Amidst an ongoing pandemic that has decimated the economy and reduced daily transit ridership to essential workers traveling to keep the city and themselves afloat, the MTA Board has tabled talks of a fare hike, agency officials confirmed on Monday. The decision comes after months of public pressure by both elected officials and transit advocates, and it marks the first time since biennial fare hikes began in 2010 that the MTA Board — and by extension, the governor — has opted to cancel or at least postpone a fare hike.

Rumors that the MTA would be delaying the fare hike had been swirling since the New Year, and as the local pile-on from elected officials continued throughout the holidays and into 2021, it seemed as though the politics of a mid-pandemic fare hike would make the move untenable. CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer broke the news, and MTA Chairman and CEO Pat Foye sent out a statement a few hours later explaining the decision:

“The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked economic havoc — devastating the MTA’s ridership and revenues and bringing them to levels far worse than the Great Depression. It has also hit people of color and low income communities hardest, many of whom are the very same essential workers that have been on the frontlines of this crisis and who are also most dependent on mass transit.

“As part of our biennial review of fare and toll policy, the MTA conducted the unprecedented level of outreach this year required, holding eight public hearings and receiving 2,100 public comments. What we heard at these hearings was that people are suffering and cannot shoulder even a modest fare increase right now.

“Buoyed by President-elect Biden, incoming Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the MTA also has hope for $8 billion in additional pandemic relief and continued federal investment in mass transit in 2021 and beyond. For these reasons, the MTA has decided to postpone the planned fare increase for several months. We plan to move forward with a discussion and vote on recommended toll changes in February.”

According to Clayton Guse of The Daily News, the MTA will not move to raise the fares until at least the summer, and I expect the agency to delay the hike until the pandemic abates and transit ridership rebounds significantly.

The city’s transit advocates were quick to praise the move. “When riders organize, our governor listens. With offices closed and Broadway dark, a transit fare hike would fall overwhelmingly on essential workers and New Yorkers with no other way to get around beside the bus, subway, and paratransit,” Riders Alliance Policy & Communications Director Danny Pearlstein said. “With the regressive MTA fare hike off the table, Governor Cuomo must now put a stop to state raids on transit-dedicated funds. While riders are breathing a sigh of relief, the governor must craft a bold, progressive solution to his transit agency’s money woes.”

For now, the relieve is temporary. The MTA will seek to raise fares within the next six or twelve months, but the decision this week is the right. Last month, as the MTA seemed on a collision course with a public economically drained by the pandemic, I wrote a piece urging the MTA to delay the fare hike, and the reasoning holds up. On the backs of essential riders, the MTA would have raised approximately $79 million in total by implementing a 2021 fare hike, and the agency is still requesting $8 billion from the incoming Biden Administration. It would have been political suicide for any fare hike to go through, and from conversations I’ve had with MTA and state sources, it seems clear the Governor knew this.

So what happens next? First, the mystifying debate over the future of unlimited ride fare cards will be delayed a few more months, and that may give us more time to understand why Larry Schwartz, architect of New York State’s current vaccine rollout plan, wants to eliminate them. Second, the bridge and tunnel toll hikes will continue, and this is good public policy. Drivers should be expected to pay more, both as a way to capture the externalities of driving and as a way to encourage transit usages.

The MTA hasn’t revealed the specifics of the planned toll hikes, but we know that crossings could increase to as much as $6.70 for New York E-ZPass customers. We also know the MTA is considering variable tolling based on time of day and/or on so-called Gridlock Alert Days, a quasi-congestion pricing plan. Resident discounts and carpool incentives may be reduced as well. Again, these are all fine proposals that should be adopted, especially as bridge and tunnel traffic has recovered significantly faster than transit usage. (Bridge and tunnel traffic is down by only 16-17 percent from pre-pandemic figures while subway and bus ridership have steadied at around 30 and 45 percent of normal, respectively.)

Still, the MTA plans to reduce some service. The commuter rail lines will see some trips eliminated as part of a pandemic-related “right-sizing” of weekday service, and New York City Transit has had to cancel around 2 percent of scheduled trips in recent months due to crew unavailability, as Jose Martinez reported on Monday. The LIRR/Metro-North cuts will be approved by the MTA Board, but the subway service reductions remain off the books. Ideally, the MTA won’t have to make further cuts, but the budget remains shaky at best.

The big X Factor though involves federal funding. With a technical Democratic majority in the Senate and control of the House, the Biden Administration should be able to secure the rest of the funding the country’s transit agencies have requested, including $8 billion the MTA wants, and the next COVID-19 relief package should include this funding, if Democrats get their way. With no room for error in the Senate, that remains a reasonably sizable “if,” but we should know soon how aggressive Democrats in the Senate will be in determining the future of the legislative filibuster and their political success. The city and the MTA need a strong federal response.

For now, though, cooler and saner heads have prevailed, and transit fares will not increase in April, as originally anticipated. This is welcome news for a city and its workforce hoping to reach the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel and the right move by the MTA and Gov. Cuomo.

I originally published a version of this piece on my Patreon last week and wanted to share it here as well. As a reminder, Second Ave. Sagas is fully reader-funded, and I will be revamping the Patreon tiers in the new year. Have a safe and healthy beginning to 2021.

With the news emerging from Washington a week and a half ago that the MTA will secure $4 billion in pandemic relief funding from the federal government, the MTA’s Doomsday budget has been averted for now. The agency received only one-third of the $12 billion it requested and may still face a deficit of around $1 billion for 2021 before the figures balloon in the out-years. But that’s something the agency will address down the road. The service cuts, which would have hamstrung New York’s post-COVID recovery before it even began are off the table, at least until the country goes through this unnecessary dance again later next year.

Instead, the transit advocacy world’s focus has turned entirely to the 2021 fare hikes. Over the past few weeks, the MTA has launched the process of soliciting public feedback regarding their fare hike proposals, and the early reviews are negative across the board. Although the MTA has taken great pains to stress how the fare hike was scheduled for 2021 and was going to happen regardless of the multi-billion-dollar hole the pandemic has blown through the agency’s budget, no one is happy with options on the table.

I wrote about those various options a few weeks ago, and examined why the MTA would even consider eliminating time-based Metrocards. The public comments have struck similar chords. No one wants to see unlimited ride cards, which encourage transit usage and eliminate transfer penalties, eliminated, and in fact, many politicians and advocates are taking an even stronger stance this year: They are urging the MTA to skip its biennial fare hike entirely.

It’s almost ancient history these day, but the MTA’s regularly scheduled fare hikes grew out of the 2008 recession and 2010’s own version of the Doomsday budget. As part of the state’s rescue package, in exchange for the payroll mobility tax, the MTA agreed to a series of ostensibly modest fare hikes every two years in perpetuity. This was designed to foist some of the MTA’s own economic pain onto the shoulders of its riders and allow for certainty in revenue increases. That certainty, of course, went out the window as pandemic ridership has dropped to barely 30% of normal, but the fare hikes must go on, or so says the MTA.

Should they though? The question of delaying the fare hike is both an easy one and complicated one. Or maybe it’s just an easy one. For starters, the MTA’s revenue projections for the fare hike are modest. The agency has a need for $8 billion over the next few years, but in the short-term, fare hikes are expected to cover only a small portion of the budget gap.

Setting aside the revenue from bridge and tunnel toll increases (which should continue on sound policy grounds), the MTA expects the fare hike to net just $90 million in 2021 and only an additional $189 million in 2022. Meanwhile, those who are still riding the subways and buses are essential workers who are keeping the city healthy and afloat, and those essential workers are going to be the bulk of ridership well into 2021. Does it make sense to attempt to balance even a small portion of the books on the backs of these folks who have little choice but to ride? Is it a fair and just policy decision?

The answers to those questions depend on whether one views transit as a public good to be subsidized or a quasi-private benefit that should be rider-funded. I fall into the former category. As a strong believer in the claim that transit is a public good and should be treated as one, these fare hikes amidst a pandemic — hikes that will burden essential workers at a time we need them most — are bad policy and should not be approved this year.

There are other secondary considerations at play as well. One is the current elasticity of ridership. In the Before Times, fare hikes generally had little impact on ridership as transit remained the most cost- and time-efficient way to travel. Lately, though, transit ridership has been very sensitive to outside effects. When it snowed on Thursday, bus and subway ridership dropped by nearly 40%, and even the rainy days this fall saw ridership dip by nearly a quarter. Thus, the same expectations may not apply, and with a skeptical public looking for excuses to avoid transit, higher costs could turn some casual riders away at a time the agency needs more fare revenue.

That brings me to point two. Unfairly or not, the MTA has borne the brunt of bad publicity this year. Some of the focus has been around crime (which is up in the subway as trains have emptied out, but still sits at levels comparable to the late 2000s/early 2010s); some of the focus have been around unfounded fears of transmission risks. As the MTA looks to welcome riders back to the system and assuage concerns about the relative safety of transit, raising fares may be counterproductive and, again, a bad policy decision.

Finally, politics rears its ugly head. Even as the MTA pleads poverty and begs for more and more federal funding, even as the MTA looks to foist a fare hike onto essential workers, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is again withholding money earmarked for transit or diverting millions to his pet projects. In a statement before the MTA Board this week, Reinvent Albany’s Rachael Fauss levied this charge:

The MTA board must not approve $148M in fare hikes for 2021 while Governor Cuomo is planning to raid at least $600M in MTA dedicated funds. As the MTA said in July, it is asking for $12B in federal emergency funding, including $600M to compensate for the loss of “state subsidies.” (“Subsidies are a euphemism for dedicated taxes, in this case primarily Metro Mass Transportation Operating Assistance “MMTOA” funding.) This $600M was added on top of its spring deficit of $10.3B which already accounted for COVID-19 revenue losses from ridership and its economic impact on MTA dedicated taxes.

To be clear, we fully support the MTA getting billions in much-needed federal COVID emergency aid, but at the same time more federal aid is not a license for the Governor to raid at least $600M of MTA funds.

The details get a little wonky, but effectively, New York State is cutting the MMTOA by approximately 35% while state budgets are being cut by only 20% across the board. In other words, the MTA is getting approximately $600 million less than it should have due to Cuomo’s budget moves. Again, riders should not be asked to pick up any of this slack while the governor looks to wash his hands of this decision.

Ultimately, the decision to raise the fares is a political one, and the MTA Board may not have much cover to vote down the fare hikes this time around. But they should. It’s bad policy at this moment in time to attempt to raise revenue off the backs of essential workers who have pushed the city through the pandemic, and it gives cover to bad budgetary decision-making from New York’s politicians. The MTA should not approve a fare hike for 2021. It is the right choice.

No matter what happens with its Doomsday budget, whether federal transit funding comes through or not, the MTA is going to raise the fares next year. The uptick is part of the never-ending, biennial fare increases that see the cost of transit inch upward in New York City every two years like clockwork and not, as MTA Chair and CEO Pat Foye has repeatedly said, part of the MTA’s effort to close its multi-billion-dollar budget gap.

In other words, the fares would be going up with or without the pandemic next year, and while New Yorkers have grown numb to the drumbeat of ever-escalating transit costs, this year’s menu of potential changes to the fares sure has raised eyebrows among the city’s transit cognoscenti. In particular, as part of the strategy of throwing everything against a wall to see what sticks, the MTA has proposed eliminating unlimited 7- and 30-day Metrocards. The agency had previously cut the 1-day Fun Pass and a 14-day card a few years ago due to low usage rates, but it’s not clear why the MTA would look to do away with passes that incentivize more transit usage. To make matters worse, the rationale offered by Larry Schwartz, Andrew Cuomo’s MTA enforcer and right-hand man on the agency board, were mystifyingly mysterious.

We’ll get to all the politics and policy decisions in a minute. Let’s start with a look at the proposals on the table.

Usually, when the MTA prepares for these fare hikes, the agency offers two menus of fare hike options. But after increased criticism a few years ago from MTA Board members who felt they were denied a say in the policy of the fare hikes, the agency has opted for a series of blanket policies and a variety of logic games. It’s not yet clear how the MTA is going to get from here to a concrete set of new fares, but the net impact of the changes to the fares will be a 4% jump in fare-based revenue. The table below, which the agency has labeled “for illustrative purposes” only, offers a glimpse at the “policy options” under consideration.

The MTA put more details online last week, and here we have a quasi-glimpse of the various proposals at play. The permutations are confusing with a lot of conditional statements, but the MTA is essentially considering maintaining the base pay-per-ride fare or increasing it by 25 cents. If the pay-per-ride fares increase, the unlimited ride cars would see smaller increases — a 7-day card could cost $34.75, up $1.75 from the current price, and a 30-day card could cost $134, up $7. If the MTA holds the base fare, the weekly pass could cost $36 or $3 more and a monthly could cost $139, up a whopping $12 from current rates. The monthly hasn’t seen this large an increase since 2010 when the cost went up from $89 to $104.

In this great puzzle of either-or-maybe options, the MTA has also said it could keep the fee for new Metrocard purchases at $1 or increase it to $3 per card. This fee, which is avoidable if you stick an expired Metrocard into a vending machine, should be increased as both an incentive to get riders to switch to OMNY and a way for infrequent or tourist riders to offset commuting costs for transit regulars.

But I’m burying the lede: The MTA is considering eliminating “one or more” time-based passes. There is no trigger here or an either-or option, and it’s not clear what will happen if the MTA decides to embrace the proposal. That is, the move to cut unlimited ride passes stands alone, and the MTA has not the public what the trade-off would be. Would it mean no increase in the pay-per-ride fare or a separate slate of fare proposals? We do not know, and instead, this is a pure policy consideration by the MTA, allegedly separate from the ongoing pandemic slump. It also makes absolutely no sense.

Generally speaking, one goal of a well-run public transit system in a heavily populated cit is to incentivize transit usage. The only way for millions of New Yorkers to move through the city each day efficiently is via high-capacity,, rail, and the more riders the better. Unlimited Metrocards were a revelation for New York City and one that unlocked the transit system for millions. For a one-time upfront fee each month (or week), potential riders could swipe as many times as they wanted, and taking short trips — whether by bus or train — became second nature. It was, in fact, best to maximize monthly swipes to get a better deal. At a time when the MTA needs to attract riders to shore up its finances and help avoid crushing gridlock on city streets, doing away with time-based incentives is foolhardy.

If anything, in fact, the MTA’s unlimited ride, time-based passes should be cheaper. Currently, the breakeven point for a 30-day Metrocard is a shade over 46 rides and for a 7-day card, 12 trips. With the 47th swipe in a 30-day period, it becomes more cost-efficient to pay $127 than to buy rides at $2.75 per trip. This is generally a high bar to clear when compared with international norms. Most international transit systems heavily incentivize time-based passes – in Stockholm, for instance, the break-even point for a 30-day pass is 26 rides and a 30-day Navigo pass in Paris pays for itself after the 39th trip. So the MTA already over-burdens users of time-based compared with international peer systems.

Meanwhile, as OMNY completes its system-wide rollout in a few days, the MTA should look to further incentivize transit while making the system more accessible through fare capping. In essence, fare capping means that after a certain number of rides per time period – whether it be day, week or month – a rider no longer pays for additional trips. In London, for example, generally, rider aren’t charged each week after their 15th trip. This allows riders who can’t afford a monthly pass upfront to enjoy the benefits of limitless transit after reaching a fare level. The MTA has yet to determine if they will implement fare capping with OMNY, but this, rather than the elimination of time-based passes, is the policy discussion worth having.

So why is the MTA considering a shift in fare policy that would disincentivize riders while shifting away from international norms? The answer appears to have arisen in the form of a half-formed rant by Cuomo aide and MTA Board Member Larry Schwartz during last month’s board meeting. Here’s what Schwartz had to say:

I’m going to take the same position I took two years ago. I don’t think the people who depend on the MTA’s mass transit system should have to pay more. It’s for the casual rider that I believe should be paying more in offsetting any increases that the riders who depend on the system. That is why I like freezing the New York City subway fare at $2.75 because it would actually mean a $2.65 fare. It would be a 10 cent decrease. That is why I believe the 30-day commuter – these are people who depend on the mass transit system to get to work as opposed to the casual daily rider that buys an off-peak ticket or to go to a show or restaurant, the doctor or has a trial in New York City. So I’m all in favor of that.

The other thing I want to say is that right now, I am somewhat in favor of eliminating the time based passes because I believe there is a lot of fraud associated with them…I would really like to see the 7-day time based fares on ZIP code or something. Who is purchasing those 7-day time-based passes? Because again, I am not here to hurt the people who rely on the system the most. The people that can afford to should pay more, the people that cannot shouldn’t. But I’m also concerned with the 7-day and the 30-day. There’s been a lot of fraud associated with these things that hurt people who pay the 2.75 trip on New York City subways.

Again, my goal is not to see the base fare increase for both the bus and subway riders and also for those people who depend the most on commuter rail, those monthly pass holders. Again, the people who depend on the system the most should be held harmless, and the people that are casual riders who use the system….um, you know, they can…It’s the best deal in town. They’ll never find an alternative source of transportation other than walking to get from Point A to Point B whether it’s coming into the city or going from one part of the city to another than it is the MTA system….My thing is for those casual people, they can probably absorb a little bit more.

So much of what Schwartz said makes no sense, and if you can make heads or tails of these arguments, more power to you. Even though in pre-pandemic times, over 50% of riders used time-based cards, Schwartz thinks they’re used only by casual riders. He also seems to think those riders don’t rely on the system most and should be socked by higher fares, again a shift from a rational fare policy. I don’t know how or why he thinks eliminating unlimited cards would lower the fare, but the biggest red flag is in his evidence-free claims of fraud.

The last time Schwartz raised an argument like this, it sent us down a years’-long path arguing over fare evasion and its impact. Now, Schwartz, without providing a shred of evidence, claims that 30-day cards are subject to “a lot of fraud.” On its face, that makes little sense as each time-based card carries with it an 18-minute timeout to combat fraud, and Schwartz has provided nothing to back up his claim. But we have to listen to it because he’s the one on the board closest to the Governor, and the Governor is responsible for the decisions made within and about the MTA.

So here we are, staring at fare hikes that involve a lot of moving parts and a threat to cut off the city’s unlimited cards, transit lifelines for millions and one that makes riding easy. If the MTA is truly considering eliminating these cards, they owe it to the public to explain why, and Schwartz owes it to the public to present evidence of this fraud. Otherwise, the MTA should leave well enough alone and make these time-based cards more readily affordable for everyone rather than cutting them out entirely.