Commuter pricing will fix this

AM New York  

The MTA Board approved on Wednesday a budget plan for 2025 that includes public transportation fare hikes and toll increases slated to take effect next summer.

The board unanimously voted to pass the plan during its monthly meeting on Dec. 18. The exact amount of the increases has yet to be announced but could go into effect in August 2025. 

In recent years, the MTA approved 4% increases in fares and tolls. Should that trend continue, a base fare for a subway or bus trip would cost $3, up a dime from $2.90, come next summer, according to an article from ABC 7. 

Meanwhile, during Wednesday’s meeting, MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber boasted of “excellent service” and surging subway ridership. 

“Last week, we set a new single-day record for subway ridership, 4.5 million customers,” he said. “Compare that to 2021, when this group began when the average weekday was less than half of that level.”

The most recent fare hike occurred in 2023, when the base NYC Transit fare was bumped up 15 cents, from $2.75 to $2.90. That marked the first such increase in eight years.

 

Despite the fare rise, Lieber remained optimistic and said the agency is coming out “on a high note” for 2024.

“I always look back at the goals we set at the beginning of the year, and when I took the chair a couple of years ago, priority one was recovering ridership to support the region’s comeback and also to help us achieve financial stability,” he said. 

Lieber added that the MTA vowed to deliver “excellent” service to New Yorkers. 

“And we also needed to keep the capital program on track to earn the public’s trust on how the MTA was going to spend money,” he said.

But New Yorkers whom amNewYork Metro talked to Wednesday after the budget vote did not hold back their opinions on the increase, some even calling it “straight-up greed.”

Others said they pay too much for too little service.

“This is absolutely outrageous. That last increase led to subpar service as it is,” said Roger Smith, an Upper West Side resident. 

Carlos Rivera of Harlem questioned what the increases will actually support, as he is often stuck waiting for late trains and buses. 

“I wish us New Yorkers could audit the MTA because this is absolutely ridiculous at this point,” he said. “Track maintenance and the trains and buses are never on time. Where is our money going?”

 

Drive, we said

AMNY  

More people are driving cars in New York City than ever before, based on toll data from the MTA and Port Authority — a remarkable feat as the city prepares to implement congestion pricing in the hopes of dissuading motorists from getting behind the wheel in favor of mass transit.

Over 335 million vehicles were recorded crossing the MTA’s nine bridges and tunnels in 2023, which include the Whitestone, Throgs Neck, Cross-Bay, and Verrazzano-Narrows Bridges and the Brooklyn-Battery and Queens-Midtown Tunnels, among others. That’s a 1.3% increase over the previous record in 2019, when 330.7 million crossings were made, and the most ever seen in 87 years of data collection.

In 1937 — the first year that the MTA Bridges & Tunnels’ predecessor, the Triborough Bridge & Tunnel Authority, was in operation — the bridges saw only 18.5 million crossings. Back then, the TBTA had only three bridges in its portfolio: the Triborough Bridge, the Henry Hudson Bridge, and the Marine Parkway Bridge.

The Port Authority, meanwhile, has this year seen the highest number of vehicle crossings on its six spans — including the George Washington Bridge, Holland and Lincoln Tunnels, and the Bayonne and Goethals Bridges and Outerbridge Crossing connecting Staten Island and New Jersey — since at least 2011. Through October, the latest month that data is available, the Port Authority had recorded just over 102 million crossings.

In its 2024 budget proposal, the Port Authority projected its bridges and tunnels would see 122 million crossings next year.

New York City’s Department of Transportation could not immediately provide numbers for its bridges throughout the city, which include major spans like the Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg, and Queensboro Bridges and hundreds of short crossings all over the five boroughs. Unlike the MTA and Port Authority, the DOT does not collect tolls.

However, DOT did record that the number of vehicles registered in the city grew more than 10% between 2010 and 2021, according to the agency’s Streets Plan update earlier this year. The numbers for 2022 will be published in early 2024.

 

MTA raises fares despite congestion pricing go ahead from Pete the Rat Buttigieg

Photo by JQ LLC, taken a few days ago.

 

 Queens Chronicle

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Wednesday approved fare and toll hikes that will take place in August. The base fare for subway and bus rides will increase to $2.90.

Express bus fares will rise to $7, from $6.75. Seven-day unlimited-ride MetroCards will rise to $34 from the current $33, 30-day unlimited MetroCards rise to $132.00 from $127.00.

OMNY card users will get their bonuses over any seven-day period, rather than just from Monday through Sunday.

Tolls at MTA bridges and tunnels will go from $6.55 to $6.94 for E-ZPass drivers, and from $10.17 to $11.19 for toll by mail. The Long Island Rail Road’s discount Atlantic Ticket, connecting Southeast Queens to Brooklyn, will be gone.

In a press release, Charlton D’souza, president of Passengers United, was disappointed. He said the fare should remain at $2.75 for subways and buses, and an express bus should be $4 rather than $7.

“We are outraged that the Atlantic Ticket weekly LIRR pass ... is being eliminated for Southeast Queens residents,” he said.

MTA nickels and dimes commuters

 

Eyewitness News 

The MTA proposed an increase to the subway and bus fare to $2.90 by Labor Day.

It is a 15-cent increase from the current $2.75 base fare, and the first fare hike since 2019.

"A lot of the stations are still dirty," rider John Delaruz said. "They are not in commission as often. I don't see the benefit in raising the price right now."

Weekly MetroCards would increase a dollar to $34 and 30-day MetroCards would go up $5 to $132.

Express bus fare would increase a quarter to $7 and seven-day bus passes would increase $2 to $64.

This year's planned fare hike will be closer to the standard 4% increase, which is typically how much the fare goes up every other year, instead of 5.5% originally floated, thanks to Governor Kathy Hochul's budget.

However, a planned 5.5% toll revenue increase remains in place.

Straphangers were less than pleased with the proposed hike.

Even Executive Director of the MTA's Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee Lisa Daglian acknowledged that fare hikes are necessary to keep the transit system rolling.

"Improving the discount options for riders across the system, ensuring there is equity across increases so that those who can least afford them have access to more options is critical," Daglian said. "That includes raising eligibility to fair fares to 200% of the federal poverty level from the current 100% level."

The last fare increase on trains and buses was in 2019. There was not a fare increase in 2021 due to the pandemic.

In addition to buses and subways, fares on the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North would also go up by about 4%.

The MTA also anticipates that with congestion pricing, more commuters will want to take the subway and commuter rail.

Officials unveiled two possible scenarios for drivers. One rewards E-Z Pass users with a 6% increase, vs a 10% increase for tolls by mail. The other spreads the pain, with a 7% increase for both E-Z Pass and toll by-mail users.

Ferry barely good fare hike

THE CITY 

The base fare of the New York City Ferry will go up to $4 a ride — with new discounts for seniors and Fair Fare program participants — as the city tries to make its program financially “sustainable,” officials said. 

The hike and new pricing structure comes as the city’s Economic Development Corporation had begun pumping more tax-payer money each year into the system, which launched in 2017 under then-Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The tack change also comes a week after Comptroller Brad Lander released an audit — spurred in part on THE CITY’s reporting — that found the system spent almost double the amount it originally said on subsidies to keep it afloat.

Under the new price system, set to launch Sept. 12, the base fare of $2.75 will go up to $4.

New Yorkers over the age of 65, those with disabilities, and participants in the Fair Fares program — which offers half-priced rides within the MTA system for low-income commuters — will get a discounted price of $1.35 per ticket, officials announced. 

Public housing residents within a mile of a ferry dock will also get two free boat rides a month.

“Getting around New York City shouldn’t feel like you’re running a 5K. Wherever you live in the five boroughs, we want you to have choices, and our vision for the NYC Ferry helps provide New Yorkers with those choices,” Mayor Eric Adams said at the announcement near the Astoria dock on Thursday. 

He said his administration’s “Ferry Forward” plan would be “built on the three pillars of equity, accessibility, and fiscal sustainability.” 

The $4 base fare will “offset the cost of everyday New Yorkers who need to take the system,” Adams said. 

There will also be discounted 10-pack rides at $27.50 to retain regular commuters who ride the ferry the most.

Finally, but there's still one thing they overlooked, the free Hornblower shuttle buses that the NYC Ferry provides. How about another fare for those? 

Here come the transit service cuts and fare hikes

 

THE CITY 

During the peak of the pandemic last spring, MTA buses became the workhorse of the transit system, shuttling more daily riders than the subway for the first time in decades.

Even after fare collection resumed in late August, the ridership decline on buses never fell nearly as steep as subway use.

But when the MTA unveiled its proposed “Doomsday” cuts Wednesday — potentially slashing service by 40% by next May and eliminating more than 9,000 jobs — bus workers were set to absorb close to two-thirds of the positions lost.

Riders who rely on buses, meanwhile, were left wondering how they’d get around a city still slowed by COVID-19.

“Believe me, it’s going to be ugly,” said Michelle Singleton, 55, a nurse from Harlem who, prior to the pandemic, commuted on the M11. “That’s why I won’t be riding the bus any more.”

At the agency’s monthly board meeting, MTA officials presented worst-case scenarios should the agency be unable to secure $12 billion in emergency federal funding to help close the enormous deficits created by the pandemic.

Without a bailout, the MTA faces a slew of unappetizing prospects — including higher-than-projected fare and toll increases, the elimination of seven-day and 30-day unlimited MetroCards and significant cuts to subway, bus and commuter rail frequency.

“We know that any reduction in service will hurt the city and the region, including customers who need us most,” Patrick Foye, the MTA chairperson said at the meeting. “But without the certainty of substantial federal dollars, there is no recourse.”

For buses, that could mean the elimination of entire lines, a slowdown on long-planned route redesigns in each borough, even the loss of a next-bus texting service and on-board WiFi.

 

NY Daily News

Transit fares in New York will go up next spring — and the MTA is considering eliminating unlimited ride MetroCards as a part of the hike.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority board on Wednesday voted to seek fare hikes that boost passenger revenue by 4%. Over the next two months, transit officials will review a slate of proposals to meet that target.

One idea is to keep the base subway and bus fare at $2.75 while eliminating the seven- and 30-day unlimited ride passes.

Another is to raise the base fare to $2.85. More options on the table include increasing the surcharge for new MetroCards from $1 to $3 and no longer allowing coin payments on buses.