Fair Fare?
September 26th, 2007
Newspapers, and transit mavens have had a complicated and varied response to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s complicated and varied ideas for raising transit fare.
Local Motion said everyone knows the fare will rise. So the MTA should get to the real issue: service. No one wants to pay more, the blog wrote, when the authority is “giving 21st-Century New Yorkers a 20th-Century transportation system with 19th-Century reliability and service.”
The Post , though, hopes the higher fares will bring better service – or at least keep service from getting worse. “The MTA must have the funds for proper upkeep of the system - even if that means a fare hike,” it wrote.
Second Avenue Sagas sees the proposed peak/off peak fare as a particularly bad idea. “While even the plan simply to have an across-the-board fare hike is a regressive tax, the one with tiered fares is more egregious than the other” because “9-to-5ers with little job flexibility will have to shoulder the burden of the fare increases,” it said. “Meanwhile, people beholden to no one — or few others — can take the subway at a more leisurely and cheaper hour.”
Reviewing the fare proposals, the Straphangers Campaign applauds the MTA for “thinking outside of the box” to come up with the off-peak discounts. But it says the increases in the fare are too big. Instead it says the local and state governments should pick up some of the burden, allowing base fare to increase by “a more modest” 10 cents.
That won’t happen, the Daily News reports today. The MTA has to boost fares by increments of 25 cents, because “its vending machines can dispense only dollar coins and quarters.” And so, MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin told the paper, “The limitations of technology would make a $2.10 fare extremely costly to implement.”
By Gail Robinson on September 26, 2007, 8:30 amIn category: Finance, Gotham City, Transportation
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September 26th, 2007 at 8:39 pm
A 12.5 cent increase, that is, 2 fares for 4.25 would allow 75 cents change from $5. this is more in line with the 6.5% increase proposed for multiple/unlimited ride metro cards