New York City Council Executive Budget Hearing
Good afternoon, I’m Henry Mei, Research and Advocacy Intern at the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, PCAC. For nearly 50 years, PCAC has served as the official voice of riders on the MTA system. Thank you, Chair Lee, for the opportunity to testify.
Fair Fares can literally change people’s lives. It expands access to jobs, education, and more, but far too few people qualify under the stringent eligibility threshold: if you make minimum wage, you make too much.
My family’s story is emblematic of this problem. There are three people in my household: myself – a part-time intern, my mother – a home health aide, and my father – recently retired. We are a quintessentially working-class New York family, and yet we take home too much annual income to qualify for Fair Fares.
You can change this. We are asking the mayor to unlock its full potential by:
1. Expanding Fair Fares to 300% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL)
2. Making it fully free for households under 150% of the FPL
3. Expanding half-fares to Express Buses and CityTickets on the railroads
4. Implementing Automatic Enrollment and
5. Expanding half-fares for qualifying Paratransit users aged 65 and older
In my part of Queens alone, the 25th Council District, over 54,000 people would qualify for Fair Fares under these changes – that’s almost 35 percent of the district. Over 30,000 of my neighbors would be eligible to ride transit for free. I am testifying today not just for myself, but for my mom, who takes the bus every day to care for her elderly client, and for all of us in the five boroughs who depend on transit yet feel its burden on our tight budgets.
As the council’s excellent oversight hearing last month brought to light, HRA badly needs to reform its enrollment and renewal processes to increase participation. Around 200,000 New Yorkers receiving other HRA benefits are not receiving Fair Fares, depriving them of up to $910 per year in transit savings.
An abysmal 50 percent of enrollees drop out of Fair Fares each year due to how difficult HRA makes it to renew. PCAC will do everything we can to ensure automatic enrollment and renewal is passed and implemented.
Thank you again for making Fair Fares a priority this year. With your help, we can change Fair Fares from just a good idea into one that will transform how New Yorkers get around their city.