Yahoo Autos NYC Subway Fare Could Reach $3.05 by 2025
New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority has proposed a 5.5 percent fare hike next year. This increase would push subway and bus fares to $2.90 in 2023 and $3.05 in 2025. However, the fare prices haven’t been raised since 2019 in an effort to keep the city’s public transportation network universally affordable in the face of the pandemic and resultant economic upheaval. The fare’s recent stability had even broken the pizza principle, the local economic rule-of-thumb that subway fare was roughly tied with the average price of a slice of pizza.
According to Bloomberg, the MTA projects that it could face a $3 billion budget deficit in 2025. The MTA’s ridership hasn’t recovered from the pandemic’s start and has plateaued at 60 percent of pre-pandemic levels. The agency tends to raise fares by four percent every two years, but hasn’t in almost four years. The largest public transportation system in the county now needs a significant boost in revenue.
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It should be noted that the MTA is owned and controlled by the State of New York, not the City of New York. In late 2021, Governor Kathy Hochul promised to table fare hikes indefinitely and delayed an increase for six months, past the June 2022 date of a contentious primary election that she won. A potential fare hike was again postponed to 2023. This was primarily possible because of federal funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
