How the Poor Pay the Price for Subway-Worker Benefits
Feeling flush with cash? If so, you might not notice when, later this month, the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority will vote to raise the monthly subway fare to $121. But the working poor will definitely notice — the scheme from born-again progressive Gov. Cuomo will hit them hardest.
And the latest proposal for how to cushion the blow won’t fix the deeper problem.
“Despite all that extra money, trains are more packed and less reliable. Over the last year, subways broke down 16.6 percent more often than the previous year.”
In the first half of the 20th century, things were different: No politician was brave enough to raise subway fares. From 1904 to 1948, the price held steady at a nickel per ride.
But the pols have made up for lost time. If the fare had kept pace with that long-ago nickel, it would be $1.22 today. Instead, it’s $2.75, or $2.48 if you include bonuses. And it may soon cost $3.
Buying in bulk hasn’t helped riders. In 1998, the monthly fare card debuted at $63. Even before the upcoming fare hike, it’s now $116.50, nearly double that. If it were merely keeping pace with inflation, it would be only $93.28.
Yet despite all that extra money, trains are more packed and less reliable. Over the last year, subways broke down 16.6 percent more often than the previous year.
So why are fares going up? Costs, particularly retirement and health costs for workers. This year, the subway and bus system will pay $975.1 million for worker pensions, and $1.4 billion for health care.
In 2002, pensions cost $153.1 million, and health-care costs came to $400.4 million.
If the MTA’s pension and health-care spending had kept up with inflation, they would cost $742.6 million today, not $2.4 billion.
That’s half the cost it took to build the Second Avenue Subway (so far).
Cuomo and the transit system’s biggest union reached a new labor agreement on Monday, to replace one that had just expired — but the new one, which contains raises above the rate of inflation, did nothing to control these costs.
Fare hikes and bad service hit the poor hardest. A lawyer commuting downtown from, say, the Upper West Side can take a walk through the park sometimes to avoid a daily $6 hit. And the cramped ride is at least short.
A minimum-wage worker coming from Hunts Point in The Bronx can’t avoid transit, and she has a long, unreliable trip. The shorter the work shift she gets, the bigger the burden, since she has to work for a half-hour just to pay for the trip.
Poor workers have to spend more than 10 percent of their household income on a transit pass, according to a study done by the Community Service Society. The figure is only 2 percent for moderate earners.
“The fare structure favors higher-income people,” says Nancy Rankin of CSS, “who can afford to lay out $121” for more flexibility in commuting — and going other places, too. “New York has this great competitive advantage” in the subway. “It gives employers access to this vast labor pool. But if people can’t afford the fare, then what good does it do?”
CSS and a group called the Riders Alliance have a stopgap solution: They want the city to pay the MTA for half-price MetroCards for nearly 400,000 poor riders, which would cost about $200 million a year.
The idea behind the city paying for this subsidy is to avoid taking money away from the MTA — that is, to make it clear that this is a social program tailored for Mayor de Blasio, not a transit investment.
It’s not a bad idea: Mobility means opportunity.
As long as two things happen. First, the city should tie it to work: Require someone to have a minimal amount of earned income for the year, even if it’s not steady, to be eligible. (People looking to get back into the workforce should be able to get a smaller number of half-price rides, but for a strict time period.)
Coupled with these requirements should be anti-fraud protections, like photos and names on cards. But, as social programs go, this one would seem less vulnerable to fraud than many others. Poor people would still have to pay half, and there isn’t much room for third-party scammers to take advantage, like with Medicaid.
And it’s not like riding around on the subway for no reason is a fun way to screw the government.
There are worse ways for de Blasio to spend our money: The city just approved nearly $200 million in tax breaks for a luxury office tower, for example.
Still, what poor people need most is a functional subway and bus system. That’s not what they have, when trains are breaking down more often and when we struggle to build for people who live far from existing lines.
Poor people aren’t going to get a solid transit system as long as the state lets costs spiral out of control. A few years from now, even half price may be a bad deal for everyone.
This piece originally appeared at the New York Post
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Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal. Follow her on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in New York Post