"... lowering the crushing caseloads that prevent our judges, prosecutors and public defenders from focusing their attention where it’s most needed. I was a public defender, and in one of my first cases I was asked to represent a woman who was not a robber or a drug dealer — she was someone who had failed to pay the fare on public transit. Precious resources had been spent arresting, processing, prosecuting and trying her, all for the loss of a few dollars. This is a daily feature of how we criminalize poverty in America...."
Writes Emily Galvin Almanza, in
"Something Surprising Happens When Bus Rides Are Free" (NYT).
Posts
63 comments:
"As a lawyer, I feel most strongly about the least-discussed benefit: Eliminating bus fares can clear junk cases out of our court system..."
But then what will all the junk lawyers do?
She was not a robber. Except she was.
Giuliani settled this decades ago--these minor infractions are overwhelmingly committed by habitual criminals. Cracking down on them is the simplest most effective way of making the city safer.
Thats not how anything works
If there is one way to drive the middle-class commuters away from mass transit, it's having a ton of "unhoused" sleeping on said busses.
There are tons of turnstile-jumpers that have the ability to pay. Intuitively I would estimate it's most, not some. So this incessant "criminalizing poverty in America" seems really dubious to me. Do we apply a standard or don't we? Do we or do we not have pleadings-in-mitigation already, along with the ability to conclusively prove someone's financial status?
Enough already.
James q wilson is screaming in the ether
Why bother fixing those broken windows?
They had free bus fare in Kansas City for several years, but have decided that the free ride is over.
"Something Surprising Happens When Bus Rides Are Free" (NYT).
Now reconcile the NYT paywall.
I'm suprised they don't follow the China model: Phone e-payment or no ride at all. With a Communist safety net the poor can't even try to ride.
American Airlines somehow figured out how to crush my hard-sided suitcase such that it wouldn't open without unbending the metal structure band. Airplanes fly on a stack of suitcases all the way down to the Earth. Then, Earth rests on a stack of turtles all the way down. Simple physics.
This paragraph:
"Fare evasion was one of the factors that prompted Mayor Eric Adams to flood New York City public transit with police officers. New Yorkers went from shelling out $4 million for overtime in 2022 to $155 million in 2024. What did it get them? In September 2024, officers drew their guns to shoot a fare beater — pause for a moment to think about that — and two innocent bystanders ended up with bullet wounds, the kind of accident that’s all but inevitable in such a crowded setting."
Is one lie stacked on another with another on top of that.
Accident
Adams
RSM: "There are tons of turnstile-jumpers that have the ability to pay."
If you can literally jump the turnstile, you can probably pass a military fitness test. Bring back the old "go to war or go to jail," and solve two problems at once.
The DC/MD/VA Metro keeps making the turnstile barriers higher, and dudes keep vaulting them. Right now, you can jump onto the turnstile proper, then just walk over the couple feet of barrier extending above it. Put those guys in the Army!
Heck, give them Letters of Marque to chase down other turnstile jumpers for a bounty. That would put an end to it right quick. CC, JSM
Do they teach Johnathan Swift in law schools?
"but have decided that the free ride is over."
AKA, we have decided to stop charging rural drivers for those bus rides.
(...at least not as much. IIRC, no mass transit system in the country meets its own operating expenses, much less capital expenditures)
Not surprised that public defenders would want to eliminate minor cases in order to focus more of their energy on getting serious offenders off the hook.
How much money and court time is wasted to prosecuting "hate Crimes" - which used to not be crimes at all for about 200 years. I think we should get rid of them. And I'm sure Ms. Lawyer would agree. Right?
Another deterrent would be special deputies with lathis stationed at the turnstiles. Take the jumper out at the knees when he's atop the thing. Then a few more whacks when he's on the ground. CC, JSM
With the fare free you need to make defecating expensive.
Whenever a leftist starts talking about "wow, this will save a lot of money", look out.
Anyway, despite that, I would agree with free bus/Subway fares - in theory. Or at least not prosecuting those who don't pay. It all depends on how much the bus/Subway lines would lose if they went to the honor system. Give us the numbers, Ms. As a lawyer.
JSM said, "If you can literally jump the turnstile, you can probably pass a military fitness test. Bring back the old 'go to war or go to jail,' and solve two problems at once."
Allow me to convey the sentiments of a former colleague and US Army JAG Colonel during the "bad years" of the 1980s regarding bringing that system back: Hell and No.
The "Army or jail" justice of that era basically turned the enlisted ranks into a prison yard without walls, except the inmates got to play with machineguns and explosives and gave them access to one of the best logistics systems for the transportation of God knows what...and we all know 'what'.
His highest case load was prior to Gulf War I. He hated it.
This is all just a matter of dollars and cents. And who should be taxed. Right now, poor people in NYC are being taxed for using the subway. The MTA gets $6-7 billion from fares/tolls. that's subway/bus/bridge tolls, etc. Probably a small increase in the NYC sales tax/income tax would cover it.
As you would expect, the NYC controller makes it difficult to get actual numbers, prefering to give you changes by year, or percentages. But from what I can tell NYC get almost $80 billion in revenue. So going to a free subway system is doable. You'd only have to raise revenue by less than 10 percent.
I remember going to Geneva Switzerland with my mom at age about 10 and being shocked to see you bought a bus ticket from a vending machine at the bus stop and then didn’t have to show it to anyone to get on the bus. Rule following high trust culture.
Many years later, on the St Petersburg Russia tram, you similarly bought tickets away from the vehicle, but you did have to punch them with a doohickey available at each window once you got on. People complied, to the extent of passing their tickets through several hands on a crowded tram. Now that was probably a result of Soviet secret police culture. In a month of taking trams all over, I never saw a ticket inspector.
I know we can’t have rule-following/high trust, but can’t we have fear of secret observation? CC, JSM
They don't prosecute turnstile jumpers over the loss of a few dollars. They prosecute them to discourage other people from doing the same. And to discourage lawlessness in general.
The problem, as always, is money. There are free buses in the small town I live in, and it makes things very easy. But cities are always looking for money, and money is fungible and moves around. Take a bit here, a bit there, and pretty soon you can fund something useless that enriches your supporters and inner circle. I would have more confidence if Mamdani were trained as an accountant.
They have decriminalized shoplifting in CA.
How's that workin' out?
The answer is to privatize the bus lines. Private owners can't call the police when people don't pay. They find other solutions. This is the bottom line problem with government owning things: they call the police for everything.
In those high-trust cities like Dublin, Prague, and Budapest you buy your transit ticket from a machine. Nobody asks to see your ticket except the inspectors who prowl the system looking for scofflaws. In Prague and Budapest, at least, there's a hefty on-the-spot fine if your ticket isn't in order.
"Fare evasion was one of the factors that prompted Mayor Eric Adams to flood New York City public transit with police officers. New Yorkers went from shelling out $4 million for overtime in 2022 to $155 million in 2024. What did it get them? In September 2024, officers drew their guns to shoot a fare beater — pause for a moment to think about that — and two innocent bystanders ended up with bullet wounds, the kind of accident that’s all but inevitable in such a crowded setting."
Is one lie stacked on another with another on top of that.
Rabel--Did the writer note that the annual budget for the NYC subway system is approximately $20 Billion?
Maybe spending 3/4 of a percent more for security is worth it to make the system safe for the people who pay for it?
Why stop at transit fairs. We can eliminate robbery if we make all merchandise and groceries free.
Nonsense.
As soon as the busses are free, the junkies and mentally ill will be living on the busses, and the commuters who can will use something else.
Even a nominal fee for any service helps prevent abuse (which is why imposing a small fee per-unit fee for telephone calls and emails would do more than any enforcement mechanism to put the scam call centers and bot farms out of business).
Way back in the 1960s a research "rat utopia" space with unlimited food and water turned all dark and horrible.
Free resources = no parallel in the history of life = unintended negatives
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
If we eliminated rapes and murders as crimes, we could clear court dockets and save on prisons.
As a test case, perhaps make murder of lawyers legal for a few years and see how it goes.
Howzabout not prosecuting parking tickets? The lawyer here wants to keep her particular patch free so the courts can handle things she thinks are important.
"Rabel--Did the writer note that the annual budget for the NYC subway system is approximately $20 Billion?"
No. And you make a good point. But my point, which I made poorly, was that the subway security cost reference was a red herring. She was writing about bus fares, not subway, but jumped so easily and dishonestly into the subway situation, which was about safety not fare jumpers, that it was easy to miss. That, and leaving our Hochul as the primary instigator of the increased security.
my first cases I was asked to represent a woman who was not a robber or a drug dealer — she was someone who had failed to pay the fare on public transit.
Let's assume that it's true that the court system is clogged up with fair-jumpers who were given the equivalent of a traffic ticket.
If bus rides are free, then the homeless will ride around on buses all day. Regular people will avoid riding around in a mobile homeless camp.
The answer is to make some of the buses free. Make them a different color. Drive the homeless around all day, so everybody is happy.
Or, take an innovative approach to fare-jumpers.
Criminalizing poverty is a real thing, so provide a choice for fare-jumpers. Accept a ticket and a fine, or accept corporal punishment right now. Make it something quick, convenient, and unpleasant with no lasting damage. Maybe a taser shock or a paddling.
That would be embarrassing, but would be a deterrent without starting a cascade of fines.
>In Prague and Budapest, at least, there's a hefty on-the-spot fine if your ticket isn't in order.
In Prague, they have a little note in Czech apparently saying that you need to both stamp and sign the ticket, and then also have a policeman camping the train station for departing travelers to fine those who only stamped their tickets.
As a test case, perhaps make murder of lawyers legal for a few years and see how it goes.
Shakespeare thought this was a good idea. It’s bern more than four centuries but perhaps the time has come at last!
We took the bus in Vancouver when we visited. We didn't have Canadian credit cards that were accepted on the buses, and we were woefully short of the coins the machines took; we only had bills.
The bus drivers just waved us on, anyways. It's Canada, eh?
TANSTAAFL: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Or free anything. There is only something that someone else is paying for. And sooner or later, you run out of other people's money, especially if the "other people" choose to leave your jurisdiction, as they are finding out with the tax on wealth in California.
That was william roper but he had a right notion
"Help! JetBlue Mangled My Vintage Louis Vuitton Bag and Won’t Pay Up."
IMAO if one can afford Louis Vuitton luggage then one should travel first class on United or American, when one isn’t traveling by chartered jet.
Drive the homeless around all day, so everybody is happy.
Except the bus drivers. Also, people (who do not ride buses) would complain that the people riding the special buses are being further marginalized by not being allowed on the non-free buses.
>The answer is to make some of the buses free. Make them a different color. Drive the homeless around all day, so everybody is happy.
Or save the carbon and just let them do their thing in some old building, a shelter from the cruelties of the modern world as it were.
When a lawyer says “As a lawyer, I feel…” she(?) has just outed themselves as someone you should NEVER hire to be your lawyer because she(?) is emoting and not thinking.
"lowering the crushing caseloads that prevent our judges, prosecutors and public defenders from focusing their attention where it’s most needed."
Like freeing up time to prosecute political opponents over novel, never-used interpretations of record-keeping laws or vague claims of sexual assault with no evidence aside from victims who don't remember when the assault occurred?
Because that stuff is important, too.
The bus drivers just waved us on, anyways.
Situational leniency is a good thing. They could train bus drivers to be the judge. They know their routes. Who they never seen before that looks confused and can’t pay fare. They know who they see everyday with their beats headphones, latest iPhone version or handheld gaming, yet can’t seem to pay fare. If they say prosecute and you got other evidence, then fast track the dockets.
Giuliani settled this decades ago--these minor infractions are overwhelmingly committed by habitual criminals. Cracking down on them is the simplest most effective way of making the city safer.
It’s a little more complicated than that. People who would normally be thoroughly law-abiding see the scofflaws getting away with breaking the law, and while they’d normally do what’s right, neither do they want to be suckers. And so the tot spreads, like a metastasizing cancer.
Facial recognition could let you work fare-jumping like speeding and red lights: completely automated. Pookie keeps jumping turnstiles and getting captured on video, which algorithmizes his face to some numerical identifier that keeps track of his jumps. No one touches him in the meantime, just like no one stops you when you blow by the speed or red-light camera. But if Pookie gets locked up for something else, when he's photographed, all his fare jumps come back to haunt him: "well, Mr Robinson, we are also charging you with 500 counts of fare jumping. Enjoy your stay at Rikers." CC, JSM
What is crippling lawyers was no longer a crime? What would that bring us?
"As a lawyer, I feel most strongly about the least-discussed benefit: Eliminating bus fares can clear junk cases out of our court system..."
Cool. Make a list of everybody who agrees then send the bill for operating the bus system to them.
Still feeling "most strongly" about that? Or is it only when you're spending other people's money?
Gosh, next will come free rides on the Staten Island Ferry, no tolls on the bridges, ride free on the the Long Island Railroad and on all subway lines and that new-fangled Rush Hour Tax will go bye-bye.
In Los Angeles, the talk is that people are too afraid to to ride the bus.
Old lawyer jokes:
Q: What’ do you call a bus full of lawyers going over a cliff?
A: A good start.
Q: Is it possible to get pregnant from anal s*x?
A: Can anything else explain where lawyers come from?
DC Metro gate jumping became severe during and after the COVID lockdowns. WMATA used to have a page that showed 90%+ didn't pay at many (lower income; east and south side) stations. They continued to jump after the taller gates were added, and some climbed over the edges that didn't get the higher gates. Others shifted to "cluster running" 3-4 people through the handicap/luggage wide gates after swiping one card.
Somewhere around 2023, even deep blue DC got sick of this and the lost revenue (i.e., the local government workers' pensions are funded by metro fares and federal subsidies). As of 2024-2025 they started charging fines and posted 3-4 police officers next to the gates and brought the no-pay ratio down. Still, they have loads of cameras and know exactly how many continue to jump.
As with San Francisco's shoplifting madness, the blind blue equity ideology has its limits.
Big Mike said...
"Help! JetBlue Mangled My Vintage Louis Vuitton Bag and Won’t Pay Up."
"IMAO if one can afford Louis Vuitton luggage then one should travel first class on United or American, when one isn’t traveling by chartered jet."
Pffft. She's obviously from the lower classes. One never takes their original Lois on a trip in a public conveyance. You take the knockoff. Or your Chanel.
Minneapolis uses an honor system to collect fares for the light rail. A comprehensive failure. White liberals in Minnesota made the rookie mistake of assuming everyone shared their values.
The REAL savings actually comes from not allowing the type who would commit a crime over a small fee to ride AT ALL.
https://x.com/meatballtimes/status/2020957484194918795?s=20
I probably worded that sentence poorly, but the link explains it better.
Sad that young people graduate without ever having learned about The Law of Unintended Consequences of The Tragedy of the Commons. Every new generation has to learn about them the hard way. Assuming they’re capable of learning (Mamdani isn’t).
So free airfare should do wonders for everyone.
Next, pick a house you like, preferably a progressive lawyer house, and just move in. Hire a few illegal aliens to remove all her belongings and then send her the bill.
That is what the modern Democrat party represents from my perspective.
Bus fare in my neck of the woods is $3 for an all-day pass. Free for college students. Did I mention they built a 4 mile "street car'' in the heart of poverty town for $550 MILLION.
It's slow at first, then all hell will break loose, the Floyd riots will look like child's play.
The root cause of any problem being too expensive to fix is lawyer fees. Every. Single. Time. Maybe we should stop pumping them out, because unlike most things, an over-supply law degrees never lowered the price. It just leads to more fees.
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