MetroCard

Over the last few months, I’ve repeatedly touched upon issues of cost in relation to the MTA’s decision to cut student MetroCards. As I explained again on Monday, it should cost between $687-$800 a year for one student’s school year travel without the option of free transit.

But what of the costs to the state to fund student travel? Tom Namako of The Post tackled this subject this week, and his findings are both staggering and unsurprising. The state won’t pony up more than $25 million — down for $45 million, up from $6 million — a year for student MetroCards, but it is content to spend over $1 billion busing students to school via the fleet of yellow buses. Namako also notes that the MetroCard program “help[s] move four times as many students at one-fifth of the cost of school buses.”

Namako continues:

The agency said it spends about $214 million to transport 585,000 students for free every year, with the city and state putting in only $45 million and $25 million respectively. Meanwhile, the Education Department’s $1 billion school-bus program moves only about 140,000 students, city statistics show.

That’s $786 million more for 445,000 fewer students. But city officials insist that money can’t be taken from one group and given to the other. “Busing requirements are set by state law. The city does not have the option of using busing money to fund MetroCards,” said one mayoral aide.

The DOE determines who is eligible for both yellow bus and free MTA services.

This is a staggering failure of politics and common sense from the city and state of New York City. Both of the entities responsible for getting students to school have been handed a literal golden transportation ticket, and they are both on the verge of letting the plan lapse. Meanwhile, these governments are content to flush money down the drain via a costly and inefficient yellow school busing system.

The MTA remains the nation’s only transit agency tasked with footing the bill for student transport, and there is simply no justification for it. It’s time for the state and city to swallow their anger and do the right thing. If the students are left stranded, it will be the fault of City Hall and Albany and not the MTA.

Student protests and parental complaints about the MTA’s proposed student MetroCard cuts are on the verge of taking center stage this week as the MTA Board gears up to hold hearings on its slate of service cuts. The Tri-State Transportation Campaign has a prime to the hearings, and I wanted to take a few minutes today to once again revisit the issue of free student transportation in New York City.

Since the MTA announced its plans to cut free student travel, advocacy groups and students have been up in arms. Just last week, a group of students delivered a letter to the MTA Board, a protest I said had the right message but the wrong audience. (Streetsblog too questioned that protest and the head of the Transit Riders Council urged the students to target City Hall.) Yet, before the traveling service cut circus hits a borough near you, let’s revisit a pair of arguments that continue to plague the student MetroCard debate.

1. The city and state are the ones who should be funding transit and not the MTA

Over the last few months, MTA officials have continually tried to lay blame for the student transit funding disaster on the state and with good reason. “I would love to see students have free trips to school but I believe that’s a responsibility that the city and state have to come to,” MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder said last week.

“We agree that school children should not have to pay to get to school, but funding this service is the responsibility of the State and City,” Jeremy Soffin, agency spokesperson, said to me recently as well. “The MTA has been called the yellow school bus for New York City, and that’s a good analogy. All over the state school kids get picked up by yellow school buses, and they don’t pay to ride. But the bus doesn’t show up unless state or local government pays the bus company.”

The reality is that the state and city have failed in their responsibility to fund transit. When the Student MetroCard program started, it was, as Metro reminded us today and I wrote in December, set to cost $135 million, and the city, state and MTA were to carry equal funding burdens of $45 million. That was in 1995, and since then, the city has never increased its contributions while the state’s have declined to $6 million. The MTA is left covering the costs, and as the below graph shows, those costs have soared.

The MTA knows it can recoup nearly $214 million in revenue by the 2011-2012 school year by charging students, and unless the city and state want to pay for student transit — a burden the state and localities carry elsewhere through New York — the MTA just should not be expected to pay.

2. A family will have to pay $687 per school year per student for transit

Some transit advocates have alleged that full-fare student transit will cost a family $1068 per student per year, but that number is simply wrong. That is the cost of 12 30-day unlimited ride MetroCards — or one year’s worth of travel. The only problem with that assumption is that students aren’t in school 12 months a year. In New York, students have 180 school days over nine months.

As I explored in depth in December, paying only for two rides per student per day for school days only would cost a family $687.90 per student. Paying for unlimited rides throughout the school year would cost just over $800 per student. For many families, these costs are a significant burden, but the true cost of transit to and from school is 64 percent lower than what may would have you believe. It’s irresponsible math to allege otherwise.

Some parents may claim that the Student MetroCard program allows their student to travel elsewhere after school. As long as that third trip is to an activity, then students are permitted to do so with their cards. Otherwise, the MTA is simply subsidizing free transit that isn’t related to school at all. The agency shouldn’t be expected to do that.

In the end, many New Yorkers, such as Michael Gould-Wartofsky who wrote a Huffington Post column on the topic, will try to blame the MTA. This is indicative of the MTA’s fat-cat culture, they’ll say, and it shows a callous disregard for students and families — especially lower class students and families — in New York City. It’s nothing of the sort. It is but another example of the why politicians scapegoat the MTA, and it’s one that should not be tolerated.

“Nowhere else in the United States is the public transportation system responsible for the costs of transporting students to school,” MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan said. “In other municipalities throughout the country the local government will provide that transportation free of charge, and in most cases, provide a fleet of yellow buses.”

As New York City students face the reality of life without a free MetroCard, most of the outrage has been directed at the MTA. How could the MTA desert the city’s children? How could they play politics with the city’s future? Doesn’t the authority know truancy rates will increase?

Over the past week, I’ve examined both the politics and the mathematics behind Student MetroCard cuts, and the picture is not a rosy one. The state, once a guarantor of the Student MetroCard program, now pays just $6 million in transportation subsidies for its students while the city hasn’t increased its funding past the $45 million mark in a decade and a half. The MTA, meanwhile, is saddled with $160 million in costs for the program.

For families, the pain will be acute. Based on my calculations, it will cost at least $687.60 for a family to send one child back and forth to school every year. Add some extracurricular stops, and the costs will rise to approximately $800 a year. As Sharon Otterman explored today in The Times, many families will struggle to find that money, and the city’s school choice program would suffer. “If I had to pay for the MetroCard, my mother would have preferred a school closer to me,” Alejandro Velazquez, a 15-year-old from the Bronx who travels 40 minutes to school each way, said. “There’s one right down the block from our house.”

I am guardedly optimistic though about the MTA’s position here. What is notable about Otterman’s article is her utter lack of sources who blame the MTA for pushing through these cuts. People are out there who are willing to point fingers, but journalists who are doing their jobs will not give them a platform. The state and city should bear the costs of transporting students, and journalists should know that.

In the end, it’s a tough situation for everyone. Urban areas are not legally required in New York State to provide free transportation to students, and the MTA in particular is under no mandate to give away transit to students while the millions of New Yorkers who rely on the transit network for to power the area’s economy wait longer for more crowded trains. While state officials may want the MTA to “find money” through other cuts that sustain student transit, the reality is that student transit is not the business of the MTA, and student transit is now acutely holding down the MTA from fulfilling its role.

“No other transit agency in the country subsidizes free or discounted student travel,” agency spokesman Kevin Ortiz, said. “Transporting students usually falls on the government body responsible for educating them.” Amen.

Let’s revisit the Student MetroCard argument for a few minutes. After the MTA Board voted this morning to cut free student transit — and, in fact, even before the vote — politicians were already slamming the agency for doing so. In a way, as I said yesterday, proposing cuts to the student transit discount was designed to get the attention of politicians, but at the same time, why should the MTA continue to subsidize free student transit? After all, the state isn’t really funding the program any longer either.

To understand the politics behind the student MetroCard cut, let’s jump back in time approximately 15 years when Rudy Giuliani was mayor. At the time, the city gave $700 million to the MTA, and according to a Times article, $125 million of that — or three times the current subsidy — went to student transit passes. Those figures were in the news because Mayor Giuliani was planning on cutting the subsidy to renegotiate a lesser contribution to the MTA from the city.

After much back-and-forth between the city, the state and the MTA, the three parties struck a deal on student transit in mid-1995. Each party would all contribute $45 million to the venture, and the funding would be split evenly. The $45 million is an important figure because, up until this year, that was still the level of city and state funding for the program. Despite assurances of at least equal funding as costs rose and on-again, off-again promises to fully subsidize student fares, the city and state simply hid their economic deficiencies in the MTA’s fragile books.

In 1996, the student passes again made headlines. This time, politicians were proposing a switch to student MetroCards. Prior to that year, students received only bus passes and could not use them on the subways. With the relatively new MetroCard technology, the MTA could offer better options for commuting services. At the time, the agency said it lost $5 million annually on the giveaways.

Two years later, the state assembly began a process that expanded student MetroCard eligibility to even more people. At the time, The Times said the program would cost an additional $45 million to administer. Only the MTA was saddled with costs as state and city contributions never increased above that $45 million level. As the ranks of the city’s children has swelled, the cost to administer this program has too, and it now costs the MTA upwards of $170 million a year to provide free rides, at the mandate of the city and state, to students.

Yet again, student MetroCards are on the chopping block, and it has again become a hot-button issue. Transit officials and city budget experts are noting the politics behind the move but also the absurdity of expecting the MTA to give away rides. “This is something the city and state should pay,” the Manhattan Institute’s Nicole Gelinas said to The Times. “It’s education spending, not transit spending. I think it is a pretty clever way to pressure the city and state to stop hiding their own budget problems in the MTA.”

MTA Board members concurred. “Who should have to pay for it are the people who provide the education, and that’s the state and the city,” Ira Greenberg, the Board’s LIRR Commuters Council representative, said today.

Looking again at the graphic atop this post, we can appreciate the absurdity behind those who criticize the MTA for a move the state itself just made to save money. Last month, New York State eliminated most of its funding for the student MetroCard subsidies. To balance its own budget, New York cut their contributions from $45 million to just $6 million. Although Gov. Paterson has promised to restore that money if the money for it rematerializes, why should the MTA be left picking up the tab? Any outrage should clearly be directed toward the elected officials who will not commit to funding student travel.

In the end, parents, as news outlets have found, will be quick to bash the MTA. It’s true that student MetroCard cuts are an easy to way to get attention, but the MTA should not have to cover for political shortfalls. “Nowhere else in the United States is the public transportation system responsible for the costs of transporting students to school,” MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan said. “In other municipalities throughout the country the local government will provide that transportation free of charge, and in most cases, provide a fleet of yellow buses.”