Despite the fact that fares were raised as recently as last March, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority may once again increase prices in an aim to reduce a $900 million deficit.
The MTA’s proposal, announced in June, would mark the first time since 1980-81 and only the second time in the MTA’s 104-year history that fares have jumped in two consecutive years. The passage of a third fare hike proposed for January 2011 would be unprecedented, and officials have even floated the idea of automatically raising fares every two years from now on, increasing revenue by five percent each time.
City Council member Inez Dickens (D—West Harlem) is staunchly opposed to the hike, spokesperson Lynette Velasco said.
“We’re in a recession, and people are losing their jobs,” Velasco said. “She [Dickens] is very concerned about working class people that have to get to work, not to have an added burden on them with a fare hike.”
Velasco noted that Dickens would not necessarily oppose future hikes, but that given the current economy, a hike is not appropriate now.
Council member Robert Jackson did not return calls for comment.
While the last fare hike decreased pay-per-ride MetroCard bonuses and increased unlimited MetroCard prices, the new hike would likely raise the base fare from $2 to $2.25.
The main factors driving the MTA’s decision, according to spokesman Aaron Donovan, were increased debt, decreased tax revenue due to a poor real estate market, and rising fuel costs. The MTA is the fifth-largest borrower in the country, and despite a rise in public transit ridership due to the high cost of gas, it has lost money due to fewer vehicles traveling over city-owned bridges and tolls.
Gene Russianoff, staff attorney for the transit riders advocacy group Straphangers Campaign, said the onus for cutting debt should not be placed exclusively on riders, and has called on Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor David Paterson, CC ’77, to provide additional funding for transit.
“Either their leadership will result in keeping the system whole, fares affordable, and service decent, or it will fail us all,” he 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, according to the New York Times.
The desire for better service is widespread, and interviews with riders reveal that they may accept the latest hike with that in mind. According to an MTA study released July 21, subway delays have increased by more than 24 percent in the past year, and trains also broke down more frequently than in the past.
But in April, the MTA canceled a number of promised service improvements—including more frequent evening service on the 1—and given increasingly worrisome finances, new upgrades seem less likely.
Velasco expressed her expectation that the MTA “really review their current spending habits and their financial infrastructure before they propose another fare hike.”
Though 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 raise necessary, Donovan said the $4.5 billion in revenue expected from congestion pricing would have gone to the MTA’s capital program, which involves long-term enhancements to the system.
Congestion pricing “would have provided a significant amount of money for the capital program, but what we discussed [regarding the fare hike] was the operating budget,” Donovan said. “There’s not really a direct connection.”
The proposal was included in the preliminary 2009 financial plan on which the MTA board will vote in December, after a five month period of public review.
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