Fare evasion is a problem that's not limited to New York City. Last year the MTA in Washington, DC started installing new subway gates designed to limit people hopping over them for a free ride. Out in San Francisco, the BART system also started installing new gates for the same reason.

But the situation in New York City is really bad. Beege wrote about this back in July, citing an analysis of the MTA's budget which found, among other things, that "Fare and toll evasion cost the MTA $690 million in 2022, up from approximately $250 million annually prior to the pandemic."

Today the NY Times reports that the situation on MTA buses is probably some kind of world record. Nearly half the people taking the bus don't pay their fares.

New York’s long-running fare evasion problem, among the worst of any major city in the world, has intensified recently; before the pandemic, only about one in five bus riders skipped the fare.

Yet public officials have done relatively little to collect the lost revenue from bus riders. Instead, they have focused almost exclusively on the subway system, where waves of police officers and private security guards have been deployed to enforce payment, even as fare evasion rates on trains are dwarfed by those on buses.

During the first three months of this year, 48 percent of bus riders did not pay, according to the latest available statistics from the transit authority, while 14 percent of subway riders evaded fares. Roughly twice the number of people ride the city’s subways as ride its buses.

There are various views of why this is happening but I'm putting my money on this explanation.

The pandemic also reinforced the perception that fares were optional, after the authority made bus rides free for a few months in 2020.

Compared to other big cities around the world, New York City has been an outlier for years, and not just a little bit.

Transit officials recently announced a remarkable figure: One in five bus riders in New York City does not pay the fare. The statistic stunned even Andy Byford, the leader of the subway and bus system, who said it was “wholly unacceptable” and at least double the rate of other cities across the world.

“We look at what other transit authorities are suffering, and this now really stands out as an outlier,” Mr. Byford said.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the agency that oversees the subway and buses, says fare evasion is on the rise on the subway and buses, costing the system $225 million in lost revenue last year. But the problem is far worse on buses, where nearly 22 percent of riders do not pay, compared with 3.4 percent of subway riders.

In 2018, about 18% of bus riders refused to pay. Compare that to 11% in Paris and 5% in Toronto. In London it's under 2%. A former head of the transit system suggested putting cops on buses and was quickly shot down.

The obvious person who should be handling this is the bus driver but the union that represents them has argued bus drivers shouldn't be asked to push people to pay fares because it's too likely they will be attacked. Back in 2008 a bus driver was murdered after telling someone to pay the fare.

Naturally, progressive Democrats are arguing the buses should be free for everyone. The fact that the MTA is already facing a huge budget shortfall doesn't seem to matter to the activists. Nor does the fact that the current situation leads to a sense of lawlessness matter to them. Janno Lieber, the M.T.A.’s chief executive, told the Times, "If the transit system does not work and nobody plays by the rules, it feels lawless. It is lawless," 

He's exactly right. If half the people aren't paying and expecting someone else to cover the cost for them, that's lawless. And how long with the other half keep paying if there are no consequences for not doing so?

This looks a lot like a doom loop, or at least part of one, to me. Here's a local news report from a couple weeks ago.