How Cuomo Plans to Crack Down on Subway Fare Evasion

Weather: Once again, a chance of rain and thunderstorms, with a high in the 70s.

Alternate-side parking: In effect until July 4.

New York’s public transportation system loses $240 million a year because of fare evasion on the subway and buses, according to Governor Cuomo. He has also said he wants to deter, not arrest, people who are evading fares.

Mr. Cuomo’s plan: Put 500 uniformed officers on bus routes and in subway stations.

Here’s what you need to know:

What are the details?

Mr. Cuomo wants to address two problems: fare evasion and assaults on transit workers.

“There’s a high correlation” between the two, he said on Monday at a news conference in Manhattan. (A spokesman for the governor said on Tuesday that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority had determined that many perpetrators of other crimes on the subway had not paid their fare during that trip.)

The governor has announced three tactics:

• Starting Monday, according to a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, 500 uniformed officers will be sent to 50 subway stations and 50 bus routes where evasion and assaults occur at elevated rates. The governor said that announcing specific locations would undermine the effort.

Who are the officers?

Two hundred are New York Police Department officers, and 300 are M.T.A. police officers or bridge and tunnel officers. An additional 70 M.T.A. employees, in so-called “eagle teams,” will also be part of the effort.

How will they deter fare evasion?

The plan relies on two enforcement tools: the officers’ presence, and the issuance of civil summonses. A summons is similar to a parking ticket.

“It’s not criminalizing fare evasion,” Patrick J. Foye, the M.T.A. chairman, said at the Monday news conference. “This is about deterrence, not arrests.”

Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, said at the event that M.T.A. officials would “be a presence to deter people from going into the subway station.” Mr. Vance had announced last year that he would stop prosecuting these cases because fare evasion would be best solved through deterrence.

Officials also said additional signs and announcements about the problem would help.

Will a summons really deter someone from hopping a turnstile or boarding a bus without paying?

“If you don’t pay a ticket,” Mr. Cuomo said, “it goes on your administrative file. So that when you go to get a driver’s license or register a car, those tickets all come up.”

When a reporter said that many people who use public transportation don’t own vehicles — making this enforcement tool moot — Mr. Foye responded. “There’s clearly an effect of getting a summons,” he said, adding, “There are consequences to do it that both drivers and nondrivers will feel.”

A spokesman for Mr. Foye said he was referring to the effect of accumulating summonses.

How will video cameras be used to deter fare evasion?

That wasn’t clear.

Transit officials are “going to research how to use video cameras,” Mr. Cuomo said. He suggested that cameras could trigger an alarm whenever a person is seen hopping a turnstile.

How will we know the deterrents are working?

Mr. Cuomo declined to outline metrics for success or provide a timetable for evaluating the program.

“Let’s see what results we get,” he said. “If it works well, we’ll scale it up. If it doesn’t work, we’ll try something different.”

What’s next?

Once a rider is on a subway or bus, officials can’t tell who paid and who didn’t.

That could change under a new payment system called OMNY, which officials say will eventually replace MetroCards.

“The growing problem of fare evasion is just one reason we’re excited for our new OMNY fare payment system, which will ultimately provide proof of payment on subway and buses,” Mr. Foye said.

From The Times

[Want more news from New York and around the region? Check out our full coverage.]

The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.

What we’re reading

The Coney Island Mermaid Parade is on Saturday. [Curbed]

In Brooklyn, 121 people didn’t comply with the city’s order to get vaccinated against measles, nor did they pay a fine for violating the order. [amNew York]

There will be a funeral today on Staten Island for the 29-year-old police officer who died by suicide last week. [Staten Island Advance]

Coming up today

An exhibition of photographs by this year’s En Foco fellows examines race, identity and sexuality at Longwood Art Gallery in the Bronx. 6 p.m. [Free]

In Chia-Chia Lin’s novel “The Unpassing,” a Taiwanese immigrant family struggles to make ends meet in Alaska. The author discusses her book at McNally Jackson in Manhattan. 7 p.m. [Free]

Learn about adaptogenic herbs like tulsi and ashwagandha with an herbalist at the Alchemist’s Kitchen in Manhattan. 8 p.m. [$25]

— Vivian Ewing

Events are subject to change, so double-check before heading out. For more events, see the going-out guides from The Times’s culture pages.

The author James Baldwin’s home on the Upper West Side was just designated a city landmark. So was the longtime Staten Island home of Audre Lorde, the lesbian feminist writer and activist.

The two homes were among six places designated yesterday by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. In a statement, Sarah Carroll, the commission’s chair, called the new landmarks “some of the foundational locations for L.G.B.T. activism in the second half of the 20th century.”

The addresses include:

• The Caffe Cino (31 Cornelia Street, Manhattan): The cafe was where L.G.B.T. playwrights shared work well before it was embraced by Broadway. In 1985, The Times called Caffe Cino “the first continuous off-off-Broadway theater.”

• The Gay Activists Alliance Firehouse (99 Wooster Street, Manhattan): Established six months after the uprising at the Stonewall Inn, the alliance mobilized supporters and confronted legislators. In 1971, The Times mentioned handbills that group members circulated: “Register and Vote Gay.”

• The Women’s Liberation Center (243 West 20th Street, Manhattan): The Center occupied the building from 1972 to 1987. The center “concerns itself primarily with establishing consciousness-raising groups, but it also keeps lists of referral agencies,” The Times wrote in 1976. The center’s treasurer at the time, Janet Taubin, described consciousness raising as “absolutely the basis of all feminist feelings and the feminist movement everywhere.”

• The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center (208 West 13th Street, Manhattan): The center has been at this location since 1984. It has been a focal point for countless organizations and events and is still operating.

• The James Baldwin Residence (137 West 71st Street, Manhattan): It was his New York residence from 1966 to 1987. According to the commission, “It is the most significant surviving building in New York City associated with him.”

• The Audre Lorde Residence (207 St. Paul’s Avenue, Staten Island): She lived here from 1972 to 1987. She was appointed as the state poet laureate in 1991, a year before her death. She wrote movingly about race, gender and her own battle with cancer, and once told an interviewer, “My sexuality is part and parcel of who I am, and my poetry comes from the intersection of me and my worlds.”

Five of the six buildings are in historic districts, which means they already had landmark protections. But as the commission’s chair told my colleague, “We wanted to explicitly recognize the association with L.G.B.T. history.”

It’s Wednesday — visit some landmarks.

Metropolitan Diary: The Greengrass is always greener

Dear Diary:

You can have your Barney Miller,
You can keep your Barney Fife,
But gimme Barney Greengrass
And you’ve salted up my life.

The nova there is unctuous,
The sturgeon’s like a dream.
And the latkes are rambunctious,
While the herrings dance in cream.

Have a LEO (very well)
A side of toasted rye
Kippered salmon?
What the hell!
A plate of matzo brei.

Wash it down with Dr. Brown,
And don’t forget the borscht,
Westside, bestside, deli crown
A black and white? Of courscht!

So, you can have your Barney Gumble,
And a plate of beans and franks,
But gimme Barney Greengrass
And you have got my thanks.

— Lou Craft

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