The role of a mass transit system in an urban area is to discourage driving. Getting around New York by car is no easy feat, and the subways provide a relatively quick escape from the trials and travails of bumper-to-bumper crosstown traffic. To that end, the people of the Kheel plan, the proposal that called for a high congestion fee and free subways, believe that the Doomsday combination of MTA service cuts and substantial fare hikes will lead to more congestion. The authors of the original plan making a compelling case for why transit prices should not increase if service is decreasing. The last thing this city needs is more traffic.
Fare hikes, service cuts could lead to more gridlock
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The problem is that the MTA has so spectacularly mismanaged their budget that both service cuts AND fare hikes are needed to balance the budget. Not only did they completely ignore the inevitability that the happy days on Wall Street would come to an end, and fail to seek a steady source of funding divorced from the fantasy of Wall Street, but they saddled future generations with billions of dollars of debt to pay for the capital programs, which we can’t even afford to pay the *interest* on now. Unbelievable. The people running this agency need to step down gracefully, apologize to the public, and… give back their generous salaries and bonuses as punishment for running the system into the ground. Then, for extra fun, they need their cars taken away so they can enjoy the fruits of their labor along with the rest of us.
Corrected.