LA Metro

The Skid Row Express (also known as the D line expansion) is set to open in LA soon. Skid row junkies will soon be able to travel from their homeless camps downtown to new homeless camps in Westwood, with convenient stops at Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills for naps, open air… pic.twitter.com/GPSGsAs9Ny

— Peachy Keenan (@KeenanPeachy) July 1, 2026

Urban transit in the US is a festering sore. Ridership, especially on subway and commuter rail systems, has diminished since COVID, while transit overall is significantly less safe. Los Angeles is no exception. A recent piece in City Journal, which in 2024 broke the story of Haitians in Temporary Protrected Status, outlines the problem:

Every day, thousands of Los Angelenos take a deep breath, step out of their houses, and plunge themselves into a transit experience straight out of Mad Max. The city’s buses have become rolling homeless shelters, replete with drugs and feces. Its trains are home to murder and mayhem. As Daquan, a daily rider who works near the North Hollywood station told us, “You could kill somebody down there and just get away with it.”

The transformation has been swift and stark. Between 2020 and 2025, crime in the system more than doubled. What drove the change? L.A. Metro’s dedication to creating an equitable transit system, where all Angelenos—drug-addicted, homicidal maniacs included—can effectively ride free, without consequences.

. . . Activists and their allies in city government have spent years laser-focused on driving cops from the L.A. Metro’s buses and trains. Their argument: making people pay to use the trains is racist.

. . . Obviously, none of this is working. . . . Adjusting for ridership, battery and aggravated assaults both increased by more than 100 percent, and narcotics offenses rose by more than 800 percent.

The lawlessness starts at the entrance: about half of L.A. Metro riders don’t pay, according to data analyzed by Davis. By comparison, Metro’s fare-evasion rate was between 3 percent and 7 percent across stations in 2007. Most importantly, more than 90 percent of violent criminals on the Metro evade fares, meaning the sort of people who go on to stab old ladies in the neck could have been caught by fare enforcement, but aren’t. Despite L.A. Metro’s numerous pilot programs and quasi-safety measures, the one method proven to work for the system is the one method board members are reluctant to try: classic policing.

Kansas City discovered that free buses don't work:

Turns out there’s no such thing as a free bus ride. Kansas City started charging fares again this month to ride the bus, six years after making them free. The area’s transportation authority said it chose requiring users to pay over continuing to impose service cuts.

. . . There is voluminous evidence that charging fares, and enforcing them, helps keep troublemakers out. Randy Clarke, the head of D.C.’s Metro system, credits a crackdown on fare evasion with improved public safety. “Not everyone who fare-evades commits crimes, but almost universally, everyone who commits serious crimes fare-evades,” Clarke told Santi Ruiz on the “Statecraft” podcast. “Not many people are going to tap in and then do armed robbery.”

The Bay Area Rapid Transit system in California found that installing hardened fare gates on its subways contributed to rising revenue while reducing crime and decreasing upkeep. BART performed almost 1,000 fewer hours of corrective maintenance in the first six months after the new fare gates were installed.

Here's a vignette of fare enforcement at tbe Bay Area Rapid Transit system:

Meanwhile at a BART fare evasion gate in SF (to save $2.55) pic.twitter.com/TdSxenaeeu

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 2, 2026

According to San Francisco media,

"I hope she wasn’t hurt and I hope she received a nice ticket to pay for fare evasion," says BART Director Liz Ames, speaking to NBC Bay Area about the viral incident.

Ames tells the station that BART revenue is rising and fare evasion has plummeted thanks to the new, mostly evasion-proof fare gates — and, consequently, crime is down as well, Ames says.

Trump-supporting former BART director Debora Allen also got a call for comment from NBC Bay Area, and she was happy to take credit for spearheading the new fare gate project.

"I think it’s great. I think it’s the best thing we’ve done at BART in many, probably decades," Allen tells the station.

Ames added that revenue is up about $10 million, possibly thanks to the fare gates, and if that keeps up each year, the $90 million project to install the gates will have paid for itself in less than ten years.

When I was in tech back in the day, I had lots of assignments in the San Francisco area, and riding transit back then was an enjoyable experience. It was actually always better than in LA, but apparently things changed, and the two cities are about equally bad. Fare enforcement, at least in San Francisco, might turn things around.