As the MTA faces deep financial challenges, politicians and riders’ advocates are championing new affordability efforts that they say would increase ridership across the entire system and help lower-income commuters at a time of worsening economic conditions. 

A newly announced legislative funding package for the system — called “Fix The MTA” — would freeze fares at $2.75 and phase in free buses over four years. 

A report released by the nonprofit TransitCenter earlier this month suggests capping ticket costs for trips within the five boroughs on Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road at the same price of a subway fare. A recent proposal from Gov. Kathy Hochul would limit that cost to $5, down from nearly $11 during peak ridership hours. 

The proposals come as the MTA prepares to open Grand Central Madison, a new LIRR station that it estimates will pull nearly half of the railroad’s traffic away from its current terminus at Penn Station, and enable direct transfers between the LIRR and MetroNorth. 

At the MTA’s final board meeting of the year Wednesday, the authority’s chairman and CEO Janno Lieber said that they would support new affordability measures — as long as they help shore up the agency’s finances. 

“There’s room for every possible innovation, provided there's the wherewithal from Washington, Albany, City Hall, to pay for it,” Lieber said. “We welcome their ideas, but first we welcome their responsible financial assistance.”

In the authority’s $19.4 billion budget for 2023, which its board approved Wednesday, it aims to avoid a “fiscal cliff” in part by increasing revenue from fares by 5.5%, potentially through a mix of eliminating discounts, increasing fare costs and upping car tolls. 

The “Fix The MTA” proposal would add funding to the authority by allowing it to receive certain funds automatically and outside the budgeting process, and by routing revenue from real estate taxes around MTA hubs to the agency through a process called “value capture.” 

“We’re at this point where, the cliff that we’re at, I would argue, is because of a lack of state and federal funding,” Queens Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, a key sponsor of the legislative package, said in an interview on NY1’s “Inside City Hall.” 

Mamdani said the new funding streams should come with improved service, including increased affordability measures that the proposal estimates would cost nearly $900 million each year. 

“This is the opportunity to think about, ‘What does it mean to fix it, and how far do we need to go?’” Mamdani said. 

Hochul has said her executive budget, which she will outline next month, will address funding issues for the MTA. 

The TransitCenter report released earlier this month argues that the MTA should also consider limiting commuter rail tickets to $2.75 for trips that start and end within the city. 

The cap, the report argues, could cost as little as $50 million — an estimate made by former New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, when his office also proposed aligning commuter rail and subway costs in 2019. The City Council also considered legislating the lower fares on commuter rails in 2015.

Yet it could also bring in revenue by increasing ridership. The TransitCenter report estimates that the reduced fares, coupled with more frequent service, could improve ridership levels on Metro-North by as much as 6%, and by 22% on the LIRR.

Making the changes would have a disproportionate impact on riders of color and people in low-income neighborhoods, shortening their commute times by as much as 40 minutes each way for some cross-city journeys, said Steven Higashide, a co-author of the report. 

“There’s really a need to pivot to new customers and make the railroads relevant to other people, people who in many ways have been excluded from the system,” Higashide said. 

“You can either choose to pay a lot of money using the commuter rail, or you can pay with your time. And that’s what people end up doing,” he added. “Either way, it's a huge burden on working-class people.”

Any expansion of service for commuter rails needs to come with significant efforts to improve affordability for the system, or else it risks criminalizing people who can’t afford transportation costs, said Harold Stolper, an economist at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. 

According to a February report from the Community Service Society, one quarter of New Yorkers living in poverty said they were often unable to afford transit costs. And despite the city operating a discount program for subway tickets for low-income households, called Fair Fares, the report estimated that fewer than half of the city residents eligible for the program know it exists. 

As fare jumping has increased this year — by 60%, according to the MTA — so have summonses for low-level offenses, which includes skipping out on transit fares, given by NYPD officers: 97,860 through the end of October versus 80,008 for the same period in 2019. 

“They can’t police away economic need,” Stolper said of the NYPD. Without making transit more affordable, he added, “You risk creating a new fare evasion enforcement front, and that's not what we want.”

Higashide said the MTA should look to nearby transit systems for inspiration on addressing affordability, such as Washington, D.C., which has increased its bus service and plans to make it free.

“It is possible to address an enormous financial crisis while also thinking about how we can provide service that’s more relevant to the New York of 2022,” Higashide said.