From today’s Times, published after bus driver Edwin Thomas was stabbed to death by a passenger who refused to pay the fare:

There is one bus route on which drivers do not have to worry about
fare beaters: the Bx12 Select Bus Route, which runs along Pelham
Parkway and Fordham Road in the Bronx and West 207th Street in Upper
Manhattan.

On that route, riders now pay at curbside machines
before boarding. The machines give riders receipts that they must show,
if asked, to inspectors making random checks on the buses.

The
system, which is meant to speed travel by cutting the time it takes for
riders to board, frees drivers from having to worry about who has paid
and who has not. Drivers on the route say the system greatly lessens
the stress of the job.