But Why Stop At $16? Charge Them $250 At The Tolls — And All Day Below 145th Street — And We’ll Be Able To Supply Everyone With Individual Jetpacks So That Anyone Can Zoom Anywhere Virtually Unimpeded!

OK, now you’re getting greedy:

With the threat of a fare hike looming, a free subway system might seem like a distant fantasy for New York City straphangers.

Some dreamers, however, are pushing to turn the concept into a reality that they say could stimulate the city’s economy and provide an incentive for more motorists to switch to mass transit.

Charging motorists $16 to drive into most of Manhattan at all times — double the amount Mayor Bloomberg has proposed in his congestion pricing plan — and levying $16 tolls on all bridge and tunnel crossings could bring in $3.1 billion annually to subsidize a free mass transit system, the early results of a $100,000 study by a nonprofit group, the Institute for Rational Mobility, show. The MTA currently takes in about $1.96 billion in fares from the subway and buses, the study says, and it could save an estimated $360 million a year that it spends collecting those fares.

“It’s a Platonic ideal,” the chief attorney for the Straphangers Campaign, Gene Russianoff, said.