{"id":390468,"date":"2026-11-02T03:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T03:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/390468\/"},"modified":"2026-11-02T03:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T03:40:09","slug":"this-mta-retreat-could-doom-all-nyc-public-transit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/390468\/","title":{"rendered":"This MTA retreat could doom ALL NYC public transit"},"content":{"rendered":"

It looks like Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s getting a wish-granted monkey-paw style: MTA buses are now de-facto free \u2014 at the price of making them increasingly dangerous and blowing a disastrous hole in the agency\u2019s finances.<\/a><\/p>\n

Not to mention the larger consequence of surrendering to farebeating.<\/p>\n

MTA chief Janno<\/a> <\/a>Leiber last week suspended the EAGLE fare-verification program after a couple of ugly incidents, presumably under political orders not to upset the anti-policing left.<\/p>\n

And NYPD flacks say the cops have \u201cno plans\u201d to step in; officers haven\u2019t been issuing more than handful of farebeating summonses for some time, and the city\u2019s district attorneys have given up on prosecuting them. <\/p>\n

Few bus drivers are in any position to enforce; it means risking their lives.<\/p>\n

With nothing making anyone pay, ever-fewer riders are. <\/p>\n

\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n

Fare-skipping bus riders <\/a>cost the agency $568 million in 2024, estimates the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission; 2025 was likely worse.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s not just an immediate hit to the agency\u2019s bottom line: Its finances also depend on regularly issuing bonds backed by expected fare collections.<\/p>\n

With bus revenues rushing to zero, who\u2019s going to bid much when the MTA attempts its next bond auction in a few weeks? <\/p>\n

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Potential bidders also have to worry if a collapse in subway collections will be next.<\/p>\n

COVID struck a fatal blow to busfare collection: Half of all riders no longer pay, while subway evasion is closer to (a still-troubling) 10%.<\/p>\n

The MTA saw some progress with the 350-member EAGLE force, <\/a>which upped collection 7% where deployed, but that\u2019s off for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

Which means worse than lost revenue: It invites the worst antisocial behavior, harassing other riders and endangering drivers \u2014 discouraging the very people Mamdani wants to help by making buses free. <\/p>\n

This is ultimately up to Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul: If he won\u2019t support the NYPD stepping in, she (or her successor) must support the dispatch of armed, trained MTA cops to turn things around, or at the very least a ramp-up of the EAGLE program, <\/a>not a surrender.<\/p>\n

If the politicians won\u2019t stand up for making public transit work, first the buses and then the subways will spiral downward \u2014 at dire cost to every working New Yorker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It looks like Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s getting a wish-granted monkey-paw style: MTA buses are now de-facto free \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[18800,1209,304,426,141,9,56,63,65,64,103,299,25637,82],"class_list":["post-390468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-bonds","tag-buses","tag-editorial","tag-kathy-hochul","tag-mta","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-nypd","tag-opinion","tag-subway-fare","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390468","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=390468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}