The first subway fare hike since the Metropolitan Transportation Authority raised the base fare 50 cents in 2003 took effect yesterday, leaving unhappy riders to wonder what they were getting for the extra outlay.

At 12:01 a.m., the price of 30-day MetroCards increased to $76 from $70, the cost of a weekly card jumped to $24 from $21, and express-bus fares rose to $5 from $4. The $2 base fare remains unchanged.

Ticket prices on the Long Island and Metro-North railroads increase an average of 5% tomorrow, and tolls on most MTA tunnels and bridges will rise 50 cents beginning March 13.

Though it ended 2004 with a cash surplus of $309 million, the MTA faces budget deficits for the next three years. Commuters expressed outrage when the fare hike was announced late last year, coming as it does only two years after a steep hike. The continual doom-and-gloom projections by the MTA – its executive director, Katherine Lapp, warned Thursday that as many 1,000 employees could lose their jobs if Albany does not fully finance the authority’s 2005-09 capital plan of $27.4 billion – have had an impact on riders.

“I can’t even whip up any outrage,” one rider, Brad Daves, said. “It feels like the fare has gone up a lot in recent history, and I don’t know if I’m seeing exactly what I’m paying for. Then again, we don’t have any choice. If I’ve got to take the train I’ve got to pay.”

Another rider, Heath Eiden, visited New York this weekend after moving to Stowe, Vt., in 1998, when the MTA was beginning to phase out tokens and the fare was $1.50.The prospect of a fare increase brought back memories of the subways and the financial crises that always preceded fare hikes.

“The question for straphangers,” he said, “is what are you getting in return, besides the same old sweaty ride in the middle of the summer and no place to sit down and half the car doesn’t have air conditioning?”

A spokeswoman for a rider advocacy group, the Straphangers Campaign, offered a simple answer: nothing.

“It’s the classic case of paying more and getting less,” the spokeswoman, Neysa Pranger, said.

But on a Sunday, when many of the riders were tourists, many subway passengers had no complaints.

A nurse attendant at Presbyterian Hospital, Marjorie Redman, took the news with equanimity, even if the fare hike made her $3 short of the $24 now needed to buy a seven-day unlimited pass.

“I had $21. It was $24,” Ms. Redman said.

Meanwhile, volunteers from the self-help program Dianetics at the stop at Eighth Avenue and 42nd Street gave subway riders free stress tests, but they reported that no one had yet complained of fare-hike-related stress syndrome.

Unlimited-ride MetroCards, which are used by more than half of subway riders, are said to be a major reason ridership topped a record 1.4 billion riders last year – and a major reason the gain in ridership has not translated into increased revenue, according to a report analyzing the MTA’s finances published last October by the state comptroller. The comptroller, Alan Hevesi, reported that unlimited-ride Metro-Cards have reduced the average cost of a subway ride from $1.30 in December 2003 to $1.26 a year later. The comptroller issued a report this month criticizing the MTA and other state authorities for not having transparent budgets.