Halt The Hike
BY LINDA J. WILSON

Queens elected officials, their colleagues from around the five boroughs and citywide transit advocates packed a rally at City Hall on December 9 to send a unified message to the Metropolitan Transit Authority, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor Eliot Spitzer: Halt the Hike! Besides Sabini, Liu, Assemblymember Rory Lancman, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Straphangers Campaign Staff Attorney Gene Russianoff, Working Families Party Executive Director Dan Cantor and Acorn Executive Director Bertha Lewis also attended the rally.

Despite the protests of local lawmakers and commuters, a fare hike on the area's buses, subways and commuter train lines is a virtual certainty.

The MTA claims that the proposed fare hike is not all bad news for straphangers and train riders. According to the proposal, released Tuesday morning, single-ride subway and bus fares will remain at $2; at $47, a new 14-day pass will provide a $1 savings over the old seven-day rate; express bus base fare will remain at the present $5 level; a seven-day express bus pass stays at $41; the Mail & Ride fare discount on joint monthly railroad-unlimited ride MetroCards remains, and instead of receiving 20 percent off the cash toll, trucks using E-ZPass on bridges and tunnels will get a 25 percent discount.

The bad news, commuter advocates and many elected officials say, is that working men and women who take mass transit every day- and can least afford a rise in transit fares- will suffer the effect of the fare hikes most. Under the MTA proposal, the price of the average MetroCard bonus ride will increase by 7 cents, from $1.67 to $1.74. A One-day Fun Pass will rise by 50 cents from $7 to $7.50, the price of a seven-day pass will increase by $1 from $24 to $25 and the cost of a 30-day pass will go up by $5 from $76 to $81.

"This fare hike will hit 86 percent of the riding public who use fare discounts," Gene Russianoff, NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign staff attorney, said when the hikes were announced on Monday. "These include pay-per-ride bonus MetroCards and seven- and 30-day unlimited-ride passes. It's also a double whammy for most LIRR and Metro- North commuters whose railroad fares would go up! The large majority of them also use city transit. The MTA says the new fare hikes are 'progressive'. In the absence of any demographic data to back up their claim, it is still a fare hike."

Russianoff added, "The struggle to win fairer state and city funding for transit continues. Metropolitan area riders already pay more than their fair share. In 2005, riders paid 55 percent of the costs of running the subways and buses. Metro-North riders paid 51 percent and LIRR riders paid 47 percent. But riders in other cities pay much less. The national average for the top 50 transit systems is 37 percent. In Boston it is 29 percent, Chicago 43 percent and Philadelphia 37 percent. The Spitzer [gubernatorial] administration should not propose a state budget filled with inadequate support and gimmicks for transit."

Governor Eliot Spitzer and Mayor Michael Bloomberg both applauded the MTA fare hike proposal. "I commend MTA Chair Dale Hemmerdinger and MTA Executive Director and

CEO Lee Sander on the hard work that they and their staff have put into developing a fiscally responsible 2008 budget," Spitzer said in a statement. "Fare increases are a difficult reality, but they have been diligent in their efforts to save the base fare at $2, limit the increase on discount MetroCards and ease the burden on those who are least able to afford any hike. They combed through the budget to find savings and also to identify revenues to keep fare and toll increases to a level that is fair to the users of the system.

"We all know the challenges that our transit system faces. The fare increase will be used to maintain an adequate level of service, ensure the safety of the system, and meet the challenges of growing ridership. By holding the $2 fare as I had requested, reducing the amount needed to purchase a bonus MetroCard, and introducing the 14- day pass, the MTA has put forward a range of options to ensure the system remains affordable."

"Based on the information that my staff and I have received and reviewed over the past few weeks, I am now satisfied that the MTA budget is a responsible plan that includes important cost reductions," Bloomberg said. "I agree with Governor Spitzer that this fare increase is necessary to maintain an adequate level of service and balance the needs and obligations of all who use this critical part of the region's infrastructure. Although it is always hard to ask riders to pay more, I will now urge the city's representatives to support the proposed fare plan that calls for preserving the $2 fare and holding the overall fare increase to less than 4 percent. This was something we couldn't support until we'd done everything possible to lower operating expenses and to ensure efficiencies."

One city representative, state Senator John Sabini, a former City Councilmember, instead called on the state legislature and the council to look for other ways to fund the transit system. "Any kind of fare hike, now or later, will put a difficult burden on working families who rely on the service every day to get to work and school," he declared. "Before we allow the New Yorkers who are the backbone of this city to bear the brunt of another fare hike, we must make sure that every other option has been exhausted first."

Earlier this year, Sabini, the ranking member of the senate Transportation Committee, drafted a letter signed by 23 of his senate minority colleagues, urging Hemmerdinger to put a freeze on any fare hike until a better picture of New York's long-range transportation plan emerges in the coming months.

"There's no need for any fare increase of any kind now," City Councilmember John Liu, chair of the council Transportation Committee, asserted. "The MTA needs to drop this arrogant effort to hike the fares and instead get down to the real business of running our mass transit system, of fixing stations, of terror-proofing the subways, of installing communications capabilities, and maintaining the storm drainage systems.

"The MTA is once again out of touch with the public in this headlong rush to raise transit fares. In New York, we're trying to get more commuters to use mass transit. However, all the ill-conceived MTA talk of fare increases has in fact stirred up mounting opposition to the mayor's congestion mitigation proposal. Ultimately, it all boils down to the MTA's credibility and New Yorkers simply are not ready to pay the MTA more now when there is a billion dollars of operating surplus, on top of which they recently found $220 million dollars of extra surplus."