The Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board approved fare hikes and higher prices for unlimited-ride MetroCards by a 12-2 vote in a heated Midtown hearing Thursday.

The MTA's third fare increase in the past three years will take effect on December 30.

The base fare will remain at $2.25, but single-use cards will cost $2.50, since users will pay 25 cents for the card itself.

The bonus for Pay-Per-Ride cards will kick in only after $10. The discount will go down to 7 percent. Currently, users get a 15 percent bonus after $8.

The seven-day card is to go from $27 to $29, and the 30-day card will increase from $89 to $104. The MTA is also charging an extra dollar for buying a new MetroCard, rather than refilling an old card.

The one-day and 14-day unlimited cards will also be axed.

MTA Chairman and CEO Jay Walder said that the fare hikes and card price increases are necessary due to shortfalls in state aid. The MTA says it needs to raise fares to close an $800 million budget gap, and that the agency has already cut costs by about $500 million a year through layoffs and other measures.

Many MTA Board members echoed the sentiment that the state government cannot be relied on for financial rescue, and they said the only other alternative would have been further service cuts.

"We did everything we could do. We have nothing left to do," said board member Susan Metzger. "I would rather have expensive fares than no service."

"The hardest vote to make today is yes," said board member Mitchell Pally.

However, several public speakers who addressed the board went on long tirades accusing the agency of being more concerned with its Wall Street investments than the concerns of transit riders. Two speakers even referred to board members as "rich scumbags" and demanded that the board be fired.

"How can you sleep at night voting for such a thing, how can you sleep? You have devastated the lives and families of hundreds of people," an MTA station agent said to the board. "Shame on you, and we will shut you down."

Board member Norman Seabrook said he would never support fare increases, but he criticized the harsh tone of the public speakers. He said the state Legislature would give more aid to the MTA if it was faced with the possibility of a transit shutdown.

"Let the system crash. I bet you dollars to doughnuts that they won't let that happen," said Seabrook.

Nassau County Executive Patrick Foye and City Correction Officers' Benevolent Association President Norman Seabrook were the only two MTA board members to vote against the hikes.

The agency will also be voting on proposed toll hikes for bridges and tunnels on October 27.

Transport Workers Union Local 100 President John Samuelsen said the the hikes and service cuts didn't have to happen if the MTA had properly used the federal funding it received.

"The shame of all this is that it was totally avoidable, regardless of what Jay Walder says, or the other rich guys on the MTA Board, or rich ladies on the MTA Board," he said. "They received a huge sum of money in federal funds in 2008 that could have been used, $130 million of it could have been used to actually avoid all of these service cuts totally, and carry them for about two-and-a-half years."

Samuelsen added the MTA used those funds for construction projects like the Second Avenue subway, that he says will have no viability for New York's working families and transit riders for 15 years.

NY1 reached out to the MTA for comment.

Meanwhile, while most straphangers expressed frustration over the new fare hikes, some say it may be a necessary evil.

"I don't see anything ever improving and fares just continuously go up so I don't understand it," said one transit rider.

"You have got to look at from an organizational perspective, I mean, if they need to do it that's fine," said another.