(The Flushing Times-Ledger posted the following article by Philip Newman on its website on October 30.)
NEW YORK — Transit officials say the $2 bus and subway fare is safe through 2007 but would not rule out the possibility of hiking the cost of weekly and monthly MetroCards if the budget gap keeps worsening.
“We are intent on keeping the $2 fare through 2007,” Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Peter Kalikow said at meeting Tuesday at which the agency unveiled its four-year financial outlook.
“Our strategy is not to touch the $2 base fare through 2007,” Kalikow said. “It is not our intention. It is not what we envision. It is not what the strategy is.”
Meanwhile, the inch-thick document known as the MTA-Wide Financial Plan for 2004-2007 and Final Proposed Budget for 2004 included widespread cuts in subway car, bus and station cleaners, dispatchers, car inspectors and elimination of more than 30 elevator operators in the city’s deepest subway stations, mostly in far Upper Manhattan.
“It is our aim to make any such cuts as imperceptible to the riding public as possible,” Kalikow said.
The service cuts showed up in the MTA plan despite a commitment by transit officials last spring that boosting the fare by 50 cents to $2 would mean no such reductions.
The MTA Financial plans projects a $36 million surplus by the end of next year but large deficits after 2005.
MTA officials said the money problem was the result of heavy debt service, big increases in pension costs along with diminished financial aid from the city and the state.
“The financial problems the MTA faces are because Gov. George Pataki has starved the agency financial for eight years, forcing MTA officials to borrow billions of dollars,” said Gene Russianoff, attorney for the transit activist agency Straphangers Campaign.
“Now the MTA has to go to Pataki and to the city of New York and tell them that their help is essential.”
Katherine Lapp, executive director of the MTA, held a news conference following the MTA board meeting at which the financial plan was presented and said plans were to hold the $2 fare through 2007.
Lapp said the MTA was looking at a variety of ways to raise money, including possibly increasing commuter rail fares and tolls on tunnels and bridges. Lapp said the agency intended to seek more financial aid from the city and from Albany.
Kalikow also said the MTA was committed to going ahead with the Second Avenue Subway and the East Side Access to bring Long Island Rail Road trains into Grand Central Terminal.
A four-year projection of the MTA’s finances was a first for the agency, which has been trying to open its operations to public view. State Comptroller Alan Hevesi last spring accused MTA officials of arrogance and of operating at times in near secrecy, something the agency denied.
The Straphangers Campaign led a demonstration at MTA headquarters to protest the service cuts, handing out Halloween candy poking fun at the proposed cut, such as “Shmutz-ie Rolls,” “Good and Dirty,” rolls of “Elevator Savers” and “They Must Think We’re From Mars” bars.
Russianoff, who handed out press releases printed on Halloween orange paper, spoke to the MTA board against the cuts, bringing a jack-o-lantern to the lecturn.