MTA is waking up
Has the consultant apologized yet?
Back in 2022, I was noticing how many bus riders in New York were simply boarding without paying the fare (link). These so-called "Select Buses" were designed to speed up boarding: riders were supposed to get a paper ticket from a machine on the sidewalk prior to boarding; and then they were allowed to board the bus from any door.
It doesn't take a genius to realize that such a system would promote fare evasion. One can consider it a price to pay for improving efficiency. That wasn't the posture of the MTA. The MTA was in full-on denial mode. This is a direct quote from my 2022 post:
The Vice reporter ... citing an earlier MTA study which concluded that all-door boarding reduced fare evasion... that study found that fare evasion was 10 times lower on Select bus routes than on regular bus routes!
That study literally claimed the fare evasion rate on Select Buses was merely 2.2%. Here's the proof:
Fast forward to 2026. The New York Times is saying:
slightly more than half of passengers — 52.7 percent — skip the fare on Select Bus Service buses
Whoever consultant that wrote the earlier report should be ashamed of themselves. What a horrendous mistake!
Over the last year, the MTA is phasing out the swipe cards in favor of chip cards. The road-side machines will be retired, instead of being updated to accept chip cards. Currently, passengers are supposed to pay on boarding by scanning the chip cards on the tablets.
This change has not reduced fare evasion. As a result, the MTA has decided to crack down. This requires – you guessed it – buying more technology to solve a problem created by technology. Members of an "EAGLE" squad will be inspecting riders; they will use a "hand-held device that can check whether an OMNY card or a cellphone made a payment on the bus someone is riding on". (OMNY is the chip card specific to the MTA.)
I'm wondering whether this device can check credit cards too.
