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.
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.
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 :)
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.
Public transit trips create positive externalities by reducing car trips. In order to maximize societal good, the best fare price for public transit is $0 for everybody.
Yup, public transit fares are regressive taxes.
A better city would have free public transit and pay for it by taxing the businesses that insist on nobody working remotely.
One thing I miss about Reddit is the vetting of news sites on the major news sub.
Whether right or wrong, this “news” article comes off as pretentious and childish.
I just want facts. If I’m reading the news, I want the facts from the news site, and I’ll get the opinions from forums.
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?
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 did they stop any of those things while on toll duty? I think someone should have gathered information like that before parading out a cost sink this big, that on the surface, has the look that they just pulled off the perfect in plan site crime of stealing NY tax dollars to punish a few people that for whatever reason didn’t pay the toll.
If you could instead point to a chart that stated, while we had officers stationed watching for toll dodgers we caught X amount of people trying to rob people, or stopped X amount of potential rapes I could see the benefit. But tooting your own horn without any of that, over what looks like robbing the NY citizens of millions of taxes dollars should have the attorney general bringing charges.
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.
I know it can be difficult to search for answers when you have questions. I did a deep dive into the subject matter, and found the following info hidden within the first sentence:
Overtime pay for cops in New York’s subway system increased from $4 million in 2022 to $155 million over the same period in 2023, according to an analysis by Gothamist.
That’s why income-based fines should be done.
This is barking up the wrong tree. I mean these fines are hitting people who are too poor to pay. They should go to the rich people’s tree and find stuff to find there. Illegal logging? Illegal dumping? Price gauging, illegal businesses, money laundering, illegal product importation etc.
Can you explain what you’re trying to say here? I don’t think I understand clearly.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/04/wealthy-people-shoplift-rob-steal-why
Rich people steal more than poor people. Not even getting into things like wage theft, they just do, so yes, they absolutely would jump a turnstile and laugh when you tried to punish them with a non-income based fine.
Mass transit should be free if they have ads on it
My city’s transit is already being treated like a homeless shelter, so having free transit would be amazing but a disaster.
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.
The biggest homeless issue in my city isn’t with the homeless who want help, it’s with the mentally ill ones who don’t want help or are too sick to ask. There’s really no way to deal with that tier of homeless unless you do it by force, which most anti homelessness activists are against.
edit sorry I have feelings about this lol, I didn’t mean to send all this energy at you, more like I needed to howl into the void
This is such an enraging narrative and I encounter it all the time. My city has lots of homeless because the climate is temperate (and for other reasons but not the point of this post). My city also has free bus transit (no fares no nothing).
People ALL the time hem and haw to me about being concerned if we have free transit it will be “overrun” by homeless. Often it is people I am talking to about mass transit living in my own city who have zero clue we have even have free bus transit.
At the end of the day if you are “concerned about the homeless” using the bus too much or something you know the best solution? Use the damn bus, not only will you actually see with your own eyes that homeless are just using the bus like everybody else, you help push the needle of what the average bus user looks towards you and away from whoever you are imagining as bad.
Free mass transit is the foundation of the best cities in the past and future, hamstringing transit because of a fear of homeless “ruining” it is the definition of shooting ourselves in the foot for no reason.
Yes I see homeless on the bus a lot, I see lots of people on the bus. There tends to be a lot of humans on the bus.
I use the bus daily. And mentally ill homeless walking around pointing their finger at your kid and saying “bang!” Or telling your wife “I wanna touch you!” Is not ok. Those are the ones I’m talking about. The ones that make their issues into everyone else’s. When you start threatening my family, my sympathy for your situation and mental health vanishes
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.
Many cities have taken baby steps, such as prohibiting tall signs. More steps to go
In Washington State, it’s relatively difficult to have billboards along highways. It’s one of the reasons our state is still beautiful to travel across.
Every time I end up in other states that have much looser billboard placement laws it’s just awful and I wonder how people can live like that.
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
Operating a subway is expensive only when you don’t compare it to operating a city on cars shrugs
It’s so expensive that the NYC subway used to be multiple private railroad companies but the business just wasn’t feasible (at a reasonable price) when the market had a downturn - which is why the city eventually took it over.
This is why the track geographies are so odd in NYC
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
For bus systems at least the amount fares cover is typically on the order of 5% give or take in the US. The fact that bus fares exist at this point in the US has got everything to do with emotions, narratives and a political stance against providing a social safety net and nothing to do with cold hard economics.
