BART is looking at a new solution to the widespread fare evasion problem that siphons off up to $25 million a year: replacing the orange, pie-wedge gates that have defined the system for decades.

It’s not an easy fix. Swapping 600 consoles for sturdier versions would cost an estimated $150 million to $200 million, officials said, and may change the open, roomy feel of the stations.

But it shows just how far the transit agency might have to go to solve an epidemic that its general manager links to crime and panhandling — and that some have blamed for a recent string of violent attacks.

“We have fare gates that are fairly easy to push open, so it’s on us to get a different set of fare gates,” BART General Manager Grace Crunican said during a recent meeting with The Chronicle’s editorial board.

She described the gate overhaul that BART is studying as part of a long-term strategy to change station environments and restore riders’ trust. Separately, BART is upping its police presence and trying to block the other hatches that people use to sneak on board.

Asked if the Bay Area transit system will soon adopt the prison-like aesthetic of a New York subway to keep thousands of people a month from hopping, wiggling or gliding into the system without paying, Crunican flinched.

“I don’t know yet,” she said.

What is clear is that there are significant challenges ahead. The 600 stiles are electronically tied to BART’s Clipper system, and the contractor, Cubic Transportation Systems, has proprietary ownership over the software. BART isn’t allowed to modify the gates without paying a hefty fee.

So the agency will probably buy a new batch of gates with open software that BART engineers can upgrade themselves. Officials are also seeking ways to cordon the outside elevators that deliver customers into the paid area and shut the swinging side “service” doors popular with fare cheats.

“We’re trying to knock them out one by one,” BART’s assistant general manager for operations, Paul Oversier, said of the system’s vulnerabilities.

Not every solution has worked. Two years ago the agency tried to bolt some side doors shut, but San Francisco fire inspectors intervened, citing fire code violations.

In the short term, BART has hired inspectors to roam the trains and stand at elevators or stairwells, issuing citations to those who haven’t paid. Those inspection workers cost BART about $740,000 a year, and only a small percentage of people cited pay their fines.

“What we can do in the short term is have officers at the gates,” Crunican said, adding that the goal is to promote “the ethic of paying up.”

BART officials have yet to determine whether the fare enforcement teams that began in March are inhibiting people from cheating the system. They’re collecting that data from citations and from surveillance cameras that count people creeping through the side gates. Agency staff will present the results to the Board of Directors in September.

Officials hope that by chipping away at fare evasion they can also fend off other problems, such as robberies, assaults, aggressive panhandling, open-air drug use and homeless people sleeping on the trains.

“They’re tied together,” Crunican said.

BART recently came under a microscope after a string of violent incidents, including the July 22 slaying of 18-year-old Nia Wilson. But complaints about other quality-of-life issues are also ticking up, as the regional homelessness and opioid crises seep into the Bay Area’s transit systems.

Over the past two years, BART has struggled to shield its passengers from societal despair. The agency is trying various solutions: glass-and-metal canopies to keep people from throwing garbage on BART escalators in downtown San Francisco; extra cleanings and beefed-up police patrols to curb injection drug use at Civic Center; increased police staffing throughout the system trust after Wilson’s killing.

This was not the world that transportation planners envisioned when they designed BART in the 1960s, said board director Joel Keller, who represents eastern Contra Costa County.

“They wanted cloth seats, carpets on the floor, a single seat for everyone,” Keller said. “They thought you could just put elevators outside the gates and people would come back and pay. They weren’t worried about people skipping fares.”

Likening the transit system’s design to “a candy store with no protections,” Keller urged BART to expand the walls and railings around stations and enact policies to keep intruders out. He supports a ban on panhandling that Crunican proposed this month. It’s elicited a spirited debate at the board.

So far BART has allocated $4.1 million to build structural barriers intended to thwart fare beaters. It moved swinging service gates at Embarcadero closer to station agent booths, put up glass panes at Downtown Berkeley, raised a metal fence at Civic Center and extended the paid area at South Hayward to encompass the elevator.

Although these walls and railings create a partial cocoon around the station platforms, they haven’t stopped people from slipping through. On Thursday morning, four people jumped over or ducked under the stiles at Civic Center’s Market and Seventh Street entrance between 10:30 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. Several others streamed through the emergency gates.

“That fence doesn’t work a hundred percent,” said 63-year-old Mission District resident Adrián Taylor, pointing over his shoulder at the tall steel bars at Civic Center. Taylor said he sees a lot of people avoid paying for tickets by pushing through the fare gates, or squeezing behind another rider before they close.

But Thia Calloway said she likes BART’s moderate and incremental station-hardening.

“It goes with the decor,” said Calloway, 63, who grew up in the Excelsior but now lives in New York, where the subway turnstiles are thick blocks of steel, and the bars on the revolving-door exits come together like interlocking teeth.

BART may evaluate the New York subway’s design, and that of other metro transit systems, during the fare gate study.

“There isn’t any specific transit system that we’re considering as a model,” said spokeswoman Alicia Trost, adding that BART will take aesthetics into consideration.

BART staff will present their findings to the board next spring.

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan