MTA Fare Hike, Service Cut Rollout Schedule

Second Avenue Sagas has the breakdown.

For anxious Carroll Gardens residents: Fare hike happens May 31st; the B75 sleeps with the fishes June 28 . . . . if the Senate Republicans and the Fare Hike Four (or six, or whatever it is today) don't knuckle down, face reality, and enact the Ravitch Commission Plan or similar.

I've said in other places, the Ravitch Plan could be tweaked slightly by applying the payroll tax to employees, rather than employers. Every economist will tell you, the employees will bear the cost either way . . . this does, however, eliminate the "anti-business!!1!" disingenuous rhetoric from opponents of the plan.

I understand many drivers do not want to pay tolls on the bridges. But the reality is we need the revenue from those tolls. And tolling the bridges will reduce traffic through our residential neighborhoods, giving us safer streets, by eliminating the perverse incentives for commuters to avoid tolled crossings like the Batrtery Tunnel in favor of "free" routes like the Brooklyn Bridge.