A Futile Afternoon at the Court Where Fare-Beaters Are Judged
With a yellow ticket in hand, Alfonso Washington spent his Tuesday grumbling about what he sees as a huge waste of time: fare-evasion court.
“I will take a year paying off this ticket if it means I can annoy them as much as they do me,” said Alfonso Washington, 46, while waiting in the Transit Adjudication Bureau’s lobby Tuesday for the outcome of his hearing. “I’ll waste their time as much as they waste mine.”
A week earlier, Washington said, a police officer in the Bronx caught him entering a Bx46 MTA bus from the back door and gave him a $100 ticket for fare evasion. Washington, a caseworker for the homeless shelter CAMBA, said he had an unlimited-ride MetroCard but didn’t swipe it at the front of the bus because it was so crowded. It was his first ticket in his 36 years of taking public transit, he said.
A week later, he sat in the Transit Adjudication Center’s lobby for more than three hours to fight his ticket. He hadn’t planned on taking the day off work, but as his lunch break passed, he called to inform his office he wouldn’t be back for the day. He was ultimately found guilty, a decision which he intends to appeal.
“Of course, I’m going to appeal this,” Washington said. “I had my MetroCard in hand. They saw that I had paid for unlimited rides. What does it matter if I swiped to get in? This is greedy and disappointing.”
The MTA estimates it loses $260 million annually from fare evasion, and the agency has aggressively ramped up the hunt for fare-beaters. Police have increased patrols in subway stations and near bus stops.
In downtown Brooklyn, the MTA’s Transit Adjudication Bureau is the endpoint for transit-related tickets. From fare evasion to sprawling too much on the subway, the court handles all of the agency’s listed violations, with fines that range from $25 to $100.
The bureau is the only place to respond to a summons in person or to dispute a hearing. With a crowded lobby, wait times as long as Washington’s three hours are common.
Eventually, Washington’s name was called from a squawk box. A hearing officer met him in a room tucked away in the back of the building, where he read the case file aloud. Washington gave a statement recounting the events and presented his evidence: his MetroCard.
He was out in 20 minutes and back to sitting in the same chair in the lobby, where he waited for another hour and a half before a clerk delivered his guilty verdict. Washington paid the required $11 and requested the documents to start an appeal, which he expects to go the same way.
“I’m fine. I can deal with this,” Washington said. “I don’t expect anything to change. I want to be petty because they deserve petty.”
And the next time he’s confronted with a crowd near the front of the bus, he said, he’ll likely skip swiping his card again. He suggested the MTA invest in placing more toll machines on the buses as a countermeasure.
