By: Ayashah Anwar
Published on: January 27, 2025
The subway serves as New York City’s nervous system, a web connecting most boroughs into a melting pot of culture and community. A fare of $2.90 gets a student from home in Jamaica, Queens to downtown Brooklyn, a single mother from her first job in the Bronx to her second job in Manhattan, the grey-suited man from his home in Park Slope, Brooklyn to Wall Street. It connects the city in a multitude of ways. Lately, the absence of $2.90 could lead to a bullet in the head. Perhaps even more shockingly, it could lead to a bullet in the head of someone who did pay the fare.[1]
Recent crackdowns on fare evasion landed Gregory Delpeche in the intensive care unit, requiring him to undergo cranial surgery.[2] On September 15, 2024, subway police officers observed Derell Mickles enter the subway without paying the fare.[3] The officers and Mickles got into an alteration in which Mickles pulling out a pocket knife to stop the officers from following him.[4] The police body camera footage showed the officer pointing a taser gun at Mickles, which prevented him from entering the subway car.[5] Mickles then turned and pointed his knife at the officers.[6] The officers opened fire in a crowded subway station and fired multiple rounds in Mickle’s direction, which resulted in four injured citizens: Delpeche, Mickles, a police officer, and another bystander.[7]
The subway has a multitude of issues: excessive delays, lack of air conditioning, unnecessary fare increases, and, in some cases, crime. However, the solution to these issues has never been more policing to stations in low-income Black and brown neighborhoods. Currently, New York’s solution to crime in the subway is policing the platforms, rather than the cars where crime occurs, militarizing the tollbooths through ensuring that low-income New York residents who are struggling to make ends meet pay the fare.[8]
The increased fare has led to increased racial policing of people using the subway. Black and Hispanic men are more likely to be targeted by police officers through policing fare evasion.[9] Between 2018 and 2023, there was a 236% surge in fare evasion enforcement, with 16% of that enforcement being fare evasion arrests.[10] Out of 601 arrests made in 2022’s fourth quarter, Black and Latino people made up 94% of arrests, while their white counterparts made up 6% of arrests despite white people make up 40% of the population of NYC.[11] Studies show that fare evasion policing in disadvantaged communities leads to higher arrest rates for petty crimes, creating the notion that policing in these neighborhoods is required to keep people safe from “petty criminals.”[12] Rather than fare increases benefiting the subway infrastructure, they are used instead to target Black and brown people through over-policing.
However, through funding redistribution, the New York Police Department’s history of targeting low-income Black and brown subway riders could substantially decrease.[13] New York City’s Riders’ Alliance (“Riders Alliance”) is a group of community-oriented subway passengers who have proposed plans to ensure that passengers engage less with the police during their daily rides.[14] Instead of more funding to police involvement and presence on the subway, Riders Alliance suggests that money be redirected to the community to support reduced fare for low-income riders.[15] The reasoning behind the proposal is that decreased funding of police in stations could create extra funding for better subway infrastructure during harsh weather, particularly in low-income Black and brown neighborhoods.[16] Many MTA patrons fear the trip to the subway and bus stop and the wait for the train more than the actual subway and bus ride itself –Riders’ Alliance proposes increasing funding to allow for trains and buses to run every six minutes, decreasing the amount of time patrons have to wait at the stops and platforms.[17]
While the fares have changed and increased, the multitude of issues on the subway have not.[18] Decreasing and redistributing police funding into community-oriented transit programs decreases fare evasion as more New Yorkers will be able to afford their subway trips.[19] There are two primary reason New Yorker’s evade transit fares. The first reason is that they simply cannot afford the fare.[20] New York City is the most populated city in the United States and the third most expensive city in the world to live in.[21] If individuals are living paycheck to paycheck, they simply cannot afford to spend almost $30 every week just to go to work – this is assuming the individual works only five days a week and takes no detours that add another $2.90 to their fare costs, which many do daily. By decreasing and redirecting funding for policing in subway stations, we allow for more investment in free and reduced train fare programs for low-income individuals. [22]
The second primary reason New Yorkers evade fares is because little to no improvements to the subway’s infrastructure have come with the increase in fares.[23] The stops still have avoidable delays, subway cars still have poor air conditioning, and crime is still rampant. The Riders’ Alliance plan to redistribute funding would allow for these necessary improvements.[24] Less funding to policing subway stations in low-income neighborhoods allows for more funding for mental health respondents to help unhoused people who are experiencing a mental health crisis.[25] Importantly, it also allows for increased train service every six minutes, causing shorter wait times on platforms and better evacuation plans for disabled riders, to be put into place to decrease crime both on and off the subway, ensuring safer travel for patrons.[26]
As inflation increases, some argue it is only reasonable for there to be some subway fare increases. Howver, but if New York City wants to see a decrease in fare evasion, it needs to decrease policing in stations and use the revenue from the increased fares to provide reduced travel time through more frequent train stops and enact various necessary infrastructural improvements to the subway system by implementing the Rider’s Alliance policy proposals. Implementing the Rider’s Alliance policy proposals allows for a holistic approach to help overcome the root problem of the MTA alleviates the stress from fare increases, leading to decreases in fare evasion. [27]
[1] Graeme Baker, Protests Over NY Subway Fare-Evasion Shooting Lead to Arrests, BBC News (Sept. 18, 2024), https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93y74xl1wvo.
[2] Id.
[3] Id.
[4] Id.
[5] Id.
[6] Id.
[7] Id.
[8] See id. (depicting police officers creating danger rather than reducing it as they attempt to prevent fare evasion); Clio Chang, Fare-Evasion Arrests Are Back With a Vengeance, Curbed (Apr. 11, 2022). https://www.curbed.com/2022/04/nypd-fare-evasion-arrest-increase.html (providing additional examples of when police officers over the years have harmed alleged fare evaders– such as police officer tasing subway rider who paid his fare and nineteen-year-old held at gunpoint for not paying the fare by multiple officers).
[9] NYC Fare Evasion – An Analysis of Arrests, Mass. Inst. Of Tech., https://nyc-fare-evasion.csail.mit.edu.
[10] Sheyla Delgado et. al., Ticket Punch: The Consequences of Fare Evasion Enforcement in New York City Subways 1, 9 (2024).
[11] Ben Brachfeld, Fare Evasion Arrests Skyrocket, More Than 90% of Those Arrested are Black, Brown Riders, AMNY (Feb. 22, 2023), https://www.amny.com/police-fire/fare-evasion-arrests-skyrocket-93-of-those-arrested-were-black-brown-riders/#:~:text=The%20NYPD’s%20fare%20evasion%20data,at%20establishing%20%E2%80%9Comnipresence%E2%80%9D%20and%20deterring.
[12] Delgado et al., supra note 10.
[13] See Riders Alliance, A Riders Plan for Public Safety 1, 2 (2022), https://static1.squarespace.com/static/61033b9bd377817f5bcc6db9/t/62a3540e31f8dc6d384172f4/1654871055393/Riders+Plan+for+Public+Safety.pdf (proposing plan to decrease funding for police in subway stations and use funding instead for the community).
[14] Id.
[15] Justin A. Davis, NYC’s Riders Alliance Wants a Safer Subway with Less Policing, Next City (May 30, 2024), https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/nycs-riders-alliance-wants-a-safer-subway-with-less-policing; Riders Alliance at 2, supra note 13.
[16] Riders Alliance at 6, supra note 13.
[17] Id. at 4-5.
[18] See Changes to MTA Fares and Tolls In 2023, New MTA Info (elaborating upon the MTA increases including subway and bus increased from $2.75 to $2.90) https://new.mta.info/transparency/mta-fares-tolls-2023.
[19] Riders Alliance at 6, supra note 13.
[20] See id. at 6 (discussing low-income individuals’ economic burden faced when they must pay the fair, but that it could be alleviated with an expansion of the Fair Fares policies).
[21] Anna Rahmanan, New York Is One of the Most Expensive Cities in the World, TimeOut (Aug. 6, 2024), https://www.timeout.com/newyork/news/new-york-city-is-one-of-the-most-expensive-cities-in-the-world-080624. See NYC True Cost of Living, United Way of New York City, https://unitedwaynyc.org/true-cost-of-living/ (explaining the large amount of money needed in New York for the basic needs of living).
[22] Riders Alliance at 6, supra note 13.
[23] See Id. at 11, (explaining that MTA patrons need to see concrete improvements for their safety if they are going to be paying for increased fares).
[24] Id. at 12.
[25] Id. at 9-10.
[26] Id.
[27] Id. at 12.