MetroCard Discount Will Only Help 3% Of NYC's Poor At First

NEW YORK — Less than a tenth of poor straphangers will be able to get half-price MetroCards in the first three months of a much-heralded city program, officials revealed Friday.

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday finally unveiled details of the so-called Fair Fares program, which was meant to help as many as 800,000 New Yorkers living below the federal poverty line afford subway and bus fares.

But the program's initial impact will be much more muted. The "first phase" will only cover the 30,000 people — about 3.7 percent of the city's poor — who already receive cash assistance from the city's Department of Social Services, according to a City Hall press release.

Another 130,000 people who are already getting food stamps will become eligible for the program in April, city officials said. It's not certain when it will reach the hundreds of thousands of others who already struggle to afford transit fares.

"Talk alone won’t get you through the turnstile," said David Jones, the president and CEO of the Community Service Society.

"It takes a concrete timeline that doesn’t leave hundreds of thousands of poor people waiting for a program that is coming at some unspecified time in the distant future," he added.

The city budget passed in June included $106 million to fund the first six months of the Fair Fares program. The deal came after a strong push from City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, other Council members and advoacy groups.

That funding level was enough to roll out the program to the first 160,000 people, said Social Services Commissioner Steven Banks, whose department is administering the benefit.

"One of the reasons why we wanted to start with people that were known to us is because we would already have determined their income," Banks told reporters Friday. "We wouldn’t have to make people come in and verify income. We already are aware of what their circumstances are."

The city will start mailing letters on Friday to as many as 30,000 cash assistance recipients who will be able to pick up their MetroCards at a designated distribution site, Banks said. Food stamp recipients will be able to go through an online system to have a card mailed to them starting in April, he said.

That's also when the program will start covering pay-per-ride MetroCards, according to Banks. But it will only include pricer seven- and 30-day passes in the first three months.

De Blasio has taken heat in the past week for keeping details about Fair Fares under wraps while some straphangers wondered how the program would work. The mayor said in June that it would be ready to go on Jan. 1, but that day came and went without any public advertising or noticeable outreach.

De Blasio, a Democrat, stood by the rollout Friday, saying the city is "very comfortable starting January fourth."

"As soon as we can announce the next phase, we're going to," he said. "We want as many people to get this as possible."

While they expressed gratitude that Fair Fares was getting started, advocates who led the charge for the program stressed the need for more specifics about its future expansion.

It currently leaves plenty of vulnerable New Yorkers in the lurch, Jones said, including immigrants, low-income college students and the unemployed.

"We need a timeline that is quick, that is aggressive, about implementing Fair Fares so that … everyone in the city who pushed and fought and advocated and organized to win Fair Fares knows how to apply and can sign up and take advantage of the program," John Raskin, the executive director of the transit advocacy group Riders Alliance, said a Friday news conference with the mayor sitting behind him.

(Lead image: A man swipes a subway card at Grand Central Terminal in March 2015. Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)