“These strategies are improving the rider experience and are key to our 17% drop in crime last year,” BART spokesperson Christopher Filippi said in an email to KQED. He said BART riders are seeing “revitalized station environments,” better access for riders in wheelchairs, and a 1/3 drop in the number of riders who reported seeing fare evasion on their trip.
“These new gates serve as a powerful deterrent against fare evasion and as a result will reduce the number of interactions between BART PD and would-be fare evaders,” Filippi said, adding that BART plans to install the new gates at all 50 stations by the end of this year.
Filippi also noted that the $25 million annual fare evasion cost estimate is a pre-pandemic figure that BART has not used in at least six years, and said CPE’s analysis was completed when the old, easy-to-hurdle orange slice gates were still in place.
“We believe the findings are no longer valid as the BART station environment is now very different,” Filippi said, adding that fare inspectors are instructed to check every single person on a train to eliminate disparities.
Filippi also said the agency has expanded the use of ambassadors and crisis intervention specialists, and is budgeting to add more crisis intervention positions next year.
He disputed the assertion that BART withheld some data from the report’s authors.
“We provided all available data,” Filippi said. We don’t know what they are referencing.”
Meanwhile, the agency’s efforts to prevent fare evasion have furthered racial disparities, according to the report. Black people accounted for more than 43% of the nearly 21,000 fare evasion stops and nearly half of all citations issued from 2021 to 2023, despite making up only about 10% of BART’s ridership. And in the focus groups, many Black and brown participants said they felt racially profiled during fare checks.
One study participant, a Black man in his late 30s, described two encounters that started as a “welfare check” because he had fallen asleep on BART after working a double shift, but quickly turned into a fare enforcement stop because he was asked to provide proof of payment and was subsequently searched, he said.
The report also found that BART police often used fare evasion checks to target unhoused people and escalated such stops into full ID checks and searches, frequently resulting in arrests for unrelated offenses.
The authors recommended that BART expand efforts, such as its transit ambassador and crisis intervention teams, which are largely based on non-punitive approaches to helping people who appear to be in distress. It further advocates for separating those programs from the BART Police Department to maintain full independence.
