Kyle Mazza/NurPhoto via AP
Four people, including two bystanders and an NYPD officer, were shot on Sunday after two officers opened fire on a suspect allegedly armed with a knife at a subway station in Brooklyn, New York.
The accounts vary, but the essential threads are these: On Sunday, New York police officers saw a man evade his subway fare and try to board a train at a Brooklyn station. They used a taser on the man; it did not slow him down. The man flashed a knife. The officers shot and wounded four people: the alleged fare evader, one officer, and two bystanders, a middle-aged man and a young woman. For policing specialists with NYPD experience, the incident raised questions about the force’s use of lethal force and its de-escalation tactics. The alleged assailant may face charges of attempted assault and fare evasion.
One of the victims, Gregory Delpeche, remains in critical condition and his family has called for an investigation of the police response. The incident is a tragic but not shocking product of New York City’s aggressive crackdown on fare evasion and subway crime. The shooting has sparked wide protests demanding police be held accountable.
At a Tuesday rally in Brooklyn, protesters also demanded free fares, which would cut down on police interactions over minor infractions. New York is now at a crossroads in the free-fare debate.
Free-fare programs, of course, aren’t free. Last year, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) launched a free-bus program on one route in each of the five boroughs. The authority identified routes based on ridership, fare evasion, and other metrics. The authority planned to add 15 more. But the pilot ends this year, and state lawmakers did not fund an extension of the pilot or an expansion in the new state budget. Who outside the city wants to pay for Big Apple buses? Who will be surprised if an overwhelming number of people see no reason to pay fares on those routes next year?
There might have been plenty of money for these routes and so much more if New York Gov. Kathy Hochul had only allowed congestion pricing to go into effect. The MTA would have had $15 billion to spend on free bus routes and more. But who wants hear suburbanites whining about paying to drive into Midtown in a presidential election year?
The free-fare movement gained traction during the pandemic but has been losing steam as pandemic-era federal funds run out and no one has figured out how to keep the existing programs going without them. Instead, metro-area transit systems are trying to close new budget gaps. In New York, the MTA budget deficit could reach nearly $1 billion in 2026. The answer to the inevitable question of “who pays?” has been less than optimal.
In retrospect, pandemic-era free fares, combined with the calls for permanent elimination of fares, helped contribute to the situation New York and other metro areas all over the country face. Once the lockdowns ended and people returned to public spaces, transit riders decided that free is fine, especially on buses. The worries about transit systems’ financial troubles were met with the stance of “talk to the hand” for some transit riders.
The free-fare movement gained traction during the pandemic but has been losing steam as pandemic-era federal funds run out.
Each day in New York, some 400,000 of those people do not pay their fares. Nearly half of New York bus riders fail to pay their $2.90, and 14 percent of subway riders pay zero dollars. Comments published in a 2023 blue-ribbon report on MTA fare and toll evasion offered a variety of reasons: “I feel like a chump for paying the fare when other riders don’t.” “My dad told me not to pay. He said nobody else is, so I shouldn’t either.”
In Washington, the story is much the same. One Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) rider revealed that some people don’t pay fares to protest late buses. In April, the authority pointed to a 50 percent drop in fare evasion on rail, but did not mention buses. Out West, San Francisco’s new sci-fi-worthy silver gates—price tag $90 million—are more of a challenge, but 20 percent of riders still use creative strategies to get through without paying. In metro Portland, Oregon, TriMet found that about 30 percent of riders did not pay for the system’s MAX light-rail lines.
Even the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, a standout among the free-fare transit systems, may return to what it calls a “functional free fare.” (No one seems to know what exactly that might mean, but suffice to say it involves money.)
For bus drivers, the long-suffering heroes of public transportation, personal safety comes first. So they largely ignore the people who ignore the fares. That’s likely a reason that the pandemic-installed partitions on WMATA buses have not been removed and drivers hardly make eye contact anymore. As for its rail lines, WMATA has deployed special police to handle fare evasion, harassment, and other crimes.
Backed by the city council, Washington planned to go fare-free on its buses, but the WMATA board backed up Mayor Muriel Bowser, who opposed it and said no at least for the short term, ending the debate. Boston runs free buses on three routes until the city’s pandemic funds run out in 2026. And so on.
If taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society, fares are the price we pay so people don’t have to drive, or walk, or cycle in poorly constructed bike lanes (or none at all) flanked by drivers who just don’t care that they’re there. Transit systems use fares to invest in subway cars, buses, tracks, switches, IT systems, wires, paint, and fare gates. The money pays for the workers who make everything possible: conductors, drivers, engineers, transit police, and cleaning crews. Until there is a brilliant answer to the “who pays” question, American transit systems have to rely on fares to buy and fix stuff and pay the people who do those jobs.
But what is clear is that the MTA will have to find a new response to fare evasion that does not involve blood-streaked subway stations or intensive care units or grieving family, friends, and community members. What is also clear is that congestion pricing needs to be back on the table to enable the MTA to pursue free-fare strategies and devise new responses to fare evasion.
The MTA blue-ribbon panel underlined that fare enforcement efforts still target people of color and marginalized communities. They concluded that police should be out of the fare evasion equation altogether. “There should be a shift over time toward more civilian enforcement and away from enforcement through police-involved encounters.”
On Wednesday night, protesters marched from Union Square, one of the city’s traditional sites for demonstrations, to a subway station blocks away, where they jumped the turnstiles en masse. There were arrests, but for the most part police stood by.
NYPD plans to release the body camera footage of the Brooklyn shooting in the coming days.
