The young couple glides through the fare collection gate at Forest Hills Station in perfect synch, boy right behind girl, not missing a beat, as if they're dirty dancing on a nightclub floor.

In fact, they've just taken the subway system on a two-for-the-price-of-one ride, piggybacking their trip out of Jamaica Plain on a single $1.25 Charlie Ticket they fed into a machine.

Just like that, the pair has pierced a piece of the MBTA's new automated fare-collection setup, a $203 million venture that's being hyped so heavily, you'd think it was as impenetrable as Fort Knox.

``Automated Fare Collection," the T declared in one public presentation, will mean ``fare compliance and fare equity."

By the time the new mode is fully implemented, which is slated for the end of the year, it may well turn out to be an improvement over the porous token-turnstile method it's replacing.

But for now, one would have to be Polyphemus, the mythical cyclops, not to notice the breaches in the state-of-the-art fare-collection operation. That's the message from evaders questioned in interviews, along with accounts of commuters reporting to blogs and online discussion groups, plus on-site observations by City Weekly.

And with a crackdown on evasion linked to a proposed increase in fares -- we'll do our part to raise funds for financially strapped mass transit, the MBTA is saying to the public, if you do yours -- critics are in no mood to cut the T any slack on fare hackers. That was one of the main selling points of the automated system, along with generating other revenue, quickness, convenience and customer service.

``I don't have any confidence in the new system," says Mark Richards , 51, editor of the local blog, BadTransit , referring to the T's ability to block fare evaders. ``It may be better on paper, it may work in other places. . . . Whatever's put in the hands of this authority . . . it's a nonworking situation."

But T officials say it's a new day. And while they say it's too early to cite statistics to support their point, they say they have no doubt that the new system is already proving harder for fare dodgers to penetrate.

With muscular open-and-shutting gates replacing arthritic turnstiles; with former token sellers now out of their booths and walking the station floors; with uniformed and undercover cops better able to pinpoint trouble spots on the subway beat; with passes that were easy to hand-off to friends replaced by stored-value ducats, or ones with built-in time-sensitive antifraud safeguards that prevent them from being passed around; and with closed-circuit TV cameras focused on fare-taking machines, T officials believe they are primed to protect the MBTA from toll skippers.

``There's no debating the new system is cutting down on fare evasion," says Joe Pesaturo , a T spokesman.

On a manic weekday morning, two college students wearing skirts and carrying paperbacks traipse through the Forest Hills fare gate on one ticket. They look as though they've done this before, which they have.

As they skitter across the gate, a series of buzzers goes off, a signal that someone has not paid. They don't flinch. Nor do T staffers present.

The hum of the commuter crowd at the system's ninth-busiest subway station is so loud, and the T workers evidently so preoccupied with other duties, that the buzzers fall on deaf ears, like a fire alarm going off in a dorm.

``Nobody does anything," says one of the evaders, Cassie Madden , 19, of Dedham, a sophomore at UMass-Boston. ``It's ridiculously easy."

Why do they sneak in?

``Because we can," says her friend Lauren Belmonte, 19, of West Roxbury, a sophomore at Bridgewater State College.

``A dollar-twenty-five adds up," Madden says.

Belmonte says she chuckled when she first saw the new barriers, which debuted last year, and, for safety reasons, are meant to give people enough time to get through without getting physically caught in the gates.

``It doesn't take a genius to figure out the system," Belmonte says.

Madden says she and several friends once passed through the gates like a convoy, chugging along on one Charlie ticket.

``We planned it out," she says.

Belmonte says she finds the buff new T entryways easier to violate than the old rickety ones.

``Ducking under the turnstiles," she says, ``is a lot more obvious than just nonchalantly walking through."

Still, the T remains steadfast that it is taking a hard line on cheaters. The goal? ``Collect every dime we're owed," Pesaturo says.

With only 29 subway stations converted to automated fare collection thus far, Pesaturo says the T wants to wait until all 68 are on line before saying how much money is being saved through its fare-evasion clampdown.

But even then, the numbers figure to be squishy. While T officials say the new automated system can precisely calculate losses by comparing revenue with ridership, they say the old system was not so adept at tracking, and so comparable numbers from previous years are only estimates.

Thus, Pesaturo cites the industry ``leakage" standard of 3 to 6 percent of revenue when asked how much the T has previously lost to fare evasion, putting it at between $4 and $9 million in fiscal year 2006 on the subway lines alone.

Nevertheless, that hasn't stopped the T from already declaring its fare-evasion tightening an unequivocal success.

Automated fare collection conversions ``have resulted in a decrease in fare evasion " the T announced in an informational piece on the proposed fare increase that was widely circulated this spring.

The T says it is banking on proposed legislation to further enhance its enforcement efforts. Now wending its way through the State House, the legislation would make it easier for T personnel, as well as transit police, to trigger fines against fare evaders ranging from $15 for a first-timer to $250 for a third offense.

Currently, the T says, the basic penalty for fare evaders amounts to only this: Telling them to pay up. Ultimately, if they refuse to pay or leave, they can be arrested for trespassing. T police say they also check for outstanding warrants.

To back their advertised claims that fare-evasion has been muted, T officials cite stories -- from the bad old days and from the new frontier.

``We have enough anecdotal evidence," Pesaturo says.

But critics say they want hard proof.

``It's PR," says Richards. ``Anecdotal is not acceptable, not for $200 million."

Nevertheless, the T is happy to relate tales of what a sieve the old system was -- of commuters effortlessly shimmying through turnstiles, or flashing bogus passes, or regularly arriving without money, so certain were they that they'd get in.

Things used to be so lax, T officials imply, that the sturdier automated fare collection structure can't help but be better in nabbing toll weasels.

And for those able to elude all the buzzers and station workers and transit cops, T officials say their closed-circuit eyes in the sky provide a great backup. When someone smashed the fare gates at the World Trade Center station in April, T officials say they used an image from a recorded televised transmission to hunt down the perpetrator on his regular commute, press charges, and hit him with a bill for $2,100. The T says he agreed to pay the tab last week.

City Weekly recently sat in on a surveillance session, during which a T official in contact with workers on the ground via two-way radio eyeballed fare gates at several subway stations beamed in on closed-circuit TV. During a two-hour stretch, T workers stopped several would-be fare scofflaws and made them pay, including a man in a wheelchair.

To be sure, some riders have noticed the efforts.

``I have not seen a single fare evader yet," one commuter wrote in an online discussion group last month. ``With the turnstiles, I frequently saw people bend them halfway back and slide through, or duck underneath."

Yet others have spotted the cracks in the system, and relayed them to blogs, or to discussion groups, or to the press.

``I have seen people cheat the new system already," another commuter wrote online. ``One person stands on the inside of the new gates and waves his, or her, hand over the sensors. This tricks the gate sensor into thinking that someone is leaving and anyone can walk through. I saw a group of five kids do this last week at Forest Hills. No alarms sounded."

One man wrote the Globe saying he's seen people at the Kendall-MIT stop slink in behind paying customers. Others have reported buzzers going off even when fares are paid, increasing their chances of being ignored, and gates temporarily stuck open as nonpayers horded through.

Meanwhile, a City Weekly reporter on assignment strolled into the Savin Hill Station from the unmanned South Sydney Street side, easily entering without paying as a man exited. The buzzers went off, but nobody stopped him before he sauntered to his train. (He later reimbursed the T $1.25.)

``It's anecdote vs. anecdote at this point," says Mike Mennonno , 36-year-old Dorchester author of the blog T-Rage.

And as the urban tales about how to beat the system inevitably rise, critics say, so will the angst of the fare-paying public, who may be looking at a $1.70 subway ride come January. For the fare beaters not only poke holes in T security, critics say, but in T credibility.

Mennonno predicts that one of the questions of the day directed at the T will be: ``Why are we really paying more for something like this?"

Globe staffer Mac Daniel contributed to this report. Ric Kahn can be reached at rkahn@globe.com

Does the fare system work?

What do you think of the MBTA's new fare-collection system? More efficient or less? Is it stopping cheaters? Send your response to City Weekly at ciweek@globe.com. Include your name, a daytime phone number, and your neighborhood or community. Responses may be edited for length and grammar.