Around 1997, before the CTA used payment cards, wine company owner Rodney Alex, now 50, got locked up for fare evasion after jumping the turnstile at the Harrison Red Line stop, next to Jones College Prep high school.
When he and the officers showed up for his court date, the judge dismissed the charges. “He seemed kind of annoyed,” Alex says. “There’s no way cops should be wasting time taking someone in for stealing $2.25. It’s ridiculous.”
In 2016, California decriminalized nonpayment for youth under 18. And in January, after a Portland State University study found African-American TriMet fare evaders were more likely to be penalized than white fare evaders, local prosecutors announced that they’d generally stop pursuing charges for nonpayment.
“We take fare evasion very seriously at CTA,” he says. “Fare evasion means a fare-paying customer is not only paying for their own ride but for a portion of someone else’s ride who is not using the system properly.” He declined to estimate how much revenue is lost to fare evasion each year, stating that it’s challenging to track.
Not having prepaid boarding means more dwell time at Loop Link’s eight platform stations, which slows down the buses. So it appears that the CTA’s obsession with losing revenue has, in effect, increased Loop Link travel times, which in turn may be costing the agency ridership and overall revenue.
Locally, Cook County Board president Toni Preckwinkle has similarly advocated for policy changes designed to keep low-level, nonviolent offenders out of jail.
