With the MTA's fare agents benched, the NYPD says it won't help check bus fares. What a Bronx Council member asked the MTA in March

For now, almost no one is checking whether New York City bus riders pay the $3 fare. The MTA pulled its fare enforcement agents off the buses last week. On Thursday, the NYPD said it would not fill the gap, Gothamist reported.

"The NYPD has no plans to assist with EAGLE team enforcement in the future," police spokesperson Brad Weekes told Gothamist. In 2024, under then-Mayor Eric Adams, the EAGLE teams and the NYPD worked together on bus fare checks.

Why it matters to residents: the MTA says it loses more than $300 million a year to bus fare evasion, and it estimates roughly half of bus riders don't pay, according to Gothamist. Lost fare money can mean service cuts, the head of the MTA's riders' advisory council told the outlet. At the same time, riders have filmed confrontations with agents, and one rider says he plans to sue.

What's happened since the pause

The MTA's 350 fare enforcement agents cannot make arrests. They have been benched since MTA Chair Janno Lieber suspended the teams on Oct. 22 after two caught-on-camera clashes with riders, one in Brownsville and one in the Bronx. Lieber said this week the pause will last until an investigation is done and agents are properly trained, Gothamist reported. The MTA is weighing body cameras for agents and a clearer way for riders to file complaints. MTA spokesperson Tim Minton said the NYPD "is the agency responsible for law enforcement on subways and buses," and that the MTA is confident that will continue.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani's spokespeople have cited the controversy as more evidence for his free-bus proposal, Gothamist reported. The mayor has not proposed how to replace the fare money the MTA would lose.

What our records add

The MTA is a state authority, and the Council does not oversee its fare agents directly. But the Council questions MTA leaders at budget hearings, and fare enforcement has come up.

"It just feels like military." At the Transportation Committee's preliminary budget hearing on March 17, Council Member Pierina Ana Sanchez, who represents parts of the west Bronx, said she understood fare evasion was a problem. But she told Lieber that in the South and West Bronx, enforcement felt like the military because there were so many agents. She asked how much revenue the MTA had lost to fare evasion each year, when the security program began, how much the MTA was spending on it, and whether it was seeing a return.

Lieber answered that riders had grown used to boarding through the back door without paying during the pandemic, and that the MTA was trying to re-establish that "everybody's in this together." He said he had ridden with EAGLE teams in her district. The agents are unarmed and "not militarized in any way," he said, and the city would soon have a system "more like what you have in Europe," where civilian inspectors check proof of payment (1:33:16). The transcript does not show the spending figures she asked for.

The Council has asked Albany for cheaper fares, not enforcement changes. On June 30, the Council adopted Res. 143, from Kevin C. Riley, calling on the state to create unlimited transfers within two hours for pay-per-ride MTA users. No pending Council bill deals with fare enforcement on buses.

The Council's main lever is Fair Fares. The city's half-price fare program for low-income New Yorkers is city-funded and set by city policy. Council leaders said this week they prefer expanding it over free buses. We look at that program's enrollment numbers in a separate story.

What's next

The MTA has not said when EAGLE teams will return. Lieber said the agency expects to "come out the other side with an even better operation," Gothamist reported. The MTA's investigation of the Brownsville incident is ongoing. The Council's Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, chaired by Majority Leader Shaun Abreu, has no MTA hearing on its published calendar.