This interview has been edited and condensed. He and many other bus operators see this back-and-forth as an escalation: “They want us to state the fare, but that leads to potential situations where a person may feel threatened.” So he says he stays quiet rather than potentially endanger other passengers - and himself. Things aren’t always that simple in practice, says Damien Lois, a ten-year veteran of the MTA. According to a memorandum sent by the MTA’s chief transportation officer in May, if a passenger doesn’t pay, a bus driver - the official title is bus operator - must “politely state the fare.” If the person still refuses, the operator is supposed to log the skipped fare and go on boarding the bus. A recurring thread in all of it is the idea that MTA workers should be actively getting people to pay up. City officials have a lot of ideas about fare evasion, both why it happens ( entitled latte drinkers, open doors) and how to fix it (blue-ribbon panels producing questionable wordplay, closing those doors).

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