When it comes to cash, the MTA can never get enough of it.
On Wednesday, the agency released a plan to give passengers a nearly 4% fare increase next year, up to as much as $3 per ride.
Only to hit them again two years later.
That would be so on top the $9 toll that motorists will have to pay to enter Midtown Manhattan starting January 5. That too is expected to rise, to $12 and then $15 in the coming years.
Meanwhile, the plan also calls for spending $1.27 billion (yes, with a ‘b’) on 435 new subways.
Certainly, those cars are an upgrade from the current fleet. But given the agency’s pleas for cash, is now the time for such a purchase?
Moreover, that price per car ($2.92 million) is almost double what Chicago Transit paid ($1.58 million) for the 400 subway cars it recently purchased.
And while those Windy City cars may be smaller, the New York Delta fits a pattern.
Who can forget The New York Times report several years ago that MTA capital project costs per mile of track were seven times higher than the average elsewhere in the world?
(On the East Side Access project, no one could tell what 200 workers should do, even though they each earned about $1,000 a day.)
No wonder the agency has repeatedly faced cash shortages: a “crisis” in 2009 led to a new payroll tax on companies in the metro area that raised billions.
Regular rate increases added more.
Then COVID severely depressed ridership and wiped out a lot of fare revenue, creating even more red ink — so the feds kicked in billions, killing the MTA.
Likewise, New York’s disastrous criminal justice reforms, which have increased crime and failed to get the mentally ill off the streets and onto the subways, have deterred passengers—and increased fare revenues.
Farebeating, which has been largely unprosecuted since the de Blasio days, compounds the losses.
Yet the answer is not to provide motorists with new tolls and passengers with fare increases; it is intended to fix the broken criminal justice and mental health systems.
And to negotiate more pro-rider contracts with the unions.
And to further tackle waste.
MTA boss Janno Lieber has made some progress that includes costs.
But No new major projects can be justified until the public is 100% confident that the agency’s budget is in order.
Only then will New Yorkers be willing to spend heavily on new subways — and perhaps even an occasional fare increase to keep up with inflation.
