(The following article by Joe Malinconico was posted on the Newark Star-Ledger website on February 16.)
NEWARK, N.J. — The turnout was so light at last night’s public hearings on NJ Transit’s proposed fare increase that everybody who spoke could have fit on one bus.
And there would have been window seats left over.
The plan to raise fares on buses and trains an average of 15 percent drew just five people to the hearing in Paterson and 12 to the hearing in Trenton.
The agency has 11 more hearings scheduled through Feb. 26. After that, transit officials say they will review their proposal and likely vote on a final fare plan in April. Officials expect the new fares to take effect in July.
Do the sparse crowds mean that folks are willing to pay an extra 15 percent to ride buses and trains?
“I guess somebody could make that argument,” Doug Bowen, president of the New Jersey Association of Railroad Passengers, said in a telephone interview last night.
But Bowen, who plans to attend a hearing tonight in Hoboken, said many people simply might figure the hike is a “fait accompli” and that they have little choice but to continue using mass transit no matter what the cost.
“Many people realize that their choices are limited. It used to be that people would say, ‘I’ll go back to my car if they raise the fares,'” Bowen said. “That’s a hollow threat now. If you go back to your car, you just get stuck in traffic.”
At the hearing in Trenton, several commuters criticized plans to curtail discounts on off-peak trains. Some also argued the state should raise the gasoline tax in order to be fair to mass transit customers.
One person in Trenton, according to NJ Transit spokesman Dan Stessel, proposed a “commuter day,” when mass transit riders would switch to their cars and jam the New Jersey Turnpike just to let state officials know how important the bus and rail systems are.
At the Paterson hearing, held in the Passaic County administration building, journalists outnumbered members of the public by a margin of more than 2 to 1. The session started with a 20-minute presentation by NJ Transit officials on the reasons for the fare hikes, including rising fuel and security costs.
Then it was the public’s turn, all five members: an activist for a transportation watchdog group, a member of the Sierra Club and three transit riders with vision disabilities.
“Any increase in fares would affect the most vulnerable people,” said Edward Fedush, a Garfield resident who is blind and who uses NJ Transit’s Access Link service for people with disabilities.
Under the fare proposal, the cost for using Access Link will climb 13.3 percent.
At 6:15 p.m., transit officials at the Paterson hearing took a short recess to give people more time to show up. No one did, leaving the officials to wait another two hours and 15 minutes before calling it a night.
“Certainly we encourage customers to come and comment,” said NJ Transit spokeswoman Penny Bassett Hackett, who attended the hearing. “The bottom line is we really want to hear from them. They can send us comments through e-mail, or they can show up at any of the remaining hearings.”
Under the NJ Transit plan, fares would increase an average of 13.3 percent on most bus routes and rail lines. But several exceptions would generate larger increases for some rail riders. They include:
# The discount for off-peak trains would be cut in half, to 12.5 percent. As a result, off-peak train tickets would go uproughly 30 percent.
# The fee for changing destinations– deciding, for example, to go on to Manhattan with a ticket to Newark — would become a flat fee of $3.10. Currently, it costs $2.75 to continue on to New York with a Newark ticket.
# The fares for northernmost stations on the Bergen/Main lines would rise an extra 5 percent. Those fares had been kept lower through payments Metro North was making to NJ Transit so that northern New Jersey riders wouldn’t cross the border to catch trains in New York. But the payments ended two years ago when Metro North fares climbed higher than those charged by NJ Transit.
Under the fare policy, there will be no increase for monthly ticket buyers on the Newark subway, light rail lines and buses for trips within New Jersey.
As a result of the exceptions, rail riders will pay about $43.8 million of the $60.6 million that the fare increase is projected to generate, about three-quarters of the new revenue, according to transit officials. Only about a quarter of the tab is being picked up by bus passengers.