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FROM one straphanger to another, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s executive director, Elliot G. Sander, consciously straddling the fence between polished bureaucrat (his upwardly mobile career) and put-upon proletarian (his roots in Jamaica, Queens), confides that the pending — read inevitable — bus and subway fare increase to $2.25 from $2 a trip is not his preference. But.
“I would prefer not to have a fare increase, and I want to keep the cost of transportation as far down as I can, but I am calling on our customers to basically keep up with the cost of living,” he said. “My objective is for the M.T.A. not to go into a death spiral, go where it was in the ’70s and ’80s when you had derailments, breakdowns, graffiti, track fires, you name it. This authority has been a high-wire act for the last 20 years.” Without a safety net.
The fare hikes, which SEPTA says it needs because a court case stopped it from eliminating 60-cent paper transfers, saddle riders with higher fares less than three months after other fare hikes.
As part of its fare hike resolution approved this afternoon, the SEPTA board agreed to review today's fare hikes if it wins a court appeal and is allowed to scrap the paper transfers.
The new fares, effective Monday, increase the price of a token to $1.45 from the current $1.30 and the price of a transfer to 75 cents from the current 60 cents. The cash fare would remain $2 - one of the nation's highest.
Riders, still smarting from SEPTA's July fare hikes, are outraged.
Off-Peak Fares Eyed for New York City Transit
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority yesterday proposed charging people less if they ride subways or buses during off-peak periods, in hopes of easing overcrowding during the commuting rushes.
Under the plan, however, most riders would be hit with steep increases, as the authority seeks to generate $580 million from fare and toll increases during the next two years.
The City
Softening the Blow of a Fare Hike
Let's begin with the pocketbook-chafing fact that New York's bus and subway riders pay far more at the farebox than riders in any other major transit network. Their burdenwould go up again early next year under a proposal by the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The current base fare of $2 would rise 25 cents to achieve the authority's goal of boosting revenue by 6.5 percent. Another fare increase, as yet undetermined, would follow in two years.
The planned increases reflect the M.T.A.'s attempt to address projected financial woes, including huge out-year budget gaps, while also improving service and expanding the system. Its proposed solution depends on raising fares and tolls possibly as early as January. Foregoing a fare hike entirely, as the city and state comptrollers have both urged, may not be possible; there hasn't been an increase in more than three years. But every effort should be made to minimize the riders' pain.
There are ways this could be done. The M.T.A. is proposing to raise $262 million through higher fares and tolls. Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign, a nonprofit riders' advocate, suggests a more equitable sharing of costs. His group is calling for the city and counties to contribute $65 million, and the state to pitch in an equal amount. If they did that, riders would face only a 10-cent fare hike. It is a reasonable approach, and lawmakers should give it serious attention.
Keeping fares affordable is critical in a city where so many riders have low incomes. It also encourages people to use mass transit instead of their cars.
The agency vowed to appeal the ruling in a suit brought by Philadelphia
By Paul Nussbaum
Inquirer Staff Writer
The transfers live.
A Common Pleas Court judge ruled yesterday that SEPTA must not eliminate the paper transfers that permit bus and subway riders to change vehicles for 60 cents.
The transit agency said it would appeal Judge Gary F. DiVito Jr.'s decision.
SEPTA had wanted passengers to pay full fares ($2 with cash or $1.30 with tokens) whenever changing from one bus to another. The city sued, saying that poor and minority passengers would be especially hard-hit by the elimination of the transfers.
In ordering the board to reinstate the transfers, DiVito called the SEPTA decision "capricious and . . . a manifest and flagrant abuse of discretion."
"What the evidence demonstrates," DiVito wrote, "is that SEPTA's board (1) voted to eliminate paper transfers (2) to mollify the legislature in hopes of ensuring funding (3) without any study of the impact on those who would be most adversely affected (4) without any semblance of a 'modernization plan' ready (5) with no agreement with the school board in place when (6) they could have designed a plan with an equitable impact on all of its riders."
Bus, subway and trolley fares won't rise, but passes will cost more. Transfers will be eliminated.
By Paul Nussbaum
Inquirer Staff Writer
SEPTA bus, subway and rail fares will increase by an average of 11 percent on July 9, following a 13-2 vote yesterday on the agency's new operating budget.
The SEPTA board also approved a "doomsday" plan to take effect Sept. 2, with 24 percent fare hikes and 20 percent service cuts, if the state legislature does not increase annual state funding by nearly $100 million.
For subway, bus and trolley riders, cash fares will remain at $2 and tokens at $1.30 under the new fare plan. But transfers will be eliminated on Aug. 1, meaning transit riders wanting to transfer will have to buy an additional token or use a daily, weekly or monthly pass.
Weekly passes for transit riders will increase from $18.75 to $20.75, and monthly passes from $70 to $78. Regional Rail riders will see costs rise as well; the price of a Zone 3 monthly pass will increase from $126.50 to $142.50.
Eliminating subway and bus fares could put local mass transit on the road to success.
By D. Malcolm Carson, D. MALCOLM CARSON, an attorney and urban planner in private practice, is a member of the Los Angeles Board of Transportation Commissioners.
February 25, 2007
CLOSE TO HALF the travel time on most L.A. bus routes is spent at the curb. Bus riders know the frustration of waiting to board while someone coaxes a floppy dollar bill into the fare box. Likewise, plenty of irritated local drivers have been stuck behind that bus in the right-turn lane. Oh, and the despair of the train rider left struggling with an uncooperative ticket vending machine as the train pulls away.
So what would happen if, instead of hiking MTA fares as is currently under consideration, we made all the buses and subways free?
Eliminating transit fares is the logical flip side to the anti-congestion pricing schemes so favored by economists. London, for instance, charges a daily fee equal to about $15.60 to drive in the traffic-chocked central city between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. weekdays. Just as such fees on cars supposedly discourage driving, eliminating fares could encourage public transit use.
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
Published: September 20, 2006
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has proposed cuts of $20 million to bus and subway service for next year, meaning that riders could face longer waits for many buses and trains, which would be more crowded. The proposed cuts, which advocates said would be the most extensive service reductions in years, are a precursor to the kind of inconvenience riders may experience in the near future as deficits of more than $1 billion loom.