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We-ell, fares are being raised.
Mar. 25th, 2009 06:29 pm
This is no surprise. Even without the irony of my excitement over the new South Ferry station (which has not diminished a whit), I'm not surprised. There's a post about it here.
But the MTA needs the money. Should've added tolls to the bridges, that's the sensible thing to do. Should be better subsidized, that's what the government's for. Can't blame the MTA for that. And I pay attention - for all people are talking about how service sucks, and it's better in other cities, I remember what it was like when I was a kid. It's better now than it was then. I don't know about other cities, but in *this* city the MTA has gotten better. (This may not mean much, but it's still *true*, I do believe.)
Noticed something else. Every train - EVERY train - that I go on now has signs up about the (then proposed) fare increase, saying that with inflation and all fares are actually cheaper now than they were when they were $1.25. That might be true, though I don't see how think they'll get anybody to believe it, or care if they do. But do you know why these signs are up in every train? It's not because they're so big on propagandizing us. It's because a lot of the adspace, for the past several years now, is taken up with public service ads. I don't think this is because the MTA thinks we really need public poetry. I think it's because, for whatever reason, the space isn't selling and they feel they need to put *something* there. So they're not getting as much ad revenue as they really ought to either. That in and of itself kinda indicates the sort of dire straits they're in.
I'm still upset, though. Who can afford another fifty cents a fare? In a way, it was better before unlimiteds - you don't want to pay the fare, you walk. It's easy to save money when you walk instead of taking the train or the bus two stops or three stops or whatever your walking limit is. But now everybody knows that if you're travelling regularly the unlimited card is cheaper, and once you buy it you have no easy way to save that little bit of cash. (Okay, it's already saved through buying the unlimited instead of the pay-per-ride, but that's not the point, exactly.)
But the MTA needs the money. Should've added tolls to the bridges, that's the sensible thing to do. Should be better subsidized, that's what the government's for. Can't blame the MTA for that. And I pay attention - for all people are talking about how service sucks, and it's better in other cities, I remember what it was like when I was a kid. It's better now than it was then. I don't know about other cities, but in *this* city the MTA has gotten better. (This may not mean much, but it's still *true*, I do believe.)
Noticed something else. Every train - EVERY train - that I go on now has signs up about the (then proposed) fare increase, saying that with inflation and all fares are actually cheaper now than they were when they were $1.25. That might be true, though I don't see how think they'll get anybody to believe it, or care if they do. But do you know why these signs are up in every train? It's not because they're so big on propagandizing us. It's because a lot of the adspace, for the past several years now, is taken up with public service ads. I don't think this is because the MTA thinks we really need public poetry. I think it's because, for whatever reason, the space isn't selling and they feel they need to put *something* there. So they're not getting as much ad revenue as they really ought to either. That in and of itself kinda indicates the sort of dire straits they're in.
I'm still upset, though. Who can afford another fifty cents a fare? In a way, it was better before unlimiteds - you don't want to pay the fare, you walk. It's easy to save money when you walk instead of taking the train or the bus two stops or three stops or whatever your walking limit is. But now everybody knows that if you're travelling regularly the unlimited card is cheaper, and once you buy it you have no easy way to save that little bit of cash. (Okay, it's already saved through buying the unlimited instead of the pay-per-ride, but that's not the point, exactly.)
