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New York will do anything to combat farebeating — except actually arresting people for it.
The MTA hemorrhaged a shocking $800 million last year to turnstile jumpers and other thieves. Its answer has been dinky, laughable efforts.
Recently, the agency offered $1 million to researchers to do a study looking at the psychology of farebeaters, and if they can be convinced to pay.
This week, metal sheets topped with “spikes” — they look more like scalloped ridges — installed at the 59th Street/Lexington Avenue station, ostensibly to stop people from gripping the sides and vaulting over. (Apparently under is not a concern, though I have seen professional women in shift dresses and heels do the limbo to save that $2.90.)
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Within 36 hours, The Post photographed a man a man foisting himself over, spikes be damned, while expressing his low regard for the MTA and our laws.
“Oh, so now I gotta jump over it? Okay, I don’t give a f–k, I’ll jump over it,” he was overheard saying.
And yet there are plans to install these useless flaps in 10 more stations. What a joke.
Remember last January when the MTA tested $700,000 gates that were easily opened by swiping a censor with your hand, no MetroCard needed? Those were also a big ol’ bust and embarrassment.
“We might, in retrospect, have chosen a different model,” MTA honcho Janno Lieber said at the time adding: “We’re going to continue to experiment, this is not what we’re putting in, in the whole system and it’s being adjusted to deal with some of its shortcomings.”
There is, of course, an obvious solution: Arrest people who dodge the fare.
But since 2020, lawmakers and progressive district attorneys have insisted that to do so is to biased, so they’ve made it essentially a non-crime. Cops rarely stop people for it — even though enforcement of such “small” crimes often catch criminals wanted for bigger ones.
To make up for the money lost to this failure of common sense, the rest of us must pay.
The new congestion tax hits not only people who drive below 60th street, but food prices, delivery fees and surcharges for non-drivers.
And the subway itself is going up in price — likely to $3 a ride later this year.
This is New York City, a place where we brag about having the brightest minds and the best problem solvers. Only a few years ago, we were able to do this pretty effectively, but now it feels like we are moving backwards.
We know how to fix farebeating — we just lack the collective will to solve the problem.
Ultimately, this problem comes down to a crumbling culture where so many sectors of our society shoulder the blame. The city was already sliding into disorder before the pandemic; COVID hastened it. Progressive leadership stopped caring about quality of life issues to focus on useless social justice initiatives. We have become a culture of indifference.
And now all kinds of people, not just teenage reprobates and vagrants, are jumping the turnstiles without a care in the world.
NYC went from a place that regularly touted its safety and order, to a low-trust society. And it was self-inflicted.
You can’t fix that with a flimsy sheet of metal.
