The MTA, LIRR, and Metro-North are ramping up their rhetoric and messaging around the topic of fare collection on the railroads. The MTA has been under pressure to varying degrees over the last several years to do more to address its fare collection issues. Fare evasion has spiraled out of control on NYC Transit Subways and Buses over the last five or so years, and the railroads often get sucked in when there are discussions over MTA's fare collection practices.
Broadly speaking, the MTA's fare collection problems fall into one of three categories:
- Fare evasion, where a passenger commits an act to purposefully circumvent fare control measures, like jumping a turnstile, entering through an emergency gate, etc. This is the main source of fare collection problems on the subways and buses, but is a rather small subset on the railroads. Because the LIRR and Metro-North rely on a very inefficient and expensive model of manually checking tickets on every train and offer the ability to purchase tickets onboard the train, only intentional acts to avoid the conductors (like hiding in the bathroom) should be considered fare evasion.
- ADL/invoice abuse, which is only a thing on the railroads, when a passenger is issued an ADL-6009 Invoice for Fare Not Paid (or the MNR equivalent) and provides a fake name/address (such that the railroad cannot recover the payment) or repeatedly fails to pay multiple invoices. Receiving and then ultimately paying the invoice is not ADL abuse.
- Uncollected fares, where the MTA by its own failure does not collect the proper fare, either due to a technical issue, or in the case on the railroads, when the train crew fails to sweep through the train to collect all tickets, or when the train crew collects the incorrect fare (e.g. accepts an off-peak ticket on a peak train, accepts an expired ticket, etc.)
The MTA often tries to lump these three together, but the issue of uncollected fares is entirely different and separate from the other two. Issues with uncollected fares typically result entirely from the MTA's own failures, unlike the first two where passengers commit intentional acts to deprive MTA of the revenue.
Uncollected fares
The issue of uncollected fares is a major problem on the railroads. This core of the problem stems from the fact that the LIRR (and Metro-North) continue to rely on an extremely expensive and inefficient fare collection system where conductors are responsible for the onboard collection of every fare. This is a practice that has been phased out by most other suburban railways around the world
in favor of proof of payment, which takes the conductors out of the equation and makes passengers responsible for validating/canceling their ticket prior to boarding, and riders are then only subject to random checks onboard trains. This significantly reduces labor costs connected with checking tickets and makes it much more affordable to increase service. But the LIRR is stuck in the old ages—and its train crews aren't even all that effective at collecting fares. Before the MTA stopped reporting this data in mid-2022,
the LIRR would routinely have a fare collection failure rate between 5% and 9% and an incorrect fare collected rate ranging between 10% and 20%, markedly higher than evasion rates seen on most well-implemented PoP systems.
The LIRR and Metro-North have ramped up efforts to cut down on uncollected fares, including increasing the number of collectors,
expanding gate collection where tickets are checked on the platform before boarding/after alighting, and
eliminating the second lift on westbound trains to redeploy collectors on other trains. But the largest problem remains conductors simply not doing their jobs—out of the 8 trains I've taken just in the last three weeks, LIRR's train crews did not come to check my ticket at all on two trips (from Woodside to Ronkonkoma last week, and from Babylon to Jamaica yesterday...both on uncrowded trains), and the conductor did not collect tickets again after Jamaica on three trips. Intra-Island passengers did not have their tickets checked on 7 out of the 8 trips. LIRR has shown little ability to identify these issues and hold train crews accountable for not collecting fares.
But laying aside the problem of uncollected fares for the moment, the LIRR does have some fare evasion issues that it needs to get a handle on. But I'll stress upfront that the scale of these problems are orders of magnitude smaller than the uncollected fare rate, and fare evasion on Subways and Buses—so MTA must be careful to throw the baby out with the bathwater and disrupt or alienate paying riders as it goes after those who don't.
Fare evasion
True fare evasion on the railroads (e.g. hiding in the bathrooms) does take place from time to time, and tends to be a problem in certain pockets/clusters of stations on the railroad. As far as I am aware, the MTA does not track any formal metrics on this type of true fare evasion on the railroads, but I anecdotally I hear this is an increasing problem on the Atlantic Branch shuttles, and on the short intra-city hops east of Jamaica on the Far Rockaway, West Hempstead, and West Hempstead Branches.
The only way to counteract this is to require train crews to report these occurrences as they happen, and look for trends where this happens at certain times of the day, at certain stations, etc. and then have MTA PD ride those trains and take enforcement action when this happens. It is difficult to effectively/efficiently enforce and in the grand scheme of things probably does not need to be a major focus.
The solution is absolutely NOT, as some train crews have seemingly empowered themselves to do, to simply lock out every bathroom on the train. I have heard reports of this happening on Far Rockaway trains, and some of the Atlantic Branch shuttles. While this prevents fare evaders from hiding in the bathrooms, it also prevents fare-paying passengers from utilizing the bathroom facilities as well, which is not acceptable.
ADL abuse
The problem of riders being issued invoices and then never paying them is growing on the LIRR, with the volume of invoices increasing considerably and collection rates dropping in the last few years. The LIRR issues ADL-6009 Invoice for Fare Not Paid forms to riders who board a train without a ticket, but are unable to pay the onboard fare.
Riders may be issued invoices for any number of legitimate reasons. Perhaps they forgot their wallet at home that day and didn't have any cash or cards on them. Prior to the LIRR finally rolling out OBTIMs in 2016, the railroad would issue thousands of invoices for $3 or $4 step-up fares because train crews would only accept cash onboard trains and some people simply didn't carry cash. But an increasing number of people are requesting and being issued invoices even though they have no intention of eventually paying the fare.
The number of ADL-6009 invoices issued by the LIRR has increased dramatically in recent years. Prior to the pandemic, the railroad would issue an average of about 5,800 invoices per month. In 2023, LIRR was issuing invoices at nearly triple the rate, with an average of 13,308 invoices issued per month. In the fourth quarter, all three months topped 15,000 invoices issued.
Meanwhile, LIRR's invoice collection percentage has dropped considerably. Pre-pandemic, about 15% of riders who were issued invoices in any given month would end up paying them. In the last two years, the LIRR's invoice collection rate has dropped to only about 5%. Note that the numbers for the last few months of 2023 are lower in part because the report does not account for invoices that were issued in 2023 but ultimately paid in 2024.
The LIRR has been passing out leaflets over the last week or two saying that beginning Monday, June 17, passengers will be required to show a valid ID in order to be issued an invoice. No longer will you be able to make up a random name and address and be issued an invoice. The leaflet says that "starting June 17, passengers who refuse to pay the fare and fail to show valid ID will be removed from the train, issued a summons, or arrested. Invoices for future payment will no longer be issued.
This is fine, and (as I understand) has actually been the policy all along, but train crews seldom follow it. One of the added features of the OBTIMs that train crews use to issue invoices is that they can scan drivers licenses of people to automatically input their information (and, I believe, check against a list of repeat ADL offenders). A nontrivial portion of the unpaid invoice balances are likely invoices where the conductor mistyped some part of the name or address wrong (or, in the days before OBTIMs, scribbled illegibly) so the railroad could never get in contact with the person to get them to pay the balance. If you don't have ID, train crews are supposed to have you get off at the next stop, or call for the police. But conductors looking to avoid confrontation frequently skip that part and just write invoices for Mickey E. Mouse, or whoever.
This policy change is fine to put on paper like that, but ultimately the need to enforce fare collection must be balanced against impact to other fare-paying passengers. The logical result of this will be many more calls for police assistance over invoice disputes in the coming weeks. MTA must take great care to balance the need to intercept the most serial ADL abusers while not delaying hundreds or thousands of fare-paying passengers over a single unpaid fare.
Before continuing, I want to stress that while ADL abuse is a problem and something that LIRR needs to get ahold of if we want to eventually move towards proof-of-payment, ADL abuse accounts for an extremely small share of LIRR's lost revenue. On average, losses form ADL abuse average less than one-third of one percent of LIRR's total revenue in any given month.
Because of the amount of cash the LIRR rakes in, the amount lost to unpaid ADL's is nontrivial (a total of $2.1 million outstanding from 2023), it's a drop in the bucket compared to the revenue the LIRR does collect out of the 99.7% of passengers who buy tickets for their trips and the few who do end up paying their invoices.
I stress this because ultimately the MTA's response to this issue and the actions it takes must ultimately be proportional to the actual problem. And in the grand scheme of the issues facing LIRR and the ways it loses money, ADL abuse is frankly not very high on the list.
Some, especially frequent users of the subways or buses, question why this "IOU" invoice system even exists and have questioned the MTA's different posture towards Subway and Bus riders (where there is no invoice system and fare evaders are issued civil summonses by police) compared to comparatively more wealthy rail riders (which are permitted to request invoices and then discard them in the trash can on the platform). I disagree with this framing—the circumstances when it comes to fare collection are very different between the Subway and the railroads, so a different approach is warranted.
First off, the scale of the problem is widely different. As mentioned before, ADL abuse amounts to less than one-third of one percent (0.3%) of LIRR's annual revenue. The impact and scale of the problem is orders of magnitude less than fare evasion rates on the Subways/Buses. The MTA claims that as much as 13% of subway riders and 45% of local bus riders do not pay their fares, up considerably from 2019 levels of 5% and 21%, respectively, and dramatically more than LIRR.
Second, the environment and the actual act are very different. On the Subways, a fare evader is actively circumventing fare control infrastructure, often in locations that are otherwise unstaffed. Without systemwide proof of payment, policing the fare line is the only effective way to counteract the problem. On rail, the person is already on the train. Issuing an invoice and moving on is the most straightforward way to address and deescalate the issue. Calling for police for every person who doesn't have the means to pay often means delaying the train (and hundreds or thousands of fare-paying passengers), which in majority of cases is plainly not acceptable. On the Subways, fare evasion can be enforced in the mezzanine, pulling the person off to the side, out of the way, not impacting service. But on the railroads, if the passenger, train crew, or the police escalate the situation, consequences could be much more severe, if an employee (or, heaven forbid, a fare-paying passenger nearby) gets assaulted. This happened a few years ago on a Ronkonkoma train, where a fare dispute that should've been summarily resolved by issuing the rider an invoice escalated to a situation where the passenger ended up assaulting the conductor. In that one moment, hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills, workers compensation claims,
lawsuits and legal fees, time for MTA PD to investigate, costs for the county to try the case, replacement coverage for the injured conductor, etc. were all flushed down the drain for the sake of a $12 fare.
The MTA has said they are implementing a new procedure MTA PD is supposed to always remove a suspected fare evader from the train and deal with the situation on the platform. This is intended to avoid these types of situations escalating onboard the train in a more confined space around other passengers, but this practice likely has Fourth Amendment problems (over which MTA will probably be sued one day). Police must establish probable cause before they can remove someone from a train (which is a stop). About 10 years ago, I was on train where conductor called for police for a fare dispute. Two MTA PD officers boarded, and I didn't catch whole exchange, but it ended with them saying "there's nothing we can do, see ya..." Instead of just moving on, the conductor proceeded to argue with the officers onboard the train for over 5 minutes, delaying everyone onboard and other trains through Jamaica. When MTA PD ultimately walked away, yes, that created a very tense and difficult situation for the crew the rest of the trip, but ultimately the conductor was wrong, and the MTA had no right to remove the passenger from train in that circumstance. Under this new policy, MTA would've violated that riders Fourth Amendment rights, which is not acceptable. The police have to witness the actual offense. What often happens in some of these fare disputes is a rider refuses to present a ticket to the conductor, they call for the police, and then before the police show up the rider produces a valid ticket (either buying a mobile ticket, or they had a paper ticket all along). Once they show a valid ticket, there is no probable cause for a stop (removal from the train). What the conductor says the rider may have said or done prior to the police showing up is ultimately hearsay and they can't take any enforcement action there on the train (the police could, in theory, take sworn statement and get a warrant from a court, but that's rarely worth it).
Then there is the time and expense it takes to actually enforce ADL abuse or fare disputes. Laying aside completely the cost of delaying a train (both in OT for the employees and the value of passengers' time), the MTA's response to fare disputes is—as you might imagine—very staff heavy and inefficient. It's not uncommon for nearly a dozen MTA employees, from cops to the train crew to supervisors to others, to be standing around while MTA PD sorts through a fare dispute. Again, when you consider the scale of ADL abuse (and it's rather low revenue impact), one has to wonder whether this is truly the most proportional and economical solution.
Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater
None of this is to say that the MTA and the railroads should not do what they reasonably can to address true fare evasion and ADL abusers. But the MTA must bear in mind that its response must be proportional to the actual problem, and that it's not acceptable to delay, disrupt, menace, or diminish service for the wide majority of passengers who do pay their fare.
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