Edition: U.S. / Global

The Emerging Subway-Fare Thief: Frustrated, Irritated or in a Hurry

Published: June 25, 1990
(Page 2 of 2)

For example, about 38 percent of all subway riders who entered the system at the 145th Street IRT station did not pay on April 11, a day when the Transit Authority conducted its monthly survey of fare abuse. The survey is based on the number of people that token-booth clerks observe evading the fare.

Mr. O'Leary said that despite the ''understandable frustration that many subway riders are feeling,'' transit police officers will not tolerate fare evasion, and that offenders face $50 fines.

About 85 percent of the 80,240 summonses written by the transit police in the first five months of 1990 were for fare evasion, according to the Transit Adjudication Board, which collects the fines.

They Can Garnish Your Pay

Stanley Grill, the board's deputy director, said that about 25 percent of the people who receive summonses pay the $50 fine. Those who do not pay the summonses within the first month of issuance face a $25 late charge, which rises to $50 after two months, Mr. Grill said.

Unpaid summonses become civil judgments that entitle the adjudication board to garnish assets like paychecks and bank accounts, Mr. Grill said. The board serves 500 to 600 garnishments a month.

Messengers account for a large portion of fare evaders, transit officials said. Many messengers pocket the subway fares supplied by their offices and simply walk through fare gates carrying large packages.

George Fisher, an 18-year-old messenger for a downtown photography shop, said that he takes home an extra $100 a week by keeping the money he is supposed to use for subway tokens. Mr. Fisher said that he has been stopped twice by the transit police when he jumped over turnstiles but that he had ''talked his way out of'' the summonses.

'I Don't Have Time'

Edward K. Strosser, 25, who works for a small publishing company in midtown Manhattan, estimates that over the last two years, he has evaded the fare about a dozen times, mostly at the 57th Street station on the R line near his work.

''The only times I fare-evade is when I come into the token booth and I hear a train is coming and I don't have time,'' Mr. Strosser said. So he pulls open the exit gate and walks through nonchalantly.

Mr. Strosser said that he never had any problems until April, when a police officer hiding around a corner nabbed him and wrote him a $50 ticket. ''I felt embarrassed,'' he said. ''I didn't really think they looked that often. I thought it was kind of easy.''

''What really shocked me was that they had a list of fare evaders and they asked me my name to see if I had done it before,'' Mr. Strosser said. The shock, he said, ''deterred me from doing it again. And I haven't done it since,'' he said.

How Thieves Are Counted

The Transit Authority bases its estimates of fare abuse on a monthly one-day survey by clerks at the agency's 469 token booths. The clerks note the number of people they see jumping turnstiles or passing through gates without paying.

As in all cases when token-booth clerks see fare evasion, they have instructions to call for transit police officers.

Extrapolating from the survey data, transit officials calculate the number of fare beaters for the month. The number of paying customers is based on the number of tokens in turnstiles and collection boxes.

In May, for example, the Transit Authority estimated that a record 4.8 million riders, or about 6 percent of all passengers, did not pay.

The fare-evasion estimates do not include the number of tokens stolen by thieves or the number of people who put something other than tokens in the black fare boxes, or who do not put tokens in the boxes at all. Thus, the authority's annual loss of revenue to fare evasion could be much higher than the estimated $60 million to $65 million.

''It's really just a snapshot portrait that we use to determine the monthly figures,'' said Caren Gardner, a spokeswoman for the authority. ''Fare evasion could very well be higher than what we estimate, but so far this is the most accurate way we having of measuring it.''

Photos: Millions of people are riding New York's subways without paying, and are justifying their behavior by saying that they are tired of the long lines at token booths and the growing number of thieves who jam turnstiles and steal tokens. A fare evader pushed a turnstile at 125th Street and Lenox Avenue.; Transit officials say they are experimenting with a variety of programs to combat fare abuse, like retrofitting fare boxes to prevent thieves from inserting aluminum sleeves that catch tokens. A youngster used metal from a tape measure to pull out a jammed token. (Photographs by Eddie Keating for The New York Times); graph showing the 10 worst stations of fare evading (source: New York City Transit Authority) (pg. B6)