Most Metro Fare Evasion Cases in D.C. Are Thrown Out

At 7:46 a.m. last Wednesday, Metro Transit Police stopped and cited someone for failing to pay their fare at the Anacostia Metro station in Southeast D.C. About 26 minutes later at the same station, another person was stopped for the same offense. All told, there were 41 such stops that day at stations across D.C.

Every day, MTPD officers stop and write tickets for dozens of people for failing to pay their fare in the Metro system. As of mid-June, the transit agency had recorded 9,745 cases this year, 6,270 of which happened in D.C.

Getting caught skipping out on paying your fare on rail or bus in the city could cost you a $50 fine — but in most cases, that doesn’t happen.

The issue stems from a combination of factors, including how D.C. punishes fare evasion, Metro’s status as an intergovernmental agency that can slip through the city’s administrative cracks, and errors in how Metro’s police officers themselves have issued the citations.

With thousands of citations being summarily dismissed and few people actually subject to the fine for fare evasion, the city’s existing law is essentially toothless.

“I think it’s a big problem,” said Ward 1 Council member Brianne Nadeau. “If people don’t think there will be consequences, if they don’t think the ticket will be enforced, then they don’t feel deterred by the ticketing.”

Metro has been pushing to reduce the number of citations it issues, especially in the city. While there’s no reliable count of how many fare evasion citations have been dismissed, a person with knowledge of the situation told NOTUS that over the past two years, it likely numbers in the thousands.

“I don’t know that there has been a citation that has gone through full adjudication,” said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to comment publicly.

In 2018, the D.C. Council decriminalized fare evasion, bumping it from a crime that fetched a $300 fine and up to 10 days in jail down to a civil offense punishable by a $50 fine. Lawmakers took the step over concerns that a relatively minor transgression could leave someone with a criminal record. (It remains a criminal offense in Maryland and Virginia.)

But in the years that followed, civil citations were rarely handed out — largely because Metro had no means to stop anyone and require them to provide their real name and address. The Council changed that in 2024, giving Metro Transit Police more power to issue the citations, which are supposed to be adjudicated by the D.C. Office of Administrative Hearings, an independent quasi-judicial body that handles tickets issued by city agencies for everything from poor housing conditions to illegal dumping.

Those changes coincided with a significant uptick in fare evasion enforcement on Metro, which included the installation of taller fare gates but also more stops by Metro Transit Police. According to Metro, there were 297 citations for fare evasion on the transit system in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia in 2021, before jumping to 16,181 three years later. According to NBC 4, more than 21,000 fare evasion citations were issued last year.

Randy Clarke, Metro’s general manager, said the uptick in fare evasion enforcement serves various purposes, including helping the agency’s bottom line.

“It creates the revenue we can use to go do stuff,” he said in an interview with Statecraft last year. “I know a lot of people go, ‘No, no, no, everything should be free.’ Well, great — that’s a larger public policy conversation, but right now it’s not. The money that people pay — those user fees — are incredibly important … to run the system, to have frequent, safe, reliable service, but also to have police officers and station managers and gates work.”

But the issuance of fare evasion citations — and the $50 fine they carry — has been rocky in D.C., so much so that OAH has taken to dismissing most of the citations it receives.

That’s largely because of errors in how the citations were written and submitted to OAH by Metro Transit Police officers, but there’s also been disagreement between D.C. and Metro over who should show up at OAH to prosecute the fare evasion cases. (In other cases, the D.C. agency that issues the citation appears at the hearing, which functions like a trial, to justify and defend it.)

None of these problems are new. Late last year, OAH told the Council that it had stopped accepting citations from Metro in mid-December 2024, and more recently added that it had “made the policy decision to spend its limited resources on live cases … rather than processing filings from WMATA just to dismiss them immediately.”

“It’s a known issue,” OAH Chief Judge M. Colleen Currie told Nadeau, whose Council committee oversees the agency, during a hearing earlier this year. (Currie declined a request for comment.)

While Nadeau says that a fix is needed, she’s hesitant to push it herself because the OAH is already overburdened with cases. In 2025, for instance, it saw 44,305 cases filed — a 31% increase over prior the year — and has tens of thousands that remain open because of limited staffing and funding.

Ward 2 Council member Brooke Pinto, who’s pushed to increase enforcement on fare evasion on Metro, said that an important part of the fix starts with Metro itself.

“It is incumbent on WMATA to ensure fare evasion citations are legible, accurate, and legally sufficient so that fares can be enforced,” she said in an interview with NOTUS. “Enforcing the fare is paid for rides on Metro is important for ensuring a sustainable and safe system for everyone.”

A D.C. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the “structural realities and independent nature of the agencies involved have made effective fare enforcement difficult,” but steps are being taken to address the problem.

In a statement, the transit agency said it “remains committed to improving fare compliance through a combination of education, infrastructure improvements, and enforcement. Metro’s investments in modern faregates and fare enforcement contributed to an 82% reduction in rail fare evasion systemwide in 2024.”

In the meantime, the issue may only get more pressing. Last month, Metro said it was increasing enforcement of fare evasion on buses.