BusTalk

[Mr. Linsky]

When Bus Drivers Stopped Giving Change


By A. G. Sulzberger New York Times 09-01-09

Before the MetroCard, before the old two-tone token, when fares were just 20 cents, New York City bus drivers did something that today seems almost remarkable.

They gave change.

For example, in case the self-explanatory nature of the concept has eroded with time, a person could hand a crisp dollar bill to a driver and the driver would return 80 cents in coins.

Until Aug. 31, 1969. In a year of 40th anniversary celebrations — the moon landing, Woodstock, the premiere of “Sesame Street” — it could be easy to overlook the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s move to exact fares on city buses. (Thankfully, though, it is the time of year when editors seem unusually eager to note these anniversaries.)

At the time it was a big deal. City officials praised it for speeding up service and preventing robberies. One driver called it the “best thing” since air-conditioning on buses. And many riders griped about losing the last 5 cents on their quarters, sometimes seriously overreacting to that prospect.

In 1969, the city bus system had about 4,000 buses taking about 1.5 million daily fares totaling about $300,000, according to reports at the time.

The main reason for the fare change was to discourage robberies. Bus robberies increased from 59 in 1966 to 97 in 1967 to 244 in 1968 and 356 through August of 1969 (bus drivers were known to have as much as $75 in fares on them at the end of shifts). The surge prompted New York to join a rapidly growing list of more than 30 cities that had switched to exact fare in the previous year, where their experience in bolting a heavy-duty, locked fare box to the bus floor had pretty much ended robbery attempts.

But transit officials cited other benefits: faster rides, less risk of fare money “disappearing” and fewer accidents caused by distracted drivers.

“This is the best thing that’s happened, other than the air-conditioned buses,” Mario Contaldi, a 52-year-old driver, told The Times. “I’ll tell you, the attitude of the public is very good — exceptional.”

There were hiccups. Within hours of the change, Norman Simington, a bus driver from Queens, was held up at gunpoint by two men who had apparently not been following the transportation authority’s publicity campaign. After informing the two robbers that the fares were locked and inaccessible in the sealed coin box bolted to the bus floor, he gave them $6 of his own money.

Complaints about the lack of change were far more common, not that transit officials were particularly sympathetic. “People must have 10 cents in exact change to use a public telephone,” a transit authority spokesman told the Times in the weeks leading up the change. “It’s no more unreasonable to expect them to have exact change when they get on the bus.”

Yet unreasonable was exactly what Arthur Burroughs, a 27-year-old Brooklyn resident, called the new policy shortly after it went into effect. Boarding a bus, he demanded a nickel back for his quarter and then refused to get off the bus when the driver said he could no longer provide change. He was arrested on a “fare beat” charge.

His lawyer — Gloria Goldstein, who recently retired from the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court — said at the first court hearing that she doubted whether the change was “legal or constitutional.”

The case spent more than a decade in criminal and civil court. After her promotion to the bench, Ms. Goldstein passed the case to her son, Mark Goldstein, who was just out of law school. “It was a weird case,” he said recently.

The charges of trying to dodge the fare were ultimately dropped, he said. Mr. Burroughs, who had been fired amid the publicity, filed a wrongful arrest suit, Mr. Goldstein said, and was awarded $75,000 in damages by a jury, but the appellate division overruled the judgment. His best guess was that the whole thing wrapped up in 1982.

Mr. Goldstein, now 51, still is surprised at all the attention the case garnered. “They made it sound like he was leading a fare revolution,” he said. “He wasn’t. He was just a guy who had a quarter and wanted change for a quarter.”

Photos courtesy of New York Times
Edward Hausner is the pictured driver.

BTW; is that a 'Short Line' New Look Suburban in the background of picture number three?

Mr. Linsky - Green Bus Lines, Inc., Jamaica, NY

[Q65A]

Nice post, Mr. Linsky!
I remember back in the late 1960's (prior to the institution of the exact far policy) when a B22 bus was robbed in Bed Stuy. The armed robber apparently tried to assault the B/O while the bus was in motion. The poor B/O apparently was so shaken that he attempted a high speed turn (that the Daily News described as having taken place "on two wheels").
Going the exact fare route (plus equipping buses with 2-way radios and hoodlum lights) probably helped prevent many similar assaults.
Buses are required to operate 24/7 through some very tough neighborhoods (ironically in which the honest residents truly depend on mass transit for mobility) so they need all the help that they can get.

[Catfish 44]

Fantastic post Mr. Linsky!