MTA Proposes Second Fare Hike

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced on July 23 that it will seek a fare and toll hike to reduce a $900 million budget deficit.

The proposal, which included no specifics on the hike but called for an 8 percent increase in revenue, was part of the preliminary 2009 financial plan on which the MTA board will vote in December. If approved, the new hike would take effect in July 2009.

The MTA raised the price of unlimited MetroCards and lowered the pay-per-ride MetroCard bonus value from 20 percent to 15 percent just four months ago, in March.

Gene Russianoff, staff attorney for the Straphangers Campaign, said that New Yorkers are already struggling with increased living costs and fuel prices.

“I’m not accusing the MTA of being misleading about its finances,” Russianoff said. “It has serious financial problems which mirror the larger economy.”

But Russianoff emphasized that the government, not just the riders, should help eliminate the MTA's debt. He said his opinion hinges on “whether riders are being asked to hold the bag with no help from Albany or City Hall.”

"The ultimate problem is that the MTA's finances are a mess, because the agency has taken on so much debt," said Wiley Norvell, communications director for the group Transit Alternatives. "It incurs debt because the city and state don’t give public transit the subsidy that it requires. We’re in favor of the MTA balancing its books, but by and large, we don’t think that should be carried on the backs of riders."

The MTA defended its proposal by referring to its debt, a poor real estate market that has led to a decrease in tax revenue, and high fuel costs. Spokesperson Aaron Donovan said that despite an increased number of riders, money has been lost due to fewer vehicles traveling over city-owned bridges and tolls.

Russianoff called on Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor David Paterson, CC ’77, to provide additional funding for transit and mitigate or reduce the need for a fare hike.

“Either their leadership will result in keeping the system whole, fares affordable, and service decent, or it will fail us all,” Russianoff said.

Bloomberg and Paterson both criticized the hike.

“This just cannot become the new way that the MTA solves problems—every time there is an issue, pass along the increase,” Paterson said at a press conference.

Last spring, he set up a panel of experts, headed by former MTA chairman Richard Ravich, to address the MTA’s financial situation.

In April, the MTA canceled a number of service upgrades—including increased evening service on the 1 line—that it had promised in an effort to soothe the sting of the first hike, and the agency’s increasingly worrisome finances make such upgrades less likely, even with another fare hike.

According to an MTA study released July 21, subway delays have increased by more than 24 percent in the past year, and trains broke down more frequently than in the past.

"We have some degree of sympathy for the MTA," Norvell said. "But it's one thing to ask for fare hikes or bonds, or to put up with service delays, when you have a light at the end of the tunnel and the quality of service is going up. Unfortunately, with the fiscal picture what it is, they [riders] are being asked to pay more for less, and that’s a really untenable position."

Many people believe the defeat of Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan—which would have charged $8 for cars and $21 for trucks entering Manhattan below 60th Street—made the latest hike necessary. But Donovan said the $354 million in federal funding and $4.5 billion total revenue expected from congestion pricing would have gone to the MTA’s capital program, which involves long-term improvements to the transit system.

Congestion pricing “would have provided a significant amount of money for the capital program, but what we discussed today [regarding the fare hike] was the operating budget,” Donovan said. “There’s not really a direct connection.”

If the hike is approved, it would be the first time since 1980-81—and only the second time in the MTA’s 104-year history—that fares had increased in two consecutive years. The passage of a third fare hike proposed for January 2011 would be unprecedented. Officials recently floated the idea of raising fares every two years, increasing revenue by 5 percent each time.

Before the budget is finalized, it will face a five-month period of public review.

maggie.astor@columbiaspectator.com