I’m an art columnist. I know, I know. But I got on a bus this week, and I keep thinking about the person next to me, and the person who might get shoved over a $2.90 fare, and about a transit chief who wants credit for hitting the brakes while keeping his foot on the gas.
Here is what the reporting says. MTA Chair Janno Lieber suspended the bus fare enforcement teams pending reviews of violent clashes with riders. One day later, he told reporters those same teams remain an “important component” of the system. Read that twice. A stand-down order and a defense of the thing being stood down. The agency is either worried about the violence or it isn’t. You don’t get to be both!
Look, I’m not pretending the MTA has an easy job. Fare evasion is real, budgets are real, and nobody wants a bus system that runs on honor alone. I might be wrong about how much enforcement is the right amount. I’ll admit that up front. But what I am NOT wrong about is the sequencing. When your own enforcement teams are involved in violent clashes serious enough to trigger a suspension, the first public sentence out of the chair’s mouth should be about the riders who got hurt and what the review will examine. Instead the first instinct was to defend the program. That tells you where the agency’s priorities live.
Think about who actually rides these buses. Not the folks at the Chelsea gallery openings, God bless them. The home health aide on the Bx12. The kid heading to a night shift. The painter hauling a canvas across Bushwick because she can’t afford a studio with a loading dock. Those are the people standing between a fare box and a fare team. When enforcement turns physical, THEY are the ones who absorb it, and they have no press office.
So here’s verdict number one: the suspension was the right call, and Lieber deserves exactly that much credit and not a penny more. Pausing the teams pending reviews is the minimum a responsible agency does when violence is on the table.
Verdict number two: the defense was the wrong call. Calling the teams an “important component” the very next day signals that the review is a formality and the outcome is pre-written. If the conclusion is already decided, why are we holding a review? Why should any rider believe it will be honest?
Verdict number three, and this is the one that gets me. We keep treating enforcement as a binary: either you chase fare evaders or you let the system collapse. That’s a false choice, and it’s a lazy one, the kind of thing you say when you’d rather defend a program than redesign it. There are other ways to protect revenue that don’t put fare teams in physical confrontations with riders. I don’t have the engineering answer in my back pocket, and I won’t pretend to. But the burden of finding it sits with the agency, not with the public bleeding on the platform.
This is the same disease I see in the art world, honestly. An institution makes a mistake, performs a pause, then doubles down in the next news cycle and hopes nobody notices the whiplash. A museum cancels a show, then defends its “commitment to dialogue.” A dealer pulls a booth, then insists the fair was a triumph. The theater of accountability is cheaper than the real thing, so it’s what we get.
I said earlier I’d admit where I could be wrong, so let me do it again: maybe the reviews will surface something that justifies the program’s continued role, and maybe Lieber knows details the rest of us don’t. Fine. Then SHOW us. A defense without findings is just a slogan.
So here is the demand, and it’s concrete. Janno Lieber and the MTA should keep the fare teams fully stood down until the reviews of the violent clashes are finished AND the findings are made public, not summarized, not paraphrased, public. No quiet relaunch on a Tuesday. No new name for the same teams. The riders who were in those clashes deserve to know what happened, who was responsible, and what changes before a single enforcer steps back onto a bus.
You can pause a program, or you can defend it. You cannot do both and call it leadership. Which is it, Mr. Chair?
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why did MTA Chair Janno Lieber suspend the bus fare enforcement teams?
Lieber suspended the teams pending reviews of violent clashes between enforcement staff and bus riders. The article frames the suspension as a response to those confrontations.
What did Janno Lieber say about the fare enforcement teams after suspending them?
One day after the suspension, Lieber told reporters the teams remain an ‘important component’ of the transit system. The article criticizes this defense as contradicting the pause.
How much is the bus fare at the center of these enforcement clashes?
The fare at issue is $2.90. The article points to people being confronted over this amount.
What is the author’s main argument about the MTA’s handling of fare enforcement?
The author argues the suspension was the right move but that defending the teams right after undermined the promised review. The author also contends that fare enforcement does not need to rely on physical confrontation.
Which bus route and neighborhood are mentioned in the article?
The article references the Bx12 bus route and Bushwick, New York as places where affected riders travel. It uses these examples to illustrate who is most impacted by physical enforcement.
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