of New York City The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is considering paying a psychologist up to $1 million to analyze the motivations of turnstile jumpers after it says “historical approaches” such as increased policing have had “limited success” in curbing record-high losses caused by fare evasion.
According to the MTA, New York City’s subways and buses carry approximately 5 million passengers each day, of which approximately 900,000 do not pay the fare; 13.6% of subway riders Jump the Turnstile Or sneak onto the platform through emergency doors, while nearly half of bus passengers don’t pay.
Transit thieves They may think their missed payment is just a drop in the bucket, but the combined total is a projected loss of $700 million this year.
“We have to win, or else the system will collapse,” MTA CEO Janno Lieber said at a recent board meeting.
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The suspect in this subway stabbing is shown jumping the turnstile at the City Hall/Brooklyn Bridge station in New York City. (NYPD/File)
In a request for proposal on its website, the MTA seeks a candidate with “research and applied behavior change experience” who “comes from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, including, but not limited to, behavioral economics, behavioral science, organizational behavior, sociology, psychology, or anthropology.”
The MTA is willing to spend $500,000 to $1 million for a six-month contract.
“Historical approaches to addressing this problem have identified punitive enforcement as a counterweight to rising fare evasion. Physical barriers, fare inspections, penalties, and messages emphasizing the potential consequences of fare evasion are the most common methods,” the agency wrote. “However, these costly and sometimes controversial methods have had limited success in reversing the rising trend of non-paying passengers.”
After analysing fare evaders and grouping them by their motivations and socio-economic background, the transport authority hopes its new employee will come up with a “cutting-edge” solution to its costly problem.
A man is shown jumping a subway station’s turnstile last August. (Eric McGregor/Getty Images)
“Moving beyond enforcement to changes in transportation-related citizen behavior yields results,” the agency wrote.
“In Colombia, mimes deployed to reprimand misbehaving drivers and pedestrians at traffic intersections cut the number of traffic accidents in half,” the MTA wrote, citing the New York Times. “A similar program in Bolivia uses dancing costumed zebras to calm traffic at crosswalks.”
Retired NYPD Inspector and Fox News Contributor Paul Mauro He said the proposal amounted to a “parody.”
“Up to a million dollars could be paid for a six-month study that would tell us that people beat alcohol addiction because they can? The MTA has been transformed into a ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit, and unfortunately, it’s that funny,” Mauro told Fox News Digital.
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The NYPD and National Guard randomly search passengers’ bags at a subway station on March 11, 2024. (Matthew McDermott for Fox News Digital)
“Fare collection in the subway was a basic way to monitor broken windows, and it worked,” Mauro added. “If we don’t go back to that, it will be hard to keep a lid on subway crime, no matter how many members of the National Guard Governor (Kathy) Hochul deploys.”
Hundreds of National Guard troops were called in earlier this spring to assist with bag checks in the city’s subway system, part of a five-point plan to improve subway safety after a series of high-profile crimes underground that included a teenage girl beaten after an altercation and a 64-year-old man kicked on subway tracks. In March, transit crimes were up 13.1% compared to that month in 2023, according to NYPD data.
According to the “Broken Windows” theory of policing, low-level offenses such as vandalism, public intoxication and fare evasion create an environment that fosters more serious crimes and disorder. Cracking down on turnstile jumpers and other petty offenders was a key part of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s crime-reduction strategy in the 1990s.
“Charging fares on the subway was a basic way to monitor broken windows, and it worked.”
This theory was supported when Fox 5 New York Teamed up with the NYPD’s Transit Response Team, which targets transit receiptists – those who repeatedly commit crimes on public transportation after not paying their fare. Police recovered a stolen diamond watch and a MacBook from a man they caught entering the subway without paying.
One NYPD Spokesperson Arrests for fare evasion are up 88.5% so far this year and officers have issued 53,000 summonses, the spokesperson told Fox News Digital. In the process, 16 firearms have been recovered from fare evaders arrested this year, the spokesperson said.
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An NYPD officer patrols a subway station on March 11, 2024. (Matthew McDermott for Fox News Digital)
“Fare evasion is directly tied to crime and public perception of safety within the subway system,” an NYPD spokesperson told Fox News Digital. “While not all fare evaders are criminals, we see it often enough that nearly all offenders do commit fare evasion. Also, it’s not fair to the paying rider.”
Regarding the MTA’s potential new approach, a spokesperson said the department “welcomes strategies that complement their efforts and encourage riders to enter the system in legitimate ways.”
MTA spokeswoman Kayla Shults said the agency is “pursuing a holistic approach to combat fare evasion that the blue-ribbon panel recommended beginning in 2023, including efforts to reinforce the importance of paying your fare and make it easier for customers to pay.”
“Fare evasion is directly tied to crime and public perceptions about safety within the subway system.”
Criminal and police psychologist Dr. Katherine Kuhlman told Fox News Digital that while the MTA’s new strategy may seem “a little silly” at first glance, other subway systems around the world have conducted similar studies and collected valuable data.
A Melbourne, Australia, Study A 2015 study classified fare evaders into four categories: “accidental fare evaders” who misread signals or make some other mistake; “it’s not my fault” fare evaders who do not pay fares because they are economically disadvantaged; “calculated risk takers” who evade fares when they see an opportunity; and “career evaders” who take pride in never paying a toll.
The last two categories account for about 68% of losses from fare evasion in Melbourne, totalling $80 million a year, according to the study. The study was carried out by Professor Graham Currie, director of the Public Transport Research Group, and Alexa Delbosc of Monash University.
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Members of the NYPD and National Guard conduct random bag searches in the New York City subway system on March 11, 2024. (Matthew McDermott for Fox News Digital)
Public Transport Victoria launched marketing activities highlighting the issue of “repeat offenders” and introduced more ticket checks carried out by plainclothes police officers who were difficult to recognise by fare evaders. According to the study, this reduced their fare evasion rate from 12% to 5%.
“A psychologist who is doing research to find out the behavior of someone who avoids rent is not trying to give him therapy or make him feel better about avoiding rent – the reason would be to find a solution,” Kuhlman said. “We study all kinds of criminal behavior – serial killers, rapists, shoplifters – and look at the root causes. When you look at it … it’s no different.”
He noted that the $1 million is a small cut from the MTA’s annual budget, which the agency estimates at $19.379 billion, and will be divided among a large team of researchers: “There’s no way one person could obtain such a massive amount of data on such a large transit system in six months without a team.”
“We have to win or else the system will collapse.”
Analyzing users of the world’s largest metro system will be no small task. Researchers will need to collect a sample size that matches the city’s socioeconomic, racial, cultural and urban divisions.
Surveying passengers traveling in a hurry will also be a challenge, Kuhlmann said.
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“Everyone is always in a hurry when using transportation. Researchers have to be very specific about the data they need, so that people can respond,” he said.
“If you look at the harm, it’s pennies on the dollar,” Kuhlman said. “I understand the reaction, ‘What’s a psychiatrist going to do, tell everybody to be happy?’ But no, there’s a lot more to it than that.”
