MetroCards Could Be Half-Price For Some NYers Under New Plan

NEW YORK, NY — The City Council wants to offer subsidies to halve subway fares for poor New Yorkers, a move likely to spark renewed debate with Mayor Bill de Blasio. The Council's 2019 budget proposal unveiled Tuesday includes $212 million for a "fair fares" program that would offer half-price MetroCards to straphangers living in poverty, Speaker Corey Johnson said.

The program could save up to 800,000 people as much as $700 a year on Metropolitan Transportation Authority fares, according to the Council's estimates. The federal poverty guidelines would define eligibility, Johnson said, meaning a family of four would have to make $25,100 or less to qualify

"We believe it's going to be a game-changer for up to 800,000 New Yorkers who will no longer have to worry about whether they should get a weekly card or a daily card instead of a monthly card because they can't afford the up-front costs," Johnson, a Chelsea Democrat, said at a City Hall news conference Tuesday afternoon.

The MTA already offers half-price fares for riders who are disabled or at least 65 years old. But the Council would extend the offer to the poor and to veterans studying at New York City colleges. Neither Johnson nor the Council's budget plan offered an estimate of how many such veterans would qualify.

Lawmakers have yet to work out the logistics of administering the benefit, Johnson said. That would require talks with the MTA once the program is funded to determine which city agencies should be involved, he said.

"It has to be a real process, some income verification, but not a onerous process so it can actually get to them," Johnson said.

Johnson said the proposal is modeled on one the Community Service Society, a nonprofit, and the transit advocacy group Riders Alliance have persistently pushed despite reluctance from City Hall.

Some 28 percent of poor New Yorkers said they or their families had trouble affording the fare — currenlty $2.75 for a single trip and $121 for a monthly pass — at some point in the prior year, according to a Community Service Society survey published in 2016. That can be a barrier to jobs and health care for many people, the group's figures show.

Making transit more affordable could also reduce instances of fare evasion, a low-level crime for which poor people of color are disportionately arrested, Johnson said.

Riders Alliance spokesman Danny Pearlstein said the plan is "enormously popular" and has broad support from City Council members and other elected officials.

"This is a moving train," Pearlstein said.

De Blasio, a Democrat, resisted the prospect of funding the program at a time when the state, which controls the MTA, is making the city tighten its financial belt. Part of that pressure comes from the state forcing the city to cover half of the MTA's $836 million Subway Action Plan, which aims to stabilize the ailing rail system.

"I understand the City Council wants to achieve something noble, but it’s going to be a very straightforward conversation with them about the actual money we have available and how far to reach," de Blasio said at an unrelated news conference Tuesday. "And I hope to show them that it’s not going to be viable to do that with city resources."

The mayor has proposed a tax hike on wealthy New Yorkers that would fund MetroCard subsidies and give additional money to the MTA, but it has not gained traction in the state Legislature, which would have to approve it.

Cutting fares for the poor should be part of a broader MTA funding scheme, whether it's the so-called millionaire's tax or something else, de Blasio said.

Johnson, though, said the mayor ought to back up his rhetoric of making New York a fairer city by supporting a policy that "should be in his wheelhouse."

"When he ran for mayor in 2013, he talked about a tale of two cities," Johnson said. "For folks that can't afford the subway every single day, I think that shows the type of city that they're living in."

(Lead image: Council Speaker Corey Johnson speaks at a City Hall news conference on Tuesday. Photo by Noah Manskar/Patch)