Second Ave. Sagas

For the right price, unlimited cards could stay that way

Written by

Benjamin Kabak

in

,

For the last few weeks, we’ve heard all about the MTA’s plans to cap the number of rides available on the so-called unlimited MetroCards, and earlier this morning, I discussed how the authority may eliminate the one- and 14-day cards. As more details have emerged today, the MTA may not axe those unlimited cards after all. According to a report in The Post, the authority will consider two proposals: one in which the unlimited ride cards become limited and another in which the cards cost more but stay unlimited.

According to Tom Namako, the two plans will look a little something like this: The weekly card could increase slightly from $27 to $28 but with a 22 ride cap or it could go to $29 with no cap. The 30-day card would increase from $89 to $99 with a 90-ride cap or it could go to $104 with no cap. The MTA also says it will lower the pay-per-ride volume discount from 15 percent to a mere seven percent and will also attempt to negotiate no-raise provisions into its expiring labor contract.

The final fare proposal will emerge after public hearings in September or October, but I would urge the MTA to maintain limitless subway rides on the unlimited cards. Even if most people do not use the cards to a full 90 rides, there’s something to be said for encouraging transit use without requiring customers to keep an eye on their ridership volumes. That said, if a 90-ride cap is met by day 28 and the cap serves to counter MetroCard fraud, it may yet be a worthwhile proposal.

Comments

33 responses to “For the right price, unlimited cards could stay that way”

  1. Marc Shepherd

    The numbers seem awfully strange: $28 for a weekly card capped at 22 rides, but $29 for an unlimited weekly card? For just a $1 difference, is it worth the P.R. fiasco of having to explain “unlimited” cards with limits? Just charge the $29 and be done with it. Likewise for the monthly card, where the proposed price difference between the limited and unlimited cards is just $5.

    Reply
    1. John

      I agree totally.

      Reply
    2. Veritas

      I also agree. I think almost all riders would be willing to shell out the slightly higher amount to have a card which is actually unlimited.

      Reply
    3. Caelestor

      Better to have grudgingly angry people than to have angry and confused customers.

      Reply
    4. Aaron

      Totally agree – even if I never hit the unlimited cap, if I’m already shelling out $99 for a card that I have to keep track of, I’ll pay 5% more for the peace of mind of not having to worry if I make a few stops on the way home. (I don’t like in NYC anymore but when I am there it’s not uncommon to stop twice on the way home for something). I’m almost coming to think that this is a trial balloon to see which people prefer, and if that’s the case, the slightly larger increase is probably it.

      Reply
  2. Al D

    Monthly commuter tail passes whould follow a similar tack, if not just for appearance and equities’ sake

    Reply
  3. Al D

    Not sure why I should start getting a sweaty brow near month’s end wondering whether or not I’m going to exceed my limit. Of course this would happen at the most inopportune time, at the busiest station, in a hurry to get somewhere. Hopefully they will set up ‘low-balance’ alerts by text or email to help take the guess work out of it.

    They want to encourage transit use, but only so much if it…

    Reply
    1. Andrew

      Presumably, the capped version would show the number of rides remaining on the turnstile display, so nobody would be caught by surprise.

      Reply
  4. Eric

    As transit funding gets more and more inequitable, these sorts of fare shenanigans on the part of the MTA are going to become a regular part of life.

    Tax the hell out of drivers and earmark that money for the MTA. It’s well past time to stop catering to them.

    Reply
  5. John S

    Not for nothing, but couldn’t they just increase the time+location window of these cards?

    That is, instead of the 18 minute delay, make it such that the card can’t be used at the same station for an hour or two *unless* you’ve swiped in at another location. Under what normal circumstance does a person need to swipe twice within 18 minutes at the same location? I’m sure there are people who go between similar places routinely (couriers come to mind), but odds are pretty good that they reached a different destination from which they’ll have to swipe.

    Such a simple change would dramatically increase the costs to swipe sellers (they’d need quite a few cards to be ‘profitable’)…and leave things viable for ‘normal’ people.

    Reply
    1. Kai B

      Exactly – only case I can think of is if you forgot something, need to make a call, etc. And usually you can convince the station attendant (if there is one!) that you’re not a scammer.

      Reply
      1. Andrew

        Or keep the 18-minute limit for the second swipe but jack it up to an hour or two for every swipe after that.

        Reply
    2. Alon Levy

      I once had to swipe twice at the same station, when I accidentally got onto the downtown platform when I needed to go uptown.

      Reply
  6. Kai B

    Tourists will legitimately use a one day card half-a-dozen times in one day. It’s even called “FunPass” – obviously geared to tourists. Shocked NYC & Company isn’t outraged by its threatened removal.

    Reply
    1. Marc Shepherd

      I am sure that’s true. By the same token, I am not sure why you would give that price break to people who don’t live here. Given the cost of a hotel and other vacation expenses, the cost of a subway ride is not likely to be the factor that determines whether someone visits NYC. If anyone deserves a break, it should be the worker who commutes every day, not the tourist who is here for a few days.

      Reply
      1. Christopher

        Depends, we make a ton of money off of tourists: especially in taxes. Helping tourists get around quickly, affordably and easily should be a major part of the transit system’s mission. Also, many of those “tourists” might be regional day trippers. People who work and live in the suburban areas. As a teen outside of Chicago, which has long had unlimited ride weekend passes for their suburban commuter rail network, cheap and easy access into the city on the weekends increased my independence, helped me enjoy the benefits of living near a major city, and led to my comfortableness with both transit and city life. (While helping me escape my quaint, but dull and homophobic hometown. Without the need of a car.)

        Admittedly this isn’t the 1980s, but still benefits might be for local “tourists” in addition to those that are coming from further away.

        Reply
      2. Kai B

        Our subway system is complex enough with all its branch lines and express vs. local service. At least the FunPass keeps paying easy. Now they have to figure out bonuses and all that fun stuff.

        Reply
        1. JP

          But Kai, nobody’s been buying the 1-day fun pass, which is why the MTA is considering dumping it.

          However, Christopher’s comment about Chicago weekend passes brings up a great idea: A MTA 3-day unlimited pass? It’s true that most tourists are not here for one day, but neither are they here for a week- but a long weekend or a 2-day trip. This city’s too big to see in one day, too expensive to stay a whole week.
          Economical- (JP’s MSRP: $16) with a much wider application for those who are just visiting on business or pleasure for two days, three days- and don’t want to plop $27 for a whole week’s worth of transit they’re going to wind up paying $9/day for. Cheaper than the current fun pass, and more economical than a week’s worth of fares. It’s less than a pizza! I think. It’s been awhile since I bought a whole pizza.

          Reply
          1. Kai B

            But Kai, nobody’s been buying the 1-day fun pass, which is why the MTA is considering dumping it.

            Tourists and other one-day purchasers represent a very small share of purchasers, but it’s a useful service. The MTA is essentially saying “scammers love this card so we’re getting rid of it” when, as proposed above there are other ways of fighting fraud.

            Reply
      3. Alon Levy

        The cost of a subway ride may be the factor that determines whether someone rides the trains or takes taxis.

        Reply
    2. John

      The thing is I think most tourists visit for more than one day, so the 7-day pass makes more sense most of the time. And if they’re only in town one day, like I was last year, you’re probably not using a ton of rides, so pay-per-ride will often be better. Yes there are exceptions, and that’s where that 2% number comes in.

      Reply
  7. Kai B

    The unlimited ride card also lets you do a lot of things you can’t do with pay-per-ride. For example I’ll ride the F into Brooklyn to Bergen go upstairs, cross the street and then take the G to northern Brooklyn. I also occasionally transfer between the G and the J,M at Broadway/Lorimer (outside walk) or between the G and a line that stops at Atlantic/Pacific (also outside walk).

    Lastly, every morning I take the “non-transfer” exit of the L at 8th Avenue, exit through a HEET, and then swipe in again at a few feet away and proceed down to the A,C,E. This is quicker and there are far less passengers to fight for stair space with.

    I’d have to abandon all these practices if I had to starting “watching my numbers”.

    Reply
    1. Benjamin Kabak

      To be fair, two of those trips you take are superfluous. You can switch to the Queens-bound G from the Coney Island-bound F at Carroll St. for free, and you can, as you noted, just use the ACE transfer from the L at 8th Ave./14th St. The others should be free transfers that do not count against your 90 rides.

      Reply
      1. Kai B

        I could do those alternatives, but I might miss a train as a result, and when trying to get to a meeting, where every minute matters, or trying to get home at night where missing a train means +20 minutes, I consider this an inconvenience.

        Reply
  8. SEAN

    I’ve ridden enough times to know how to maxamize my Metrocard benefits & with this knowledge I’ve realized, removing any insentives to ride transit will be quite distructive in the end for the MTA. If riders go away because the carrot was taken away, it will be extremely challenging to get them to return in the future.

    Remember it is easier to keep existing customers then to atract new ones. Plus there is the rise of the tax/ transit NIMBY’s to be worried about. Basicly they go something like this… since I don’t use it, I don’t want any of my tax dollars being waisted on it! After all it’s MY MONEY! Sort of the T-party line of thinking.

    Reply
  9. rhywun

    I guess I’ll have to disagree with everyone here and say that no way do I want to pay an extra five dollars a month to subsidize other folks’ extraordinary transit usage. I think I am an average user: twice every weekday, occasional use on weekends. At 90 rides a month, I would have to take five trips every Saturday and Sunday to meet the limit. I don’t live in Manhattan where hopping on and off the train all weekend is practical.

    It’s unfortunate the MTA even raised this issue. I would have willingly if grumblingly forked over the extra five dollars just like everyone else had they not put this price tag on the habits of a very few high-usage riders. Because I DO support “unlimited rides” in principle. Except now we have two competing plans which pit two classes of user against each other – not a good thing.

    As for “encouraging transit use” – it seems a double-edged sword to me, and not just because it pits average users against extraordinary users. As we’ve seen, it leads to a dramatic decrease in the average fare (and thus in farebox recovery), which places even greater stress on the day-to-day maintenance of the system.

    Reply
    1. Alon Levy

      If the MTA ever goes around to implementing POP on the buses, without American wheel reinventions, you won’t be subsidizing anyone with an unlimited ride; you’ll be a participant in a system that makes bus service tolerable.

      Reply
      1. rhywun

        I’m talking about some negative unintended consequences I see with unlimited rides. How is POP relevant?

        Reply
        1. Alon Levy

          It’s relevant because with unlimited cards, and only with unlimited cards, POP opens up the possibility of swipe-free riding.

          The part where some people use the trains a lot is one negative consequence, you’re right. That said, the MTA does not consider reduced ridership as a consequence, which means that it assumes every heavy user will keep using the system a lot even if the monthly card has a limit; this means that the actual difference to you may be much less than $5, as the fare will need a further hike with a limit to account for reduced usage.

          Reply
    2. Andrew

      Among unlimited card users, you’re probably at the low end. They’re priced to be only marginally attractive to people who use them primarily for commuting twice a day, five days a week, with only a few side trips.

      Extraordinary users, as you term them, don’t actually cost the system much more than you do. It’s those rush hour trips that cost the most to provide, and they’re not taking any more of them than you are.

      Reply
  10. wayne’s world

    I’d go with the limited as I can’t imaging using more than 22 rides in a week….though it is more confusing.

    Reply
  11. In a four-year plan, fare hikes and labor concessions abound :: Second Ave. Sagas

    […] package of fare hikes in October. The authority will decide, based upon public input, whether to limited the unlimiteds or simply raise the fares a few dollars more. Only around three percent of all subway riders exceed […]

    Reply
  12. Andrew

    Heavy usage is not fraud. There’s nothing fraudulent about taking 91 rides in a month on a card that’s advertised as unlimited.

    Reply

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