After months of free bus travel, the MTA is implementing tariffs for city buses where the agency goes with a budget deficit of several billion dollars.
Beginning August 31, the front doors of buses, which have not been used for months in an effort to protect drivers from possible exposure to COVID-19, will reopen, allowing bus riders to start paying a fee again.
“The fact is, we do not operate as a free service as much as we might like, and we can not afford to lose out on that revenue at this time,” NYC Interim President Sarah Feinberg said in a press release. the Michael J. Quill Bus Depot in Manhattan. “It’s financially important for us to go back with collecting the fare.”
The MTA loses $ 200 million a week due to a loss in tariffs, tolls, and COVID expenses. With the decline in bus riding, $ 431 million was lost if riders stayed home or opted for other trips, such as cycling and walking during the pandemic. If bus transportation had been collected in recent months, the MTA would have received another $ 159 million.
These numbers are a drop in the bucket for the $ 16 billion budget deficit that the agency has expected through 2024.
But Feinberg said, “We are in a moment where every dollar counts.”
“It’s a policy debate,” she said, when asked how bus sharing would make a lot of a difference, given the size of the budget deficit. “Do we want to become an agency that can run free of charge? That is an absolutely honest policy question. It is not a policy question that we can debate at the moment, while our finances have unfortunately fallen off a cliff.”
Bridge and Tunnel officers and “eagle teams” will ride buses to “remind” customers to pay for their fare and wear masks – something the agency had not decided earlier this summer.
There will be one or two weeks of a communication period, with rates expected to be paid with effect from 31 August.
Riders on Manhattan Select Bus Service routes can pay for their fare through OMNY readers at the back door of the buses. OMNY will be available at the front door of buses from Manhattan and Staten Island.
OMNY readers will be installed on buses in the Bronx in the coming weeks, said Al Putre, the executive and chief officer of OMNY programs at NYC Transit.
The Riders Alliance called on Governor Andrew Cuomo and the MTA to implement all-boarding on all buses at the end of the year in response to today’s announcement.
“Post-COVID, whole-door boarding is more important for riders than ever,” said group manager Stephanie Burgos-Veras of the Groups Leadership Group in a statement. “All-door boarding helps both riders maintain social distance and ride buses with the latest pay-as-you-go technology.”
To keep bus operators safe when a wave of riders on the bus starts coming through the front door, the MTA moves the marker behind where passengers have to stand forward more back in the bus to keep them from getting so close come as they would typically to a bus operator.
Plastic shutters around the bus driver’s seat are also installed, and some buses have masking machines for riders without a face cover.
After dozens of transit workers died during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rate of virus infection has risen to near zero among transit workers, who attributed Pat Warren, the MTA’s chief security officer, to social distance measures, disinfect, and wear mask.
Buses will be redesigned with more improved air filter systems, known as MERV filters, to limit the potential spread of coronavirus. Some filters have already been replaced, with additional filter changes expected in the coming weeks. The filters within the systems are also changed every 30 days, compared to every six to eight weeks prior to the pandemic.
“So far there are no coronavirus clusters attached to public transport and we will do everything we can to keep it that way,” Warren said.
