Extra credit points to the Post for their cheeky headline: “MTA Won’t Treat All Riders Fare-ly”
I guess I can give the Post partial credit for putting together their fare increase “calculator.” I use the term loosely. It’s just a table, but whatever. Let’s see if I can do it better.
First, read the back-story here.
Option #1:
Single Ride – New Cost: $2.25
Unlimited Card – New Cost: $79.00
Option #2:
Single Ride – Peak Fare: $2.25
Single Ride – Off-Peak Fare: $1.50
Unlimited Card – Peak Fare: $82.00
**Single Ride Off-Peak Fare discount only applies with $6 minimum purchase.
Clearly an off peak discount would be cool for single riders, however, it ends up being us Unlimited Ride users that pay for it! So boo to option 2. Also, that’s way too much to keep track of. You’ll end up having change on your MetroCard. So you could end up with only $0.50 on your card, which then you would have to recharge.
That will make it hard to keep track of (mentally) how much you have left on your card. Right now, if you have $10 on your card, you know you’ve got 5 rides…period. With a peak/off peak system, you could end up getting 6 and 2/3rds rides. That last $1.00 on your card isn’t going to get you anywhere. So you would have to add an additional 50 cents or dollar to your card to get a full fare.
If we need to do something, let’s hope we end up with Option 1. It’s a fare hike. We don’t need to get cute with it.
SUBWAYblogger 
Quick, how many $2.25 rides can you get on a $10 Metrocard?
Off-peak fares are a good idea. They’ll induce more people to ride when there’s more spare capacity, and they’ll be good for the elderly. PATH riders have been dealing with a decimal fare on their Metrocards for a while, and the sky hasn’t fallen.
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Quick, how many $2.25 rides can you get on a $10 Metrocard?
True, but you can get 10 rides for $22.50, and know that no matter what, it is always going to be 10 rides. That way you can just keep track of how many “swipes” you have left instead of the dollar value.
Why not just have us swipe our credit cards through the slot instead? Wouldnt that just cut through most of the crap?
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[…] of the fare hike, The Post printed a nifty fare calculator which, as SUBWAYblogger noted, is really just a table with a drop-down menu that helps display the differences between the two fare […]
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All that math makes my head spin.
I miss tokens.
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[…] first read about this article & calculator in an entry written by The Subway Blogger. The calculator is merely nothing more than a table with a built in drop down menu. However […]
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You can’t get a $22.50 card. $20 gets you a $24 card. So, you are going to end up with $1.50 on a card that you will have to recombine or recharge anyhow. And besides, some of us have to take the dreaded X-buses and Air Trains which cost $5 and screw it all up as is already. Who is going to complaint that instead of 5 rides they got 6 2/3rds? That is a _good_ thing, more rides is better. Honestly, I would prefer to see a $2 fare and no change, but having it be $2.25 sometimes and $1.50 other times is way better than having it $2.25 all the time. It doesn’t make any sense to complain about screwed up math, because you are going to get that anyhow with the fare increase.
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Daver:
You don’t explain why riders like myself, TSB, & many others who use unlimited monthly cards have to foot the bill for others to ride cheaper.
The idea that we should foot the bill for others to ride at a cheaper cost is beyond ridiculous. Plus no matter the cost, a majority of riders have to ride at peak times & have no say in the matter.
Even the MTA expects only a small percentage to take advantage of $1.50 fares. In the end we should not have to foot the bill!
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Daver:
Ahhh but you can get a $22.50 card. To prove it, I bought a $2.50 card tonight, just for kicks.
You can buy a card in just about any amount you want. It’s under the “other amount” option.
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Am I the only one that votes for NO FARE HIKE?
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Patrick:
I don’t think you are the only one who votes no for a fare hike. I just think many of us expect it to go through regardless of our outcry. This should not stop us from hammering our points home which I have been adamant about lately.
However unless someone drastically pulls the MTA’s card & sham, the fare hike is happening.
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“Ahhh but you can get a $22.50 card. To prove it, I bought a $2.50 card tonight, just for kicks.
You can buy a card in just about any amount you want. Its under the other amount option.”
Er, OK. How does the bonus dollars work then? Did it give you 20% for a $3 card? Weird.
Oh, and I vote for no fare hike too. And I also vote for not sticking it harder to the monthly folk in under to subsidize the dollar folk. However, any way you look at it, the monthly is going up a lower percentage than the dollar rate, regardless of which propsed amount they go with on the monthly. So I figure us monthly guys are getting a deal (comparatively, the bastards!) anyhow.
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Well considering they had ridership increase 15% the past 10 years, 4 years of budget surpluses, heck the L train has seen ridership increase nearly 50% in the past 5 years, and now there telling us they want to raise the fares, yet they are not raising service?
Why is it they can’t allow the city to manage it’s own MTA when the city generates 66% of the MTA’s revenue?
Why is it that there is competition between bus and subway lines? After all wouldn’t it make sense if there was an incentive between lines to compete for federal funding, and revenue which would make service better across the board?
Why not a fare cut? Look at express bus service in the outerboroughs where people are sitting in buses for 2,3 hours and paying more for less?
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I’d pay extra for my metrocard if they fired “Tom McManus” 😉
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lol
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Pay me directly and I’ll stop writing. Sort of like the guy with the bugle, he wont blow it in your ear if you give him money.
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The new 15% bonus structure will probably put even more money in the MTA’s pockets as it results in lots of spare change left on nyc subway riders metrocards. You can use this handy online calculator to compute an even balance on your metrocard: http://MetroCardCalculator.com
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Also try the original MetroCard Bonus Calculator at http://www.metrocardbonuscalculator.com/
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