Benjamin Pinczewski<\/a>, wasn\u2019t buying it.<\/p>\n\u201cHow could they not have know about it? The MTA tried to cover this up,\u201d he told The Post.<\/p>\n
Lieber said he asked MTA security chief Michael Kemper, a 30-year NYPD veteran, to look at \u201cthe whole shebang,\u201d including how the teams are trained and how the around 350 EAGLE inspectors report incidents.<\/p>\n
The attorney for Kyle Taylor, the Brooklyn school dean caught on video getting roughed up by fare inspectors, filed a $25 million notice of claim against the MTA. X\/iamrevkev<\/p>\n
As he announced the EAGLE suspension late Thursday, he also called on rider to please pay the fare.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to play by the rules or they start to fall apart,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
EAGLE teams have checked fares on Select Bus Service routes since 2008 and expanded to local buses in 2023, but fare evasion on buses still climbed that year, from 36% in 2022 to 43% in 2023, and it hit 48% in the first half of 2026.<\/p>\n
Subway fare evasion is about 10%, according to MTA data.<\/p>\n
EAGLE teams have checked fares on Select Bus Service routes since 2008 and expanded to local buses in 2023. Stefano Giovannini<\/p>\n
The MTA has said paid boardings on buses increased 7% when EAGLE teams are present.<\/p>\n
Bus riders skipping the fare cost the MTA an estimated $568 million in 2024, the latest figure available, according to the fiscal watchdog Citizens Budget Commission.<\/p>\n
Lee, 30, of Manhattan, said the teams are ineffective.<\/p>\n
\u201c[They\u2019re like] \u2018Hey, can you show me your card?\u2019 and I\u2019m like \u2018No, I can\u2019t actually show you anything,\u2019 and I just walk past them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Lee called the teams \u201ca waste of money\u201d and said he\u2019s glad they\u2019re gone for now.<\/p>\n
While the program is paused the MTA will look at how the teams are trained and how the around 350 EAGLE inspectors report incidents. Stefano Giovannini<\/p>\n
Stella Nathenson, 19, an NYU student who rides buses around Manhattan called the teams \u201cscary\u201d and \u201cunsettling,\u201d and said many fare beaters she sees are older.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen people don\u2019t pay the fare, half the time it\u2019s usually a person with a walker or a cane,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She said broken card readers have kept her from paying.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have avoided paying twice, and it\u2019s just because the card doesn\u2019t work \u2014 which is probably something they should fix,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Bus rider Jaime Madrid, 75, of Manhattan said an EAGLE team wrongly ticketed him two years ago on the M34-SBS, and he had to send in his yellow card and bus number to get it tossed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey embarrass you,\u201d he said. \u201cThey pull you out like a criminal. They pull on you and put you in the street.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mayor Zohran Mamdani ran on on a campaign promise of making city buses free, but the state-controlled MTA is mostly out of his hands, and he admitted in April that it wouldn\u2019t happen this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The MTA is suspending its EAGLE bus fare inspection teams for allegedly roughing up passengers in a series…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1209,57,141,9,56,63,65,64,615,25637,58,82],"class_list":["post-381020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-buses","tag-metro","tag-mta","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-subway","tag-subway-fare","tag-us-news","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381020","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=381020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}