I am sorry to say that despite all the hard work and protests made by the citizens of New York and the legislators that have backed them up, that the fare increase is now a reality. I guess that we knew this was coming all along though, the boardmembers of the MTA never really showed any interest in what the people thought of the increase, or even knew what it feels like to have to struggle to buy the Metrocards in the first place.
Many of these elitists do not even live near the city or have to take public transportation. They do not know what it feels like to be crammed into a 6 train at rush hour, wait for a 2 train that is ridiculously late on a sweltering summer day or be stuck for hours because a little rain destroys every public transit commuter's workday.
WCBS has more:
The 8 million daily passengers who ride the subway, bus and commuter train will be forced to cough up more for transportation for the third time since 2003.
The base subway/bus fare will stay at $2 for two more years. Monthly unlimited-ride metrocards are rising $5 to $81. The 7-day metrocards will cost $25, a $1 increase. E-Z pass tolls for cars will increase by 3.8 percent and LIRR and Metro-North fares jump up between 3.7 percent and 4.2 percent.
Straphangers spoke out against the hike and CBS 2 gathered a wish-list for changes from concerned riders, including:
- Faster trains
- Polite service from ticket booth employees said Anthony Dicrescio of Brooklyn.
- On-time buses, as described in bus schedules.
- Cleaner trains and cleaner stations
- Guaranteed regular service on weekends and accurate announcement boxes
- More announcements on delays
Ha, yeah right, like that will ever happen. The MTA claims to be fixing these problems, but they also broke ground on the 2nd Avenue line back in 1929 and there still isn't anything to show for it. Spitzer and Bloomberg also failed us, deciding to back the bad fiscal habits of the transit authority instead of thinking about ordinary people's budgets. The MTA claimed they'll be poor in two years, yet are still running surpluses for now and even they much vaunted deficit in 2009 shrunk considerably once someone started looking at their books and that does not even take into account their duplicative costs across the board.
What a shame that this had to happen.
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