The MTA is suspending its EAGLE bus fare inspection teams after a series of disturbing incidents in which inspectors allegedly roughed up passengers and failed to report the encounters promptly. Officials also acknowledged that the teams have not reduced fare evasion.
Transit chief Janno Lieber announced the move as the share of bus riders skipping fares climbed from 36% in 2022 to 48% during the first half of 2026, despite the teams’ presence.
The suspension came one day after Kyle Taylor, a Brooklyn school dean, filed a $25 million lawsuit against the MTA. Taylor was allegedly assaulted by EAGLE inspectors earlier this month over claims that he had failed to pay the $3 bus fare. The encounter was captured on video.
Lieber said the violent confrontation, which passenger advocacy groups have condemned, was never reported to his office.
He also said a separate complaint involving alleged harassment by MTA fare inspectors during an encounter with a man on a Bronx bus was not passed up the chain of command.
“I was not happy that leadership of the MTA and even New York City Transit didn’t even hear about that episode until more than a week afterwards,” Lieber said. “It now appears that there is another episode where that failure to timely report is even more extreme.”
Taylor’s attorney, Benjamin Pinczewski, rejected that explanation.
“How could they not have known about it? The MTA tried to cover this up,” he told The Post.
Lieber said he directed MTA security chief Michael Kemper, a 30-year NYPD veteran, to review “the whole shebang,” including the inspectors’ training and the way the roughly 350 EAGLE team members report incidents.
As he announced the EAGLE suspension late Thursday, Lieber also urged riders to pay their fares.
“We have to play by the rules or they start to fall apart,” he said.
EAGLE teams have enforced fares on Select Bus Service routes since 2008 and expanded onto local buses in 2023. Fare evasion nevertheless increased that year, rising from 36% in 2022 to 43% in 2023 before reaching 48% in the first half of 2026.
By comparison, fare evasion on the subway stands at about 10%, according to MTA data.
The MTA has maintained that paid bus boardings rise by 7% when EAGLE teams are deployed.
Fare evasion on buses cost the MTA an estimated $568 million in 2024, the most recent figure available, according to the fiscal watchdog Citizens Budget Commission.
Lee, 30, of Manhattan, said he considers the fare inspection teams ineffective.
“[They’re like] ‘Hey, can you show me your card?’ and I’m like ‘No, I can’t actually show you anything,’ and I just walk past them,” he said.
Lee described the teams as “a waste of money” and said he was pleased to see them suspended, at least for now.
Stella Nathenson, 19, an NYU student who rides buses around Manhattan, called the teams “scary” and “unsettling.” She said many of the people she sees skipping fares are older adults.
“When people don’t pay the fare, half the time it’s usually a person with a walker or a cane,” she said.
She said broken card readers have kept her from paying.
“I have avoided paying twice, and it’s just because the card doesn’t work — which is probably something they should fix,” she said.
Bus rider Jaime Madrid, 75, of Manhattan said an EAGLE team wrongly ticketed him two years ago on the M34-SBS, and he had to send in his yellow card and bus number to get it tossed.
“They embarrass you,” he said. “They pull you out like a criminal. They pull on you and put you in the street.”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani ran on on a campaign promise of making city buses free, but the state-controlled MTA is mostly out of his hands, and he admitted in April that it wouldn’t happen this year.
