The numbers are now on the table, Spitzer has given the go-ahead to the MTA board and now the public has to make one last push to try and save New York from the fare increase. While Spitzer makes good with tourists that are the biggest users of the pay-per-ride $2 fare, the vast majority of locals use monthly passes, which are set to rise $5, or $60 a year, or $240 for a family of four. For many Manhattanites that doesn't seem like a big deal, but there are plenty of people in the five buroughs that see that as a huge increase.
From The Daily News:
Governor Spitzer's transit chiefs at the MTA want to charge $81 for a monthly MetroCard - a 6.6% increase - and reduce a popular MetroCard discount under a plan the MTA will announce Monday, the Daily News has learned.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority staffers have worked out the final details of a revised fare-and-toll-hike package on which the MTA board is expected to vote in just nine days, a transit source said.
Opposition to any hikes, meanwhile, continued to mount Sunday as City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and more than 20 members of the Council and the state Legislature again called on Spitzer and Mayor Bloomberg to halt all hikes.
"Do the right thing," Quinn (D-Manhattan) said from the steps of City Hall. "With so many other dark things on the economic horizon right now, don't make New Yorkers pay a higher fare when they just don't have to."
At least the Speaker is still standing up for the citizens of the city. Spitzer is a lost cause, Bloomberg supporting us is most likely trivial to him. It isn't like he needs to win over the voters any more. The council and the state legislature is behind New York, but the two men that count (plus the board) do not seem to care.
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