Right now, in my wallet, I have three MetroCards. One is my standard 30-Day Unlimited Ride card I use when I’m not planning on being out of the city for an extended period of time. The other two have cash on them. One currently has $10.50 and the other has $1.00. The one with just a buck is set to expire at the end of September.
For me to make full use of these pay-per-ride cards, I’d have to do some fancy math. The card with more money has 4 rides with $1.50 left over; the card with a dollar is useless until I add more money. With the new fare scheme for pay-per-ride cards — $2.25 per ride with a 15 percent discount at $8 and over — I am not alone in possessing MetroCards with awkward amounts of money left on them. In fact, the MTA is counting on just this problem for some of its budget.
Heather Haddon in amNew York details how the MTA relies on unused MetroCards for millions of dollars in revenue. The agency knows that people throw out MetroCards with money, and the agency is now including these millions in its budget estimates for 2010. Haddon reports:
Straphangers threw out an estimated $40 million in unused or unrefunded fare money in 2008, according to agency documents. The MetroCard windfall was up a whopping 38 percent from two years earlier.
What’s more, NYC Transit is budgeting for that revenue to increase to $48 million next year because of the recent fare hike…
At least two other transit agencies decline to budget for unused fares, arguing the revenue is a moving target that can’t be relied on for operations. “It’s a tricky one to compute. We don’t recognize it as a revenue source,” said Cathy Asato, a spokeswoman for the Metro in Washington D.C.
A MTA spokesman said including the figure for unused fares adds transparency, and all revenue estimates are updated three times a year.
Currently, straphangers with expired MetroCards can transfer the unused fare to new cards up to two years past the expiration date on the back. According to Transit spokesperson Paul Fleuranges, the agency fields approximately 1500 refund requests per month, but with fare math becoming increasingly complicated, busy New Yorkers are content to let the dollars slip away.
This fiscal reality could lead to a conflict of interests for those in charge. Transit should tell its riders how to use all of the money straphangers put on MetroCards, but if the agency needs the revenue to meet its budget estimates, officials may be less than forthcoming with refund information.
As far as I can tell, this $40 million doesn’t include Unlimited Ride MetroCards that do not pay for themselves. The MTA could, in fact, be recovering more than just the 21 million unused rides they currently take in.