{"id":2807,"date":"2007-09-27T02:04:45","date_gmt":"2007-09-27T10:04:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2007\/09\/this_makes_perfect_cents.html"},"modified":"2007-09-27T02:04:45","modified_gmt":"2007-09-27T10:04:45","slug":"this_makes_perf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/09\/this_makes_perf.html","title":{"rendered":"This Makes Perfect Cents . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

. . . to the MTA at least in a case of man versus machine<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The MTA can’t nickel-and-dime straphangers — but it has no problem taking their quarters.<\/p>\n

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority acknowledged yesterday that one BIG reason it wants a 25-cent bus and subway hike is because its vending machines can dispense only dollar coins and quarters.<\/p>\n

MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin defended the increase as fair and said upping it by a nickel or dime wouldn’t be enough.<\/p>\n

“The limitations of technology would make a $2.10 fare extremely costly to implement and would provide a much poorer quality of service,” Soffin said.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

Riders weren’t buying it.<\/p>\n

“It’s an outrage,” said Anthony Thompson, a Queens engineer. “Our money is being spent because of a hardware defect?”<\/p>\n

Recruiter Jisele Lazo, 22, of Queens, said: “It stinks. Why don’t they just leave it at $2? Why are they making it easier for the machines? There are far more commuters than machines.”<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

Soffin said smaller change would mean longer lines and riders being saddled with pockets full of silver.<\/p>\n

He said the size of the fare hike was not unreasonable because the $2 base fair had remained steady since 2003.<\/p>\n

A 25-cent jump would amount to a “cost-of-living” increase for the system, Soffin said.<\/p>\n

A rider buying a single-ride ticket priced at $2.10 with a $5 bill would be carting away 11 quarters and three nickels, or 58 nickels, he pointed out.<\/p>\n

The machines also would likely run out of change more quickly, have to be filled more often and likely need more frequent maintenance, he said.<\/p>\n

Out-of-service machines would result in longer lines at token booths, he said, estimating the added costs to be millions of dollars.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

. . . to the MTA at least in a case of man versus machine: The MTA can’t nickel-and-dime straphangers — but it has no problem taking their quarters. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority acknowledged yesterday that one BIG reason it wants a 25-cent bus and subway hike is because its vending machines can dispense only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,55,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumer_issues","category-thats_an_outrage","category-youre_kidding_right"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2807\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}