In January, the MTA board had to finally decide how to increase the fare on public transport. But the meeting was canceled. The management decided to spare the New Yorkers. They are already having a hard time.
Due to COVID-19, many are still unemployed. The city’s economy is in a deplorable state. The head of the agency Patrick Foy noted that these disasters also affected transport workers. Transportation is now at such a level that it, as he put it, “looks worse than during the Great Depression.”
Does this mean that MTA has completely abandoned the idea of ​​once again increasing tariffs on the subway, on city buses and on commuter trains? No, they just postponed it for a while. The goal is still to increase revenues by 4% through higher tariffs. We have not yet come to a conclusion on how exactly to accomplish this task.
One option is to keep the base cost at its current level of $ 2.75, but cancel the weekly and monthly metrocards for unlimited rides.
Another suggestion is to raise the cost per trip to $ 2.85. There is also an idea to charge not $ 1 for the purchase of a metro card, as it is now, but $ 3, and at the same time cancel the payment in coins on buses, so that passengers will inevitably have to purchase metro cards.
After postponing the vote, MTA made certain financial sacrifices.
But it’s not just about sympathy for the city’s residents suffering from the epidemic. To a certain extent, we helped out the $ 8 billion that we managed to receive in 2020 from Congress. There are real hopes that in the coming years, the same amount of federal aid will be received and this will help keep afloat. Anyway, after Biden became the president of the United States, and Chuck Schumer became the leader of the majority in the Senate, the likelihood of subsidies from Washington increased and it became possible to postpone the rise in the cost of urban transport.
Newspaper headline:
MTA temporarily postponed increase in fares