The dime increase in the subway and bus fare, from $2.90 to an even three bucks come January, doesn’t overjoy us, but it’s necessary, like eating healthy and doing exercise. The last fare hike was two years ago, which is just about right to stick to the concept of every other year increases tied to inflation. We call that the Ravitch Rule, after Dick Ravitch, the businessman and former MTA chairman who saved the subway several times and also served as the state’s lieutenant governor.
Dick is gone (and boy does New York miss champions like him), but we will carry on with his idea and push the MTA to follow it and resist the efforts to put a hold on fare hikes.
New York has played that losing game before. Politicians, fearful of angering straphangers, postponed raising fares, even as the need for more revenues from riders just kept growing. Every time, eventually, the fare had to rise and it was a big wallop, instead of something manageable, like a thin dime.
Yes, Mayor Adams is against the fare hike, but he’s running for reelection. See the connection? Someone is always running for office, so there’s never a good time, which is why the Ravitch Rule must be obeyed (and why Gov. Hochul is correctly letting the MTA stay on track).
The other part of the Ravitch Rule is that in exchange for regular, inflation-based fare increases, the taxes from employers would keep up and the MTA would have to deliver decent service. If everyone does their part, we can have a well-working transit network, which we need.
As for the mechanics of this round of fare hikes, we don’t agree with the MTA’s decision to shrink the public hearings to just three sessions within 24 hours in the same place in downtown Brooklyn. Some people like to appear in person and those folks shouldn’t have to trudge to Brooklyn from other boroughs and the outlying suburban counties (LIRR and Metro-North commuter rail fares are also going up) to state their case.
Speaking of mechanics, when the $3 fare arrives in the new year, the MetroCard will be gone, replaced with the OMNY system, where riders can use the OMNY card, as well as certain credit cards or debit cards or smartphones. However, until then the MetroCard is still the accepted coin of the realm, but the MTA is making it harder and harder for passengers to use by removing the MetroCard vending machines from so many stations. The MTA should at least keep a current list of the MetroCard vending machines on its website, otherwise people will all have to refill their MetroCards at the mobile sales buses and vans.
People paid $1 for an empty MetroCard and the MTA is charging another $1 for blank OMNY cards. And, believe it or not, there are plenty of New Yorkers who don’t have a credit card or debit card or smartphone and use cash.
Finally, on the subject of fares, after many years of complaints in these columns that NJTransit was charging rail passengers to Newark Airport an extra surcharge to travel to and from Manhattan’s Penn Station, NJT finally eliminated the penalty fee. It disappeared on July 1 last year, but we didn’t realize it until now. Thank you. Fare is fair.
