The perpetually broke MTA’s fiscal plan for the next few years contains both good and bad news. The good news: No service cut-backs! The bad (and predictable) news: Our fares are being raised 7.5 percent in 2013, and then another 7.5 percent in 2015. The MTA doesn’t have much of a choice — even with sharp cost-cutting measures, it just doesn’t have the funds, and Albany isn’t interested in helping. (In fact, Governor Andrew Cuomo cut the MTA’s budget for 2012 by $100 million.) The MTA is planning to borrow $6.9 billion for its capital projects, like the Second Avenue subway line and a link-up between the LIRR and Grand Central Terminal. And the agency is banking on “winning big concessions” from its unions, like those secured by Cuomo with public employees earlier this year, in which wages were frozen for three years. But it’s the fare increase that the average New Yorker will feel the most. “I feel like eventually everyone will have to ride bikes to work,” one woman tells the Post. Yep. That wouldn’t be a bad idea.
New York’s MTA Plugs Budget Gaps by Freezing Wages While Increasing Fares [Bloomberg]
MTA Seeking $6.9 Billion of New Debt [WSJ]
