By Nicolas S. Rothbacher

Predictive policing has quickly become widespread in the United States. Practitioners claim it can greatly increase police efficiency and base decisions on objective statistics. Critics say that these algorithms reproduce discriminatory outcomes in a biased justice system. In this thesis, I investigate fare enforcement in New York City and what might happen if predictive policing were applied. First I analyze legal precedents on discrimination law to create a framework for understanding whether policy is legally discriminatory. In this framework the fairness of a government policy is judged based on how different groups are treated by the process of carrying out the policy. Three elements must be examined: a comparison group that is treated fairly, discriminatory burden for the disadvantaged group, and government negligence or intent. Next, using this framework, I perform data analysis on fare evasion arrests in New York City, and find evidence of discrimination. Finally, I examine predictive policing to determine what its effect on fare enforcement might be. I conclude that predictive policing algorithms trained on the arrests will be ineffective and seen as unfair due to the institutional practices that impact the data. This examination sheds light on how machine learning fairness could be analyzed using societal expectations of fairness.

Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology m Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, 2020 . 54p.

By Jason Wagner

Fare evasion and license plate fraud are costly and growing problems for New York City, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), the New York State Thruway Authority, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. In 2023, the cost to the MTA alone was more than $700 million—an amount equal to the amount of funding that would be raised through two rounds of fare hikes; and the evidence suggests the cost is growing.1 Increasing fare and toll compliance is critical to funding the region’s transit agencies and providing reliable, high-quality, affordable public transit services. While much of the lost revenue is from fares, license plate fraud is increasingly chipping away at the bottom line of entities that collect tolls, as evaders become more brazen and sophisticated. This trend presents a risk to the success of the Central Business District Tolling Program (congestion pricing), which is set to begin in June 2024. Congestion pricing revenues are critical for the MTA; they will fund more than a quarter of the MTA’s 2020 2024 Capital Program and support numerous capital projects that modernize the system and bring it to a state of good repair. The State, the City, and affected public entities need more tools and should take additional steps to lower the fiscal risk from revenue loss. The Citizens Budget Commission (CBC) supports Governor Kathy Hochul’s Executive Budget for Fiscal Year 2025 proposed policies, which would strengthen laws and efforts to enforce fare and toll compliance.

New York: Citizens Budget Committee, 2024.yp.

By Nick Sawhney

Fare Evasion and its enforcement is an ever-more relevant issue in New York City. In this paper, a data set of fare evasion arrests and weighted census data is created and analyzed using a difference-in-differences regression model in order to understand the impact of the Manhattan District Attorney’s 2018 policy to curtail the prosecution of those arrested for fare evasion in the New York City Subway. Results suggest that, despite an overall reduction in arrests, Black and Hispanic communities still saw an increase in fare evasion policing. Income inequality is suggested as an indicator of the number of arrests as well. Furthermore, the proportion of Black arrests was found to increase following the implementation of the policy, especially in areas which contain greater Black and Hispanic populations.

Published 2020.

By Laura Wolfgram, Cyndy Pollan, Kirstie Hostetter, Amy Martin, Tina Spencer, Scott Rodda, and Andrew Amey

This report explores in detail the recent past and emerging future of fare enforcement on transit systems. While the focus is on North American transit systems, the research also provides examples from some agencies abroad, primarily in Europe, Australia, and South America. The intent of this research is to discuss the many facets of fare evasion that must be considered to successfully measure and manage it. These include changing attitudes about fare enforcement and penalties for evading fare, how these impact the ability to manage fare evasion, and the role of new technologies and emergent enforcement alternatives in changing the purpose of and approach to managing fare evasion. The evolution of fare collection methods and technologies has required transit agencies to develop new ways to verify and enforce fare payment, increase their understanding as to why and where fare evasion occurs, take proactive approaches to increasing fare compliance, and respond to emerging community sensitivities and social issues related to discrimination and systemic bias, use of police, and needs of vulnerable populations. This research effort involved three core activities: a review of the existing literature (which included documents from and studies of U.S. and Canadian transit agencies, as well as agencies elsewhere in the world), phone surveys conducted with 18 North American transit agencies, and follow-up communications with those tran

Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. 2022. 452p.