With the Metropolitan Transportation Authority losing more than a million dollars a week to farebeating, some of the agency's board members are speaking out against a City Council proposal to decriminalize turnstile-jumping. On this issue, the MTA's is finding some powerful allies on its side. NY1’s Jose Martinez filed this report.

You're supposed pass through the turnstiles—not jump over them.

Now, as the City Council weighs whether to decriminalize offenses like fare-beating, it's meeting resistance from some Metropolitan Transportation Authority board members who warn that such a move could return the subways to the era of high crime and grafitti.

"We don't want to do back to a period of time where people don't feel safe in the system," says MTA board member Allen Cappelli.

Even as the number of felonies keeps falling in the subway system—plunging 16 percent in the first quarter of the year—MTA board members say they don't want to give an inch on farebeating.

"In the event you decriminalize it, you're encouraging people to do the kind of misconduct that leads to a deterioration of a civilized society and of a city. The second is, it costs revenue,"says board member Charles Moerdler.

The MTA says it lost $50 million in 2014 to turnstile jumpers—and nearly as much to fare beaters on buses.

That's more than 100,000 free rides a day—money the MTA desperately needs.

"We are operating on such a thin margin these days that we don't want to see that the issue is trivialized," says Cappelli.

In the past two days, many key decision-makers have agreed.

The state's chief judge, Jonathan Lipmann, said that he favors decriminalizing some lower-level offenses, but not farebeating. On that front, at least, he finds himself in league with Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and Mayor Bill de Blasio.

In an interview with NY1's Errol Louis on Tuesday, the mayor drew a hard line on farebeating.

"Fare evasion has historically been an offense where a number of the people who were intercepted proved to have a criminal history, and in many cases a weapon on them or an outstanding warrant," de Blasio said.

So take it easy, MTA Board Member.

"What you're doing is giving them a trip to Utopia and that's inappropriate," Moerdler said.

There will be no free rides to Utopia or anywhere else, for now.