Lawmakers Attempt To Derail a Planned MTA Fare Hike
State lawmakers today are announcing new legislation that would increase city and state aid to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority by $660 million, a boost they say could help stave off the fare hike scheduled for February.
Transit advocates are rallying behind the bill and are planning to voice their opposition to higher subway and bus fares this evening in Brooklyn at the first public hearing on the fare hike.
"The state has not been giving the MTA its fair share of revenue to operate the system," state Senator Thomas Duane of Manhattan, who is introducing the bill today, said.
"It's the MTA's job is to make the fare hike seem inevitable," the chief attorney for the Straphangers Campaign, Gene Russianoff, said. "We have some good arguments that this one isn't."
The bill would allot $305.5 million for subway and bus operating expenses from the state budget, as well as $32.3 million for the commuter railroads. The totals would be matched by the city.
"I don't know what the MTA's thinking is, but this would make a fare hike not inevitable," Mr. Duane said.
In anticipation of the budget gaps the MTA is expected to face beginning in 2009, the MTA has proposed a fare hike and toll increases beginning in February that would generate $262 million next year.
The plan would need the support of a majority of MTA board members to pass next month, and some are voicing opposition to the plan.
"We should wait to implement it until July, and give the state and City Council time to pass their budgets and give us what is appropriate," an MTA board member, Mitchell Pally, said.
Another board member, Norman Seabrook, has publicly expressed opposition to the plan, and Mr. Pally said others had voiced opposition to him privately.
The MTA would need a commitment of more than $2 billion over the next two years from the city and state in order to safely consider putting off a fare increase, a spokesman for the MTA, Jeremy Soffin, said yesterday in an e-mail message.
