Criminals

Almost Half of NYC Bus Riders Don't Pay: An Explanation

Dennis Prager has thoughts:

On April 13, 2019, the Times ran this headline: "1 in 5 Bus Riders in New York City Evades the Fare, Far Worse Than Elsewhere."

In just five years, the percentage of New Yorkers who avoid paying their bus fare -- in other words, steal -- increased from 20% to 50%, a two-and-a-half times increase.

And why might that be? The answer is the same answer that explains virtually every awful development in American cities: moronic progressive ideas and the Democratic Party, the party that governs all our big cities.

As reported in the 2019 article, "Fare evasion was widespread and the reasons varied. Riders did not have exact change. They knew they would not get in trouble ..."

Let's deal with these reasons.

"Riders did not have exact change."

Are we to believe that two and a half times more New Yorkers lacked exact change in 2024 than in 2019? The "no exact change" excuse is typical of people who break laws -- they don't blame themselves; in fact, they regard themselves as perfectly innocent. This is precisely what almost all people who engage in criminal behavior -- from fare evasion to murder -- do: justify their behavior to themselves.

"They knew they would not get in trouble."

That's the real reason. And as we shall see, progressives ensure that fare evaders will not get in trouble.

If people believe they will get away with it, many, maybe even most, people will do bad things.

There are three reasons people desist from doing bad things:

Reason 1: They will be punished.

Progressives have done away with this crime prevention tool. In California, for example, progressives decided to make theft of up to $950 a misdemeanor. As a result, there is more theft of retail stores than at any time in modern California history.

The threat of punishment is why there is less fare evasion in London or Paris than in New York. As the 2019 Times article reported, "In London, where riders face fines as high as $1,300, the fare evasion rate on buses is only 1.5 percent." And in Paris, "the fare evasion rate for buses is 11 percent. ... The Paris transit system has 1,200 staff members dedicated to the problem and hands out about one million fines each year."

In December 2018, The Washington Post reported:

"The D.C. Council gave final approval this week to a measure decriminalizing Metro fare evasion. ... Council members and activists (said) decriminalization was an important step toward addressing disproportionate policing of African Americans who use the transit system. ...

“Proponents of the bill, the Metro Fare Evasion Decriminalization Amendment Act of 2018, pointed to a recent report from the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs that found between January 2016 and February 2018, 91 percent of Metro Transit Police citations and summons for fare evasion were issued to African Americans."

“91 percent of Metro Transit Police citations and summons for fare evasion were issued to African Americans." That’s an impressive statistic, but to be fair to our African American friends, at some point, the “chump factor” kicks in, and even reasonably honest individuals realize that, when a payment system — for transportation, retail shopping, groceries — has become voluntary, only chumps will pay, and who wants to be a chump?* Very uncool. Would I pay the “suggested toll” on highways if there were no cameras overhead capturing my license plate? Or income tax, if the enforcement branch of the IRS was disbanded? Hmmm.

Prager goes on to cite two other reasons for bad actors’ defiance of the law: a lack of conscience, and the demise of religion, but our society is long past being able to instill those virtues in our citizens; better we focus on punishment as a deterrent and gave up hope for the other two. We won’t do anything at all, of course, so Prager’s concluding warning is apt:

In a nutshell, the Times headline encapsulates one other aspect of modern life: The civil war in America and in the West is not just between the Left and the Right. It is between the Left and civilization.

There are still cities in some countries such as Norway and Switzerland where transit riders are trusted to pay for the benefit with limited (inspectors occasionally board and ask for proof of payment) — those cities are not ours, nor are their citizens like us; thanks to Europe’s open border policies, however, they soon will be.

*Besides, they’ve probably been tipped off by Eddie Murphy about the unfairness of it all: