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After months of free bus travel, the MTA is reimplementing city bus fares as the agency grapples with a multibillion-dollar budget deficit.
Starting August 31, the front doors of buses, which have been unused for months in an attempt to protect drivers from potential exposure to COVID-19, will reopen, allowing bus drivers to start paying a fare again.
“The point is, we don’t operate as a free service as much as we would like, and we can’t afford to lose that revenue right now,” Sarah Feinberg, interim president of NYC Transit, said at the meeting. ‘a press conference. briefing from Michael J. Quill bus depot in Manhattan. “It’s important for us financially to get back to price perception.”
The MTA is losing $ 200 million per week due to lost fares, tolls and COVID spending. With the decline in bus ridership, $ 431 million has been lost as riders stay at home or opt for other means of travel such as cycling and walking during the pandemic. If bus fares had been collected in recent months, the MTA would have earned an additional $ 159 million.
These numbers are a drop in the bucket for the $ 16 billion budget deficit the agency has forecast through 2024.
But Feinberg said, “We are at a time when every dollar counts.”
“It’s a political debate,” she said, when asked how collecting bus fares would make a big difference given the size of the budget deficit. “Would we like to become an agency capable of handling free public transport? This is an absolutely fair policy question. It is not a policy question we can debate at this time as our finances have fallen out of thin air. a cliff, unfortunately. ”
Bridge and tunnel agents and “eagle teams” will be on buses to “remind” customers to pay their fare and wear masks, something the agency had not yet decided earlier this morning. summer.
There will be a one or two week communication period, with rates to be paid from August 31st.
Users of Manhattan Select Bus Service routes can pay their fare through OMNY readers at the back doors of buses. OMNY will be available at the front door of Manhattan and Staten Island buses.
OMNY readers will be set up in the Bronx on buses in the coming weeks, said Al Putre, director of OMNY programs and director of revenue for NYC Transit.
The Riders Alliance has called on Governor Andrew Cuomo and the MTA to implement all-door boarding on all buses by the end of the year in response to today’s announcement.
“After COVID, all-door boarding is more important than ever for passengers,” said the head of the organization of the public transport advocacy group Stephanie Burgos-Veras in a statement. “All-door boarding both helps passengers maintain their social distance and speeds up buses with the latest fare payment technology.”
To ensure the safety of bus operators as a wave of passengers begins to board the bus through the front door, the MTA moves the marker behind which passengers are supposed to stand further back on the bus to prevent them to get as close as they usually would. to a bus operator.
Plastic barriers around the driver’s seat of the bus have also been installed, and some buses have mask dispensers for passengers without face masks.
After dozens of transit workers died at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rate of infection with the virus has dropped to almost zero among transit workers, which Pat Warren, the MTA security official, attributed to social distancing measures, disinfection and mask. wearing.
Buses will be fitted with more improved air filter systems, called MERV filters, to mitigate the potential spread of the coronavirus. Some filters have already been changed, with additional filter changes expected in the coming weeks. System filters are also changed every 30 days, compared to every six to eight weeks before the pandemic.
“To date, there have not been any transit-related coronavirus clusters and we are going to do everything we can to keep things that way,” Warren said.
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