Dominique Davenport was waiting for a ride home after getting off the MetroLink light rail one night in East St. Louis, Illinois, when he heard an argument followed by gunshots behind him on the station platform.
A teenager was killed, the latest act of violence in a St. Louis-area transit system notorious for crime and where anyone could board without even showing a ticket.
“You could just leave work and someone will have an attitude,” Davenport said. “Hard addicts, drug dealers, you have so many different personalities, so many different types of people going through things. And everyone gets on the bandwagon.”
As transit hubs across the country try to win back riders who haven’t returned since the pandemic — 26% as of September 2023 — one major obstacle is the sometimes inaccurate perception that transit crime is increasing. Many systems are tightening controls and focusing their efforts on people who try to ride without paying.
MetroLink has begun adding 8-foot (2.4-meter) metal gates to ensure customers cannot enter the platform without a valid fare card. This is a major change from the honor system that the bistate light rail system had used since its inception in 1993, with fares enforced only through spot checks on board and the threat of fines for repeat offenders.
Transit systems in other metropolitan areas such as New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and San Francisco already required upfront payments, but lately they have beefed up entry gates to curb the temptation of users to simply go through a turnstile.
Jeff Roberson/AP
Does cracking down on ticketless passengers help stop violent crime?
As Janno Lieber, president and CEO of New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, explains, “not all fraudsters are criminals,” but virtually all criminals “evaded the ticket.”
The new barriers installed at MetroLink stations in the St. Louis area are commonly known elsewhere as “fare barriers.” But Kevin Scott, general director of security at Bi-State Development, the agency that oversees transit in the region, is quick to correct the reference. They’re “security barriers,” he says, emphasizing that the $52 million purchase, which also includes the addition of 1,200 regularly monitored cameras, is less about stopping passengers and more about improving security.
“We saw over and over again that something would happen in the street and then everyone would run to the MetroLink platform and that’s where the shooting or stabbing would happen,” Scott said. “We’re really trying to influence the general perception that the system is unsafe. We could have been five or six steps forward with security, but if an incident happens, we’re now three or four steps ahead. back.”
Assaults and homicides on public transit roughly doubled between 2011 and 2023, according to the Federal Transit Administration. Several transit agencies, including St. Louis MetroLink, have reported a recent drop in crime.
There is less current national data on the link between crime and fare evasion. However, people who did not pay a fare accounted for nearly 94% of people arrested for violent crimes in the Los Angeles metro between May 2023 and April 2024. Metro is testing higher fare barriers and some stations now require that fares Customers present a card when using a card. they leave as they enter.
Joshua Schank, who wrote a report for the Mineta Transportation Institute examining whether public transportation should be free, said closed entrances are emblematic of the major question underlying public transportation: whether it should be a service for everyone. the world or only for those who can afford to take public transportation? ?
“There’s a tendency to default to thinking that enforcing rates or putting up rate barriers is a security solution because it’s something concrete you can do,” said InfraStrategies partner Schank. . “That may be the answer, but it’s worth exploring other behavioral elements to improve safety and not just settling for default price barriers.”
Operation of the metro system throughout the country
New York’s subway system has long been notorious for fare evasion, with a widely viewed YouTube video showing a man sneaking through a turnstile simply by pulling it back slightly, and another showing five people hurrying to through a door after paying a single ticket. Earlier this year, more than 1,400 turnstiles were modified to prevent passage and other modifications are being tested to make them more difficult to pass through.
As New York, Washington, D.C.’s Metro subway system has worked to raise its gates while increasing patrols for unpaid riders. Police have written more than 10,000 tickets for fare evasion this year, almost three times the number compared to the same period last year. More than 250 people caught ticket skipping were arrested on open warrants and 16 firearms were recovered.
But in New York, the new wave of bus fraud is costing millions of dollars, as is the cash-strapped Metropolitan Transportation Agency. badly needs new funds to modernize its aging system. Every day, nearly a million bus riders – 48% – board without paying the fare, more than double since the pandemic, according to CBS New York. In 2020, 21% of bus users boarded without paying. Part of the reason is that buses were free during the pandemic and officials say it’s difficult to put that genie back in the bottle.
Recently, a MTA Pilot Program which offered New Yorkers free bus rides throughout the five boroughs has ended after a report revealed high rates of fare evasion in the public transit system.
Last month, four people were shot and killed while sleeping on an elevated train in Chicago. Improving the gates was already part of the Chicago Transit Authority’s plan to increase security at L stations, along with better patrols and a pilot program to detect guns.
Bay Area Rapid Transit in San Francisco has had fare barriers since it opened in 1972, but until 2018, an agent actually had to see someone evade a fare to write a ticket. Now customers risk fines if they don’t carry proof of payment or rate card. Additionally, each door is reinforced with security wings, which spokesman Jim Allison says are nearly impossible to open “unless you’re an NFL linebacker and go all out.”
“We started looking at fare evasion a little differently, not just as a cost of doing business, but also as a cultural liability,” Allison said. “There was a feeling that because so many people were watching the fraudsters, it was eroding trust in the system.”
Sound Transit, which operates the regional light rail system in the Seattle area, has never had fare barriers and has no plans to add any after a study concluded that the cost to the scale of the system could approach $200 million.
The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority in Philadelphia estimates it loses as much as $68 million a year to fare evasion. Yet it’s rare that expensive new gates like the glass ones installed by SEPTA quickly pay for themselves through more efficient toll enforcement.
That’s why many systems, including the St. Louis MetroLink, justify the purchase less from a financial perspective than from other factors such as safety and equity.
The Jackie Joyner-Kersee Center station, near where Davenport works in East St. Louis, was among the first to be upgraded. Until the fare card system is operational, workers open the doors manually when customers show proof of payment.
“I like it,” Davenport said. “If they know you are going to pay your ticket and take the train home, they will let you pass.”
