MTA Installs New Subway Gates But Will They Really Curb Fare Evasion?

Janno Lieber, chair and CEO of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), has repeatedly described fare evasion as the subway’s largest existential threat. Whether one jumps over or crawls under a turnstile, or waltzes through an open emergency gate, the effect is the same. Lieber believes, in essence, that fare beaters are not just a corrosive agent on subway civility but one that leaves all the saps, dubs, and suckers who do pay wondering why they bothered.

Actually, that’s not true, the MTA would never refer to people as “saps, dubs, and suckers.” People are “customers,” though Lieber has on many occasions called emergency gates “the superhighway of fare evasion.”

Meanwhile, the NYC-based Citizens Budget Committee estimated in 2024 that 330 subway fares were evaded every minute. Their 2025 year estimate of bus and subway fare loss for non-paying riders is over $900 million, a shrieking, flashing alarm that the MTA needs to take stronger measures.

While the subway rate for fare evasion is less than 15 percent, bus fare evasion is far higher, above 40 percent of ridership. Why the big difference? Because there is little law enforcement on buses, which besides their cute “fare required” signs, have only a single, often beleaguered operator, who’s not going to stop and fight over a $2.90 theft of service (shortly to rise to $3).

Put another way, with fare evasion costing the MTA more than its much-debated Congestion Pricing program is taking in, something drastic needed to be done to decrease this fare loss. Since fare control is more easily effected in the subway, it is the acrobatic denizens of the underworld and the elevated who are most facing the wrath of Lieber.

In 2024, bids were solicited for fare gates capable of combating the revenue drain, with 12 vendors expressing interest. Of these would-be enforcers, three of them have had, or over the next several months will have, their equipment installed at 20 subway stations.

Most gates will take approximately one to two weeks to install, with some station entrances closed during installation.

Manhattanites will find these new fare gates at Third Avenue and 138th Street on the 6; 42nd Street-Port Authority Bus Terminal on the A, C, and E; the Broadway-Lafayette Street / Bleecker Street stations, covering the B, D, F, M, and 6 trains; and the Delancey St-Essex Street F, M, J, and Z trains.

On Dec. 19, the Broadway-Lafayette subway station unveiled gates with five-foot-plus glass “paddle” doors, similar to automatic passport controls at large airports.

Want to sneak through without paying? The gate, using sensor-based feedback, will start making a loud noise similar to the hellacious noise once emitted at emergency gates, which (happily for many) were later silenced.

Manufactured by Conduent, these shrieking gates are also currently used by NJ Transit and Philadelphia’s SEPTA transit system. The other vendors, Cubic and STraffic will also be installing their gates. All three companies utilize gate technology employed by various transit authorities throughout the world.

At present, around 200 subway stations have emergency doors that delay one’s exit for 15 seconds, which provides less time for freedom-seeking fare evaders to duck in.

Third-party security guards have been placed by emergency doors not so equipped, but as anyone can see, these people aren’t paid enough to risk confrontation nor are they authorized to stop people from jumping over, ducking under, or backcocking turnstiles. Check your local Instagram feed for what seems like an infinite number of creative, often humorous examples of how true city kids beat the system—even if Janno Lieber doesn’t approve.

For their part, the Citizens Budget Commission backs the MTA honcho, believing the agency’s war against turnstile hoppers will reduce fare loss by more than 10 percent. Unfortunately, that means fare evasion on subways will be cut by only $90 million, meaning the MTA is still going to lose an estimated $810 million a year.