At the Livonia Avenue L train station on the border of Brownsville and East New York in Brooklyn, police issued six times more fare evasion summonses than average last year, according to a data analysis by Gothamist.
The station is one of about 100 citywide where fare evasion summonses were concentrated. Although they represent only about a quarter of New York City’s subway stations, they account for almost 70% of fare evasion tickets.
Riders at Livonia Avenue described seeing uniformed and plainclothes officers stop, ticket or arrest people on fare evasion charges almost every day. Some officers were even dressed as MTA employees – an enforcement technique confirmed by a police spokesperson.
“They’ll act like they’re from the MTA and then just whip out the badge,” said Cary Bereijo, a lifelong Brownville resident whose son has been caught jumping the turnstile.
Fare jumping arrests have more than doubled since Mayor Eric Adams took office, and fare jumping tickets have spiked 160%. In October 2022, Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a plan to flood the city’s subway system with more police. More than 1,000 additional police officers were deployed in the subways each day as part of the plan, which Gothamist reported cost the city and state an additional $151 million in overtime.
Now, Gothamist has mapped fare evasion tickets and arrests per 100,000 riders from January to September 2023. Readers can check how many tickets and arrests there were at the stations they frequent.
Even accounting for the number of riders that use each station, the analysis found a huge disparity in the number of tickets and arrests for fare jumping at different stations. A majority of fare evasion tickets were issued at just a quarter of the city’s stations — with Livonia Avenue, Far Rockaway-Mott Avenue and Aqueduct Racetrack in Ozone Park tallying between 50 and 60 tickets per 100,000 riders. On the other hand, at about half the city’s stations, police gave out fewer…
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