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)