Who Needs A Fare Hike When The MTA Is There To Nickel And Dime You Into Solvency?

The MTA takes a page from the decrepit bottler/distributor industry by cleaning up on riders who can’t be bothered to use up every last cent on their MetroCards:

Beginning in March, many subway and bus riders will have to learn a new math — and it could leave them scratching their heads. Or gnashing their teeth.

On Wednesday, the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted to reduce the bonus that riders receive on pay-per-ride MetroCards, from 20 to 15 percent. The board also decided to increase some other fares.

The change in the bonus means many riders will see odd amounts of spare change — as little as a nickel or a dime — left over on their MetroCards. And if large numbers of exasperated riders throw away cards with balances of just 5 or 10 cents, the result could add up to a windfall to the authority in unclaimed fares.

The current 20 percent bonus system makes for simple math: Buy five rides and you get one ride free. In other words, if you feed $10 into a MetroCard vending machine, the card will come out showing a balance of $12.

Under the new plan, the minimum that riders must spend to qualify for a bonus will be reduced to $7, from $10, in an effort to put a fare discount within the reach of more people with lower incomes. But in that case, when someone puts $7 on a card, an additional $1.05 will appear on the card, for a total of $8.05.

If they take four subway trips, at $2 each, that will leave a balance on the card of five cents. If they refill the card with another $7, it will then show a total value of $8.10, enough for four rides, with a dime left over. The real challenge is figuring out how much to put on the card to bring it up to a round sum.

Hot Dog Vendor Not Kosher

War veteran undercuts Big Hot Dog. In other news, Tony Avella threatens to unseat John Liu and Eric Gioia as biggest grandstander on the City Council*:

Out in front of the crowded entrance to the Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the more lucrative spots in Manhattan to sell hot dogs. It is so good, in fact, that one of the largest pushcart vending companies in New York City pays $574,000 a year to the city for the right to place two hot dog carts there.

And since mid-July, Dan Rossi has also had a hot dog cart there, on Fifth Avenue near 82nd Street, and has been paying absolutely nothing for the spot. The carts belonging to the big company, New York One, formerly named M & T Pretzel, are off to each side of the museum steps, but Mr. Rossi’s cart is smack in front, and because he charges less for some items, he often has a line of customers when the other carts do not.

“I’m not really doing it for the money, I’m doing it for the veterans,” Mr. Rossi said while selling hot dogs briskly one recent Sunday afternoon. Mr. Rossi said he is a Vietnam veteran and claims that the city, about a decade ago, wrongly began limiting the number of pushcart permits given to war veterans.

“I’ve been summonsed, fined, threatened with arrest and shut down by the police, but I keep coming back,” said Mr. Rossi, 58, of the Bronx.

City Councilman Tony Avella of Queens, who also criticizes the city over permits for veterans, held a news conference on Tuesday morning at City Hall to call attention to what he said was a “disgrace by the city, to forget its veterans.”

“The right of veterans to get permits has a long history in this city, and for the past few years, when veterans try to apply for one, they can’t get one,” he said. New York State has allowed veterans free vending permits since the Civil War, he said.

*Avella vs. John Liu vs. Queens Councilmember Eric Gioia.

Location Scout: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Fiscal Restraint And Moderation

Huh. You don’t say:

Although Mr. Bloomberg has ordered an overall hiring freeze and has yet to agree to raises for the city’s largest municipal labor union, he has doled out generous pay increases to those who work directly for him, a review of payroll records shows.

The mayor, while holding raises for other city employees to about 4 percent per year, has given more than 200 members of his staff increases ranging from 10 percent to more than 100 percent, the records show. And 57 staffers have received a raise of at least 10 percent more than once.

In addition, the number of employees earning $100,000 or more has risen by 59 percent, to 105 from 66 in 2002, with the bulk of that increase coming in 2006, after the mayor won re-election.

It is not unusual for mayors to reward their loyal aides, especially as they near the twilight of their tenure. Mr. Bloomberg’s predecessor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, gave generous raises throughout his term to his deputies. During his final summer in office, Mr. Giuliani handed out 8 percent raises to his deputy mayors, increasing their salaries to $168,700.

For Mr. Bloomberg, who founded the media and financial services giant Bloomberg L.P., the swelling salaries echo the pattern he established in the private sector of pulling together a loyal coterie of advisers and assistants and paying them handsomely.

. . .

Shea Fink, who worked on Mr. Bloomberg’s 2001 campaign, started at a $93,000 annual salary as assistant to the mayor, overseeing his schedule. She now earns $170,368, an 83 percent increase, though John Gallagher, a mayoral spokesman, said her responsibilities have significantly increased and she now serves as a senior adviser to the mayor.

Mr. Bloomberg also provided six-figure bonuses from his campaign account to his closest lieutenants after his mayoral runs in 2001 and 2005, generally distributing them just before the aides joined or returned to city government to avoid running afoul of conflict-of-interest regulations.

For example, Patricia E. Harris, who has been Mr. Bloomberg’s most trusted aide since his days running Bloomberg L.P., is the highest-paid employee in the mayor’s office, with an annual salary of $227,219. She received a 19 percent raise when she was promoted to first deputy mayor in 2005.

That increase came after she received a $350,000 bonus for less than three months’ work on his campaign.

Two of the mayor’s other deputies who followed Mr. Bloomberg from his private company, Kevin Sheekey and Edward Skyler, have also received large bumps in salary since joining the administration in 2002, of 31 percent and 21 percent respectively, to $196,574. In addition, Mr. Sheekey was given a $400,000 bonus after taking a hiatus from the administration to manage the 2005 campaign.

Francis Barry, who worked on the 2005 campaign, joined the administration in the legislative affairs division in 2002 at $45,000. After big increases in 2004 and 2006, Mr. Barry now earns $122,452 as a communications adviser and speechwriter, a 172 percent increase from his starting salary

And Gerardo Russo and Christopher Coffey, who took positions in the 2001 campaign, have doubled their city salaries since 2002. Mr. Russo, who began as a press aide earning $55,000, now earns $122,452 as an assistant to Mr. Skyler.

So . . . Tourists And Convicts . . . Anyone Else?

Who benefits most from keeping subway and bus fares at $2? Besides tourists, I mean. Inmates:

Jailbirds are among those thanking the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for maintaining the $2 pay-per-ride MetroCard — part of a restructured fare-hike proposal supported by Gov. Spitzer and Mayor Bloomberg that will save the base fare while raising the price of unlimited cards used by 86 percent of riders.

Recently released convicts must buy a two-ride, $4 MetroCard with money in their inmate accounts when they’re sprung from Rikers Island.

. . .

“I’m glad they didn’t raise it,” said 59-year-old Roberto Gonzalez of Bushwick, Brooklyn, who has been locked up since Dec. 8 for burglary and menacing.

But he admits he had other things on his mind while in the city’s infamous lockup.

“I wasn’t thinking about the fare hikes,” he said. “[Rikers] is full of Crips, Bloods, MS-13s . . . And they’re full of attitude.”

The Correction Department buys about $160,000 worth of MetroCards a year for inmates to use upon their release, a spokesman said.

“We issue them to inmates who do not have sufficient money in their accounts as they’re being discharged from jail,” said a spokesman.

Bait With A Really Stank Piece Of Bait Then Switch To A Less-Stank Piece Of Bait

And for some, the end of ever taking a cab home:

The chairman of the state commission studying ways to reduce traffic in Manhattan is increasingly pushing a measure certain to prompt opposition in the rest of the city: charging tolls on the four East River Bridges.

“I’ve made it pretty clear that I think the bridge tolls proposals might be part of a solution that this commission’s going to look at before it’s over,” said Marc V. Shaw, the commission chairman, after a meeting of the panel on Monday.

Tolls on the bridges would most likely be presented as part of a scaled-back version of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s original congestion pricing plan.

. . .

In an interview yesterday, Mr. Shaw, a real estate executive and a former first deputy mayor under Mr. Bloomberg, said tolling the bridges was appealing partly because, like the mayor’s proposal, it could both discourage people from driving into Manhattan and raise substantial revenue.

The mayor estimated that his congestion-pricing plan would raise $380 million a year in revenues, after subtracting the cost of operating the system. Research material provided to commission members this week suggests that East River Bridge tolls could result in gross revenues of $500 million, although Mr. Shaw said the estimate could be revised before next Monday, when the commission is scheduled to discuss the bridge tolls.

The bridge tolls are projected to cause a 5.8 percent drop in traffic, and the mayor’s congestion pricing plan would cut traffic by an estimated 6.3 percent. Mr. Shaw said that a revised plan could include an alternate way to raise revenues on travel within the congestion zone, such as through a surcharge on taxi trips.

A public official who helped develop the mayor’s congestion plan questioned the wisdom of trading it for something equally controversial.

“I feel like its Groundhog Day,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak for the administration and asked not to be named. “We’re back to where we were during the Koch years. Is that sort of the death knell for congestion pricing?”