MTA Picks Pockets of New York Straphangers
by Joshua Liberles on December 23, 2007
If New Yorkers are already paying $10 for a dirty martini and over $1000 a month for a cramped studio apartment, what’s a few more dollars for a MetroCard? At least, that seems to be the attitude of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) in the face of mass protests and petitions by straphangers to stop an impending fare hike that finally passed early this week.
New Yorkers have been awaiting another fare hike for the last few years, though this increase is hardly the worst the city has seen in recent years. In 2003, fares rose a dramatic 33 percent, and transit officials increased the base fare to $2 from $1.50.
Fortunately, this latest increase was minimal—fares rose only four percent, and the base fare for single-ride trips didn’t budge. But only 14% of riders actually buy single-ride fares, and they tend to be the poorest of commuters, or tourists (who often stick around Times Square and eat at the Olive Garden after seeing a bad Broadway musical). Those hardest hit are New Yorkers and “bridge and tunnel” suburbanites from surrounding communities who buy unlimited MetroCards for the week or the month.
Norman Seabrook, a member of the transit board, told the Times, "Mom and Pop can still get on the bus or the train for two bucks. I’m happy."
Seabrook may be satisfied, but most so-called “Mom and Pop” commuters are the ones buying monthly and weekly commuter fares. It’s the fanny pack-sporting tourists, and the poor, who opt for the single-ride fare from Central Park to Coney Island.
…This increase is arguably stealthier than most. Sure, Gov. Eliot Spitzer may boast that he preserved the $2 base fare. In fact, that’s exactly what he did. “The $2 is staying constant, which we think is the benchmark that people look at and understand as the defining price,” Mr. Spitzer said proudly last month.
The reality, however, is that the $2 fare is increasingly irrelevant. It means more to the average tourist than to the typical subway or bus passenger. Overwhelmingly, New Yorkers rely on the various discounted MetroCards that enable them to pay less than $2 per ride, even with the latest increase.
Subway managers say, correctly, that the riders who will feel the most pain are those with the deepest pockets, notably those who will soon pay $81 for a monthly MetroCard instead of the current $76. Anyone able to shell out $76 at a time can probably come up with $5 more without raising a sweat.
Still, users of the unlimited cards are, almost by definition, the most frequent users of mass transit. Why else buy those cards? So the authority’s most loyal customers are the ones who will be hit the hardest. It is an intriguing way to do business.
Most alarming, I think (as a former, subway-surfing New Yorker), is that the MTA plans to continue hiking fares incrementally every few years (crushing my dreams, perhaps, of ever affording NYC again). MTA chairman H. Dale Hemmerdinger told the Times that the most recent increase “establishes the practice of smaller and more regular fare increases." Sounds like fare hikes in this mass transit mecca may become as routine as a Saturday morning bagel with schmear. Each bite, however, will leave a bad taste in the mouths of commuters.
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