Audit faults MBTA for CharlieCard misuse by transit ambassadors

MBTA transit ambassador at work pre-COVID. (CommonWealth Beacon file photo)

BOSTON — The MBTA knew as early as 2019 that some of its transit ambassadors were using agency-issued CharlieCards for personal use, but the transit authority has failed to address the problem, according to a new state audit.

The ambassadors, who work for a private contractor that operates under the name Block By Block, help passengers buy tickets and navigate stations and also serve as the T’s eyes and ears monitoring safety hazards and maintenance needs inside the subway system.

“The MBTA should hold Block By Block accountable for inappropriate use of these cards,” said the report from Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s office.

The report also found that the T could not verify that ambassadors were fully trained before assuming their posts and that spot checks of station infrastructure (elevators, escalators, and other equipment) were not being conducted at agreed-upon twice-per-hour intervals.

The audit — covering the two-year period from January 1, 2021, to December 31, 2022 – was released on Sunday, which is unusual. A spokesman for the auditor’s office said the audit was released over the weekend to reduce overlap with another audit or audits scheduled to be released this week.

According to the audit, the problem of ambassadors abusing T passes first surfaced in April 2019, when the MBTA decided to replace CharlieCards assigned to specific stations with passes assigned to individual transit ambassadors.

In a communication at the time to transit ambassadors and Block By Block, the T said the change was needed because there had been a significant increase in what it called “courtesy taps” with the CharlieCards and not all taps were being reported. The communication also reiterated that the CharlieCards were to be used for work only and their use would be closely monitored.

Three months later, the MBTA shifted gears and went back to the system of assigning cards to stations and not individuals, in part because high turnover of transit ambassadors made it difficult to track card usage.

Nevertheless, the audit said, the three-month experiment “revealed signs of misuse of the courtesy taps (e.g., BBB employees letting people in for free and cards being used at locations not covered by those employees).”

At the end of the two-year audit period on December 31, 2022, the problem had not gone away. The audit said the station-based cards were used for more than 2.5 million taps over the two years, but only 669,547, or 27 percent, were reported by transit ambassadors along with specific reasons for the taps.

“Failure to properly record courtesy taps, at a rate of $2.40 per transaction, increases the risk for significant lost revenue,” the audit said. “Our analysis also identified 83,990 instances where these fare access cards were used at different MBTA locations than the ones where the cards were assigned. In 445 of these instances, the fare access cards were used on an MBTA bus, indicating a high probability that the card was used for personal use.”

Transit ambassadors reported that they used their passes to let riders into the subway system in many instances because of problems with passenger gates, faulty fare passes, and mixups involving riders unfamiliar with the system.

But the cards were also used to let in members of the military (48,038 taps), customers experiencing homelessness (75,532 taps), customers who didn’t have enough money for the fare (92,492 taps), and for station checks (113,295).

The audit included a response from the MBTA, which disputed the suggestion that ambassadors were tapping in customers and costing the T significant fare revenue.. The T said many of the taps not reported by ambassadors were related to infrastructure checks, mostly for elevator inspections. The agency also said the CharlieCards are secured in station booths and instances where passes are being used “at an abnormally high rate” are investigated by the T’s fraud department.

The audit, however, said the T’s deputy director of fraud detection and analytics revealed that his team does not monitor courtesy taps. The audit also said on-site monitoring of ambassadors indicated the passes are not confined to a station booth but typically carried by the ambassadors themselves.

The audit urged the T to set a specific threshold for courtesy taps that, if exceeded, would trigger an investigation.

“It is also important to investigate instances that exceed the established threshold or when station-assigned fare access cards are used at locations other than where they are assigned,” the audit said. “For example, as part of our data analysis, we noted that on December 31, 2022, one station-assigned fare access card was used 40 times at the Orient Heights station when it was assigned to the Wood Island station. The use of this pass 40 times in one day in a station where it was not assigned—and certainly not secured in the station booth—and the MBTA’s response to this issue indicates a lack of monitoring and control and a lack of awareness by MBTA management about how its operations are being conducted.”

This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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