After the hike, MTA ridership still on the climb

The MTA is going your way at a record pace this year. (Graphic courtesy of The Daily News).

Just last week, I wondered how the fare hike would impact MTA ridership figures. Through February of this year, ridership was on pace to set a modern-day record, but the fare hike loomed.

Well, the numbers are out, and ridership continued to increase in March at near-record levels despite the fare hike. Through the first quarter of 2008, ridership on the commuter rail lines and the subways is up around 5 percent over the same time period from 2007. By the end of March, 393.7 million riders had swiped into the subways this year. The Daily News blames rising gas prices.

“Obviously, there’s been an enormous push by gas prices moving people from cars to mass transit, but that’s not the only factor,” Christopher Jones, vice president of research at the Regional Plan Association, said to the News. “The economy is getting weaker, tolls are going up and traffic congestion is getting worse.”

As the News notes, conditions are ripe for drivers to eschew their cars. The average price of a gallon of gas in the city is $3.97, up nearly 80¢ from last year; and with tolls up as well, the MTA saw a drop of nearly 2 percent in the volume of cars passing through their tolls. The Port Authority saw a drop of 1.5 percent. (The Tri-State Transportation Campaign has noted a similar decrease in the volume of cars on the New Jersey Turnpike.)

All of this brought the Daily News to a logical conclusion: Despite the moans from the anti-congestion pricing forces, charging drivers would actually get them off the roads, and the MTA would have had a dedicated revenue stream to address the higher ridership demands being placed on the system. In fact, the paper editorialized on that exact point yesterday:

The trends prove that the theory of congestion pricing was valid: When the cost of driving rises, people actually do switch to mass transit.

Opponents of imposing an $8 fee to cross the untolled East River bridges scoffed that motorists would never leave their cars. But the opponents were wrong, and mass transit riders are suffering for the error.

Had Silver and the Assembly passed congestion pricing, as the City Council did, the MTA would already be using that $354 million in federal aid (which has now been disbursed about the country) to make more bus and subway seats available.

Then, the congestion fee would have given the MTA a half-billion dollars a year to pay for big projects like completing the Second Ave. subway and extending LIRR service to Grand Central Terminal. When that money vanished, the MTA’s building plan was eviscerated.

The News takes an appropriately strident tone toward the Assembly, but I don’t think it’s a clear cut issue of dead or alive anymore. As gas prices continue to rise — What? You think they’re ever going back down? — MTA ridership will increase, and as public education campaigns continue, public sentiment will shift in favor of congestion pricing.

Congestion pricing isn’t dead; it’s simply dormant with many people working behind the scenes to plot the plan’s next move. In all likelihood, Richard Ravitch’s commission will recommend a form of congestion pricing to fund the MTA. And when that time comes, the plan’s proponents will have the facts and the knowledge to get this necessary improvement off the ground. It’s only a matter of time.