It was a change four decades in the making meant to ensure people who ride the Metro Rail pay their fair share.
The Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority last October activated fare gates in the system’s stations that supplanted the longstanding subway honor system.
But the new technology hasn’t kept scofflaws off the section of the Metro Rail where fares are required. The share of passengers caught not paying the fare between April and June tripled the percentage from the same three-month period a year earlier.
While fewer than 1% of riders are caught evading the $2 fare, the agency reported, employees have handed out more than 100 tickets this year through August.
“It makes other riders feel safe when they see us taking action on fare evasion,” Transit Police Chief Brian K. Patterson said in an interview.
Metro Rail goes digital, but for some, the free ride is about to end
Starting Wednesday, for the first time since the light rail system was opened nearly 40 years ago, the NFTA will activate new fare gates for all areas except the above-ground “free fare zone” downtown.
The NFTA doesn’t track revenue lost to fare evasion. But in New York City, which has the nation’s most heavily used subway network, this crime costs the system $285 million annually and is, in the words of its CEO, “the No. 1 existential threat.”
In Buffalo, Patterson said NFTA employees are careful not to discriminate and avoid heavy-handed policing of riders who may come from lower-income backgrounds.
Still, it is frustrating to some strap-hangers who wonder why they pay when they see other riders brazenly push through the station gates without repercussion.
“I think they get a feeling that they can do whatever they want to do,” said Dan Ward, a regular Metro Rail rider who emails the NFTA whenever he spots a fare beater.
Fare beaters seen
The full, 6-mile Metro Rail system that runs between the University at Buffalo South Campus and Canalside opened in 1986. The above-ground section that operates downtown is free, while the underground section requires fare payment.
Previously, the NFTA trusted people riding the underground section to pay the fare, though ticket inspectors would enter the train cars to perform random integrity checks.
The agency last year installed gates as part of its shift to a digital payment system. Riders tap a limited-use pass, MetGo card or smartphone app at a reader and the fare gates open.
Patterson acknowledged it’s still possible to forcibly push through or hop over the fare gates and avoid payment.
Workers known as “transit ambassadors” assist riders with using the fare gates and, occasionally, check proof of payment on the trains.
Ambassador Darnell Barton said he now spends less time doing train checks and more responding when, for example, he sees someone push through the gates inside the Metro Rail stations.
Ambassadors have discretion in whether to issue a ticket, known as a notice of violation (NOV), said Barton, who gained recognition as an NFTA bus driver in 2013 when he saved the life of a woman threatening to jump from an overpass onto Route 198.
“We never just automatically assume that we’ll give you a ticket. Let’s have a conversation. ‘Oh, issue at the gate? Yeah, cool. We’ll talk about it,’ “ he said at the Allen/Medical Campus station. “But will we give you an NOV? Sure will. I mean, the majority is good people. And they’re paying. But is there still that element? Sure is. And then when that time comes we go to work.”
Students may say they left their Metro pass at home, while other riders may say they had trouble with the app, Patterson said.
Still, it is rare for fare beaters to say they couldn’t afford the ride, he said, and it is important to enforce the law because fare evaders may commit vandalism or other offenses.
“Fare evasion to me, to some degree, is a slippery slope,” Patterson said.
Complaints lodged
Ward, the former Amherst supervisor and Town Board member, said he regularly rides the Metro Rail downtown from his Eggertsville home in the evening, often with his bicycle in tow.
He said the fare gates are too easy to push past, and he frequently sees fare beaters go through after a quick look to see if agency employees are nearby.
“Got off the Metro tonight – 12:05 am – at University Station – we all went up in the elevator – me and 2 other guys ...they both evaded paying a fare – I paid – here is the photo of one of them – no enforcement – why am I paying ? You have the vids,” he said in one email to the NFTA from August.
Dan Ward talks about NFTA fare evasion
Dan Ward, an Eggertsville resident and former Amherst town official, frequently rides the Metro Rail downtown in the evenings. He said he regularly sees fare beaters and never gets a response to the emails he sends to the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority reporting what he's seen.
Ward said he receives automatic replies to his frequent complaints.
“You get these notes that say, you know, ‘We consider it very seriously, yada dada da,’ “ he said. “But nobody’s ever around. And I’ve never seen anybody arrested or, whatever they call it, ticketed.”
NFTA records show that, before the fare gates went in, 0.21% of riders couldn’t prove they paid during the months of April, May and June 2023. After the fare gates went in, 0.76% of riders over the same three months in 2024 were caught not paying the fare.
Employees issued 108 tickets, at $50 each, for fare evasion in 2024 through August, with the third quarter on pace to be the year’s busiest three-month period.
The NFTA doesn’t track fare evasion on Metro buses, though officials said it is more difficult to get onto a bus without paying. Also, the agency measures fare evasion through tickets issued, so it is not known how many people do this without getting caught.
“We have a structure in place to minimize fare evasion,” Patterson said. “And so, while we don’t have true numbers, we do feel like we have a handle on it.”
Policing the problem
Why do people do it? Some riders, especially those who rely on public transit for their daily transportation needs, likely can’t afford the full fare, experts say.
Others may weigh how easy it is to do, and how unlikely it is to get caught, and figure they will take their chances. They may view fare skipping as a minor offense akin to cable theft or jaywalking, said Christopher Dennison, an associate professor of sociology and criminology at UB.
“’It’s victimless. Who’s getting hurt? I’m getting a free fare and moving on,’ “ he said in describing this attitude.
Fare evasion is a bigger problem in New York City, where data show 13% of subway riders skipped over the turnstiles in the last three months of 2023, compared to just 5% over this period in 2019.
A study of fare evasion there recommended improved turnstile technology, posting ads that encouraged payment and expanding eligibility for discounted fares.
The city also spent an extra $151 million on police overtime between 2022 and 2023 to take on fare nonpayment in subways, an analysis by the Gothamist news site found.
This produced an additional 1,900 fare evasion arrests and 34,000 more summonses through September 2023, compared to the same period in 2022, Gothamist found. At $2.90 per ride, the site Hell Gate calculated, those fare beaters had cost the city just $104,000.
This month’s police shooting inside a Brooklyn subway station involving a fare beater armed with a knife further raised doubts about using deadly force in response to what is considered a petty crime.
UB’s Dennison said this might spur social scientists to say: “Let’s try to find some other solution that doesn’t involve trying to police our way out of this. Because we’ve tried incarcerating our way out of crime and that didn’t work.”
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