Jai Patel

And so we've made great strides on the subways.

We've reduced fare evasion in over a year by 30%.

We've dropped that rate from a high of 14% to 9.8%.

So we know those efforts are working.

On the buses, it's a little bit more difficult, but we're also working there.

We've decreased fare evasion on our buses as well in the last year from 50% to 44%.

Because all the tactics the president of New York City Transit is employing, we have Eagle teams that are on different bus routes to make sure that they are enforcing the pay your fare, right?

Our bus operators do their due diligence, but really our Eagle teams are enforcement out there riding different routes.

and making sure customers pay their fare or they're getting a summons or they're getting off the bus.

And that's how we're working towards that.

um so right now um what we are doing is if you're boarding the bus you have to pay because there's two different ways you can pay right today is the metro card and the omni and when we go to full omni next year there's going to be proof of payment and so what you can do is european style proof of payment for customers is you can tap their phones or credit cards the method of payment to see if they paid their fare and if they didn't pay their fare

That's something that we'll work with on a summons or, you know, you need to pay your fare for our customer.

And so that's something that's coming.

We're really excited about that for Omni and proof of payment.

But right now there's two different methods.

And so we're working on different ways to

combat fare evasion.

So we've heard the mayoral candidates proposal for a fare free buses.

What I'd like to emphasize again is fare box revenue is important to the operations of the MTA.

It's 26 percent of our revenue and buses is about a billion dollars in the out years of revenue for for the MTA bus.