It’s getting much harder to hitch a free ride on an MTA bus.
An army of unarmed “enforcers” deployed at bus stops and aboard city buses in the Big Apple to stem skyrocketing fare beating is paying quick dividends — and passengers have noticed.
“They are serious,” bus rider Imogine Grant told The Post as we waited for the Q65 bus in Jamaica last week. “They are not going to let you on if you don’t pay.”
The MTA’s fare inspectors, known as EAGLE teams, operate both in uniforms and in plain clothes, and yank anyone who hasn’t paid off the buses throughout the five boroughs — even turning back a passenger who tried to use a transfer to get back on the same bus later in the day.
Transfers are meant to connect a rider to a different bus.
“We pull up to eight to 10 people off the buses,” one plainclothes inspector said.
The uniforms worn by some of the inspectors is often enough to shoo away any potential freeloaders, but others try to push their luck, another MTA staffer said.
“[One rider] came on the bus and he didn’t pay,” they said. “We told him he had to pay. He said, ‘I am not paying, get the f–k out of here.’ I asked him, ‘How old are you?’ He said, ‘Old enough.’
“We told him to get off the bus,” the inspector said. “I asked him his age because if he was over 65 you can use your discretion. If we see someone wearing a uniform like they are going to work, we can use our discretion ad let them on.”
The transit agency announced the enforcement program on Aug. 3 after years of staggering losses from fare evasion — about $312 million in 2022 alone.
Overall, the MTA said fare evasion went from 21% in 2020 to nearly 50% in the first quarter of 2024.
The EAGLE teams were launched at a slew of problematic stops in Queens and Brooklyn.
A spokesperson for the agency told The Post last week that the most recent stats it currently has available are only through the end of June, prior to the launch of the program.
However, speaking at an MTA board meeting on Sept. 23, NYC Transit Interim President Demetrius Crichlow said that just in the first two weeks there were 3,200 paid bus rides per day.
“Our fare inspections are now touching the trips of tens of thousands of riders every day and we’re beginning to see a real impact in what we’re doing,” Crichlow told the board.
“There’s no question customers are responding,” he said. “They are directing applause. You see people driving by saying, ‘It’s about time. Thank you guys for everything you’re doing.’
“It speaks to the individuals who continued to pay and have been kind of dismayed by the fact that no one else, or many individuals, are not doing so,” he added. “Customers love it.”
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