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The era of subway gate jumping could soon be over. By this fall, 20 stations across the New York City subway system will begin testing new gate systems that aim to make it all but impossible for someone to get through the gate to the subway platform without paying a fare. This week, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) announced the planned piloting of four gate control systems as part of its effort to crack down on fare evasion in the subway system. The four systems will be installed in five stations each across the MTA’s subway network to test their effectiveness. In contrast to the conventional turnstile gates seen in many subway stations, the MTA’s subway gates pilots are generally larger and more akin to sliding or swinging doors, making them more difficult to climb over or sneak under. Provided by vendors Conduent, Cubic, Scheidt & Bachmann, and STraffic, some may be familiar from other transit systems around the world, or security areas in airports. These off-the-shelf gate systems are vying for their chunk of the $1.1 billion the MTA has budgeted for improving fare gates at 150 stations over the next five years. [Photo: MTA] The MTA’s subway gate pilot program is a calculated investment, which the agency sees as a way of increasing revenue and improving service. About 40% of the MTA’s operating budget comes from fares and tolls, and it sees reducing gate jumping as a way of bumping that number even higher. Previous investments seems to have worked. The agency reports that “multiple anti-fare evasion strategies” have helped total fare revenue rise to $5 billion in 2024, an increase of $322 million from the year before. “We will continue to use all the tools at our disposalincluding increased enforcement efforts and new infrastructureto prevent fare evasion, hold perpetrators accountable and keep these numbers trending in the right direction,” said New York Governor Kathy Hochul in a statement. [Photo: MTA] How will the new gates work? These approaches vary from station to station. About 200 stations have implemented guards to monitor gates, and the MTA reports that fare evasion is down 36% in these stations. Some turnstiles have even been retrofitted with “sleeves” and “fins”add-on attachments that make them harder to climb on and over. Turnstiles are also being retrofitting to prevent “backcocking,” or pulling them back just enough to create space for some people to squeeze through. Adapting the existing infrastructure has contributed to the reduction in fare evasion, but the MTA sees an opportunity to do more with its new gate pilot program. “For the last two years, we’ve been attacking fare and toll evasion from all angles hardening the system against fare beaters, simplifying fare payment, raising awareness about discounted fares and, yes, doing more enforcement,” says MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber. “Now those efforts are yielding positive results that will grow even more with the new modern fare gates that are coming.”
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E-Commerce
SAG-AFTRA is expanding its reach into the influencer economy. In late April, the unions board unanimously voted to establish a new influencer committee, appointing New York-based lifestyle influencer Patrick Janelle as chair. SAG-AFTRAs involvement with influencers isnt new. In 2021, the union introduced an influencer agreement and waiver to cover branded content workan initiative that thousands of members have used. While that agreement marked a major step forward, it notably excluded original creative content, which remains the core of many creators livelihoods. It really became clear that if were going to continue to expand, and especially outside of the branded content space, we needed to have a formal structure in the union so that members who do this work could come together and give us guidance and leadership, SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland told The Hollywood Reporter. Online content creation is a fast-growing but still loosely regulated industry. Since 2020, the number of full-time content creators in the U.S. has surged from 200,000 to 1.5 million in 2024, according to Axios. Despite this growth, pay structures and content guidelines vary significantly across platformsfrom Instagram Reels to long-form YouTube podcasts. To successfully advocate for creators across the board, the new committee plans to engage voices from all major platforms. The goal of this committee is to provide the union with necessary guidance and feedback from the creator’s perspective as SAG-AFTRA continues its efforts to assist creators in their pursuit of stable, safe, sustainable careers, Janelle posted to LinkedIn. As a SAG-AFTRA member, I’m honored and excited to be stepping up and representing my fellow creators and the industry at large. SAG-AFTRA doesnt have a clear count of how many of its 160,000 members are influencers, but Crabtree-Ireland points to the 2023 actors strike as a moment of convergence. Influencers found themselves in a gray area, as the union warned that any nonmember who took work with struck companies during the strike would be barred from future membership. Many chose solidarity over a paycheck, something the union now wants to show in return. During the theatrical strike, creators of influencers stepped up in big ways to stand by our members on strike, Crabtree-Ireland told The Hollywood Reporter. I think that just really cemented for us the obvious connection and nexus there.
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E-Commerce
For one exhilarating moment, it sounded like Amazon was about to make a gutsy pro-consumer move. On Tuesday, Punchbowl News reported that the company would soon show how much Trumps tariffs are adding to the price of each product by specifying it right next to the products total listed price. That act of transparency would have been reminiscent of past precedent-shattering Amazon initiatives such as its 1995 introduction of user-written reviewsincluding ones so stinging as to drive customers away from a product. And then Trump 2.0 reality set in. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt attacked the idea of tariff disclosure as hostile and political, another confirmation that Trumps oft-expressed contention that American consumers wouldnt bear the cost of higher tariffs never jibed with basic economics. An Amazon spokesperson claimed the notion had been under consideration only for the companys Temu-like Amazon Haul bargain store and was not going to happen. Trump himself chimed in to say he had called Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who solved the problem very quickly and he did the right thing. To be fair, its unlikely that Amazon could have introduced anything like a universal tariff line item for the 600 million-plus products in its online store. It only designs a few devices itself, giving it the requisite intimate knowledge of their supply chain. Mostly, the company is a reseller, and more than half of the transactions on its site are third-party sales it facilitates for other merchants. It surely doesnt know how much tariffs added to the cost of every random HDTV it sellsand if it did, presidential whim might change the math from day to day. Still, even if Amazon breaking out tariffs at the point of purchase turned out to be a fleeting fantasy, it was an instructive mental exercisemaybe even a powerful idea thats tough to unimagine once youve thought about it. Why should anyone care about the percentage of an items price represented by tariffsa form of taxation most of us have cheerfully ignored until recently, even though it has a 236-year history in the U.S.? First of all, a reliable accounting would counter misinformation spread by the president. Hes backpedaled some on his past stance that tariffs only burden manufacturers in other countries. However, absent dramatic developments such as iPhones suddenly going for $2,000, it may be tough to tell exactly what his increases are doing to our purchasing power. Explaining it on an item-by-item basis would help. But the impact of tariffs on my own wallet is just one reason why I crave hard facts. Trumps interpretation of global tradethat China is ripping off the U.S. because we buy more stuff from it than it buys from usis plainly ridiculous. His attempt to use tariffs to spark a renaissance in American manufacturing is already backfiring, given that factories here need parts produced elsewhere, and other countries are retaliating with stiffer tariffs on U.S. products. (Fun fact: A Corning plant in Harrrodsburg, Kentucky, exports the Gorilla Glass pervasive in phones and other devices.) All of this, I already know. Yet except for a few high-profile items like the iPhonewhose production Apple may ramp up in India to avoid tariffs on Chinese importsI dont claim to understand much about the endlessly complex tales behind the products I buy. The tariff backstory for individual purchases were considering making is arguably a more valuable data point than a superficial, potentially misleading Made in the U.S.A. or Made in China label. It would be a visceral reminder of how fundamentally connected the world economy is. Globalists and isolationists alike would get something out of it. Its not just tariffs. The more I ponder the situation, the less informed I feel as a consumer. I tend to take the Nutrition Facts information box on packaged foods for granted and rarely dig any deeper than the figures on calories and fat. But its hard to imagine life without that box. When I refreshed my memory about its history, I was startled to learn it came into existence only a little over 30 years ago, mandated by a 1990 bill signed by President George H. W. Bush. Before that, food makers got to choose what they disclosedor didntabout the products they sold. An equivalent box for other goods would make us all smarter. Theres plenty of fodder beyond tariffs: other taxes, product recalls, warranty information, carbon footprint, and on and on. In the unlikely event that a Nutrition Facts for Everything bill passes Trumps desk, hes not ging to sign it, so Im filing the idea away for future reference. In the meantime, I hope there are merchants out there willing to post tariff numbers, at least for certain products. Countless companies have spent this entire century trying to keep up with Amazon, often by copying its innovations. Heres a rare chance for them to gain an edge on the e-commerce behemoth by going where it wont. Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on FastCompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard. 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