Sorry. You’re too late. You missed your chance: the deadline has passed for offering “public comment” on the upcoming fare hikes on Metro-North.
Not that anything you might
have said would have made a difference to the inevitable: a 5%
fare hike on September 1st of this year and another 5% jump in
July of 2026. But don’t blame the
railroad or CDOT.
You should really blame the
legislature. The budget they wrote this
year practically required a fare increase as they under-funded the CDOT’s operating
budget requests for our trains… Metro-North, Shore Line East and The Hartford
Line.
So these recent hearings on a “proposed”
fare increase were really for show, required by law, but mostly “political
theater” (as I described it 12 years ago).
I’ve been through this charade before, attending and testifying at many, many such hearings over the past 25 years… all with the same outcome: what was proposed was always what happened. This round, I didn’t even bother.
So why does the agency even go
to the time and expense of this exercise when we know the inevitable?
Why do they prepare a 25-page Service
Equity Analysis (in two languages) explaining the impact of the increased
ticket costs on the poor and minorities?
Why does a team of CDOT
managers travel across the state, holding these fare hearings in-person
and online, basically signaling to the few people who show up to testify that
they’ve wasted their time… that anything they might say can’t stop what’s
coming down the track?
That seems like such a waste
of the agency’s talents. These CDOT
managers want to run a good railroad but aren’t adequately funded
by lawmakers. The railroad takes the
heat but shouldn’t take the blame as they were given no real choice but to
raise the fares.
Sure, alternatively, they
could cut service, but nobody wants that.
While the CDOT staff did not
share any analysis of the effect of higher fares on ridership, they did remind
us that in the last seven years fares have only gone up 14% while inflation has
hit us with a 28% jump.
If fares must go up, what
riders would really want would be more service and faster trains, maybe even a
Quiet Car. But the CDOT can’t deliver on
those dreams.
The problem is that fares don’t
even come close to covering the cost of running a railroad. Pre-pandemic Metro-North boasted a 70+% “farebox
return”, meaning that most of the operating costs for the trains were covered
by ticket revenue.
But we all know what happened
to ridership in the past five years. And
while it is slowly building back up (it’s up
6% in the past six months since congestion pricing began), the farebox
return today is only about 38%. Someone has to make up the difference: us
riders.
And those millions of dollars
being collected in tolls from drivers in midtown Manhattan? Those can only be spent on capital
improvements, not
subsidies for operating costs, i.e. lowering fares.
For NYC-bound commuters, there’s
little choice. They’re a captive
audience of 23,000 daily riders dealing with a monopoly that can raise prices
without really losing customers.
Driving isn’t an option,
especially with an additional $9 toll now added to your daily drive into
Manhattan. And work from home was great,
while it lasted. But now you have to
show up at the office in person at least a few days a week.
The CDOT now will analyze the
testimony from the hearings and issue a final recommendation to the
Commissioner, who will make the fare hike official.
So when your ticket price jumps,
don’t blame the conductor. Blame your
elected officials for under-funding this crucial transportation resource.
