BART’s new fare inspection program aims to scare scofflaws who sneak a free ride on the system into paying. But chances are most fare cheats won’t get caught.

Six community service officers will work as fare inspectors across a system that runs 20 hours daily carrying an average of 420,000 passengers into and out of 46 stations on up to 62 trains.

“My gut feeling is that it’s not enough, but we’re just starting out,” said BART Police Chief Carlos Rojas. “We’ll see what progress we can make. We’d like to get voluntary compliance, but we know there are people who won’t pay their fair share.”

Fare inspectors likely will work in teams of two. Where and when they’ll be deployed hasn’t been determined but they’ll be required to go from one person to the next in the areas they work, skipping no one and recording every encounter on a body camera. Sworn police officers won’t be part of the regular fare inspection squads, Rojas said, though they’ll have the authority to act on their own to demand passengers prove they’ve paid.

Fare inspections are one piece of BART’s three-part strategy to reduce an out-of-control fare evasion problem estimated to cost the agency $25 million a year. In addition to ticket inspections, BART police are conducting targeted enforcement campaigns at the fare gates of troublesome stations. Officials also are making physical changes to make it more difficult to sneak into stations: building higher barriers, moving elevator access inside gated areas and closing some swinging gates.

Although the board just approved the so-called proof-of-payment system, it had authorized hiring seven employees — six community service officers and a police administrative specialist — to staff the program in its June budget.

The workers will cost the district $740,748 a year. The electronic fare readers they’ll use to check Clipper cards and paper tickets, and other equipment, will cost about $50,000.

Critics, including director Debora Allen, question whether BART is getting its money’s worth. She voted for the fare inspections but said she was disappointed that the enforcement strategy “didn’t have a little more teeth.”

Ordinances adopted by the board Thursday call for BART police and community service officers to issue two civil citations — similar to parking tickets — to adult evaders during a rolling 12-month period. Any subsequent citations within that time frame will be considered criminal violations. Youths aged 5 to 17 will receive only civil citations in keeping with a state law that took effect this year.

Initially, the fines will be $75 for adults and $55 for youth. The ordinances, however, allow fines as high as $120 for adults and $60 for minors.

Under California law, community service officers can write the civil citations, but only police officers can write criminal citations, so fare inspectors would need to summon a police officer to ticket a serial offender.

Allen expressed skepticism that the fare inspections would have a significant impact on fare evasion. She speculated that some occasional cheats could be prompted to pay rather than risk a ticket, “but chronic fare evaders, it’s not going to affect them.”

She said the money would be better spent on replacing the all-too permeable fare gates with something tougher to sneak through.

Some riders also doubted the cost-effectiveness of the approach.

“Randomly questioning or checking riders for proof of payment and fining the evaders seems unlikely, potentially contentious, and, well, ridiculous,” wrote Robert O’Brien, in an email to The Chronicle. “Fining someone $100-200 for evading $40 a week of fares for years … really?”

But Rojas said the program is not about cost recovery.

“It’s really about everyone paying their fair share,” he said, “so we can make BART as clean and safe as possible.”

Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email:

mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @ctuan