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According to LA Metro's internal estimates, 46% of boardings are unpaid. That's 12 million unpaid boardings a month.
LA Metro is losing millions that could be used to run better service and creating an onboard environment where rules are not respected.
LA Metro has 200 Transit Security Officers (TSOs) who could enforce the fares, but instead, they issue fewer than 10 fare citations a day systemwide.
Look! We're on the news!
Look! We're on the news!
Nov 16 2025 LA Daily News
How LA Metro quietly stopped enforcing fares
Nov 18 2025 Planetizen
By quietly ignoring fare evasion, LA Metro inadvertantly...
Dec 8 2025 LAist | AirTalk
How is LA Metro enforcing ride fares? 🔊
Dec 12 2025 Reason Magazine
LA Metro Is a Dangerous, Costly Mess. What Would Fix It?
Jan 8 2026 Money Digest
The Surprising Cost Of Fare Evasions In These 5 US Cities
"Okay, but why should I care about fare evasion?"
Here's what we know.
For most of LA Metro’s history, fare evasion rates were in the single digits because Sheriff's Deputies (and later in-house Transit Security Officers) conducted regular proof of payment inspections on vehicles. But in 2018, the rate of enforcement mysteriously plummeted by more than half. Fares were then suspended from 2020 to 2022, and while fare collection resumed, inspections did not. Without any authorization from the Board, the Metro Transit Security department has quietly halted fare enforcement for the last five years. As a result, fare evasion has skyrocketed to 46% (according to LA Metro), with two major consequences for the hundreds of thousands who depend on the system.Â
We're losing money that could improve service.
Over the last decade, LA Metro's farebox recovery has dropped from 25% to 8%. This is because Metro stopped adjusting fares to inflation after 2014 and started phasing out fare enforcement after 2018. While growing sales tax revenues have been able to offset Metro's voluntary abandonment of fare collection, Metro could run more and better service if they began taking fare collection seriously again. We estimate that inflation adjusting and enforcing fares would bring in $176M more annually, enough to fund 12-15% more bus service or bring back frequent rail service after 8:30pm.
LA Metro FY2024 Comprehensive
Financial Report Pg. 187
Captured on member's commute
Optional fares are making LA Metro less safe.
In every LA Metro customer survey, the top issues are consistently cleanliness, safety and antisocial behavior. Customers even prioritize these issues over actual operations goals like speed and on-time performance. Riders also give Metro low safety ratings like in the 2024 USC barometer survey, where 2/3 of respondents believed LA Metro was unsafe.
Metro's unauthorized 5-year suspension of fare enforcement is the single largest contributor to this crisis. That's because over 90% of crimes on Metro are committed by people who enter the system without paying, and with no cost to entry, Metro is defenseless against anti-social behavior like illegal drug use and harassment. To make matters worse, Metro Transit Security has also suspended Code of Conduct enforcement, not just fares. It's time to start enforcing the rules of the system again and create a onboard environment that respects customers' safety.
An equitable LA Metro requires fare enforcement.
Right now, the biggest transportation barrier for low-income Angelenos isn't a $1.75 fare; it's a transit system that doesn't respect the safety or comfort of its riders and isn't collecting the funds needed to operate adequate service levels. Metro riders making under $53k a year already get 20 free rides a month under the LIFE program, and fare citations are adjudicated as a $75 civil fine with no criminal record. LA Metro already has the infrastructure for thoughtful, compassionate fare enforcement. They just stopped using it.
Riders will support fare enforcement.
In Los Angeles, the conversation about transit fares is dominated by a group of loud and highly-motivated anti-fare activists. These groups do not represent the majority of LA Metro riders. In surveys, LA Metro riders strongly favor increased security and existing fare collection initiatives (ineffective as they may be) and put security and cleanliness as higher priorities than even actual transit operations. And in May 2025, 95% of riders surveyed at Firestone station supported the installation of higher fare gates. It's time for Metro to finally give riders what they want: a security and fare enforcement system that actually works.
What we want:
We want LA Metro to bring back onboard fare inspections on the rail system using their existing force of ~200 TSOs, setting a modest goal to check just 20,000 passengers a day (143 per TSO shift). To make mass fare enforcement viable on buses, we propose that LA Metro convert buses to proof-of-payment as Muni has done in San Francisco. Lastly, because LA Metro has not adjusted fares for inflation in 11 years, we propose that once Metro reestablishes fare compliance, fares should be increased to $2.25, $2.50 and continuously adjusted with inflation thereafter. The greatest transit systems of this country and the world got where they are by running good service, charging appropriately priced fares to pay for it and keeping the system secure. That's what Metro used to do, and we believe it's not too late to get back on track.
LA Metro won't admit the obvious.
Everything that isn't Fare Enforcement
To deflect questions about Metro's unauthorized five-year suspension of fare enforcement, Metro security leadership claims they are pursuing a "holistic approach" to fare compliance and points to a grab bag of security initiatives they believe lower fare evasion.
The problem: none of it works.
High Faregates
We're glad that LA Metro is installing faregates that are harder to jump, but this is not a substitute for fare enforcement. Faregates can't be installed on buses or street level stations and are easy to sneak through behind paying customers.Â
LAPD and LASD
Metro security leadership has repeatedly pointed to Metro's law enforcement partnerships as a strategy to combat fare evasion. This is bizarre, because under the 2017 Metro security agreement, Metro explicitly transferred all Code of Conduct enforcement to in-house security. While police and sheriff's deputies will sometimes ask to see TAP cards on the rail system, they don't have scanners to check if the card was tapped. Only the TSOs can enforce fares. They're just not doing it.
Removals
Metro Transit Security claims to ask about 100 people to leave the system per day for fare evasion, but does not issue these people citations. Not only are these numbers negligible compared to the hundreds of thousands of daily unpaid boardings, but having to step out of a station or vehicle is not an effective deterrence from fare evading in the future.
TAP-to-Exit
At four rail stations, riders have to tap again to exit the system. Riders who didn't pay on the way in get charged on the way out, and TSOs are sometimes there to watch. Like removals, this strategy does not create deterrence against future fare evasion and can't scale to the system. While Metro has presented this as a strategy to increase fare compliance, it's mainly a distraction.
"There was an erroneous media report suggesting that we are not conducting fare enforcement, because they were measuring fare enforcement just by the citations that were issued...There are multiple ways we seek fare compliance."
LA Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins Nov 2025
LA Metro is littered with warnings left over from when fares were enforced.
They've tried everything... except actually enforcing the fares.
These initiatives fail to curb fare evasion because they lack deterrence. In other words, fare evaders can clearly tell when they will get caught before they choose to evade, allowing them to pay only in those rare situations. With random fare inspections and citations for non-payment, riders will have no choice but to pay even when a TSO isn't watching. This proof of payment system is used by transit agencies across the country, but by phasing out fare inspections, Metro has shattered its effectiveness.
Inaction will only make things worse.
Right now, for every fare citation issued by LA Metro, there are 42,000 unpaid boardings. That means that a fare evader dodging 520 fares a year would receive a consequence once every 82 years on average with current enforcement levels. Nearly half of riders have noticed this and decided to stop paying. Many others have taken the hint that Metro no longer cares about their safety or comfort, and now ride less. Eventually, voters will notice that Metro isn't respecting their tax investments. And in 2028, the world will notice as our city’s leaders ask visitors to ride a transit system they themselves are afraid to use. But there's still time to reverse course, and we will support and defend LA Metro every step of the way.
We can win this.
Because fare enforcement was suspended without Board authorization, there are technically no procedural hurdles to bring it back. Fare checks could be reinstated without even a Board vote. Better yet, LA Metro and its leaders do not express opposition to fare enforcement. (They just claim falsely that it's already happening.) We have the high ground, and the support of most riders. All we need is sustained, outspoken support for a positive vision of a fare-required LA Metro.
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