NYC Transit Fares And Tolls May Rise In 2008

"Elliot G. Sander, Metropolitan Transportation Authority executive director, said yesterday that despite the current ($1 billion) surplus, a fare and toll increase was needed to help offset significant rises in debt service and other costs expected in coming years.

At a meeting of the authority's board, he proposed raising fare and toll revenues by 6.5 percent, although it was not yet clear how the increases would be distributed among tolls, commuter train tickets and the different types of transit fares, like unlimited-ride MetroCards."

"They have good arguments, and I think they're worth listening to," said Gene Russianoff, staff lawyer for the Straphangers Campaign, a rider advocacy group that in the past has been among the most ardent opponents of fare increases. "We've been complaining for a decade that there's this debt bomb that's going to go off, so it would be very hypocritical to say it will solve itself in 2009."

"The current budget surplus has been generated by higher-than-expected revenues from real estate taxes, Mr. Sander said, but he warned that those revenues could not be relied on to continue to grow indefinitely. And he pointed to payments on the authority's debt that are expected to rise to nearly $2 billion in 2011 from $1.4 billion this year, which he said endangered the authority's financial stability.

He said postponing a fare increase by even a year could lead to cuts in service and the need for a 15 percent fare increase in 2009."

"Through this program we believe we will be putting the M.T.A. on a course of solid, long-term fiscal stability," Mr. Sander said.

From NYT editorial:

"Mr. Sander needs to find an immediate way out of the M.T.A.'s fiscal pickle. Its revenues have come from the state and local government coffers and the fare box. Fares have had to finance a big part of the budget - 58 percent versus the national average of 40 percent - mostly because the state and city have long shortchanged public transit.

The main blame lies with former Gov. George Pataki, who, with the cooperation of then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, began rerouting billions of dollars in taxes that should have gone to mass transportation. Gov. Eliot Spitzer could help undo the damage, and minimize fare increases, by finding a way to rededicate all public transit taxes."

Thanks to Mark Boshnack