BART Fare Evasion Crackdown Is Largely Ineffective, New Report Suggests

BART’s fare enforcement efforts have neither led to significant revenue recovery nor made riders feel all that much safer, according to a new report.

The report published last week by the Center for Policing Equity, an found that the transit agency’s efforts to curb fare evasion have also disproportionately affected marginalized groups of riders, including people of color, unhoused people and those experiencing mental health challenges. It also recommends that BART expand its non-police responses to public nuisances.

“BART’s focus on fare evasion recovers minimal revenue, may be addressing an overstated problem, and is not effective at curbing incidents that make riders feel uneasy in the system,” the analysis concluded.

Findings from the BART-funded report, conducted in partnership with the agency and its police department, the Office of the Independent Police Auditor and several local nonprofits, is based on a trove of public safety and financial data, as well as short interviews with commuters at eight stations with the highest rates of fare evasion stops by BART police — including El Cerrito Plaza, Lake Merritt, Civic Center and West Oakland stations. The study’s authors also held focus groups with 95 riders from the five counties the transit agency serves.

Most riders shared similar safety concerns, ranging from quality-of-life issues to fear of serious violence, with the most commonly reported complaints being related to nonviolent nuisances and the presence of people who are unhoused or are suffering from mental illness.

Most riders, however, said BART’s heightened efforts to crack down on fare evasion have done little to improve public safety. That is backed by available data, despite the agency’s assertions to the contrary, the report said.

“They suggest that their fare enforcement policies and practices will improve public safety,” said Price Nyland, CPE’s impact and engagement manager. “But within this report and the data we were given access to and did use, there was not a consistent or meaningful link between punitive fare enforcement and increased safety.”

Researchers were also unable to verify the accuracy of BART’s estimate that fare evasion costs the financially struggling agency an estimated $25 million a year, the report said, arguing that the figure is likely overstated. It also noted that BART denied researchers access to data that could have been used to support that estimate and accused the agency of failing to clearly explain how its efforts would reduce crime.

The report comes as BART faces significant financial challenges due, in large part, to significantly decreased ridership since the pandemic. The agency is grappling with ongoing structural deficits ranging from $350 million to $400 million per year beginning in fiscal year 2027, the agency reported in a post titled “BART is facing a fiscal cliff.”

BART said its leadership had not been given sufficient time to read the report or weigh in on the findings, but the agency touted its efforts to install taller fare gates at 30 stations and uphold its code of conduct, including fare enforcement and “an increase in the visible safety presence in the system.”

“These strategies are improving the rider experience and are key to our 17% drop in crime last year,” BART spokesperson Christopher Filippi said in an email to KQED. He said BART riders are seeing “revitalized station environments,” better access for riders in wheelchairs, and a 1/3 drop in the number of riders who reported seeing fare evasion on their trip.

“These new gates serve as a powerful deterrent against fare evasion and as a result will reduce the number of interactions between BART PD and would-be fare evaders,” Filippi said, adding that BART plans to install the new gates at all 50 stations by the end of this year, at a cost of roughly $90 million.

Filippi also noted that the $25 million annual fare evasion cost estimate is a pre-pandemic figure that BART has not used in at least six years, and said CPE’s analysis was completed when the old, easy-to-hurdle orange slice gates were still in place.

“We believe the findings are no longer valid as the BART station environment is now very different,” Filippi said, adding that fare inspectors are instructed to check every single person on a train to eliminate disparities.

Filippi also said the agency has expanded the use of ambassadors and crisis intervention specialists, and is budgeting to add more crisis intervention positions next year.

He disputed the assertion that BART withheld some data from the report’s authors.

“We provided all available data,” Filippi said. “We don’t know what they are referencing.”

Meanwhile, the agency’s efforts to prevent fare evasion have furthered racial disparities, according to the report. Black people accounted for more than 43% of the nearly 21,000 fare evasion stops and nearly half of all citations issued from 2021 to 2023, despite making up only about 10% of BART’s ridership. And in the focus groups, many Black and brown participants said they felt racially profiled during fare checks.

One study participant, a Black man in his late 30s, described two encounters that started as a “welfare check” because he had fallen asleep on BART after working a double shift, but quickly turned into a fare enforcement stop because he was asked to provide proof of payment and was subsequently searched, he said.

The report also found that BART police often used fare evasion checks to target unhoused people and escalated such stops into full ID checks and searches, frequently resulting in arrests for unrelated offenses.

The authors recommended that BART expand efforts, such as its transit ambassador and crisis intervention teams, which are largely based on non-punitive approaches to helping people who appear to be in distress. It further advocates for separating those programs from the BART Police Department to maintain full independence.

Additional recommendations for BART include working closely with community-based social service providers to address the needs of vulnerable populations, improving access to discounted fares for eligible riders, and implementing data auditing procedures to ensure accurate and comprehensive recording of incidents. It also urges the agency to clearly articulate the rationale for its enforcement strategies to the public.

“BART riders and Bay Area community residents deserve to see an evidence-based and a metrics-based plan” for their enforcement strategies, Nyland said. “It’s one thing to just implement something because it worked in another city, but you should have research to back your plan in your own community.”

CPE’s report follows its 2020 analysis examining the impact of policing throughout the BART system, which found significant issues related to racial equity and use of force. BART leadership accepted 12 specific recommendations from the report, its authors said, while also committing to analyzing the root causes of those disparities.

Nyland emphasized that this new report found multiple examples of BART taking positive steps to address disparities in its system, but she said the evidence makes clear that BART should adopt additional community-informed strategies that rely less on punitive fare enforcement.

“I think that their decision to participate in this evaluation reflects a willingness to engage with the issues at hand. But the process is not without its challenges,” she said. “This is really intended to be a starting point for BART as an agency to better understand the range of experiences that its riders are having on the system.”

The report, Nyland said, is meant to support the idea that the diverse experience of riders should be central to the approach that BART is taking in its enforcement efforts.

“Especially when you’re talking about the racial impacts, I mean, the realities are that these practices and these policies are disproportionately impacting Black riders, and the community deserves to know that,” she said. “BART has indicated in the past and continues to indicate an investment in addressing those types of issues. So we’re very hopeful that this report and these recommendations can empower the community and the agency itself to improve in those ways.”