The new gates have 55-inch tall doors and are made of polycarbonate.

/ WMATA

After more than half a year of testing, Metro has finalized a taller faregate design that will roll out across the entire rail system in the coming year. The goal is to reduce fare evasion, which costs the agency about $40 million a year.

The 55-inch high (about half the height of the average basketball hoop) gates were put in at Fort Totten station overnight Monday. They are made of polycarbonate, which is about 200 times stronger than glass, and are designed to be harder to push through.

Metro says it will be setting up the new gates at Pentagon City next. By early fall, they will be at eight more stations: Bethesda, Vienna, Mt. Vernon Sq, Addison Rd, Congress Heights, Wheaton, Federal Center SW, and Court House stations. Metro will then retrofit the gates for all remaining stations.

The final design for the Fort Totten gates followed tests of several different prototypes in recent months, including one with 48-inch tall doors. Metro General Manager and Chief Executive Officer Randy Clarke said there has already been a reduction in fare evasion this year and that the taller gates will be “more of a deterrent.”

“The bottom line is fare evasion is not okay, and we will continue our efforts to ensure everyone is respecting the community’s system and each other,” Clarke said in a statement.

In addition to installing higher faregates, Metro will also be raising fencing and emergency gates, which people also jump over to evade fares. In November, Metro also began increasing police presence in stations and issuing fare evasion tickets, fining violators $50 in D.C. and $100 in Maryland and Virginia. (That lower fine in D.C. — where most fare evasions occur — is due to a local 2018 law decriminalizing fare evasion. In Maryland and Virginia, fare evasion remains a criminal offense.)

Last year, Metro finished installing new faregates across all 97 stations, spending $70 million to replace faregates that had been in place since the ‘90s. Those gates have sensors – which beep when someone jumps over – but the doors on the gates are  much lower, at about 28 inches tall, not even waist height for the average person. Officials were reluctant at the time to install taller gates due to aesthetic concerns.

But raising the gates became a priority with Clarke at the helm, especially as Metro grapples with a historic $750 million deficit this year. Metro has projected that retrofitting all the gates would cost approximately $35 to $40 million and take about 15 months.

The upgrades at the Fort Totten station, however, did not stop more determined fare evaders from jumping the gates Tuesday morning.

 

Police also appeared to put a person who evaded the fare in handcuffs at the station. A spokesperson for Metro confirmed that the Metro Transit Police Department made one arrest at the station Tuesday for “unlawful entry.”

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