very simple

Apparently, the MTA was surprised by the fact that when they raised prices, people in New York immediately changed their metrocard purchasing habits to something more advantageous, leaving a really big shortfall (again) in the MTA budget. Wow. It’s almost like they assumed that we’d all be so stupid that we couldn’t figure out that they were fleecing us.

I personally don’t really have an option when it comes to my metrocard buying habits – I get mine through my office’s transitcheck program, which gives me a yearly (yes, yearly) metrocard and then takes the cost of a monthly card (right now $70, soon to be $76) out of my pre-tax earnings. At my old office, the program allowed us to choose either a monthly or one of the "flat fee" cards – I used to just get two $30 (now $40) cards a month. Because I actually don’t take the subway all the time, this was actually more advantageous for me when I sat down and did the math (i.e., the monthly runs out at the end of the month whether you’ve used it once or 100 times, but the fee-based cards can get carried over, and I could actually accumulate them, and then just not get a new card for a month or two). But apparently the MTA thinks that the ordinary rider isn’t quite this sophisticated. Heh. If nothing else, NYC residents are a pretty financially savvy bunch.

Anyway, there’s a bunch of other transportation-related news today, including the fact that there is going to be a new ferry service from lower Manhattan to LaGuardia Airport. I wish I could take advantage of this, since I absolutely love boat rides around the city, but since I live and work near the midtown tunnel, it would be monumentally stupid for me to drag my luggage all the way downtown to take a boat. I would certainly eat up any of the advertised time savings trying to get myself all the way to lower Manhattan.

Oh, and then the outer borough bus strike is still going on. Yep, that’s the way to get the city to not take over your routes. Not.

Tags: new york city