A fare hike–but only for the general public, not the MTA board members. Pretty outrageous!!

I honestly can’t get too upset about this. The main reason is that they probably get free parking permits as well, and many of them get other driving subsidies, if not from the MTA then from other connections.

If they actually took the subway and didn’t always have the alternative of a private car (often with a professional driver), then being forced to suffer the fare increases might actually deter them from paying. But given that they have a free (or low-cost) alternative, making them pay will just deter them from riding the subway, which will in turn make them less likely to identify as (and with) subway and bus riders.

By the same people who now say that the poor use the unlimited ride cards, whereas the pay per ride is only used by tourists.

People are sickening.

In any event, they were right the second time but were hoisted on their own petard.

However, I disagree that it’s too much of a bargain. The bargain should be steep because:
A) If people buy multi-ride cards rather than single fares, less time is spent waiting in line at MetroCard vending machines and bus fare boxes.
B) The more reasonably priced it is to take public transportation on a regular basis (i.e. commute), the more people will do so, rather than driving to work.
C) If people are invested in their farecards in advance, when they have a trip to make they will be more likely to take public transit (especially when the marginal cost is zero on an unlimited-ride card) rather than drive.

There are more reasons why the discount should be steep, I’m sure, but these are the ones that came to me right away.

Why would people buy the pass you suggest and only take 40 rides too and from work. The unlimited monthlys are used way more frequently than that. The report on the board, I think in September, was that the average price of a ride was $1.299. But I used the $1.67/$1.74 figures here because the other number is too much of a bargain to even discuss in the context of a fare increase, even if it is true.
As far as fare support the MTA is truly fucked. If Spitzer can only get a 1% per year increase in his first year in office what will he get in the run-up to his election? Maybe he’ll cut the fare, that would be a good move. Where all the people will go is beyond me.

The conundrum gets to be though, why give this irresponsible, fucked up authority, who provides such horrible service at such outrageous prices, more money from the pockets of anyone else? Thats just as big a reason as any as to why Congestion Pricing is crashing and burning politically.

Your math is muddled, as well. The 15% bonus on pay-per-ride bulk purchases brings the cost per ride down to $1.74 with no time constraints and a minimum purchase of $7. In other words, no subway-only commuter should be paying more than $1.74.

You seem to be disregarding my point in favor of making fun of the person I quoted. I’m not a huge Felder fan, I think the things with the pigeons and the takeout menus are a waste of government time. I’m mainly quoting him because he raised the same question I would have anyway, and did so in a public forum where the MTA should have responded to it.

I’m *not* opposed to rate hikes per se, as I believe I said, I’m opposed to the burden of those hikes being borne by commuters rather than tourists. I’m really unclear what your point was about class warfare, but if your generalized “poor people” can’t afford $1.90 per ride ($76/month taking 40 rides to and from work 20 weekdays a month, let alone if you use your card more often), then how can they afford $2.00 per ride?

Making it all a war of drivers against riders is actually a formula for the demise of congestion pricing through the City Council and Assembly. I suggest that is exactly what the oppositionists want; it may even be part of Weiner’s campaign strategy.

Keep in mind that though nondrivers in the city may outnumber drivers, they are ghettoized (or gerrymandered) into a limited number of council districts, mostly in Manhattan. Because of this, the City Council as a whole (and of course every other legislative body in the state) will tend to favor the interests of drivers over nondrivers. In addition, the fact that city workers (except for cops and firefighters, who can live in surrounding counties) are both asked to live in the city and encouraged to drive to work (through parking permits) creates a potent, aware pro-driving voting bloc.

I think drivers are simply using this discussion to vent their frustrations with how expensive it is to drive. That may be true, but it has absolutely NOTHING to do with the cost of a subway ride.

Can simply transferring toll revenues to transit be considered congestion pricing if the link isn’t used to modify the behaviour? Shouldn’t it require that the tolls and fares be set (and adjusted) to produce a measurable shift from one to the other? This is just the opposite of what MTA announced as their goal at the public engagement workshop last month: “revenue neutrality.” To me, that assumption made the whole exercize pointless.

It’s 1967 all over again — huge debts, enriched pensions, lots of promises, rising construction costs enriching contractors on public projects, “save the fare!”

Or 1930, at the end of the last major round of subway expansion.

100 years of blowhards have produced a fare that, in the end, has gone up by more than inflation despite rising subsidies.

Mark and “t” are in denial that the MTA financial issues are real. Where were they and the Daily News when Pataki was borrowing the system into crisis? Daily News was endorsing him.

And Anne, “I believe what they are saying is that motorists have a “free ride” from the standpoint of what they pay into the public coffers.”
-This is forgetting the little thing of the TBTA tolls, without which the MTA would fold in minutes. To a certain extent that is already congestion pricing. The proposal before us now is a widening, deepening and hardening of that system of transfer from cars to mass transit.
Making it all a war of drivers against riders is actually a formula for the demise congestion pricing through the City Council and Assembly. I suggest that is exactly what the oppositionists want, it may even be part of Weiner’s campaign strategy.

T says “Well, I’d really love a politician to start pandering to the millions of subway riders who are paying more and more and getting less and less.”
- You didn’t see any of that in the fare increase hearings? Not even the demon Brodsky? No pandering at all? The average fare is $1.67. It is 2007. The MTA isn’t coming close to recouping the increased costs of Diesel fuel and electric power of the last few years with the increases just passed. The drivers may cry but they line up at the pump and they pay.

And Josh, apparently one of Simcha Felders fans (50 loyal Felder supporters can’t be wrong). “Has anyone obtained a satisfactory answer to the question raised by Councilman Simcha Felder?”
-Another one of the Hallelujah Chorus against fare increases who has maintained an exquisite silence all these many years as city government slashed its financial support for the mass transit system. When this round of fare increases was first proposed, (oh yeah, that was a year ago with a different Governor who somehow escaped blame for all this) and often since, many people have complained that poor people couldn’t afford the monthly tickets and were being unfairly punished by the base fare increase. I never agreed with that analysis but you can be sure that plenty of people raised that class warfare issue. The discounts have kept the real fare going down and surprise, surprise, the system is packed. That is normally what happens when the real price goes down on anything. If the price of tomatoes goes down the market runs out of tomatoes.
Poor people get dumped on in every conceivable way, if the only place they get relief is the transit system expect it to become their system and expect the level of service to reflect the “captive” market. In this case, pity for the poor who can’t afford $5 a month increase for unlimited rides, 0.15 a day increase over three years, a nickel a day a year increase, is sadly misplaced. When you roll in all the rides it is probably less than two cents per day per ride per year increase.

Now maybe thats something to storm the Winter Palace about and maybe its not.

No one likes fare increases but the cycle you are observing has occurred many times over the life of the subway and rail systems from long before there was an MTA. No one wants to pay taxes either. The only thing that has historically interrupted the no fare, no tax support cycle is the collapse of the system into bankruptcy and/or disrepair. Both happen slowly but surely. And, stupid me, I thought the the city and state were committed to actually expanding the system.

The only antidote is dedicated money, TBTA tolls, Mortgage Recording Tax, Petroleum Business taxes and, hopefully, Congestion Pricing. Has Simcha Felder helped with any of that stuff? What is he doing with Congestion Pricing? Birth control for pigeons.

But I’ll give you some chutzpah points for citing the Great Pigeon Inquisitor of 2007 as the source of this question. Now there’s a pol who knows a pressing problem when he sees one.

http://www.streetsblog.org/2007/09/20/delucchi-study-finds-that-us-motorists-do-not-pay-their-way/