#MTA bringing back front-door bus entry after 5 months of free rides

New York City buses will resume front door boarding — and thus fare collection — at the end of August, the MTA said Tuesday.

Transit officials said they had no choice but to resume collecting fares amid the agency’s $10 billion “fiscal tsunami” wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The reality is we have to go back to collecting fares, because we have to survive as a transit agency,” Interim Transit President Sarah Feinberg told reporters at Manhattan’s Michael J. Quill Bus Depot.

Local buses have been back door-only, fare-free since March 20 — part of a bid to prevent the spread of coronavirus that also included closing off much of the front area of each bus.

In the five months since, the MTA missed out on $159 million in bus fares, Feinberg said. MTA finance gurus say the agency is losing $250 million per week due to pandemic-depleted ridership.

“We are in a moment when every dollar counts, which is why we now find it as an appropriate time to resume fare collection,” Feinberg said.

“The fact is, we do not operate a free service, as much as we want to.”

As part of the return to front-door entry, the MTA starting installing plastic curtains around bus operator seats, a process expected to wrap up by the end of the month.

Officials also moved the white line that divides riders from the front of the bus farther from the driver, MTA bus chief Craig Cipriano said.

Cipriano said the MTA’s Eagle Team civilian officers will be out to enforce fares.

“We are in a full-blown financial crisis, but opening the front door and beginning to collect fares will not be done at the expense of anyone’s health,” Cipriano said.

Express charter buses and “Select Bus Service” routes have continued to collect fares through the pandemic.