The MTA will outfit 20 subway stations this fall with sleek new fare gates designed to keep people out who shirk the system’s $2.90 fee while making it easier for passengers with wheelchairs, strollers and luggage.
Transit officials will pilot four types of wider fare gates, all of which feature barriers that horizontally open and close and are difficult to force open or scale over. The MTA is testing out the technology as part of a $1.1 billion investment it is making over the next five years to modernize fare gates at 150 subway stations — roughly a third of the system.
“These gates are the cutting edge and are both ensuring fair compliance and are making the system accessible and easier to use,” said Jamie Torres-Springer, the MTA’s president of construction and development.
The tech may look like spiffed up versions of what’s already in the system, but Torres-Springer said swapping out the gates will be a complex undertaking that will require the authority to make “major technology upgrades.”
Toward that end, the MTA has selected four contractors that are experienced in installing fare gates in transit systems throughout the country and overseas: New Jersey-based Conduent, San Francisco-headquarter Cubic, German firm Scheidt & Bachmann and South Korean company STraffic. Each will test out its model of fare gate at five stations.
The authority is looking to install the gates at stations with comparable traffic levels; so far the agency has decided on eight stations in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens:
– 14 Street-Union Square
– 42 Street-Port Authority Bus Terminal
– Delancey Street-Essex Street
– Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center
– Nostrand Avenue
-Crown Heights-Utica Avenue
-Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Avenue
-Forest Hills-71 Avenue
