The Metro is a mess. Service is unreliable, series 7000 trains are unsafe, major lines are closed, and @UnsuckDCMetro has more than 80,000 followers. Metro asserts that it is losing $40 million a year to people who don’t pay a fare. In response, Metro is beginning a campaign to stop and ticket persons who do not pay a fare.  
 
Metro has a long record of enforcing the law in a racially discriminatory fashion. In 2018, the Committee worked in coalition with other advocates to decriminalize fare evasion. Prior to decriminalization, we published a report showing enforcement was not applied evenly. Ninety percent of people cited were Black. Areas in which Black youth congregated were specifically targeted by the Metro Transit Police and youth as young as seven were being stopped. 
 
In 2018, Metro admitted that fare evasion enforcement was being used as a basis for pretext stops. Metro Transit Police were stopping people for the purpose of running their names through the system for warrants, which might explain why so many young Black men were targeted. 
 
Prior to decriminalization, Metro asserted that it lost $25 million per year on busses and millions on the train, pretty much what it claims as losses now. Whether the law is enforced or not, does not seem to have an impact on the bottom line. 

If we are going to have a fare based transit system (maybe free transit is an approach that is more equitable and better for the local economy), people should pay the fare. But discriminatory law enforcement practices, which too often end in violent encounters, do much more harm than good.   

Knowing the long history of discrimination, we will be closely watching as Metro rolls out their new fare evasion enforcement campaign in November. Read more about this issue in our report here. 

  


Jonathan M. Smith
Executive Director