The Metropolitan Transportation Authority lost about $1 billion in revenue in 2024 because of fare and toll evasion, according to a report released on Thursday by the Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscal watchdog group.
But in 2025, the commission’s president said, deterrence measures the authority has put in place are projected to result in the first decrease in lost revenue in five years.
The decline in lost revenue, which began in the middle of 2024, is “the first reversal of the trend of the massive increase that we saw over five years,” Andrew Rein, the president of the commission, said. “This is a huge change.”
The M.T.A. credited the addition of fins and sleeves on turnstiles that prevent jumping, mechanisms that prevent riders from pulling back the turnstile to slip through without paying, unarmed gate guards and delayed entry through its emergency doors, via a mechanism that keeps the doors locked for 15 seconds after an attempt to open them.
In 2024, the report said, the M.T.A. lost a combined $568 million in unpaid bus fares and $350 million in unpaid subway fares, plus at least $51 million in unpaid tolls and at least $46 million in unpaid commuter railroad tickets.
The report focused mainly on revenue losses from subway and bus fare evasion, which tripled between 2019 and 2024. In 2024, the $918 million the M.T.A. lost in unpaid subway and bus tickets equaled, according to the report, one-fourth of the subway and bus fare revenue collected that year; or the cost of 180 new subway cars; or 630 new buses.
The report noted that the agency has begun to reverse the trend. Subway fare evasion decreased from 14 to 10 percent of riders between the first quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of 2025. And rates of bus fare evasion, the highest among the city’s modes of public transit, decreased from 48 to 44 percent within the same time frame.
Between the third quarter of 2024 and the second quarter of 2025, ridership had increased while fare evasion rates went down, the report said.
The commission predicted that if the pattern continued throughout 2025, the M.T.A. would be on track to lose $900 million, reversing the trend of increased annual losses from fare evasion that began with the pandemic.
“Fare evasion started before the pandemic and then exploded,” Andrew Rein, the president of the commission, said. Though it continues to be a big problem, he said, “this is a very important turn from the bad upward tide.”
The M.T.A. has been tackling fare evasion using a four-pronged approach recommended by a 2022 panel. In addition to reconfiguring its turnstiles and gates, it has increased the presence of law enforcement officers and fare inspectors on subways and buses, run an educational campaign emphasizing the importance of fare payment and reduced fares for eligible low-income New Yorkers.
“We have no plans to let up on this crusade any time soon,” Jai Patel, the M.T.A.’s chief operating officer, said in a statement.
The report said that more needs to be done. The M.T.A.’s roughly $20 billion annual operating budget could become precarious in the years to come if fare evasion is not reduced. The agency needs the revenue in order to operate its system as intended.
Fare evasion also lowers public confidence in the M.T.A., Mr. Rein said.
“When you tap at a turnstile and then you look left and someone jumps the next one, you wonder why you’re the one paying,” he said. “It’s unfair.”
The commission issued several recommendations to the M.T.A. to further reduce fare evasion, including accelerating the rollout of new fare gates that are more difficult to slip through and a proof-of-payment program that enables gate guards and fare inspectors to check payment on subways and buses.
Stefanos Chen contributed reporting.