I warned ’em but to no avail. Yesterday, the MTA board members — or at least those who decided to show up — had to face a room full of pissed off Staten Islanders, and based on reports in the Staten Island Advance and on NY1, it was not a pretty scene.
At the last of the fare hike hearings before this weekend’s big Public Engagement Workshop, the touring fare hike circus journeyed to that hard-to-reach Staten Island to discuss transit options with a bunch of disgruntled Staten Island residents. As NY1’s Amanda Farinacci relates, things started out bad and only got worse.
To highlight the transit problems facing Staten Island, State Senator Diane Savino leveled an indictment of the MTA’s designated start time for the hearing. “There is a hearing held here at 6 p.m., and if they lived in any other borough, the vast majority of people would be able to get here,” she said. “But most Staten Islanders are still on their way home.”
Maura Yates, of Staten Island’s hometown newspaper, had more of the gruesome details:
The officials about to vote on a proposed fare and toll hike probably haven’t experienced the hell of standing up for hours on a stifling express bus with no bathroom, day in and day out. So several furious Staten Islanders who took the microphone during the public hearing that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority conducted last night at the Petrides Educational Complex in Sunnyside challenged them to do just that.
And at least two MTA officials said they’d be willing to make the trip. “I know the pain, I feel it,” said Todt Hill resident Frank Powers, who is Staten Island’s representative on the board. He said he experiences the traffic firsthand driving home from MTA headquarters in Midtown. “It’s not a question that none of us know it,” he said. “We do know it.”
He said, he’d be willing to board an express bus “at 57th Street at 5 o’clock, if that’s what it takes.” Hilary Ring, the MTA’s director of government affairs, said he would come, too.
I’m not sure that’s what it takes, Frank. For one day, you, one of three privileged MTA board members who openly admitted to shunning public transit during rush hour commuets, will experience the joys of a two-hour bus ride from home to work. And then you’ll go back to your car. I’m sure that’ll convince Powers to vote against the fare hike.
Meanwhile, Staten Islanders annoyed at constant Verrazano Bridge construction and few other transit options for escaping the Island even challenged the MTA on their bathroom breaks. Yates relates the tale of one Joseph Mizrahi who noted that one of the board members had left for a bathroom break one hour into the hearing. “Think of the people who don’t have that luxury” while trapped on buses for two hours or more each afternoon, he said. “Who are you to judge fare increases on something you can’t even relate to?”
With the end of this bitter hearing, the only public forum standing between the MTA board and the fare hike vote is Saturday’s workshop. This is it, folks. If we want to further drive home the point that no one wants the fare hike, show up to this hearing. But be prepared to present alternatives. How can the MTA fund its debt service and expansion plans without a fare hike? If we can’t answer these questions, we’ll have to face the reality of a fare hike, and the MTA will have to face a very bitter ridership.
11 comments
Riders have never met a fare hike they agreed with. If it were up to them, the fare would still be five cents. Since the MTA already operates at a deficit, keeping the fare the same is a good way to ensure that that two-hour bus ride will be two hours forever.
No doubt about that one, Marc. I’m not morally opposed to this fare hike. In fact, for just those reasons and for the ones I listed in the last paragraph, I’m tentatively in support of the hike, but if someone has a better idea, I’m willing to listen.
I won’t be able to make it to the Saturday’s workshop, but my idea would be for the MTA to stop buying what I can only assume to be hundreds of billions of dollars in various tiles for the subway stations – please continue to buy replacement tiles though.
Take Times Square, the platform floors had been plain concrete my entire life, and that worked great. Now the entire station flooring is covered in one foot square tiles, at a cost of who knows, and it seems like a waste of their current and future budgets.
That, and put on the ballots some form of general obligation bond to pay for things like the second avenue subway, and better transit to, from, and through places like Staten Island.
The MTA is not spending “hundreds of billions of dollars” on decorative tiles. I mean, the whole station rehab budget is not that much, and tiles are only a small part of each rehab.
The fact is, if you look at other subway systems that have been managed better than ours, generally the stations are beautiful. Platform tiles are no substitute for safe, clean trains that run frequently and on time. But attractive stations are one factor among man, that contribute to positive public perceptions of the subway.
For all the arguing and stuff, is there any real way to avoid this? I haven’t heard much except for the school kids fairs and some real estate surplus that you really can’t count on too much until you get the taxes come next year
Theoretically, it’s avoidable if the state dramatically increases its subsidy. This is unlikely, because upstate legislators (who get little or no benefit from MTA expenditures) would block it. As it is, the current proposal assumes a higher level of government subsidy than the MTA had been getting under the Pataki administration.
Let’s face it. I would pay $7 each way if they would open up an uninterrupted bus lane all the way from the West Shore Expressway to Manhattan. The current system of multiple noncontinuous bus lanes just doesn’t work. It’s like a pipe with a few kinks or choke points in it. The water will only flow as fast as its narrowest point.
While the MTA isn’t spending “hundreds of billions of dollars” on the tiles, over the past seven years, they spent a lot of cash on them. We’ve all seen them shut half sides of stations at a time to tear down perfectly good tiles up and down Broadway, only to polish up the buried tiles, and then add in art tiles in the middle of them.
The original addition, then removal of the addition, and subsequent addition of art into the subway cost us tens of millions – just so the perception of things is better? Very wasteful…and that was just one line…
Thank God I moved to Pennsylvania in 05. The amount of money that I save by living up here is great. The MTA should be criminally investigated by the federal
govt for stealling billions of dollars from hardworking people all these years.
Staten Island people should not have to pay a dime to cross the VZ bridge but they
are being punished for living on an island and the local politicians don’t have the guts to do anything about it.
I thought when the bridge was first built a toll was to be in place until the bridge was paid for? Isnt the bridge paid for already? we should not have to pay these tolls to subdidize other transit cost in other boroughs.
We would be able to make suggestions if the MTA would open their books. There is tons of waste at MTA…starting with excess middle mgmt salaries. Let’s look at their books and be able to make educated suggestions…odds are …MTA says no.