SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — BART estimates those who ride the train without paying costs the transit agency anywhere from $15 million to $25 million a year.
BART is now embarking on an ambitious plan to stop fare evaders.
“The free ride is over at BART, and everyone has to pay their fair share,” BART spokesperson Alicia Trost said.
BART is spending $2.5 million to bring on six community service officers in January who will focus solely on fare evasion, with tickets being checked on platforms and trains.
“The idea here is that we will check everyone surrounding you as well if we’ve decided to ask you for a ticket, so on a train car, everyone on that train car is going to be asked for their ticket,” Trost said. “We don’t want to profile anyone or we don’t want to single out anyone.”
Station improvements are also underway to make it harder to evade paying. At San Francisco’s Embarcadero station, swinging gates have been closed shut and new gates have been installed with a word of warning that those who exit when it’s not an emergency are fare evading and will be caught on camera.
At other stations, glass barriers between the free area and the paid area will rise to 60 inches.
Riders think it’s a good idea and BART hopes ultimately it will improve safety overall.
“We do think there is a correlation and we do think having extra officers out there, and checking tickets and preventing people from fare evading will help reduce crime,” Trost said.
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