LIRR considers physical barriers to combat $24M per year fare evasion

The MTA is considering several measures to curb fare beaters on the Long Island Rail Road, including potentially setting up “physical barriers” to keep riders from boarding trains without showing their tickets.

That was among several recommendations in a report published Wednesday by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on how to address fare evasion, which costs the MTA nearly $700 million a year.

On the LIRR, $24.4 million is lost annually on unpaid fares, according to the report. It estimated that a third of all LIRR fares are either uncollected or collected incorrectly.

“We have found that fare evasion is at crisis levels across the transit system, and the problem is much bigger than everyone thinks,” Rosemonde Pierre-Louis, co-chair of the MTA’s fare evasion panel and executive director of the NYU McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research, said at an MTA news conference at Grand Central Terminal Wednesday. “Turning the tide on these sobering numbers is mission critical. And we firmly believe that action must be taken now, before the impact is irreversible.”

Different from subways, where fare beaters avoid paying at turnstiles, fare evasion on the LIRR is often more complex. Some fares go uncollected because trains are too crowded for conductors to collect tickets, or because the pricing structure is so complicated that some passengers are undercharged by ticket collectors.

The report, compiled by a panel of experts that studied the issue for a year, made several recommendations for how to address fare evasion on the LIRR. They include exploring automatic penalties, “technology-based solutions” to delayed activation of electronic tickets, giving police officers technology to more easily issue summonses for riders who refuse to pay fares, and looking into “the cost effectiveness and efficacy of adding physical fare control” at some of the LIRR’s busiest stations.

The LIRR has said a key problem has been riders putting off activating electronic tickets until a conductor comes around, hoping it won't be checked and can be used in the future.

One idea mentioned in the report is piloting a “full-scale gating” operation during the rush hours. Riders would be required to show their tickets before boarding “at a checkpoint with physical barriers” and police present.

LIRR commuter Danya Matthew expressed skepticism about the LIRR putting a new obstacle in the way of riders boarding trains.

“I don’t know how that would work,” Matthew, 53, of Brooklyn, said before boarding her train at Grand Central Madison. “Now you’re going to have a stampede around people trying to get through this barrier to get on a train. I don’t know if that’s going to go over well. I can’t see it.”

Other recommendations included reviewing ticket validity periods, considering increasing the service charge for onboard ticket purchases, and reviewing the LIRR’s pricing formula “to identify opportunities to streamline and simplify the onboard fare collection process.”

The report also recommended several changes in the way the LIRR deals with riders who refuse to pay. The LIRR’s system of giving fare beaters an invoice to be returned by mail is “clearly ineffective,” according to the report, with the railroad only collecting payment on 5% of the invoices.

The panel recommended doing away with the mail-in invoices, and coming up with an alternative that focuses on creating “customers, not criminals.” As such, the panel suggested treating fare beating on the LIRR as a crime “only in the most serious cases.” Repeat offenders would face escalating fines, while most others would receive a civil summons.

Anthony Simon, who leads the LIRR conductors’ union, criticized the MTA for “taking a soft approach” to fare evasion, rather than addressing the problem through increased police enforcement.

“Stealing is stealing,” Simon, general chairman of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, said in a statement. “Not prioritizing policing to fix this issue, as well as implementing legislative changes to provide consequences for those who cheat the MTA, just empowers people who will continue to evade.”

The report also made several recommendations on how to address fare evasion on MTA buses and subways, including by expanding a program to offer discounted fares to low-income riders who cannot afford full fares, and by modernizing subway fare gates to make them “more evasion proof.”

Prototypes of the new devices, which replaced turnstiles with taller, retractable doors, were on display at the news conference.

By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com@alfonsoreports

Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.