Forget swiping — or jumping.
Waving one’s hand over an ill-placed sensor is all that’s needed to get past a new set of $700,000 subway gates the MTA is testing to crack down on fare-beating.
The simple hack, first exposed in a TikTok video, was replicated by The Post this week — proving how embarrassingly easy it is to defeat the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s shiny new line of defense against turnstile jumpers.
In the video, posted by a user named kiingspiidertv, a man walks up to the gates at the Sutphin Boulevard-Archer Avenue station in Queens, then leans over the paddles of a neighboring gate and waves his hand over the exit sensor.
The doors fling open, letting him saunter through as if that’s how it was supposed to work.
“How To Avoid Getting A Ticket
“NEW NYC TURNSTILE HACK,” the clip is captioned.
But there was another flaw, as Post reporters discovered, namely that the doors stay open for about five seconds — giving fare-beaters plenty of time to scurry through on the heels of paying customers.
This happened several times at the Queens station — as did people going through in pairs with only a single ticket swipe.
“One person will pay and three will go through,” an MTA employee at the station told The Post. “Or someone goes through with a stroller and the others just walk through. When I see them, I say, ‘No, you gotta pay. I don’t let them through.”
It’s not quite the rollout the agency wanted for the new design, installed late last year as part of a test of potential remedies to the fare-beating plague that robbed $690 million from the city’s coffers in 2022.
The array replaced the decades-old turnstiles with tall metal paddles that were ostensibly tougher to jump over or crawl under.
They also make it easier for subway riders with bags or luggage to get through — a definite plus at a station that connects to the JFK AirTrain via the larger Jamaica Station complex.
The 8th Avenue-Penn Station A/C/E was slated to be the second station to get the new setup, which cost about $700,000 to install.
“I don’t think I’ve seen technology that’s perfect in any city, frankly,” Rich Davey, the MTA’s top executive for the city subway and bus systems, said at the system’s Dec. 4 unveiling. “But this is obviously going a long way to improving our current turnstile system.”
At the Sutphin-Archer station this week, several cops watched the gates, occasionally stopping brazen law-breakers and even writing a $100 ticket to one man.
But the MTA is still looking for other solutions, and recently issued a solicitation for a new gate-fare system that specifies “doors and panels must be designed to minimize opportunities to evade fare payment by reaching under, over, or in any way around while in the closed position.”
Similar models in Europe employ higher paddles and slightly different dimensions, so changes could be made to the New York models to make them tougher to beat.
In a statement Wednesday, MTA Communications Director Tim Minton said the agency has a “multi-layered approach to deterring fare evasion driven by a blue-ribbon panel’s report, that includes a search for new fare gate technology, police officers, private guards, transit enforcement teams, discount fare programs and soon, a customer-messaging campaign.”
“In addition, MTAPD officers were assigned to encourage payment compliance through wide gates being piloted at Sutphin-Archer station shortly after they were installed there,” Minton said.
New York’s Finest had their own doubts about the gates’ efficacy.
“I don’t think they are effective,” one officer at the Sutphin-Archer station said. “The gates stay open too long. People can just push through, and they do. You can’t catch everyone.”
The cop also said the gates are open for too long — instead, the MTA should have created special areas with slower gates for people with luggage, strollers or wheelchairs.
When asked if fare evasion is worth a $100 ticket, the officer said it must be, since people are still doing it.
“In rush hour, when you have so many more people going through, even more people are going to slip by,” the cop said.
The MTA employee was more optimistic.
“You are going to pay $100 fine for a $2.90 ticket?” she asked. “It’s not worth it.”
https://nypost.com/2024/01/10/metro/hack-defeats-mtas-700k-subway-gates-to-keep-out-fare-beaters/
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