This isn't an apt comparison. Late fees are a designed to de-incentivize a certain behavior. We have little data on how effective it is, but we know it has cos

This isn't an apt comparison. Late fees are a designed to de-incentivize a certain behavior. We have little data on how effective it is, but we know it has costs both for implementation and its effects on patrons. Let's take another example- charging people to use public transportation. We could do away with that as well, and some places have done that- finding that the cost of collection came close to overshadowing the income it generated. Late fees are not part of the structure of a library except when they're implemented as such. NYC will now have the opportunity to see if eliminating the late fees will have an impact on patron behavior or overall cost of running the library. NYC's position is that late fees disincentivize the most vulnerable from using the library. If that's true and eliminating the fees would increase usage and not generally harm the income stream, then NYC- the largest municipal library system in the US, will have been an incredible test case.