The MTA board is getting ready to vote on a giant subway fare hike (don’t listen to Governor Spitzer!):<\/p>\n
The base fare may still be $2, but the 86 percent of subway and bus riders getting discounts will face higher costs under the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s revised fare proposal unveiled yesterday.<\/p>\n
MTA chief Elliot Sander said the latest plan is the result of a “balancing act,” weighing concerns for low-income riders who rely on the cash fare against the need to provide discounts for regular customers.<\/p>\n
The biggest hit goes to the 30-day unlimited MetroCard, which will climb five bucks to $81. Seven-day cards will go up to $25, but a new 14-day pass will cost $47, or a buck less than two current weekly passes.<\/p>\n
The popular 20 percent bonus on pay-per-ride cards will be cut to 15 percent, but the buy-in will be $7 instead of $10. The average fare on the bonus cards will be $1.74, up from $1.67.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Meanwhile, the issue of who benefits most<\/a> (ahem, tourists) from keeping the fare low gets murkier<\/a>:<\/p>\n
But some people can’t calculate savings into any fare increase. Many lower-income straphangers buy a weekly pass because that’s all they can cobble together at once, Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign said. Under the new hike proposal they’re getting the worst deal.<\/p>\n
“Sometimes when I don’t even have the money for the weekly pass, I buy the $10 card,” said Melinda Joseph, a 22-year-old who studies and works at a midtown Dunkin’ Donuts. “Now I might get my boyfriend to drive me to school.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The MTA board is getting ready to vote on a giant subway fare hike (don’t listen to Governor Spitzer!): The base fare may still be $2, but the 86 percent of subway and bus riders getting discounts will face higher costs under the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s revised fare proposal unveiled yesterday. MTA chief Elliot Sander […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumer_issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2986","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=2986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2986\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}