A viral video showing a woman trapped by her neck in a newly installed MTA fare gate has injected fresh political heat into New York City’s long-running war over fare evasion.

The clip, filmed at Manhattan’s Broadway–Lafayette Street station, shows a woman in a long black coat wedged between automated turnstile doors that appear to have clamped shut as she rushed to catch a train. An MTA worker can be seen on the opposite side of the gate, struggling to pry the doors open as the woman flails helplessly.

Technicians told the New York Post the woman was likely attempting to slip through the gate behind another commuter — a common fare-beating tactic — when the system’s sensors detected two people and triggered the doors to close on the second entrant.

“This happens when two people try to get through the door together,” one MTA employee said. “The sensor picks that up and closes the door on the second person.”

The incident underscores the growing pains of the MTA’s latest experiment in automated fare enforcement. The agency is piloting the new gate system at select stations as part of a broader, high-dollar effort to stem fare evasion, which officials estimate costs the system hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Freeing someone trapped in the gates, technicians said, requires shutting down the automated mechanism entirely and opening the doors manually — a process not exactly designed for peak-hour panic.

The video landed at an especially sensitive moment for the MTA, which has faced mounting criticism from elected officials, riders, and watchdog groups over both the cost and effectiveness of its anti-fare-beating measures.

The agency has already spent millions installing so-called “fins” and sleeves on traditional turnstiles — hardware that critics say commuters have simply learned to vault, crawl under, or even use as leverage.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)