Late post

A few months ago, large signs appeared at Fort Totten Metro station alerting riders that Metro would be testing solutions to “fare evasion.” Last week, I did notice the debut of one solution–rounded plexiglass across the top of the faregate to make it harder for people to place their hands on the gates to get leverage to jump over the gates.

This particular design certainly might put a stop to the tiktok videos of riders filming themselves sliding and doing acrobatics across the top of the faregates, but they certainly will not stop people from simply stepping over the faregates (except for people with short legs maybe).

DCist has a picture of the other prototype (described as a “saloon style”) that Metro has installed at Fort Totten, but that is not operational yet. That one might actually prevent people from jumping the faregates, but more than one person at a time could probably walk through the gates with that particular design.

As noted in that article, Metro just recently replaced all of the faregates in the system to accommodate mobile payments. Unclear how much money Metro is now spending to roll out these new prototypes.