MTA Nabs Federal Money to Study the New Psychology of Fare Beating

 

Facing a behavioral shift seen since the pandemic, the transit agency is pulling out all the stops to figure out how to get people to pay their own way. 

This article originally appeared in The City.

By Jose Martinez

NEW YORK - Facing what it calls a “historic high” in fare evasion, the MTA wants to use behavioral research to get inside the minds of the estimated 900,000 bus and subway riders who dodge fares daily.

With new grant funding, the agency is aiming to contract analysts for a study — at a projected cost of $500,000 to $1 million — that is designed to “apply the theories of civic cultural change and tools of behavioral science” to fare evasion, according to a request for proposals on its website.

“If we are going to hire a behavioral consultant, it will be to help change the behavior of a criminal justice system that has determined that fare evasion should have no consequences,” John McCarthy, the MTA’s chief of policy and external relations, told THE CITY in a statement. “This needs to change. Pay your fare.”

The MTA reported this spring that those who don’t pay the $2.90 bus and subway fare could, in coming years, cost the agency up to $800 million annually.

A 2023 report titled “Blue Ribbon Panel on MTA Fare and Toll Evasion” found that nonpayment on transit trips alone cost the agency close to $600 million in operating money the previous year, with another $50 million lost to unpaid tolls on the MTA’s seven bridges and tunnels.

The MTA has an operating budget of nearly $20 billion this year.

The contract solicitation posted to its procurement opportunities website on Dec. 6 is an update to one from May, due to the availability of the new grant money, an MTA spokesperson said, adding that no public funding has yet been put toward the planned six-month study.

The document states that six months of initial qualitative and quantitative research would further develop farebeater “personas” such as  “opportunists,” “rebels,” “idealists,” “youth,” “unintentional” and “low-income,” with the goal of determining why people in each group do not spring for fares.

“If the emergency door is open, I will not pay,” reads the description for “opportunist” fare evaders.

Among “rebels” — described as middle to high school students — a possible motivation to not pay fares is defined as “what the cool kids do.”

For those classified as “low-income,” the reasoning is more straightforward: “I simply can’t afford the ticket for public transportation.”

One bus operator on the M66 route in Manhattan, who asked not to be identified by name, described the effort as “smoke and mirrors” and said the MTA may be grappling with a problem that “is beyond their control” and not easily classified.

“It’s everybody. It’s not one group or demographic,” the bus operator told THE CITY. “They just feel like, ‘Why should I have to pay for this service that’s not great?”

Changing Culture

As part of the prospective study, researchers would come up with at least three distinct behavioral interventions for each persona and then develop pilot programs to put the strategies in place, according to the notice.

The solicitation also highlights methods that have changed civic behavior elsewhere, including using “dancing costumed zebras” for “traffic calming” at crosswalks in Bolivia and posting mimes at intersections in Colombia to reprimand “errant drivers and pedestrians.” The latter, according to the document, helped reduce by half the number of traffic fatalities.

David Jones, an MTA board member who was among the blue-ribbon panel’s 16 members, told THE CITY that a “cultural change” around fare evasion is needed and that enforcement, particularly by police, is not enough.

Jones pointed to the deployment of unarmed security guards on buses and near emergency gates in subway stations as steps that are “already working.”

He said he’s not yet sure how much of an effect behavioral research may have on fare evasion.

An NYPD officer keeps watch near a subway entrance at the Fulton Transit Center, Dec. 12, 2024.

“I work with social scientists, I know that some of this is very effective and I don’t want to denigrate the effort — I’ll take anything they have,” Jones said. “But I’d like to see something that is much more concrete.”

THE CITY reported in August that the MTA plans to double to 1,000 the number of private security guards posted near emergency exits that agency officials have labeled the “superhighway of fare evasion.”

About 13% of subway riders now beat the fare, according to the MTA — up from just under 3% in 2018. 

Above ground, agency numbers show that Select Bus Service buses have a staggering 55% non-payment rate, while riders on local buses skip the fare 48% of the time. That’s in contrast to the last three months of 2019, when MTA statistics show the fare evasion rate on local buses was a fraction over 20%.

The research work would be among the MTA’s latest efforts to stem the long-running drain on dollars from unpaid ridership — and partially pins the losses on a pandemic-driven shift in mindset toward covering the bus and subway fare.

“A new social perspective on fare evasion emerged in the wake of COVID-19,” the notice reads. “Not paying the fare is simply not as ‘bad’ as it once was.”

The solicitation notes that penalties, physical barriers, fare inspections and messaging are the “most common tactics” used against fare evasion.

But it cites a 2020 Public Transport report that says “these costly and sometimes controversial methods have had limited success in reversing the upward trend in riders who do not pay.” 

According to NYPD numbers provided to the MTA board, enforcement of fare evasion surged through the first 10 months of 2024 when compared with the same time frame last year.

Through October, there were 8,792 arrests for “theft of service,” or fare evasion — a 114% increase from 4,108 in 2023.

The number of summonses issued for fare evasion over the first 10 months of this year also climbed, NYPD numbers show. There were 120,883, a 13.5% jump from the same period of 2023. 

Jones, the MTA board member, said expanding measures such as “Fair Fares” — which offers half-price fares to low-income New Yorkers — will be important for reversing the trend on fare beating. He added that other measures must also be part of the equation. 

“Yeah, it’s going to take a while,” he said. “I think we have to have a cultural change where people start to say, ‘Well no, I’m not going to do that, I don’t have to do that and I can get Fair Fares if I don’t have money.”

Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.