{"id":192004,"date":"2026-04-10T10:11:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T10:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/192004\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T10:11:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T10:11:08","slug":"making-winning-the-fare-evasion-fix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/192004\/","title":{"rendered":"Making winning the fare evasion fix"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fare evasion is a massive, well-known problem<\/a>, costing the MTA nearly $1 billion in unpaid bus and subway fares in 2024 alone, according to the Citizens Budget Commission \u2014 $568 million on buses and $350 million on the subway.<\/p>\n

The MTA knows this and, to its credit, has taken steps to address it. The agency has installed new fare gates, deployed \u201cEvasion and Graffiti Lawlessness Eradication\u201d (EAGLE) inspection teams on buses, and is weighing bus monitors \u2014 actual humans stationed onboard to watch people pay.<\/p>\n

But these tactics share a common limitation: none is fully deployed across a system that carries millions of riders a day, none is impervious to evasion, and each comes with ongoing complexity and cost. It\u2019s hard to imagine bus monitors squeezing through a packed M15 at rush hour \u2014 exactly when and where the problem is worst.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a political headwind. Mayor Mamdani made free buses a signature campaign issue. Whatever you think of that policy, the message has a side effect: when the mayor says buses should be free, it\u2019s not a stretch for riders to wonder why they\u2019re still paying.<\/p>\n

The MTA keeps reaching for sticks. It\u2019s time to try a carrot.<\/p>\n

Specifically: turn every tap into a lottery ticket.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t a gimmick. Businesses and governments have long used gamification to encourage behavior. And New Yorkers already love the lottery: city residents purchase more than $1.3 billion in tickets each year. This is a city that runs on the thrill of maybe.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how it would work. The MTA already runs OMNY, its tap-and-ride system, which tracks every fare<\/a>. That infrastructure could power a simple monthly raffle: every compliant tap earns an entry. At the end of each month, one rider wins $100,000.<\/p>\n

Start with a three-month pilot \u2014 call it Tap and Win, a natural extension of the MTA\u2019s own tap-and-go language. Three winners, total cost: $300,000. That\u2019s less than one-third of 1% of the roughly $1 billion lost annually to fare evasion. If it doesn\u2019t work, little is lost. If fare evasion drops, the MTA could fund the program year-round with recovered revenue.<\/p>\n

\u201cTap and Win\u201d could even borrow logic from the very successful congestion pricing program and increase prizes during peak travel periods \u2014 holidays or major events like the World Cup \u2014 to nudge riders toward transit instead of gridlock-inducing rideshares. We can combat fare evasion and congestion in tandem.<\/p>\n

The policy case is simple. The political case may be even stronger.<\/p>\n

A lottery doesn\u2019t punish anyone. It doesn\u2019t profile anyone. It doesn\u2019t require confrontation on a bus. It rewards the millions of New Yorkers who already do the right thing \u2014 and gives everyone else a reason to join them.<\/p>\n

Imagine the campaign: real New Yorkers, real Tap and Win winners, cameras at the turnstile the morning after the drawing. A bodega worker from Flatbush. A nursing aide from the Bronx. A retiree from Jackson Heights who\u2019s been riding the No. 7 train for 40 years.<\/p>\n

These are the people the MTA serves. Give them a shot.<\/p>\n

Three months. Three winners. $300,000. That\u2019s the price of finding out if New York City can make honesty feel lucky. It shouldn\u2019t hurt that this could also be a lot of fun.<\/p>\n

Harrigan, a board member of Tech:NYC<\/a>, is cofounder and managing partner of Company Ventures<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fare evasion is a massive, well-known problem, costing the MTA nearly $1 billion in unpaid bus and subway…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,24,55,54,56,299],"class_list":{"0":"post-192004","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","11":"tag-new-york-city-news","12":"tag-ny","13":"tag-opinion"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}