The MTA is trying to get a leg up on turnstile jumpers at the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall/Chambers Street subway station.

Crescent-shaped metal shields attached Tuesday to a bank of turnstiles at the Lower Manhattan complex are the MTA’s latest attempt to curb a fare-evasion crisis that last year cost the transit agency an estimated $360 million in the subway alone — and more than $700 million in 2023 from unpaid fares and tolls on trains, buses, bridges and tunnels.

“It is a constant battle to try and fight this urge of our customers who just don’t want to pay the $2.90,” Demetrius Crichlow, president of New York City Transit, told THE CITY. “They would pay it for anything else, but they just do not want to pay it for the fare.”

At their highest point, the shields attached to each turnstile arm add more than two inches of elevation to the fare gate, forcing farebeaters to at least consider a more grounded approach to avoiding the $2.90 fare.

“I could make it, I just didn’t want to bust my ass, bro,” said Kay, an 18-year-old Brooklyn man who did a triple take at the new-look turnstiles before waiting to beat the fare through an open emergency gate. “My hands were cold and I saw the door was open, so I just said, ‘Screw it.’”

The tweaks to the turnstiles at the hub serving the 4, 5, 6, J and Z lines are part of the broader efforts against farebeating, a campaign that transit officials in January said resulted in a 26% drop in subway fare evasion over the last six months of 2024, along with a double-digit drop in fare evasion on the buses.

“We have reduced bus fare evasion by 12%, down from roughly 50% — yikes! — to 44%,” Janno Lieber, MTA chairperson and CEO, said in January. “But it’s the first time we have turned around the trajectory of those stats and I am thrilled.” 

Among the anti-farebeating measures taken in the subway are posting unarmed “gate guards” near emergency exits at more than 200 stations, putting in a turnstile-locking mechanism that prevents “back-cocking” at fare-payment gates and replacing traditional emergency exit gates with wide-aisle gates at a select number of stations.

The MTA last month installed spiked “fins” on turnstiles at the 59th Street-Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street-Times Square stations. The sharp-edged barriers are meant to deter fare evasion.

In addition, the NYPD has cracked down on subway farebeating, issuing more than 143,000 theft-of-service summonses in 2024 — a 14% increase from the previous year, according to police statistics provided to the MTA board.

The MTA has even considered using behavioral research to study what drives different types of fare evaders.

“What we tried to do is systematically break down all of the different ways that people evade the fare,” Crichlow said. “So it’s not really one effort, it’s all different types of efforts that are combining to fight fare evasion.”

The moves are among the more than 70 recommendations made in a May 2023 report by the MTA Blue-Ribbon on Fare and Toll Evasion, which found that non-payment had reached “crisis levels” of nearly $700 million a year in lost revenue.

As part of its proposed $68.4 billion capital plan for 2025 to 2029, the MTA wants to put $1.1 billion toward installing modern fare gates in at least 150 stations.

The largest five-year capital plan in the history of the MTA, it has yet to be approved by Albany lawmakers.

The new fare gates would be prioritized for high-ridership stations and transit hubs.

“They will definitely reduce fare evasion, but that’s not going to be tomorrow,” Crichlow said.  So it’s incumbent on us to make changes now [so] that customers can see a difference.”

Several riders at Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall told THE CITY that they were struck by the sight of the new metal shields on the turnstiles, but said they are not convinced that the barriers will deter especially agile or high-stepping fare evaders.

“That’s not gonna stop them,” said Ray Ramos, 56, of The Bronx. “They’re gonna hop right over that, bruh.”

Station workers said they saw some people hop the barriers soon after they were installed on Tuesday and several riders said they were skeptical about the barriers making a major dent on fare evasion. 

“At least they’re trying to go in a positive route with it,” Melvin Rodriguez, 27, said as he exited the station. “But it’s going to take a lot more than that.”