A Green Line trolley rolls up to the Boston University East MBTA station. The platform is crowded with dozens of students outfitted with backpacks and earbuds. As the doors slide open, the crowd floods in. But no one pays.
On a Thursday afternoon in April, this scene was business as usual along the line's B Branch, offering a snapshot of everyday fare evasion at one of BU's busiest T stops.
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WATCH HERESince the MBTA introduced its contactless payment system in August 2024, riders have been able to board by simply tapping a credit card or smartphone. The agency described the upgrade as a success, boasting over 10 million taps.
But at street-level stops like those on the Green Line, where there are no turnstiles or fare gates, that same convenience may also be enabling a different kind of rider behavior: skipping the fare entirely.
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SIGN UP "On a street-level, typically, they open all the doors [and] there are a lot of people that will use the back doors," BU student Rohit Vemparla said. "There are a lot of students, during Monday to Friday, and it's easier for them to just skip [paying the fares]."
Others echoed that sentiment. For some, the issue isn't just fare evasion, but a lack of clear incentive to pay in the first place.
"I don't think people feel the need to [pay]," BU student Aly Yam said. "There's also free buses from BU, but mostly everyone I know just hops on the T, and I feel like that's a big trend for students."
MBTA ridership data supports what students have been seeing. Before the contactless system launched, about 42 to 46% of riders used non-gated stations. After August of 2024, that figure rose sharply — reaching 56.5% in September — suggesting that more people are boarding at stops where fare payment is unenforced.
Investigating fare evasion on the MBTA
NBC10 Boston teamed up with journalism students at BU's College of Communication, who are taking an in-depth reporting class taught by NBC10 Boston Investigator Ryan Kath. We took a closer look at the new contactless payment system and how it might be contributing to frequent fare evasion on the Green Line.
On the day when we visited multiple Green Line stops near BU's campus, the pattern was clear: Almost every passenger boarded trolleys without paying. From BU East to Packard's Corner, not a single rider was seen tapping their card or phone.
"There is the perception in which the people who do pay resent to people who don't," said Terrance Regan, a lecturer in transportation policy and finance at BU Metropolitan College. "You begin to kind of break down the faith in the system, if the regular paying customer watches everybody else not pay their own share."
Passengers avoided paying fares by positioning themselves near the middle of the platform, where the trolley's back and center doors open. Despite payment devices being installed at every entrance, we watched as they simply hopped on without tapping.
"It certainly is a problem that most people above ground will choose not to go in the front door, will go into a middle or back door to ride for free," Regan said.
MBTA General Manager Phil Eng said the MBTA's efforts to speed up service through all-door boarding may be unintentionally contributing to fare evasion.
"I think what happens here is maybe word of mouth spreads a little bit and folks encourage each other," Eng said. "We are in a means to try to accelerate loading and keep trains moving, [and] all-door boarding also allows that to happen."
A loss of $25 to $30 million threatens a "lifeline"
Eng also emphasized that fare revenue remains a crucial part of the MBTA's funding, especially as the agency works to improve service frequency and reliability. A 2021 public hearing from the T discussed fare regulations and estimated that they suffer a loss between $25 and $30 million annually from fare evasion alone.
"Every dollar is important to us. [Revenue from fares] is important because as we continually want to deliver more and more frequent, robust, safe service, [and] those dollars do go a long way," he said. "At the same time, we're going to continue to find ways to deliver and be more efficient, but we're gonna also really stress the importance of paying."
Many BU students rely on the B Branch to travel between East and West Campus. The sprawling campus stretches from Kenmore Square to Packard's Corner.
"The T is basically my lifeline," one BU student said. "If I say that the T's my lifeline, it's important to pay."
The MBTA offers semester T passes for students, but their sales have declined significantly.
Boston College and Boston University, both of which are served by the B Branch, offer students an 11% discount on MBTA passes, which start at roughly $80 per month. Despite the discount, many students opt out of purchasing one, figures show.
BU student Brian Ding said his semester pass has been worth the investment.
"I mean, I take the T a lot to go to pretty much everywhere. It's just nice to have, you know, because it's infinite, right? So you have the reassurance," Ding said.
But he is among a dwindling group of students. Twenty years ago, students at BU purchased a little more than 5,000 semester passes, according to Colin Riley, the school's executive director of media relations. That number has now dropped to just under 900 passes.
"Transportation Services recommends students make sure a semester pass is a good value for how often they expect to use it over the four months it will be active," Riley wrote in an email.
Team deployed to crack down on fare evasion
The MBTA appears less concerned about the decrease in sales of the semester pass, instead seeming to be more focused on decreasing riders' tendency to hop aboard without paying.
In October of 2024, just two months after instituting contactless payments aboard Green Line trains, the MBTA employed a team of people whom it hopes will be the solution to increasing rider revenue: the Fare Engagement Team.
The team's green polo shirts create a distinction between them and other red-shirted MBTA workers. But now — almost six months after implementing the team — many T riders say they haven't interacted with a fare engagement officer or were aware of the team's existence.
These representatives assist riders in paying for fare, help to plan trips using accessible travel options and answer questions about contactless payment, according to the MBTA. A job listing noted the Fare Engagement Team's primary duty is to "maintain the integrity of the fare system by providing proactive passenger education and assistance and enforcing fare and other applicable policies."
"Wherever our fare engagement folks have actually interacted with our riders, we're seeing a 30% or greater increase in payment of fares. And this has been a longstanding issue," Eng said.
Fare engagement representatives have already been deployed to stations between the Green Line's Union Square and Medford/Tufts stations, as well as the Back Bay station on the Orange Line. The MBTA confirmed representatives began patrolling the above-ground stations on the B Branch of the Green Line starting this week.
The Fare Engagement Team boasts 16 employees, all of whom receive an hourly rate of $45 — or about $97,000 annually. The T says that the tens of millions of dollars the T loses each year to fare evasion makes the $1.5 million investment in employing a Fare Engagement Team worthwhile.
"I guess people don't realize that even though it's $2.40, it sounds like not much, but it's important to us. Every dollar counts," Eng said. "It would probably take 50 times of being able to evade a fare and if you get caught once, [a fine] offsets it completely."
A first, second or third documented offense of fare evasion would warrant a $50 fine, while a fourth or subsequent citation would elicit a $100 fine, according to the MBTA website.
However, it remains unclear whether the MBTA will follow through on issuing fines. According to its 2023 Fare Citation Annual Report, the T reported "zero written warnings or citations issued for fare evasion or fraudulent use of a reduced fare credential in calendar year 2022." A public records request confirmed that no fare citations have also been issued to date, raising questions about how strictly the new penalties will be enforced.
Still, Eng expects that by next year, the Fare Engagement Team will have technology that allows them to tap a rider's Charlie card to verify whether they have paid to board the train.
"Once we have the tablets and there's a means of verifying whether or not someone paid, that should change ridership behavior," Eng said. "Right now, it seems like an innocent thing, but I don't think anybody wants to get caught evading a fare."
Regan suggested stationing two fare enforcement representatives at each side of above-ground stations, requiring riders to validate their fare before gaining access to the platform.
"If you had somebody standing [at the end of the platform] with an iPad and you ask them to tap to get onto the platform, you're done," he said. "There's no confrontation there, you're just asking them to do what they're supposed to do."
The story was reported by Broder, Mclean and Song and edited by Kath
