"Free rides. Plus, Donald Trump, a hostage rescue, and clubbing with kids."

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Russ Roberts (https://trendsingeopolitics.blogspot.com).

August 28, 2024

	By David Leonhardt

Good morning. We’re covering the rise of fare evasion on subways and buses — as well as Donald Trump, a hostage rescue and clubbing with kids.

Two people jump over turnstiles in a New York City subway station.

A subway station in Manhattan. Stephanie Keith for The New York Times

‘Not an orderly place’

I’ve been riding the subway regularly for almost 40 years, first in New York, where I grew up, and these days in Washington, D.C. When I started doing so, in the 1980s, fare evasion was common.

I saw many people jump turnstiles, and I’ll confess that I cheated once myself: As teenagers, a friend and I squeezed through the gate together at Shea Stadium to save $1. It seemed like a normal New York thing to do.

Until it didn’t.

As part of the city’s crackdown on crime in the 1990s, the subway system became a cleaner and safer place. I saw very few people jump turnstiles in New York in the early 2000s. The same was true in Washington.

It is not true anymore. For the past few years, fare beating has again become a regular part of public transit. I’ve watched people do it just a few feet away from powerless transit workers looking directly at them.

My colleague Ana Ley, who covers mass transit, wrote a story this week focused on buses that quantified the problem in New York City with a jarring statistic: On nearly half of all bus rides in the city, people now skip paying the fare. As a result, about one million riders ignore the bus system’s most basic rule every weekday.

A chart shows quarterly fare evasion rates in New York City for subways and local buses. In the second quarter of 2024, 14 percent of subway fares were evaded; in the first quarter of 2024, 47 percent of local bus fares were evaded.

Source: M.T.A. | Local bus data is through the first quarter of 2024; subway data is through the second. | By The New York Times

This evasion has become a major financial problem for the transit system, which depends on fares for revenue. The trend has also created a sense of chaos and unfairness. “Something should be done about it,” Mary Parrish, a frustrated 85-year-old retired teacher, told The Times while waiting for a bus in Brooklyn.

Janno Lieber, chief executive of the transit system, which is known as the M.T.A., has called fare evasion “the No. 1 existential threat” because it creates a sense of lawlessness. “It says at the doorway: This is not an orderly place,” Lieber said. The subways have indeed become less orderly. Violent crime, per subway rider, has risen sharply since 2019, as Nicole Gelinas wrote for Times Opinion. In a survey last year, only 49 percent of daytime subway riders said they felt safe, down from 82 percent in 2017.

Two big reasons

Covid is part of the explanation. The transit system suspended some fare collection in 2020, which fed the notion that paying was optional. Society’s long pandemic shutdowns also seem to have contributed to a malaise from which the country has still not recovered.

But M.T.A. data makes clear that Covid isn’t the only cause of growing fare evasion — because it began rising sharply in 2017, not 2020.

The second big cause is also part of a larger story. In the late 2010s, calls began growing for a more relaxed approach to law enforcement. Crime had fallen so low that it didn’t always seem like a threat. And more people had understandably grown concerned about mass incarceration, given that the U.S. was a global outlier and disproportionately locked up people of color.

These concerns helped lead to several policy changes. In Oregon, citizens voted to decriminalize all drugs. In Washington D.C., Democratic politicians questioned the importance of immigration enforcement. In New York, the Manhattan district attorney in 2017 stopped pursuing most fare evasion cases, and Brooklyn took similar steps.

Times Square subway station. Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

These policies haven’t aged very well. Fare evasion in New York has surged. Oregon, faced with neighborhoods coping with sick addicts and public defecation, recently restored some penalties for drug use. On immigration, the Biden administration’s loosening of border policy has frustrated even many Democratic voters, mayors and governors — and the administration has since reversed itself.

The subway systems in New York and other cities have also made changes. Washington and Philadelphia have installed taller barriers to stop people from jumping over fare gates. New York and Chicago have placed more police officers inside the transit system.

City life, damaged

None of this necessarily means that the old status quo on subways and buses was ideal. Some activists argue that public transit should be free and that higher taxes should cover the system’s costs; critics of this idea reply it would cause transit systems to be underfunded and unreliable.

There are also thorny questions about what the consequences for fare evasion should be. Few legal experts favor jail. Drug use may offer a useful analogy: As my colleague German Lopez has pointed out, even modest penalties can have a big effect on behavior.

Whatever the answer, New York’s glorious transit system, a signature part of the city, is struggling. The projected budget deficit is growing, and many regular riders say that today’s chaotic atmosphere has damaged the quality of everyday life.

For more: I recommend reading Ana’s story. She also did a Q. and A. with our New York Today newsletter.

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Try a summery tomato risotto.

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GAMES

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And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. —David

P.S. Young Chung, a schoolteacher, recently completed every puzzle in The Times’s Mini Crossword archive — all 3,600 of them — in honor of the Mini’s 10th anniversary.

Editor: David Leonhardt

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