A Monthly MetroCard Might Cost More Than $100 Next Year

Why should car drivers subsidize the MTA? NO CONGESTION TAX! And get rid of the new MTA surcharge when registering a car! The whole reason I own a car is so that I DON'T have to use mass transit. So why should I pay for it? Train riders don't pay for my car maintenance, do they?

Raise the MTA rate to WHATEVER YOU NEED to the system to make a profit. I don't care if that is $10 a ride. Fine. Do it.

If the MTA can't hack it, let em go bankrupt, and let a private company take over. They can make cuts in the budget where they need to, fix the books, and stop the curruption. If they do all this, I'm sure they won't have to raise rates all that much anyway.

Of course train riders pay for your car rides. They pay for highway/road maintenance and construction. They pay for higher asthma rates that can be partially tied to vehicles' emissions. They pay for the auto accidents' cleanup. They pay for the traffic lights and traffic cop salaries. They pay by opting to ride at all, and showing you what a truly intolerable daily commute is like. They pay for EMS responding to injuries caused by traffic. On the way to and from the train, they also pay with pedestrian injuries and fatalities. They all pay in lots of ways that many people choose to ignore because they don't want to think through the whole situation and come up with a solution. Many people love to look for ways to be a victim so you can be belligerent about it and deflect even indirect responsibility.

Everyone pays.

We have a city. A big city, where lots of people want to, or have to, live. These fellow city-dwellers need to make a living, or are training to make a living. Most of them cannot work within walking distance of where they live. Roads and cars do NOT scale. CANNOT scale. What do we do?

Besides throwing up your arms and blaming the MTA for money mismanagement and calling it a day, I mean. (Or bitch about not wanting to pay for anything, ever.)

I have no probelm with EVERYONES taxes paying for the MTA, or of highway/road maintenance, police, traffic lights and signs, etc... Everyone uses these services. This is what tax dollars are for, to keep society running smoothly.

What I DO have a problem with is one group being taxed MORE then others, for a service they don't use. Like I said, the whole point of me having a car is so I DON'T have to use mass transit daily. So why do I have to pay extra for it?

Holy s--t, they are going to hike the payroll tax even more now. I swear, it is like buying an extra 2 monthly-metrocards a year already.

When discussing the congestion tax, I hear everyone talking about people who commute to work. I argue that most (anyone have numbers?) of the vehicular traffic in Manhattan is people using their vehicle to DO work. Why should these people who do not have a mass transit option, pay the penalty for doing business in Manhattan?

$2.60 is a joke.

Unless lawmakers can come up with new ways to fund the MTA

Is it really so hard to understand, Albany? TRAFFIC CONGESTION TAX!!!

Commuting time today: 1 hour 45 minutes.

Distance: 5.5 miles.

35 minutes waiting for a G train which never comes (find out G trains aren't running when I finally go up an ask station agent)

20 minutes waiting for B62 or B43 or G-train Shuttle (two buses are too full to take all G-train exiles, no Shuttle arrives)

Times I swiped my (thankfully monthly unlimited) Metrocard: 3

Signs, announcements or other helpful information from MTA staff, including 2 phone calls made to MTA line: 0

One time my boyfriend and I tried calling the MTA to find out service for the B48 bus, cause we were trying to go to the Brooklyn Museum. That bus NEVER runs when it's suppose to...of course they didn't pick up when we tried calling. Ugh between the G train and the buses out there. It's a head ache.

Single rides should be $5, the Fun Pass should be $20.

$100 is a lot of money for a service that doesn't even work. If i was getting my moneys worth then yes. And i wish it was as easy as "Just pay the extra money...or take a cab." Cabs are just as expensive (and even just as non-reliable) esp when you live in an outter borough and have a crappy train line like the G train to rely on. Something needs to be done. There has to be a better way....

The monthly subway is used mainly by the lower and middle classes to get to work every day. It puts a burden on folks who are simply trying to get to their jobs. Charge whatever for a single ride, but the monthly should be reasonably bargain-priced considering why most folks buy a monthly.

Seriously -- why the fuck are they talking about raising the single ride pricing by $0.10 (or 4%), while jacking up the monthly passes by 15%?

Single ride is now $2.25, right? An increase to $2.60 is an $.35 increase, correct?

Well, you can see how often I buy the single rides, given that I thought it was $2.50 already.

Yeah,I can see that. I use an unlimited, but I'm not sure how much it costs. I pick it up from HR when the email goes out for transit check arrivals.

Just pay the extra money already. Or take cabs.

not everyone who drives into manhattan is doing so because they are "too good" for public transportation. there are parts of the five boroughs without reliable or fast ways to get into the city, especially if you need to travel at odd (non-rush hour) times.

commuter tax!

If you're commuting outside of rush hour(s) it should be no problem to find parking near the terminus(sp?)/start of most major train lines. Otherwise, pay for driving into and around the most congested parts of Manhattan.

Exactly! Drive to the stop, then take transportation in. I used to do that when I lived in Westchester and believe me Westchester has a hell of a lot more dead spots then here in NYC (there is a bus within a 15min walk in almost every area in NYC except Queens...which is really lousy, sorry guys, that need improvement!)

I agree. People do live in areas where there is no convenient method of traveling into the city, then the city needs to remedy that before imposing a commuter tax. Huge parking lots near certain train stations? People don't drive as often in Japan, but there are huge bicycle parking lots next to Japanese train stations so people can conveniently park them there all day.

Let each transit work display their salary and benefits, time to retirement, and days worked on each subway and bus. Once the riders understand how much money these surly, incomptent buffoons make every year we will take a strike and demand massive wage and benefit reduction as well as modern work rules. Productivity and a proper retirement age or you are fired.

Time for tranparency and reform. The unons don't care because once the city worker retires, he or she moves to Florida and doesn't pay the taxes and fees to support their lifestyle. The clock is ticking.

I think you meant STINK TANK...our politicians and the retards at the MTA can't do anything right...

Here's an idea: how about we start charging property taxes to the pro sports teams who get huge piles of public funds to build their stadiums, then proceed to freeload in them for the next 40-50 years until they start whining about how they need yet another stadium.

You already pay for the MTA morons. All of you. NYS takes 5% of your income. Florida on the other hand has no state income tax but has the same population, yet continues to run the state. Wonder how that is?

When are you people going to learn that government run agencies are black holes of waste? MTA? Amtrak? USPS? SSI? Medicare?

Yeah, exactly. Let's hope Mr. I-Love-University-of-Alabama here would never be in a position where he would have to use 'black-holes' like Medicare for his own health insurance or commuting with the MTA/Amtrak.

and your suggestion to all this would be???

Please don't feed the Teabaggers

I like how they say right up front that we will be paying more for poorer service. Sure, sounds like a plan!

Why don't they switch it around for once and charge us LESS for BETTER service? That would catch everyone off-guard.

Oh, you must have missed when they did that - better service for less money than it cost to deliver - in the first 70 years of NYC mass transit. This is the 2nd 70 years of NYC mass transit, where we pay for it.

It's easy to figure out -- every other subway in the world is more heavily subsidized than ours.

Right. They also tend to have better revenue streams than those of the MTA.

And the additional problem is if FREE student Metro Cards are not reinstated families with children that commute via public transportation will get VERY VERY hard.

sorry, but i am unable to stop myself from asking, how hard will they get?

I was in Santiago, Chile last summer. Their subway system is brand new, trains are huge, run one right after the other on time, and it only costs $.50 per ride. While almost $3 a ride is cheap in the grand scheme of things, it's going to exclude a lot of people from riding mass transportation.

I don't know why we can't figure this one out.

You do realize that

New York's subway infrastructure is a century old in some places and so we aren't starting from scratch - just look at signaling systems

And it caters to one of the world's biggest, most congested cities, with 1.563 billion people riding it every year?

it's almost like your comparison/analysis is completely meaningless

It could always be worse too. I studied abroad in Japan last year in the fall. Although I paid a around 7,800 Yen = $80 for a monthly pass to and from school, I could only travel on a certain path. Not to mention all travel fares are determined in distance. The further you travel from your originating point, the more you pay. Taxis are also not the best option since they start you off at around $7.50 just for sitting in them as opposed to the $2.50 you get in NYC.

Although Japan's train system is clean and constantly on time it is costly. Compared to them then, NYC's prices are beautiful.

I would rather pay more for a system that is clean, on time, and not filled with human excrement.

Amen!

yes to congestion pricing. Make drivers who commute into the city w/o any passengers or carpooling, pay a fee. Their convenience is inconveniencing others, esp the environment.

I think driving into the city because you're "too good" for public transportation is stupid and wasteful. Pay up brats!

such a bogus think tank, you can bet their collecting donations from bloomberg to release unbiased opinions like this one.

Fact is if you live the outer boros you have a RIGHT to be able to freely move in your own city, let alone country without tolls. tolls on the bridges will make manhattan a completly gated community for the rich and for tourists. if it happens, its the death of the city, at the very least the death of its soul.

here's a progressive idea. tax the rich. the wealth of the real estate in this city is staggering. the real estate scions own huge amounts of property, yet nyc property tax is one third the amount of surrounding areas. the city makes the least amount of revenue from real estate compared to the rest of country. Instead its revenue is made up from nickel and diming the poe people, the working people, all the while the wealthy who own real estate are left alone.

'No one questions why property tax revenues have actually declined between 1993 and 2000, while the city has had one of the biggest real estate deals in history.

Property taxes -- the one major tax whose rate is under the city's control -- represented 45 percent of all city tax revenues in 1993; in 2000 it was 35 percent."

read this article

http://www.gothamgazette.com/iotw/propertytax/

how come the think tanks arent suggesting this? Cause they're paid to propagandize not think of real solutions.

Ugh, get a clue:

"tolls on the bridges will make manhattan a completly gated community for the rich and for tourists"

So, it's the working class that drives into the City for their commute? No, it isn't.

"here's a progressive idea. tax the rich. the wealth of the real estate in this city is staggering. the real estate scions own huge amounts of property"

Yes, that's the whole point of congesstion pricing and East River Tolls. It's to tax the rich, i.e. those who can afford to drive into the city and not worry about paying $50 to park for a day. As for companies doing business in the city that send trucks into the city, they can pass the cost onto the customers. Like, an HVAC truck doing 5 jobs in manhattan, can easily pass the $5-$40 in fee's onto their customers.

What you're proposing: increased property taxes in the City --> increased housing costs for everyone. That's not progressive. It means everyone's rent goes up by a little bit.

Your heart is in the right place, your conclusions are not.

from the heart of bottom to you

you seem to think people who own cars are as rich as people who own houses. you should watch more price is right, theres a big difference between rich enough to have a car, and rich enough to have a house. No one pays 50 dollars to park. you're out of touch. it doesnt make you rich if you drive into the city. depending on where you live its might be your only option.

look at that mta map. you see all that area outside of manhattan with nary a train line next to each other. and thats not even in scale. for many, many new yorkers public transportation isnt feasible, we dont all live by a train station. a car in parts of nyc, like in most of the world is necessary. I know the young people with bikes cant comprehend this but you'll just have to trust me.

nyc in its infinite wisdom has been building crap housing while jersey has been building corporate offices in jersey city and huge corporate campuses further west. believe it or not, tens maybe hundreds of thousands of nyer actually drive thru manhattan just to get to jersey to work. lots of crappy housing in the outer boros, not much work. charge people to drive thru manhattan, you can bet alot of people will up and leave.

you want to demagouge somebody, look at real estate. somehow the rents protection laws get cut back every year, somehow the prices go up and up, somehow the city always fails to ask the land owners to pony up. its always the dick and jane taking the train, or driving somewhere, that have to adjust their lifestyle. Never the real estate moguls who own billions. they've got this city sewn up. thats who should be paying any new taxes.

I could go on, but I'll leave it at that.

Yet they keep paying transit workers $100K+/ year with steady raises. Unions are worthless these days.

Let's see -- my weekly Unlimited Xpress Bus Metrocard costs me $180 per month. If that goes up then I'll have to revert to the regular bus to the subway which from NE Queens will add another hour to my commute. Why spend time at home when you can have fun with the MTA.

No congestion pricing!

You can't solve a money mis-management issue with more money!

Things that make the most sense never make it past law makers.