Local Representatives Rally Against MTA Fare Hike, Service Cuts

State Sen. Bill Perkins (D-West Harlem and Washington Heights) hosted a public hearing in Harlem on Thursday about the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s proposed fare hike and service cuts.

The forum—held at Perkins’ Harlem office and organized by the New York State Senate Corporations, Authorities, and Commissions Committee—focused on the recommendations of a commission led by former MTA Chairman Richard Ravitch, submitted to Gov. David Paterson in December. The commission called upon the MTA to increase fare and toll revenue by 8 percent instead of 23 percent, and urged Paterson to provide additional state funding to the MTA to avoid the need for a larger hike.

Ravitch testified at the hearing, as did MTA CEO Elliot Sander and various community members.

In addition to raising MetroCard prices, the MTA’s plan would implement drastic service cuts, eliminating three subway lines—the M, W, and Z, which run in downtown Manhattan and into Queens and Brooklyn—and reducing overnight service on most others, including the 1 line and the M96 and M104 buses. The M10 bus line, which runs along Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem and Central Park West, connecting Harlem to Penn Station on 34th Street, would be eliminated altogether.

Perkins has been an outspoken opponent of the MTA’s recent proposals, and signed a letter to New York City Transit President Howard Roberts on Feb. 9 which protested the elimination of the M10 bus.

State Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell (D-Morningside Heights) also signed the letter. “New York is a 24-hour city, and we need a 24-hour public transportation system,” he told Spectator in January.

City Councilmembers Robert Jackson (D-Morningside Heights and West Harlem) and Inez Dickens (D-Morningside Heights) have also expressed opposition to the proposed fare hike.

“We’re in a recession, and people are losing their jobs,” Lynette Velasco, a spokesperson for Dickens, told the Spectator in September 2008. “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.”