For the last three months, the MTA has firmly insisted that they would not raise fares for 2010. When faced with an initial deficit of under $400 million, Board members said the authority would become a leaner one with more streamlined service options and fewer costly and underutilized runs. When the deficit ballooned to $751 million, they began to dance around the issue, but CEO and Chairman Jay Walder repeatedly said he preferred to stick with the scheduled 2011 fare hike. Well, the best laid plans…
Today, the Post reports that the MTA is considering a fare hike in 2010, not least of all because most people at last week’s hearings expressed a strong preference for a hike over a service cut. I’ve touched on this topic in a few posts since December, and I too prefer a hike over the cuts. Tom Namako has more:
Increasing the cost of a ride on subways, buses and commuter rails in 2010 is just one option out of many that officials have put on the table to overcome the staggering deficit, management sources said.
“I think there is a set of options. And the fare is one of those as we try to get to the bottom line,” a board member said.
“In view of the reaction we got to the service reductions we have out there, I think that asking most board members if they’d rather see more service cuts or a fare increase, I think, at the moment, many would pick a fare increase.”
In a statement to the Post, the MTA denied exploring the hikes. “Our position has not changed. It remains our intention to raise the fare in 2011 as agreed upon last year,” spokesman Jeremy Soffin said.
Yet, the truth remains that to cut $751 million worth of services would cripple the MTA and the New York City economy. Without massive layoffs and an agency-wide restructuring, it is nearly impossible to cut that much while meeting ridership demands.
Meanwhile, Bill Henderson of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Council to the MTA raised some interesting points about the fare hike. He first noted that a hike this year could be viewed as an acceleration of the 2011 hike, but it is my understanding that the MTA’s fare hike in 2011 is a foregone conclusion whether they raise fares this year or not. Henderson noted, however, that if the MTA were to announce a fare hike within the next few weeks, it would go into effect right around Election Day. Hopefully, straphangers would be angry enough at the way Albany robs from the MTA to vote the anti-transit representatives out of office.
And so we are where I expected us to be. The MTA is broke, and it needs to offer transit service to the millions of New Yorkers who rely on it a day. It doesn’t enjoy any sort of political support in Albany and has become a scapegoat for the politicians’ inabilities to defend their constituent interests. Soon, we’ll be paying more for, hopefully, the same amount of service. Cutting service and raising fare would lead to a dark day for New Yorkers indeed.
I grew up at 91st St. and Broadway in Manhattan, and I remember learning from an early age of the subway stop that, one day, years before I or my parents lived there, had been open at our corner. The station was a local stop on the IRT from 1904 until February of 1959 when modernization and platform expansion rendered it useless. Today, it is a 
Currently, New York City’s 422 subway stations are staffed by 3000 station agents. These folks are supposed to serve as the eyes and ears of the MTA. They sit in their booths to help passengers in need, assist those who can’t negotiate the turnstiles and, ideally, guard against crime. In a few months, their numbers will drop by 450, and although every station will still be staffed, people will be inconvenienced. 