(The following article by Randy Kennedy appeared in today’s online version of the New York Times.)
NEW YORK — More than 200 subway and bus riders packed a hotel ballroom in Midtown Manhattan yesterday to protest a proposed increase in transit fares. Many said that an increase would be a regressive tax imposed on New York City residents by Gov. George E. Pataki as a way to help the state’s ailing budget.
The hearing, the second of 10 to take place around the region over the next two weeks, was a mostly subdued exercise in mass democracy, at least compared to some past fare-increase hearings at which insults and even loose change were hurled at transit officials.
Last night at the Roosevelt Hotel, Mr. Pataki, who was not present, received most of the criticism. And the issue that elicited the most noise from the crowd was the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s plan to close 177 token booths — almost a quarter of those in the system — to help save $25 million a year.
“We have lost enough token booths already,” said C. Virginia Fields, the Manhattan borough president, to raucous cheers. Characterizing the closing as service cuts, she said, “You must not take away the eyes and ears of the system that give us all a sense of security and safety.”
Transit officials argue that the booth closings are a necessary part of a plan to close an operating budget gap of almost $1 billion over the next two years. They say the deficit has grown in large part because the transit system’s expenses have increased while the average fare, with MetroCard discounts, has dropped to $1.04 since 1995, when the last increase took the base fare to $1.50.
Under the plans to repair that gap, subway, bus and commuter rail fares could increase by up to 33 percent, although — unlike any past fare increase — the MetroCard makes possible dozens of different permutations of discounts that could mean some riders will pay much less. A vote is likely in March on the booth closings, fare increase and higher tolls on several M.T.A. bridges and tunnels. They could be in effect by April.
Critics of the authority contend that it has been deceptive about its finances and has not made a convincing case for a fare increase. They add that if an increase is necessary, it is only because contributions from both the state and city for rebuilding the transit system have disappeared in recent years, forcing the agency to borrow more and causing riders to pay more of the interest on that debt with their fares.
“If New York City and New York State had been contributing to the M.T.A. and New York City Transit as other municipalities and states do in other areas of this country, we would not be confronting a deficit,” said Beverly Dolinsky, executive director of the New York City Transit Riders Council.
Questioned about a fare increase at an event in the South Bronx yesterday, Mr. Pataki said he would wait for the hearings to end before coming to any conclusions. But he emphasized how much better the system had become.
“I think the subway and bus and train service is far better than it was a few years ago because we’ve invested billions of dollars to upgrade that service,” he said. Those dollars, however, do not come in the form of direct state capital aid, which ended in 1995, but in the form of bonds.
Gene Russianoff, the staff lawyer for the Straphangers Campaign, an advocacy group for transit riders, made light of Mr. Pataki’s statement, saying that the governor must have been using the “royal we” when he spoke about billions in investments. “It includes the federal government, the City of New York and the riders who are being saddled with billions of dollars in bonds and ensuing millions in debt payments,” he said.
According to longstanding practice, transit officials — five M.T.A board members, along with Peter S. Kalikow, the authority’s chairman, and Katherine N. Lapp, its executive director — sat silent and mostly unsmiling last night at a long table, sometimes taking notes, as a parade of more than 100 speakers denounced the plans.
The one proposal that did not come in for much criticism during the first three hours was a plan to phase out the lowly token. Only one speaker, a Con Edison electrical engineer, rose in its defense. “It is just ludicrous,” he said, holding up several plastic MetroCards, “to get rid of something that is real for something that is not as real.”