Section 103 - Transportation prohibited until publication of schedules; rates as fixed to be charged; passes prohibited1. No common carrier subject to the provisions of this chapter shall engage or participate in the transportation of passengers or property, between points within the state, until its schedules of rates, fares and charges shall have been filed and published in accordance with the provisions of this chapter. No common carrier shall charge, demand, collect or receive a greater or less or different compensation for transportation of passengers or property, or for any service in connection therewith, than the rates, fares and charges applicable to such transportation as specified in its schedules filed and in effect at the time; nor shall any such carrier refund or remit in any manner or by any device any portion of the rates, fares, or charges so specified, nor extend to any shipper or person any privileges or facilities in the transportation of passengers or property except such as are regularly and uniformly extended to all persons and corporations under like circumstances.2. No common carrier subject to the provisions of this chapter shall, directly or indirectly, issue or give any free ticket, free pass or free transportation for passengers or property between points within this state, except to its officers, employees, agents, surgeons, physicians, attorneys-at-law, and their families; to ministers of religion, officers and employees of railroad young men's christian associations, incarcerated individuals of hospitals, charitable and eleemosynary institutions and persons exclusively engaged in charitable and eleemosynary work; and to indigent, destitute and homeless persons and to such persons when transported by charitable societies or hospitals, and the necessary agents employed in such transportation; to incarcerated individuals of the national homes or state homes for disabled volunteer soldiers and of soldiers' and sailors' homes, including those about to enter and those returning home after discharge, and boards of managers of such homes; to necessary caretakers of property in transit; to employees of sleeping-car companies, express companies, telegraph and telephone companies doing business along the line of the issuing carrier; to railway mail service employees, post-office inspectors, mail carriers in uniform, customs inspectors and immigration inspectors; to newspaper carriers on trains, baggage agents, witnesses attending any legal investigation or proceeding in which the common carrier is interested, persons injured in accidents or wrecks and physicians and nurses attending such persons; to the carriage free or at reduced rates of persons or property for the United States, state or municipal governments, or of property to or from fairs and expositions for exhibit thereat.3. Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to prohibit the interchange of free or reduced transportation between common carriers of or for their officers, agents, employees, attorneys, surgeons, and their families, and their household and personal effects nor to prohibit any common carrier from carrying passengers or property free, with the object of providing relief in cases of general epidemic, pestilence or other calamitous visitation; not to prohibit any common carrier from transporting persons or property as incident to or connected with contracts for construction, operation or maintenance, and to the extent only that such free transportation is provided for in the contract for such work, nor to prevent any common carrier from transporting children under five years of age free. Provided further, that nothing in this chapter shall prevent the issuance of mileage, excursion, school or family commutation, commutation passenger tickets, half fare tickets for the transportation of children under twelve years of age, any form of reduced rate passenger tickets for persons attending schools or educational institutions pursuant to title two of the "Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944," or any other form of reduced rate passenger tickets, or joint interchangeable mileage tickets, with special privileges as to the amount of free baggage that may be carried under mileage tickets of one thousand miles or more. But before any common carrier subject to the provisions of this chapter shall issue any such mileage, excursion, school or family commutation, commutation, half fare, or any other form of reduced rate passenger tickets, or joint interchangeable mileage ticket, with special privileges as aforesaid, it shall file with the commissioner copies of the tariffs of rates, fares or charges on which such tickets are to be based, together with the specifications of the amount of free baggage permitted to be carried under such joint interchangeable mileage ticket, in the same manner as common carriers are required to do with regard to other rates by this chapter. Nor shall anything in this chapter prevent the issuance of passenger transportation in exchange for advertising space in newspapers at full rates. The term "employees" as used in subdivisions two and three, when referring to employees of a common carrier, shall include furloughed, pensioned and superannuated employees, persons who have become disabled or infirm in the service of any such common carrier, and the remains of a person killed in the employment of a carrier and ex-employees traveling for the purpose of entering the service of any such common carrier; and the term "families" as used in such subdivisions shall include the families of those persons named in this proviso, also the families of persons killed, and the unremarried widow or widower and minor children during minority of persons who died, while in the service of such common carrier.4. Nothing in this section or in any other provision of law shall limit the power of the commissioner to require the sale of, and upon investigation prescribe reasonable and just fares as the maximum to be charged for, commutation, school or family commutation, mileage tickets over railroads or street railroads, joint interchangeable mileage tickets, round trip excursion tickets, or any other form of reduced rate passenger tickets over such railroads or street railroads, including cummutation, mileage, school tickets or any form of reduced rate tickets issued to persons attending schools or educational institutions pursuant to title two of the "Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944"; provided that all special round trip excursion tickets, the sale of which is limited to less than thirty days, except round trip excursion tickets to the state fair and return during the holding thereof, shall be deemed exempt from such regulation by the commissioner.Amended by New York Laws 2021, ch. 322,Sec. 39, eff. 8/2/2021.