Fare evasion<\/a>, they said, finds a way in New York.<\/p>\n\u201cIf I was like a really slender, athletic teenager, I\u2019d take a running jump on the angled part, go up and hop over,\u201d said Ann Mellow, a 69-year-old Brooklyn resident commuting to SoHo for some last-minute Christmas shopping. \u201cIt\u2019s sort of like parkour.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new gates at the station were designed and installed by Conduent, a company that\u2019s also installed fare payment technology in France and Italy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just love the fanciness of it and it reminds me of Europe because I travel to Europe a lot,\u201d commuter Sam Bilton said. \u201cI think this is really pretty.\u201d<\/p>\n
MTA construction chief Jamie Torres-Springer said last week that designs from other contractors would be rolled out at other stations in the next \u201c24 hours,\u201d including at 42nd St.-Port Authority.<\/p>\n
But three days later, the new fare gates at the Port Authority subway station were still hidden behind a construction fence, closed off from public use.<\/p>\n
MTA spokesperson David Steckel offered no explanation as to why the new gates at Port Authority weren\u2019t open to the public on Monday, as Torres-Springer had promised.<\/p>\n
Those gates \u2014 designed by Cubic, the company that created the OMNY and MetroCard systems \u2014 similarly employ glass doors, but also feature a digital screen on each pillar bearing the name of the station.<\/p>\n
Eager riders still peered at the new designs through a plexiglass window in the fence, mulling how one could get around the new fare gate.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aI don’t know how the door’s bend, probably. Or can you just kind of slightly open them to squeeze through?\u201d said 30-year-old Robert Giles. \u201c\u200aI know they’re a lot higher, so you can’t hop them obviously.\u201d<\/p>\n
Back at Broadway-Lafayette, many speculated the easiest \u2014 and most realistic \u2014 method to beat the fare was by sliding or crawling underneath the glass doors of the gates. The doors hang lower than the MTA\u2019s regular turnstiles, but are still high enough off the ground for dedicated fare beaters to army crawl beneath.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can envision any number of people sliding under,\u201d said Gary Giardina, 77. \u201cThe doors, they don\u2019t come down low enough in my opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n
MTA officials said the new gates are smarter than the turnstiles of the past. The machines at Broadway-Lafayette can detect when someone is trying to sneak through without paying, and will quickly shut and blare a loud horn noise.<\/p>\n
Videos shared on social media over the weekend showed some people tripping the feature accidentally and getting their bags wedged between the glass doors.<\/p>\n
Torres-Springer ensured that the modern gates will be able to detect when parents enter with their children, who are allowed to ride, so long as they are no taller than 40 inches.<\/p>\n
The feature worked for a woman who tapped into a wider, accessible gate at Broadway-Lafayette along with a child on foot and another in a baby stroller on Monday. The gates did not abruptly slam on the young family.<\/p>\n
Conduent is competing with Cubic and STraffic as the MTA considers which company will get to install new fare gates across the city.<\/p>\n
While the MTA mulls a design for the wider rollout, the agency has continued installing spike guards and paddles to existing fare gates as a temporary solution to fare evasion<\/a>, and they’re expected to be at nearly every station in the city by the end of next month.<\/p>\nAccording to MTA officials, the spikes and paddles have reduced fare evasion at the stations where they\u2019ve been installed by 60%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the MTA tests out new fare gate designs at a handful of subway stations across the city,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-78526","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-staten-island","12":"tag-staten-island-headlines","13":"tag-staten-island-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78526","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=78526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}