Good morning, I’m Brian Fritsch, Associate Director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, PCAC.
What’s the future of the Fair Fares program during the Mamdani Administration?
We believe Fair Fares can and should be a crucial tool for delivering on the mayor-elect’s mandate for affordability, at a time when 1 in 5 New Yorkers are struggling to pay the fare. Expanding Fair Fares complements the mayor’s transit affordability agenda and can be done quickly, in his first city budget – providing much needed relief to millions of bus and subway riders – the latter being where two-thirds of taps from Fair Fares users occurred this year.
This past Friday, we released on a report with Riders Alliance and the Community Service Society titled Universal Affordable Transit for New York, outlining the steps to get there.
We believe the program should be expanded to at least 300% of the federal poverty level, to finally include workers making at or close to the minimum wage; fully free fares for the lowest-income New Yorkers at the current level of 150%; and add the commuter railroads and express buses as options. The program also needs automatic enrollment, as only a dismal third of eligible New Yorkers are enrolled.
Our expansion proposals will save over two million New Yorkers up to $910 per year on their transit costs, while also cutting commute times in parts of the city without subway access, and helping to address the MTA’s fare evasion problem, just as you are about to begin testing new fare gates.
Our framework charts a course towards a city where every New Yorker, irrespective of income, can move around our city affordably and with dignity on whatever mode of transit works best for them. Let’s get it done. Thank you and happy holidays.