MTA Robs 550,000 Children

Take a few minutes after reading this to look at the news stories linked. I'm interested in your feedback on the matters at hand.

As can be expected from any money hungry organization that was caught red handed, the MTA has stooped so low as to do away with Student Metrocards. Each card has 3 fares a day available to get a student to school, possibly an extracurricular, and then home again. That's $6.75 every day per student. That's $3,712,500 a day in additional revenue. This means that after a school year (196 days after vacations,) there is $727,650,000 in additional money injected into the MTA's budget. That comes to $1,323 a student, assuming they are involved in a club or sport that meets off of school grounds. If they go there and back directly, that's 882 per student per year.

I don't know if I speak for others (I probably do), but that's a lot of money to expect from high school students. It makes only the tiniest dent in the deficit that the MTA has racked up for itself ($383,000,000,) and seems like a backhanded way to encourage the public's willingness to pay a larger fare.

This is a very backhanded way to suck the life out of the city. It makes more sense to reduce the wages of the executives and administrators (they've already pissed off the operator's union, so they can't scrape from there, despite most drivers not actually earning their bloated keeps through poor, unfriendly service). Rather than alienating customers with bad business, why not drum up more business with better service? Instead of cutting trains, why not increase frequency? My buses are bursting with passengers, it's not safe anymore to take them with that kind of crowding. Increase and improve service. You'll make your money back and fill the defect quickly if passengers have more reason to use your services.

A Decent Person is Punished for Truth

MTA Pisses off the Union

WNYC's Take on the new Cuts

NY1's News Story

New York Post said some things too