Thirty years ago, the New York Public Interest Research Group, a non-profit research and advocacy organization, formed the Straphangers Campaign. Tasked with speaking up for the city’s millions of subway riders, the group has, as its Web site explains, enjoyed numerous success stories over the last three decades. They have helped — with an emphasis on the help — more transparency and citizen participation at MTA meetings, increased attention to transit investments, better MetroCard options and the restoration of the Court St. station into a permanent Transit Museum.

Yet, when push came to shove this year, when the MTA found itself with its back against the wall, when riders and politicians uneducated in the minutiae of the transit agency’s woes started slamming it for demanding more money or threatening a fare hike, the Straphangers were hardly a force in the debate. Gene Russianoff, the group’s lead attorney, made his perfunctory appearances at fare hike meetings and saw his name in nearly every article about the MTA. His quotes though are mostly bland and forgettable. Transit opponents have their “two sets of books” while Russianoff says on the eve of the fare hikes, “It would have been much worse – with double the fare hike, coupled with severe service cuts – if the state Legislature had not passed an MTA bailout, which spread transit costs among riders, motorists and business.” You tell me which one makes for a better talking point.

Over the last few years, I’ve gone from admiring the Straphangers’ ability to get their name out there for most subway-related things to believing that the group may need a new mission and a new focus. A glance at their Web site reveals nothing compelling. There’s yet another survey about pay phones underground and an annual look at how dirty the trains are. We have the slowest buses and the state of the subway awards. The only lists that are less interesting and less variable on a year-to-year basis are those ranking colleges and universities published by U.S. News and World Reports.

The site is notably silent on the fare hike. The lone link goes back to the hard-to-find page on the MTA’s website, and the organization doesn’t have anything resembling a one-pager about the state of the MTA, contacting officials or urging better investment in transit. They’re just not doing the job.

I’m not the only transit advocate who has noticed this lack of leadership. Over at On Transport, a new site run by Chris O’Leary, he slams the Straphangers for their ineffective leadership:

The outrage over the hike was not directed at the state’s inaction, but rather at the MTA for its alleged mismanagement of funds and bloated, overpaid board of directors…In the face of all these facts, the media, politicians, and the MTA’s customers have chosen to blame the MTA for their deficit.

A logical reaction by an organization that is working for the best interests of subway riders would be a campaign of facts: simply lay out some simple facts about how the MTA got into this mess, point out what the MTA has done to improve their efficiency and transparency, and make a call to action to rally riders to demand that the state provide new funding sources for the agency.

Instead, the Straphangers Campaign sat on their hands. They joined a coalition of over a hundred organizations that created a letter-writing campaign to the state legislators, but there was nothing they did to stop the flow of misinformation from politicians into the mass media…The organization has been far less proactive and far more reactive. In a time when transit was in peril in New York, the Straphangers Campaign did what they always do. Russianoff showed up on NY1, repeated the same valid but tired talking points, but never made it part of a wide-ranging campaign to get the truth out: fares were going up because of the State Government, NOT the MTA. The Straphangers Campaign seemed content to continue simply being quoted in the news and not making news of their own.

O’Leary ends with a pair of questions: “If the Straphangers Campaign refuses to do anything other than send out press releases and ‘report cards,’ how will they affect any change in getting the MTA fully funded at the state level? And if the Straphangers Campaign won’t take up the task of rallying people around the cause of a fully-funded transit system, who will?”

Over the last few days, I’ve posed the same questions and have arrived at no answer. The news reporters are mailing it in; the advocacy groups — and I count myself here — are preaching to the choir. Somehow, someway, we have to get the message out, and if the long-standing groups who have championed themselves as the voice of the riders won’t do it, then maybe it’s time for some new voices to step up and take the reins.

Whenever the MTA raises subway fares, the city’s newspapers — or at least those that decide to write about — cover it with a faux-populism outrages as expressed through the riders the reporters choose to interview. Instead of focusing on the whys and wherefores of the fare hike, instead of explaining how Albany has left the MTA out in the financial cold, it’s far easier to find people outraged than it is to educate.

Take, for example, Irving DeJohn and Stephanie Gaskell’s piece in the Daily News about rider reaction to the fare hike. It is chock full of quotes bemoaning the price increases, and the statements of the riders are, frankly, ignorant.

Take the first one in the article from Emmanuel Louis of Brooklyn: “You shouldn’t raise the fare if you’re not going to increase service. It’s just not fair.” This is where a reporter should challenge Louis and ask him how he feels about raising the fares if the alternative means worse service and significantly less of it. After all, to the cut the budget gap without raising fares, the MTA would have had to scale back service to unusable levels on those lines they could justify keeping open.

Louis isn’t alone. “The increases don’t make sense,” Najla Netus, of Brooklyn, said. “The service isn’t that great. The trains are always running slow.” That’s right, Najla, blame it on the slow trains. Where are these slow trains, by the way? When I ride, the trains run fast. The wait times are often far too long though, but hey, more service costs a lot more.

How about this one? “It’s ridiculous,” Trimette Roberts, also of Brooklyn, said. “It’s bad budgeting and bad management. To have a fare increase every year, year and a half – that’s the part that’s frustrating.”

We Brooklynites sure are opinionated. Anyway, actually, Roberts is dead wrong. To have a fare increase every year that’s tracked with inflation would make far too much sense. The history of low fares along with government subsidies that diminish each year and don’t make up for the gaps due to artificially low fares is what got the MTA into this mess in the first place.

On Friday, in a companion piece to this one, I took transit activists to task for their inability to fight in Albany. All of us work hard online to get our opinions heard, but in the end, those listening are those who are already educated. The Trimette Roberts’ and Emmanuel Louis’ of the city aren’t actively reading StreetsBlog or Second Ave. Sagas on any sort of basis.

What they are reading, though, are the papers. The Daily News covers the fare hike by taking an uninformed but outraged populist approach to the MTA because it sells papers. At OTBKB, Leon Freilich notes that The Times Sunday Metropolitan section had nary a word about the fare hike.

It isn’t, of course, the city’s reporters’ jobs to educate the masses. They’re in the business of selling papers. A responsible press though should be part of the job. As I criticized transit activists on Friday for not getting the message out, so must I look at the transit coverage with a raised eyebrow. Maybe the activists need to be getting the message and the talking points out to the reporters, but faux-populism is irresponsible no matter the issue.

Just a quick Sunday reminder that the new fares have gone into effect. A subway ride now costs $2.25, and the Unlimited Ride options all saw increases of a few dollars this morning. You can click on the image above for a bigger version of the MTA’s fare hike poster.

Meanwhile, Transit provided me with some interesting information about the current state of the fares. When the pay-per-ride discounts, Unlimited Ride usage and free transfers are aggregated, the average fare had been around $1.41. It will go up to approximately $1.56. That’s $1.13 in 1996 dollars, and in 1996, the actual fares were $1.50. Somehow, straphangers are paying less now than they did 13 years ago. That’s small comfort though as this is the second fare hike in two years.

On Sunday, the MTA will raise the fares. A single ride will cost $2.25, and the various MetroCard offerings will increase by a few dollars. For those of us watching, it won’t come as a surprise, and we’ll know that the MTA almost had to raise the fares by a much greater percentage than they did. We’ll also know that the MTA’s finances — just one set of books — is not too far from the edge of a disaster, and we’ll know that the MTA would rather not have to raise the fares at all.

The sad part is, though, that the vast majority of New Yorkers don’t know and don’t care to find out. They don’t care to invest time to educate themselves about the mass transit system. They would rather complain about fictional charges — two sets of books, the MTA wants to cut service, yadda yadd yadda — than educate themselves about transit and find out how a true commitment to transit investment would radically improve life in New York City.

A series of articles by Heather Haddon that appears this week in amNew York drive home this point. For the most, these articles are anecdotal. Haddon staked out a bunch of subway stations, asked various straphangers their views on the upcoming fare hike and picked some of the most ludicrous answers to highlight.

On Monday, Haddon focused on the fact that some riders did not know the fares were going up. Never mind the front page news coverage or the lead stories on the local newscasts about it. “Get out of here. Nobody’s going to pay that,” Richard Tillman said. “It just went up.”

No one, Richard? Really? I think everyone will pay it, and it will remain a relatively cheap and easy way to get around the city.

The best quotes from Haddon’s articles though are from those who say they will turn to their cars. “Now I know what I’m going to do next week. I’m going to pull out the car,” Angela Pacheco of Brooklyn said because the 30-Day Unlimited Ride is going up the cost of a whopping three gallons of gas. Another rider in another Haddon piece echoed Pacheco. “Might as well get a car,” Marcia Roberts, a Queens resident, said.

This is the attitude that explains why our mass transit system doesn’t have political support. This is why people are going to be fighting with MTA employees over the new fares. This is why politicians refuse to toll the East River bridges, refuse to allow the city to implement camera-enforced bus lanes. This is why the agency that runs our subway system — a system that transports over 5.2 million people per day — is struggling to keep it in a state of good repair.

On the eve of yet another fare hike, transit advocates have themselves to blame. We haven’t united behind the proper message; we haven’t overcome a powerful auto lobby; and we haven’t made our voices heard by those who hold the purse strings. One day, that will change. For now, we’re left with higher fares and a transit authority on life support.