From the Daily News:
The new “green” MetroCard surcharge is making one northeast Queens lawmaker red in the face.
Assemblyman Edward Braunstein blasted the MTA on Tuesday, saying the $1 surcharge to encourage riders to re-use the cards is unfair to bus riders in his district.
Many riders buy their MetroCards at Long Island Rail Road station vending machines where cards can’t be refilled, he said, forcing them to buy a new card.
“Their whole justification is the environment and I get that,” said Braunstein (D-Bayside). “But if you can’t refill the card, it’s just unfair.”
The surcharge has been on the table in Metropolitan Transportation Authority budget discussions since 2010. When the charge was announced in July 2011 as likely to go into effect in 2013, Braunstein wrote a letter to New York City Transit President Thomas Prendergast explaining that it placed an unfair burden on an area where there are no subway stations.
Prendergast wrote back that riders had the option of avoiding the surcharge if they bought the cards at off-site vendors or if they bought a combination commuter-railroad card.
9 comments:
There's little advantage to buying a MetroCard from the LIRR ticket machine. Just go to a MetroCard machine in Penn Station and save the $1.
An Assemblyman in a photo-op; must be election time!
An Assemblyman in a photo-op; must be election time!
Didn't even recognize Braunstein, since his photo hasn't been in the paper since his election. Yep, it's time to run for re-election.
Some grandstanding, yes. But this one may be justified.
Has it struck any of you that there might be a fair number of people in Eastern Queens that do not regularly commute to areas with subway stations?
Maybe some of those guys want to charge their ride (neighborhood merchants accepting cards to pay for Metrocard? Hit or miss, usually miss for smaller stores) instead of having to maintain stockpiles of coin and fumbling to have the correct amount of change on hand to pay their fares every day?
But campaigned as an "Independent Reformer"! What a joke! Can't the Republicans find someone to run against this idiot puppet?
http://capitaltonightny.ynn.com/2012/07/who-voted-the-most-with-skelos-with-silver/
Who is his uncle again?
Yes, we'd be much better off if legislators ignored all actions of the executive and the public authorities and if the newspapers did too. It's great how Ed got the MTA to make this announcement just so he could get his picture in the papers.
Steve Behar would of made a Great Assemblyman. I read some of his policy papers and he really knew his stuff.
Anony1 - I take the bus from Auburndale to Bayside most days, no Penn Station for me....
Post a Comment