Swipe for What? To Fix the MTA We Must Talk About Racism
If you grew up in or around New York City, jumping the turnstile was a right of passage. For some, it can make or break whether or not you can afford lunch later that day. For others, it’s the risk you take for an expedient commute. But for a few, it’s a move you make in desperation. I was the third.
At that point in my life, I had been assigned the most stressful job ever— to help with a celebrity fitting for a film premiere. It was an unpaid one-day gig, but for an 18-year-old brown kid from Jersey to even land something like that was an immense privilege, and I had fucked it up. I left some purses by accident at a hotel which we needed last minute, so like anyone else trying to preserve their reputation I hauled ass to Bowery subway station to make a quick trip downtown, only to be greeted by another dilemma. There were two Metrocard machines - one was out of service, and the other was occupied by an elderly couple that had no idea what they were doing. And that’s when the train arrived. In haste, I hopped the turnstile, which for any youth is a second nature survival tactic. Almost immediately, four undercover cops had ganged up on me and by instinct I resisted. My behavior had warranted them to take me to Union Square to take my information and give me a hundred dollar ticket.
At that point in my life, it wasn’t the worst thing in the world. What the situation meant to me was an awkward phone call with my employer that day and that I’d be losing half of my next paycheck from my retail job at the time. But two years later, as an urban planning student wrapping up his degree, it is something I look back upon with a significantly more critical lens. Despite how those cops treated me, I was far from a transgressor. I had not broken some social contract maintaining the “goodness” of civil society, I was a kid who was met with difficult circumstances which led me to make a decision for self-preservation. A decision that was the result of poorly managed infrastructure that didn’t accommodate my situation. This reality is not unique or extraordinary, it unfortunately is the basis of most crime, especially crime that afflicts Black and brown communities. It’s the framework that abolitionists use when tackling discussions regarding policing and prisons— the idea that punitive justice is hardly productive, and to bring about any real change requires a structural overhaul. Incredibly insightful, but what does this have to do with the MTA?
In December of 2019, three members of Congress including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez released a letter in opposition to Governor Cuomo’s plan for the MTA to spend $250 million on increased policing in the subway. Perhaps the most striking criticism was the plan’s cost ineffectiveness, as Streetsblog noted, “$249 million on new cops to save $200 million on fare evasion” belied anything approaching sound economic sense.” However, Cuomo’s plan— although foolish on the surface - is not entirely unprecedented. It falls in line with the broken-windows theory of policing which has dictated New York’s policies for the last three decades, the idea that by punishing petty crimes you create an environment that prevents serious crimes. This narrative has holes, of course, most glaringly of which is the myth of fare evasion. When the data was put under inspection, as the Community Service Society has reported:
“No credible evidence supports this narrative. The MTA released slides showing fare evasion rising to historically high levels on subways and even more so on buses. But their survey data doesn’t pass the sniff test. The MTA’s own Inspector General cited numerous serious flaws, along with an MTA staffer’s assessment that the survey was never intended to be an “official analysis whose results would formally [be] reported to the MTA Board or considered a robust and reliable estimate of revenue loss.”
When coupled with research showing the disproportionate amount of fare evasion arrests in Black communities, it’s apparent these tactics only affirm the racial bias in transit policing. This, of course, comes at a hefty cost. As the International Action Center reports, “The MTA has recently cut service on at least eleven bus lines, eliminated stops on Manhattan’s busy 14th Street and is planning to cut 2,700 transit worker jobs. It has also removed printed schedules from bus stops, requiring riders to use smartphones — which not everyone can afford or is able to use.”
When met with this information, it’s important to ask who’s responsible for the deficiencies of the agency. The MTA Board of Directors has 17 seats. The governor picks 6, the NYC mayor recommends 4, and 7 surrounding counties recommend 1 each. 4 of these counties share 1 vote. All board members must be confirmed by the governor. As made evident, the state clearly has a lot more say in the operations of the MTA than the city itself. This bureaucratic setup has led to its own host of organizational issues, most recently the resignation of former transit boss Andy Byford, who pointed fingers at Cuomo for the agency’s shortcomings. This revelation may be shocking to some, but it’s not entirely unfounded. Fares are about 40% of total revenue, taxes and subsidies are another 44%, the bulk of which are levied and paid by the state. This state influence is why investment often goes toward major infrastructure projects like the Second Avenue subway line (which currently serves the majority-white community of the Upper East Side), but proposals to build transit lines in underserved minority communities in the city’s outer boroughs never come to fruition (despite these plans costing less).
Although broken, the system is not irredeemable. There are efforts to gradually bring the MTA under the city’s control, most notably the congestion pricing plan which intends to fund $15 billion of the city’s $51.5 billion five-year capital plan, which hopes to improve accessibility and transit quality throughout the city. Skepticism should tell us it’s unclear what these improvements may manifest as, but if the MTA can increase its revenue base within the city, then perhaps we can make strides towards city interests. Since the nationwide protests that have erupted after the police murder of George Floyd, we’ve seen the progress made by presenting proposals asking to defund police departments and reallocate those funds towards other services within the city budget. This is no different. If we want to see a better MTA for New Yorkers, it means speaking to the interests of its Black and brown residents. It means hearing the qualms of marginalized people and improving transit accessibility. Should we implement those principles as the basis of our transportation planning, then perhaps New York could serve as a model for the world to follow. And maybe, just maybe, people wouldn’t need to jump the turnstile.