour time period. In some cases, entire groups of people entered without payment.
Mayor Mamdani recently rode the Q70 bus in Queens where he reinforced his desire to have free buses.
“We are just as committed as we were before to fulling our promise to make buses fast and free in the nation’s most expensive city,” Mamdani said.
A recent report by the Citizens Budget Commission shows, many people are already riding for free when they shouldn’t be.
https://cbcny.org/research/no-fare
More than 700 people a minute are fare evading on buses, according to the commission, and it’s adding up. When combined with subway fare evaders, it cost the city approximately $900 million last year.
“Bus fare evasion is a really big challenge for the MTA, it’s not like you can station a police officer or an unarmed guard on every single bus,” said Ana Champeny of the Citizens Budget Commission.
It’s money the city needs to make transit improvements and to keep the buses on the road.
“We can’t keep running buses and subways if the revenue goes into the toilet,” said Janno Lieber, the CEO of MTA.
When Eyewitness News asked Lieber if there’s any scenario of actually having free buses when the city’s already facing close to a billion dollar loss from fare evasion, he said “Listen, I’ve commented on some of my questions about it, we’re looking forward to having discussions with the new mayor and his team.”
“He is a pro transit guy, his rhetoric and his emphasis on transit is welcomed to us, obviously we have some complicated issues to talk through and work out,” Lieber said.
But it appears the MTA’s not counting on a free bus system.
By the end of the year, it plans to hire people to check fares of bus passengers once they’re on board to ensure fare evasion doesn’t happen.
“We can do a much more effective modern way of doing modern fare enforcement where we’ll have people with handheld devices that can ask folks to show how they paid,” Lieber said.
According to Governor Kathy Hochul, the state’s not planning to fund any free bus programs soon. The governor said it’s not part of her budget plan for at least the next year.
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