The NYPD Spent $150 Million to Catch Farebeaters Who Cost the MTA $104,000
The NYPD Spent $150 Million to Catch Farebeaters Who Cost the MTA $104,000 - Hell Gate
I love the ticket systems in places like Berlin, Helsinki, Heidelberg, and Tampere. They don't use turnstiles at all, just occasional onboard ticket checkers.
It's so much faster for large groups of people to move through the stations so it keeps people moving instead of piling up at a ticket machine, even ones as fast as those in London.
You don't need officers standing guard at turnstiles, just extra onboard sweeps to keep most people honest.
Even better is a whole free system like some cities are going to. LA is having a freeway widening project happening. If the money for that went to their public transit system, they could make it fare free for 20 years at the same price point as "just one more lane, bro" of freeway that will still be a parking lot anyway.
I know someone that grew up in LA. Their childhood home was demolished and turned into an extra lane for the freeway.
Same in Oslo. No turnstiles, you are just expected to have a valid ticket, (mainly digital) within the zone. And you can get checked at any time
Berliner here. That's not better at all. It makes it much easier to forget to validate the ticket, and the people who control are usually assholes.
IDK about that, have you ever been handcuffed and arrested by an armed uniformed police officer because you didn't spend $3? Lots of people in NYC have. The transit system in Berlin sounds similar to the one we have where I live (not NYC). Here you can get a fine (a couple hundred dollars iirc) and kicked off the train, but that's it. Not pleasant, certainly enough to keep me honest, but a damn sight better than having a police record and maybe getting shot by a cop.
Dunno how it works there, as I've never used public transport there, but here in Tampere we have ticket readers right next to tram doors and everyone taps their card / mobile on those to activate the ticket. Not easy to forget at all. Same in local trains.
That's a job requirement.
I wish the UK would go to the German system. Particularly the 50EUR/m unlimited slow train travel, that's goddamned amazing.
I'd consider getting rid of my car if we had that here.
Even better is a whole free system like some cities are going to. LA is having a freeway widening project happening. If the money for that went to their public transit system, they could make it fare free for 20 years at the same price point as “just one more lane, bro” of freeway that will still be a parking lot anyway.
Actually the Metrolink trains that run to/from LA to/from the other nearby counties/suburban areas all work the same way, no turnstiles, just conductors checking for tickets on them.
Some local community cities even subsidize the monthly fees for the Metrolink trains.
And once the Metrolink trains get to downtown LA's Union Station you take the subway to different areas (yes, LA does have a subway system as well).
That's all great. I have been hearing about the LA transit build out for a while and I'm excited to see more investment for the region. It's one of the largest metro regions in the world and deserves to have one of the best public transit systems to go with that.
If they could just get that Vegas high speed rail line to actually reach into downtown instead of stopping 40 miles out, it would be a serious upgrade to the Intercity efforts.
This guy Finlands. Two of those cities are the same country haha. Toriiii 🇫🇮
People in LA don't want a free system. Unfortunately we have a lot of problems that free covid fares exacerbated.
Mass transit should be free if they have ads on it
Mass transit should be free and not have ads on it.
In fact, all advertising in public spaces (including things like billboards mounted on private property but aimed towards the street) should be prohibited.
If I were "dictator for a day" one of the odd things I would do is ban all billboards. I think this every time I drive down the highway.
For the public and environment policy that mass transit is made for (freeing up parking space; removing polluting cars from the road; reducing congestion; reducing carbon burn) yeah. Mass transit should have no usage cost
I'll accept public service adverts. Telling you about services, advertising health and well-being, telling you to keep your feet off the seats
Is the ad revenue on mass transit actually high enough to support its operation?(ignoring even maintenance or expansion, or the replacement of unrepairable vehicles)
It's not, and I don't even need to go look it up.
Operating a subway is expensive. Maintenance, new lines, new trains, you name it, it costs shitloads
It varies. Usually fares are just there to ration use of the mass transit, providing less than a third of its cost (ignoring capital)
Also: why would you ration transit? You want as many people as possible to use it
No one's so cheap they cycle instead. Those who cycle do so for health. We could free up there roads for the die hard drivers
The fares themselves usually account for a tiny portion of the overall revenue. For example, in 2021 the MTA had $7.8 Billion in revenue. And they are fighting for $100k of lost fares
McDonalds should show ads instead of charging me for a burger
My city's transit is already being treated like a homeless shelter, so having free transit would be amazing but a disaster.
Transit should be free and the money spent implementing the fare-collection system should be spent on housing the homeless instead.
So, give them homes. Tiny homes are cheap and for most homeless people not having a house or address is the number one reason they can't get a house or address. The others need to be in a care facility. It should take a true renegade to remain homeless. But we value profits over everything else.
Something isn't adding up here:
Fare evasion cost the MTA $690 million last year, according to a new agency study that recommends upping enforcement
Just casual news reading has shown different numbers here.
Edit: oh I get it hellgatenyc is looking for s story and saying that the people they caught only amounted to 104k in fares at like 3 bucks a fare or something around that that's a lot of people. I'm not a fan of the NYPD but no way they didn't deter way more than that by their presence. Whether or not you think policing fares is right this is bullshit sensationalism. Think for yourself.
At the same time, $150 million could fund a shitload of free or discounted rides for poor people if it was administered as a social program with the same decrease in fare skipping.
Right... But they spent $89m to prevent 104k in shrinkage...
If you're the executive at Walmart who handles loss prevention, and you put $89m into a program that reduces shrinkage by $104k, your new duty position becomes "don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out". It's a gross mismanagement of public money, and while it was obviously glowed up considerably, that was what was implied In the title.
The lack of a comparison in overall losses specific to skipped fares before and after is a contemptible omission though, I'll definitely join you on that hill :)
Of the estimated $690 million annual loss, buses accounted for the largest share with $315 million, subway evasion cost $285 million, about $46 million was due to drivers avoiding tolls and commuter rail evasion totaled $44 million, the report said. Source
Subway losses were $285 mil (41% of the total you quoted) and "the state reimbursed the city for about $62 million" of the $151 mil OT pay (leaving $89 mil).
Overall, there were 48 fewer serious crimes like murder, rape and robbery reported in the subway system this year than in 2022, according to NYPD data. The biggest change was 65 fewer reported robberies, where someone stole property by using force or the threat of force. There were also seven fewer reported rapes this year and four fewer murders, according to the newly released data shared with Gothamist. Assaults were an exception, rising by 5%. There were 26 more assaults this year than 2022, according to data. Source
So numbers are the same.
And then there's this gem ...
The vast majority of New Yorkers ticketed and arrested for fare evasion this year – 82% and 92% respectively – were not white, according to NYPD data. That’s a pattern that’s stayed consistent since 2017, when the NYPD first started publicly reporting fare evasion arrest data. Black New Yorkers are 10% more likely now to be ticketed for fare evasion than they were six years ago.
Tell me again how "good" the NYPD is.
First, fantastic job tracking down the actually relevant stats rather than the person above you who was trying to debunk.
Second - and this would only make your argument stronger and I’m not saying you needed to go this far - we would need to see if there has been an overall drop in crime rates. The tough on crime types love to tout numbers that reflect general trends as if they’re a justification or proof of the effectiveness of their policies. You need to demonstrate using proper statistical analysis to show that the falloff can accurately be attributed to a given policy.
Nah, it's what you can prove you lost. Fuck scenarios that didn't take place. There's no way in hell they lost almost a billion dollars in fares.
Citations Needed did an episode about this. "Fare evasion" crackdown is a bullshit excuse to beef up cops and redirect public attention
I feel like you can make that case about sooo many 'crackdowns' because of the way crime statistics and reporting is done in America. But if that was true we'd eventually have declining violence rates in the face of over militarized police where the media focuses on spectacles of violence to justify the spendings. Good thing thats not what's happening right now /s.
It's not about the fares, it's about the control.
That's nothing. Trump never paid taxes for a decade on millions of dollars of income and property. No one bothered to catch him until it was convenient to not get a psycho president again.
They were so psyched they could, they never stopped to think about if they should?
imagine how much better the public transit in NY would have been with that 150 million.
Man they take that shit seriously. Roughly twenty years ago, I was headed for a train, which I paid for. I think the mechanics were that I bought a paper ticket that had a magnetic stripe on it, then put that into the turnstile to enter.
The turnstile ate the ticket, didn't let me go through, and didn't come back out.
So I hopped it.
No fewer than four NYPD were right up on me and they were not happy about the situation at all. They surrounded me I guess so I couldn't run?
I explained, and the only reason I got out of it was that some other people had seen me pay and attempt to put the ticket in and told the cops the same story I'd told them. This combined with my out of state license demonstrating that the whole thing was indeed new to me got them to let me go, but not without a very stern warning.
I really thought I was going down that night.
Cool, so the city paid for 4 people to sit and watch a turnstile for who knows how long to prevent, what, $100, $1000 in lost revenue?
It costs them $50/hr per cop (roughly). Is the argument really that this squad is stopping more than 60 people every hour from skipping fares?
I've seen no less than eight cops hiding around the corner from an open emergency door at Times Square. They truly are terrible.
And this is why Seattle mostly ignores people who skip out on fares.
The Capital Hill train is totally useless, but I love that I've never paid for it, so... Win win?
Capitol Hill train? Do you mean the light rail, which visits many neighborhoods and even other cities?
If I spent $150m in my private sector job and did not at least net in the positive, I'd be out right shit canned and black listed from the company, along with everyone who approved such a waste.
Is farebeater what we’re calling it now?
Tbf I can do that without leaving my house.
Yeah, police are a service, not a cost of goods sold. It's supposed to cost money, it's not supposed to pay for itself.
Very true but there is a line my man. If they had blown that much money going after serious criminals? Sure. But 150 fucking million to track down and catch what is essentially half a step above shoplifters?
Half step below, I'd say. Shoplifting is a more serious infraction (not that I care) because they're taking physical items.
This is just a small fraction of the cost of upkeep and maintenance and is intangible.
You might be right, and I'm not one to suggest we ought to spend more on police when an equivalent crime reduction could be the result of spending the money on social services.
All I'm saying is that you cannot measure its success or failures by comparing the cost to one type of arrest. The article mentioned a 2% reduction in major crimes, and while we can't really know if that's caused by theincreased spending, if one rape or one murder was stopped as a result of increased police presence or increased overtime, then what is that one crime worth?
But is it supposed to waste money?
The most successful drug smuggler in the USA
The same thing is true for public transit! We shouldn't even be trying to charge for it in the first place, let alone spend money policing fare evasion.
I agree with you and I really do not like modern policing at all. Just like the post office we shouldn't evaluate it simply on the most discrete of monetary accounting. However in this case I prsonally feel like the response was disproportionate in both money and execution wise comapred to even the desired goal, which takes a little longer to say but has a teeny bit of nuance to it.
The downvotes you're getting are wild to me, I feel like everything you said was objectively true, and without personal opinion even. If someone has an issue with what the police are doing here it's not hard to look further than the money in vs. money out equation, and it is lazy to lean on only that financial argument.
Thankfully there are a lot of grifters so at least we hope corruption reduced their arsenal
That's why income-based fines should be done.
If you own a house but can barely afford it, this is how you become homeless. Ofcourse, a new body would come into the story to purchase your home from the bank after it reposese it.
This sounds like the NYPD working like the Mafia, no work and no show jobs, taking jobs that they know they're not gonna do or investigate. They're stealing from the city to make their officers and departments richer.
You get your car stolen, or robbed and you can't find a cop to even pretend they give a shit. But they're happy to take $150 million off our ass.
You're dead on. NYPD is entirely useless. I've had to call them before due to violent fights outside my door, they called back 3 hours later asking if the fight was still happening.
bruh they think it like a DBZ fight or something 💀
Yeah. Not just NY, either. About a decade back where I live we called the cops about a curb-stomping we witnessed living across the street from the local bar. We had our radio on. Here was the timeline.
The end. We identified ourselves in our report, the officer declined to visit and question us. There were at least 5 eyewitnesses, and we live in a town that they'd probably talk... but nope.
Isn't it absolutely asinine that new york voters literally elected a fuckin cop from the NYPD, which is well-known as being one of the most corrupt and racist police departments in the nation?
I honestly couldn't believe it even after all the 2020 protests against American law enforcement.