The MTA voted Wednesday to raise the price of weekly and monthly MetroCards, while nixing bonuses on pay-per-ride cards — as one of its board members blasted the decision, saying straphangers are the ones getting “screwed.”
The board members voted to keep the base fare at $2.75, but to eliminate the pay-per-ride bonus on the MetroCard, which gave riders a 5 percent bump when at least $5.50 is added to a card.
Weekly unlimited-ride MetroCards will increase in price by 3 percent from $32 to $33, while the cost of 30-day unlimited-ride MetroCards will surge by 5 percent from $121 to $127.
“We are doing the best we can to make the MTA as efficient as possible,” acting MTA chairman Fernando Ferrer said at the board meeting.
Ahead of the vote, board member Andrew Saul explained why he was voting against the plan, saying, “The riders are getting screwed.”
“This is a bloated bureaucracy,” Saul said. “This thing is full of waste … I think it’s dead wrong to put this thing on the riders.”
Lisa Daglian, director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, had also argued ahead of the vote that “since the majority of commuters — the regular riders of the system — take advantage of the discounts, their fares will effectively go up, while the occasional user, and tourists, will not feel any pain.”
“We don’t think that’s in the best interest of everyday riders,” Daglian said.
Meanwhile, board members also voted to raise the fares on tolls on MTA bridges and tunnels.
Tolls at all major MTA-run crossings except the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge will go up from $5.76 to $6.12 for E-ZPass customers and from $8.50 to $9.50 for those paying tolls by mail.
The new subway fares will go into effect on April 21, while the new tolls on bridges and tunnels will take effect in March.
The vote on the fare hikes comes after it was pushed off in January and after Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday unveiled a 10-point plan to overhaul the MTA.
Under the city and state proposal, which includes implementing congestion pricing, mass transit fare increases would be limited to inflationary increases of 2 percent per year.