Russianoff Letter

NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign
9 Murray Street
New York, New York 10007

September 9, 2010

Jay Walder
Chairman
Metropolitan Transportation Authority
347 Madison Avenue
New York, New York 10017

Re: Fare Policy and Upcoming MTA Hearings

Dear Jay:

I write to ask you – as Chairman and CEO of the MTA – to voluntarily make public the relevant data the MTA must have used in making its current fare policy proposals.

As you know, these fare changes are one of the subjects of public hearings next week, including significant possible changes to the discounts the MTA offers. These include limiting/capping previously unlimited-ride MetroCards and raising the threshold to be eligible for the pay-per-ride bulk discount.

Such information is critical to getting useful and important feedback at the hearings from your customers and civic groups. Does the abbreviated wording now on the MTA’s website meet this goal? Respectfully, I think not.

As you may know, the MTA has sent me some fare policy information recently, including responses to my July 20, 2010 FOIL request, which I received this week. In addition, I received answers to a number of questions from the MTA’s Director of Special Project Development and Planning. Both these responses are helpful, and I suggest they be posted on www.mta.info. But in my opinion, they are not sufficient.

I would offer the following as example of questions that would benefit from a fuller disclosure of MTA MetroCard related data:

- Can the MTA make public the most recent opinion polls and/or focus groups it has conducted on marketing and usage of its various fare card discounts and non-discounts? By looking at the actual polls, knowledgeable reviewers could have informed opinions on such questions as the poll findings, methodology, sample size, wording of questions and demographic categories.

- Can or has the MTA determined what revenue it may lose if it caps 30- and 7-day MetroCards? Do polls show how much the convenience of not keeping track of trips versus savings plays in riders purchasing choice? The MTA noted in a recent communication to me that the “break event” point (when the card becomes worth the expense) for 30-day MetroCards will grow from the current 46 trips to 48 trips.

- Have you conducted polls on the perception users of 7-day and 30-day MetroCards have about how many trips they take in a week or a month?

- The MTA calculates that “25% of 30-day MetroCards are used for fewer than 46 trips.” In other words, these riders are paying more than if they had purchased pay-per-ride discounts. Are these trips counted as “subsidizing” MetroCards where the use is above 46 trips? Does the MTA count the value to the agency of these unused trips as income?

- How much of the unlimited-ride trips are on the weekend, when in theory there is more capacity? I recently asked the MTA about the following scenario about capping unlimited-ride MetroCards at 90 trips: A parent who drops their child at school takes 4 trips each day in a month (22 days) or 88 rides, without any discretionary trips. (I was often such a rider in recent years.) The agency’s answer was “A customer who makes 88 trips in 30 days would fall under the cap and his average fare would be $1.13 per trip.” That’s true, but it results in virtually no non-peak period trips.

- The MTA acknowledges that no other major transit system has moved to cap “unlimited” transit passes. Has the MTA looked into whether other systems have considered and/or rejected this option? Or asked any outside agencies for input on this approach?

- The MTA says that the break-even point is 48 trips for 30-day capped pass and 50 trips for the uncapped pass. Why the difference? And can the MTA project the likely average number of trips that would be taken on the 30-day and 7 day capped and uncapped passes?

- If the capped pass is adopted, exactly how will card readers/ turnstile read outs indicate the remaining trips?

- How would moving the threshold for pay-per-ride discounts from $7 to $10 affect your low-income customers? Can you say what this change would mean for them? Has the MTA considered a bigger discount for, say, under $15 purchases?

- Is there a projection of how much ridership will be lost if the new fare policy options are adopted?

- The MTA provided me with demographic information on how different income, age and ethnicity groups use MetroCards. Can the MTA provide me with numbers on the overall demographics of subway and bus use so I can make meaningful comparisons?

- The MTA proposes the possibility of capping 30-day MetroCards at 90 trips and 7-day MetroCards at 22 trips. Yet the agency’s own data shows that 7% of trips are taken on 30-day MetroCards that are used at a rate of 91 trips or more a month and 13% of trips are taken on 7-day MetroCards that are used at a rate of 23 trips or more a weeks. What justifies the two different caps given that one would affect double the riders?

My last request concerns the impact of the proposed fare hike on riders.

In my July 20th FOIL request, I wrote: “In the November 2008 Financial Plan 2009-2012, there was a slide labeled ‘NYCT Fare Operating Ratios.’ The slide appeared in the financial plan presentation that was posted to the web. It was a bar graph with two sets of numbers: (a) the then-current fare operating ratios for subway, local bus, express bus and paratransit; and (b) ratios that would take effect for each of the four groups “after GAP Closing Actions Including PEGs, Additional Actions, Fare Increases.”

The chart showed, for example, that if the proposed round of service cuts has been adopted in 2009, the burden on subway riders would have gone from paying 69% of operating expenses to 83%.

I was not given this information in the MTA’s response to my FOIL request. (I am attaching a copy of the 2008 slide.”)

The agency has presented this information to riders in the past. Why not now?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours truly,

Gene Russianoff

Staff Attorney