This column originally appeared in On The Way, a weekly newsletter covering everything you need to know about NYC-area transportation.
Sign up to get the full version, which includes answers to reader questions, trivia, service changes and more, in your inbox every Thursday.
The MTA has a new strategy in its war on fare evasion: convincing New York City students to pay the fare.
This past weekend, I had the chance to interview outgoing NYC Transit President Richard Davey. Our conversation mostly focused on the $15 billion hole in the MTA budget caused by Gov. Kathy Hochul’s pause on congestion pricing. But Davey also shared an interesting observation about fare beating: It tends to spike around 3 p.m., when school is dismissed.
“It’s actually not fare evasion because these kids already have prepaid cards. They don’t want to swipe for whatever reason, so the fare evasion numbers are probably a little elevated as a result,” Davey said.
That got me thinking – are students with MetroCards who can’t be bothered to swipe partly driving the MTA’s supposed “existential threat” of fare beating?
As a father of two, I can confirm that many kids don’t bother swiping their free student MetroCards. My son lost his MetroCard and can’t be bothered to replace it. My daughter tries to use her MetroCard, but it’s so crumpled it no longer works.
Enter the MTA’s Extra Credit campaign, which is trying to sell students on the appeal of MetroCards (or later this year, free OMNY cards). Last month, the agency began giving away a free virtual reality Meta Quest 2 headset each week to a random high school student who uses their student MetroCard and has perfect attendance that week.
“Our hope is to create a buzz around swiping while encouraging regular usage,” Chantel Cabrera, senior director of subways for coordination and solutions, said at last month’s MTA board meeting. “We hope to bring a holistic approach to promoting fare compliance that engages our youth.”
Cabrera’s remarks might have a “How do you do, fellow kids?” vibe, but the stakes are real. MTA data shows fare evasion continues to rise, with 13.6% of subway riders skipping the fare and nearly half of bus riders not paying. The MTA expects to lose $285 million to subway fare evasion this year and $315 million to fare evasion on buses. Exactly how many of those fare beaters are students isn’t clear. But MTA Chair Janno Lieber has indicated he believes students are among the scofflaws at the turnstiles.
“They have their student MetroCard in their pocket. So there’s a lack of education and culture and understanding of what it means to fare evade,” Lieber has said. “And we’re going to work on that because they’re part of New York. We need them to play by the same rules as everybody else.”
Curious Commuter
Question from Martin, from Brooklyn
Why do my trains run at such slow speeds sometimes? It feels like an amusement park monorail sometimes but other days it’s normal. I usually take the B or Q from Brooklyn to Manhattan and vice versa.
What Clayton says
There are two main reasons subway trains crawl along the tracks: traffic and track work. Train operators we spoke with say subway tracks are easily gummed up on some lines during rush hour, which causes the whole system to slow down. But the “amusement park monorail” speeds Martin may be noticing are largely the product of maintenance and construction work on the tracks. When a crew is on the roadbed, subway operators are typically prohibited from running their train at more than 10 mph. That’s true even if the train is running on a track adjacent to the workers. Trains sometimes move even slower when workers have to “clear up,” or go into spaces right next to the tracks to let a train pass by a worksite.
Have a question for us? Curious Commuter questions are exclusive for On The Way newsletter subscribers. Sign up for free here and check Thursday’s newsletter for a link to submit your questions!