Fare Hikes

Remember how excited New Yorkers were last week when the fare hike was seemingly rescinded?

Well, cancel those celebratory parties. As I noted, politicians shouldn’t play populist games with fare hikes when the MTA needs the money, and as Chris at East Village Idiot aptly noted, the fares for the Unlimited Ride MetroCards would increase such that those passengers who use them wind up shouldering much of the load for the fare hike.

Yesterday, the bad news started flowing straphangers’ way. The MTA has begun to unveil plans for Fare Hike ’08 Version 2. As you can guess, bridge and tunnel tolls will increase, commuter rail ticket prices will increase, and Unlimited Ride MetroCards will see a substantial increase. For many commuters — nearly half, in fact — those Unlimited Ride increases will hit them the hardest.

William Neuman at The New York Times has more:

Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s decision to freeze the base subway fare at $2 will not take the sting out of commuting costs for everyone: Yesterday, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said commuter rail tickets and the city’s bridge and tunnel tolls will jump an average of 3.85 percent. And unlimited ride MetroCards and bonus pay-per-ride MetroCards possibly face even steeper increases.

“At the most basic arithmetic level, obviously if you hold constant one portion of your revenues, then by definition other revenues will have to be raised to make up that difference,” said the authority’s chief financial officer, Gary J. Dellaverson, referring to bus and subway fares.

Got that? The MTA is trying not to lose too much revenue to Spitzer’s pandering plan to scale back the fare hike. I now fully expect to see prices on the Unlimited Ride MetroCards jump substantially.

It will take at least a week for the MTA to formulate another plan, but it won’t look pretty. Right now, only 14 percent of riders pay the $2 base fare, and most of those folks aren’t regular subway users. Pay-Per-Ride discounts account for approximately 36 percent of the total fares, and Unlimited MetroCards make up a little less than half. We the regular subway riders will feel the burn on that one.

But, as I see it, that may not turn out to be a terrible outcome. I’m not flat out against the fare hike. If the MTA claims it needs money to stave off multi-billion-dollar debts, past ineptitude aside, I’m inclined to believe the new highly-qualified leaders now in power. Plus, the Unlimited MetroCards are a boon for the consumers.

Yesterday, I announced my MetroCard Challenge in which I figure out for this month how much per ride I pay on my 30-day Unlimited card. Already, after five days, I’ve taken 15 rides, and the cost per ride is down to just over $5. At my current pace, I’d be paying around $0.85 per ride, a far cry from the $2 base fare.

So if Unlimited Ride cards increase, riders will still see a benefit, but it won’t be as damaging to the MTA. And before we get all misty eyed over Spitzer’s supposedly riding the our rescue, did you really think he would be able to eliminate the fare hike? He just wanted to pay lip service to that notion and look good. Mission Accomplished.

Photo of the turnstiles courtesy of flickr user k8johnson.

The news flew fast and furious yesterday following the Spitzer press conference and the MTA’s announcement that they would be scaling back the fare hike. When the dust settled, Elizabeth Benjamin at The Daily News’ Daily Politics blog came away with steller coverage. She had three posts — here, here and here — with reaction from, respectively, those praising Sptizer, those who think he didn’t go far enough and Mayor Bloomberg.

With all of this information flowing our way, it’s easy to lose sight of what mattered in the day’s news. The bottom line is that the public came away with something of a victory as the MTA announced it would keep the base fare at $2; scale back increases on Unlimited Ride Metrocards and toll increases; and probably throw out plans to implement peak and off-peak fares on New York City Transit-controlled buses and subways. I see three things wrong with this outcome, and the last culminates in an analogy to the five-cent fare, a historical era in New York transit that still reverberates today.

Who benefits from this decreased fare hike proposal?

In a surprising turn of events, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has announced plans to scale back the proposed fare hike. The announcement, coming on the heals of a call from New York State Gov. Eliot Spitzer, lessens the fare burden carried by the millions of New Yorkers who rely on the subway each day.

The decision by MTA CEO and Executive Director Elliot “Lee” Sander and MTA Board Chair Dale Hemmerdinger, announced in a press release, follow a month of fare hike hearings in which the public spoke out against the planned increases and an updated budget which included an unexpected end-of-the-year windfall of $220 million.

The MTA plans to return this $220 million to the riders over the next two years by reducing the propsed 6.5 percent fare and toll increases. The base fare for subway and bus riders will hold steady at $2.00 a ride, a point Gov. Spitzer stressed this morning. It is anticipated that Unlimited Ride Metorcards will still see a slight price increase.

“I believe this is a compromise that helps our customers without compromising our fiduciary responsibility,” Hemmerdinger said, “and I look forward to discussing it further with my fellow Board members.”

With the extra money, the MTA can hold that base fare steady and still cover their costs. While the details won’t emerge on the compromise for a few weeks, I anticipate that many of the provisions in the current fare hike proposal – notably a reduction in the pay-per-ride discounts – will still go into effect. But the base will remain at its current levels for now.

Both Sander and Hemmerdinger stressed the role the public played in achieving this end result. I’m sure some back-room arm-twisting by a governor in need of a public win had something to do with it as well. Additionally, the two MTA officials seemed to suggest that more state money would flow their way in order to close their projected deficits. Sounds good to me.

“The MTA is grateful to Governor Spitzer for his commitment to funding public transit and our four-year financial plan,” Sander said. “We are glad that revenues came in high enough to allow us to limit the fare increase and still address $6 billion in deficits over the next four years.”

It’s the season of fare hike grandstanding for public officials. Yesterday, Andrew Saul, MTA Vice Chair and Republican Congressional hopeful, announced his politically expedient opposition to the fare hike. Today, our embattled Governor Eliot Spitzer has done the same. While this seems like a move to shore up his waning popularity, Spitzer is employing a rational that I think is fatally flawed to justify his opposition to the fare hike.

As many news outlets have reported (City Room, Daily Politics – Spitzer held a press conference and issued a statement outlining his opposition to the proposed hike:

I have been closely following the public hearings on the potential fare hike by the MTA and I’ve listened to the public’s serious concerns about paying more, especially while times are tight. At the same time, I am acutely aware of the need for state agencies and authorities to be fiscally responsible, pay down debt and plan for the future. So as the MTA considered a fare hike, my chief concern was making sure that fiscal responsibility was observed and that all avenues were explored before imposing an added burden on the public.

As the MTA updated its budget forecasts, their balance sheet yielded an additional $220 million. Based on the current economic climate that has so many New Yorkers feeling squeezed, it seemed only proper that this amount be returned to the riders. I am therefore calling on the MTA to use these funds to reduce the proposed fare and toll increase.

As City Room notes, Spitzer is talking solely about the $2 base fare here. He simply wants the other increases to be toned down a bit. However, considering that the Metrocard Vending Machines accept increases that are multiples of $0.25, the MTA can’t really lower the anticipated fare hike. While mentioning the economics of the current day, Spitzer ignores the environment. The MTA should be raising toll rates, in my opinion, to discourage driving and fund mass transit options along those road routes.

But that’s not the big flaw. Rather, Spitzer’s belief that the $220 million represents a satisfactory amount of money for the MTA ignores the MTA’s own budget projections. The MTA right now is predicting potential deficits of over $4 billion between now and 2011 if they don’t raise the fares. Even if those estimates are wrong on a magnitude of $220 million a year, that steal leaves the authority approximately $3 billion in debt because they have to repay outstanding debts from when the Authority refused to raise the fares in the 1970s. Have we not learned our history lessons yet?

Until someone else can come up with a long-term plan for the MTA’s economic health that allows for system growth and financial strength, I will support this fare hike. To me, it seems that Spitzer is another public official speaking out against something that he knows is inevitable in order to curry favor with a public that has largely turned against him.

Give us a solution or stay silent. Enough with the pandering at the expense of the MTA. The Authority is too important the long-term success of New York City to become a political pawn again.

Andrew Saul is the Vice Chairman of the MTA Board. As such, you would imagine that Mr. Saul cares deeply about the upcoming fare hike. You may even believe that Mr. Saul would go out of his way to attend the fare hike meetings. And you would be wrong.

Saul, we learned last week, was one of the three MTA board members who couldn’t make it to a single fare hike hearing. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that Saul had already decided to the support the fare hike no matter what. Well, guess what? You’re wrong again.

In what I can only call a surprise announcement, Andrew Saul, according to The Daily News, plans to vote against the fare hike. Pete Donohue has more:

“I am against this fare hike proposal,” board Vice Chairman Andrew Saul declared. “A fare increase is always a hardship and the last option I consider to cover budget shortfalls.”

Instead of seeking higher fares from millions of daily subway, bus and commuter train riders, Saul – who also heads the board’s finance committee – said he would continue to pursue savings within the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

He also pledged support to lawmakers seeking more mass transit funding from Gov. Spitzer and the state Legislature. Spitzer unveils his first budget and the Legislature reconvenes in January.

Great. This is good news for opponents of the hike even if the fare increases seem inevitable right now.

But I have to wonder why Saul didn’t go to the fare hikes to lend his support to the public testifying against the fare hikes. If he’s so convinced that asking the legislature for more money and internal belt-tightening can cover the multi-billion-dollar gap that the MTA is projected, why didn’t he say so on the record during one of the hearings?

Maybe it’s because Saul, who is running for Congress in New York’s 19th District, knows that the MTA needs the funds from the hike but doesn’t find it politically expedient to voice his support for an increase that will inevitably pass muster with the MTA board. I don’t think his MetroNorth-riding constituents would look too kindly upon a vote for the fare hike during a hotly-contested Congressional race. Hmmm.

As I stood in the lobby of NYU’s Kimmel Center on Saturday morning at 10:05 a.m., five minutes after the scheduled start of the MTA’s Public Engagement Workshop on Fares and Tolls, I couldn’t help but to chuckle. Like so many of the MTA’s trains, the start of the conference was delayed. According to one of the conference staff members, there was a “security issue with the university.” Maybe someone saw something and said something.

No matter what, by the time we made up to the tenth floor, police officers were there patting us down. I guess 200 dedicated transit geeks and public advocates concerned enough with the fare hike process to get up pretty early on a Saturday morning represented a threat. Whether we were a security threat or a threat to the hegemony of the MTA’s fare hike process, well, I’ll leave that one up to you to decide.

Once the conference kicked off, thirty minutes late, it was still beset with problems. The lighting in the room made it nearly impossible to see the PowerPoint presentation projections until someone realized the ceiling-to-floor curtains needed closing, and there weren’t enough copies of the presentation materials for everyone in attendance.

But after these initial hiccups, the event ran smoothly and could even be considered a success. The MTA showed they were willing to make a show of listening, and the public displayed a willingness to talk. “We will listen closely to the conclusions and suggestions you put out,” MTA CEO and Executive Director Elliot “Lee” Sander said during his introductory presentation on the current state of the MTA’s finances.

Throughout the morning, MTA officials spoke, and then, the participants responded. The officials spoke on the fare hike proposals, the capital campaign programs and the future of public transportation in New York City. After each 15-30 minute presentation, participants in groups of about 4-8 answered a few questions and discussed what we had just heard. The independent moderators took notes and collected our answer sheets.

Supposedly, these answers will all be presented to the MTA board members. I have to wonder, though, if the MTA board members can’t be bothered with attending the fare hike hearings, will they really want to sift through over 800 answer sheets from the participants? Probably not.

In the end, the meetings seemed to strike a positive chord with those in attendance. While The Daily News, in an article in which I was quoted, claims that the participants panned the fare hike, their blurring of the editorial/news boundary with their Halt the Hike campaign is on full display here. In that article, I am quoted discussing the sequestering of MTA employees and officials. They sat at their own tables while the rest of us talked with the moderators who weren’t too well-versed in topics relating to transit.

But otherwise, contrary to what the News reported, most of the attendees understood that, by tying its revenue streams so closely to volatile property taxes, the MTA could really use that fare hike. We all just want the Authority to look elsewhere as well.

As I’ve reflected on these morning’s events, I am torn between believing that the MTA is truly searching for answers from the public or that the MTA is simply putting a front on a fare hike that is all but inevitable. Lee Sander clearly talked as though the fare hike is a reality, and even the discussions about the MTA’s future focused more around the nebulous idea of a green MTA rather than on concrete ways in which the MTA can improve and expand its service.

Over the next few days, I’ll discuss a few other things I noticed at the hearing. But for now, I’ll leave you with this: While some MTA board members have expressed opposition to the fare hike, the fare hikes are going to happen, public input or no public input, and these fare hikes will probably be tied more closely to the rate of inflation.

I hope the MTA continues to host workshops. There are a lot of people out there with great ideas about the future of public transportation in New York City, and the city will benefit immensely from this exchange of ideas.

Photo by Benjamin Kabak (Second Ave. Sagas)