Today, for the fifth time in eight years, the MTA has hiked subway and bus fares: A monthly pass is now $116.50, up from $112, and single rides are up a quarter to $2.75.
Meanwhile, the subways are worse than ever.
Over the past month especially, not a day goes by without serious delays, cancellations and overcrowded subway cars and platforms. It has become impossible to predict the length and route of one’s commute. This Monday and Tuesday, the L train — already stretched to the max by its never-ending population explosion — stopped running during the morning rush.
Know how many subway lines aren’t running their regular routes this weekend? Just the 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, A, C, E, N, Q, F, D and S. The L is running this weekend — unlike the past six or so weekends — but there are service changes on weeknights.
Currently, the MTA — shockingly, still a self-reporting entity— admits falling short of its goals. For on-time performance, they say they’re at 74% but would like to be at 92%. (Why not 100%?)
For “mean distance,” or the amount of miles a train can go without breaking down, they’d like to be at 175,000 miles. Right now, they say they’re at 141,000.
In an attempt to explain why the MTA’s performance has become so abysmal, Gene Russianoff of the NYPIRG’s Straphangers Campaign appeared on NPR. He struggled.
“It stinks,” he said. “It’s not good enough.”
As for the MTA’s stats, Russianoff scoffed: “There are lies, damn lies, and transit authority stats,” he said.
He cited some alarming facts: Between subways and buses, New Yorkers take 8 million trips a day. (The MTA claims it’s only 6 million.) We’re suffering from an overcrowding problem that the city hasn’t experienced since the late 1940s. The last time the MTA purchased new cars for the C train was during the 1964 World’s Fair. The Lexington Avenue line — consisting of the 4, 5 and 6 trains — carries 30% of daily riders.
The Post reported that last December alone, there were 15,000 delays due to overcrowding — a 113% spike from the year prior.
Nearly every New Yorker with a smartphone and a social-media account is venting daily:
A rider named Dylan Tulic tells The Post that recently he left one hour early to make a job interview in Fort Lee, NJ.
No matter.
“‘Due to train traffic’ on the A train,” he says sarcastically, “I sat in the tunnel between 59th Street and 125th Street for 45 minutes — causing me to miss the bus into New Jersey, which caused me to be an hour late — even though I had left an hour early specifically to counter potential MTA bulls—.”
(He still got the job.)
In a statement to The Post, MTA spokesperson Adam Lisberg said that increased ridership is a testament to the good job the MTA is doing.
“Subway ridership keeps rising, and late last year started hitting 6 million on our busiest days,” he tells The Post. “This is an incredible achievement after decades of deferred investment that left the subway system near collapse in the 1970s and 1980s.”
This latest fare hike, by the way, covers only the raises of MTA employees — not new and cleaner cars, or updated signal service or track work or the damage still felt by Hurricane Sandy.
Meanwhile, the Second Avenue subway — which the city has been planning to build since the end of World War I — may halt construction. The MTA dropped that bomb earlier this month.
Right now, the MTA is running on $13 billion dollars. In order to keep things running as they are, they need $15 billion.
The only person who can allocate the extra dollars to fix this mess is Gov. Cuomo.
The MTA is lobbying for $20 billion for “state of good repair funds” (we know), along with $5 billion for enhancements, such as countdown clocks, and another $5 billion to keep Second Avenue subway construction going.
Currently, the advocacy group Riders Alliance is collecting horror stories, which they’ll send to lawmakers as they consider the next MTA capital plan, which Cuomo will rule on in the next few weeks.
In the meantime: Rider, beware.