#MTA’s fare is going down but riders aren’t coming back till violence decreases

The Hochul-era Metropolitan Transportation Authority is having a sale: Starting next year, it will offer big discounts to get people to use subways, buses and commuter rail more often. That’s great — but a huge chunk of people use the subway rarely, if at all, because they fear the rise in violent crime.

Incoming Adams-era Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell must make safeguarding the underground a key part of luring New Yorkers back to business. 

Before COVID, more than half of subway and bus riders bought unlimited-ride MetroCards, for seven or 30 days. After a certain number of rides — 12 with the weekly pass and 44 with the monthly — every ride after was free.  

The point of this policy wasn’t to make people’s commutes cheaper (it didn’t) but to get people to ride outside of their commutes: That is, hopping the train to see a friend or do some shopping was free. In the late 1990s, more nighttime ridership made the system safer by getting more people onto platforms and trains. 

Now, most people aren’t buying unlimited-ride passes because they’re not on the trains enough. Subway ridership is only 60 percent of “normal,” on its best day.  

Plus, it’s hard to plan ahead: If you buy a $127 monthly pass and your workplace tells you not to come to work, you’ve wasted your money. 

The MTA is acknowledging that uncertainty. Starting February, even if you’re not using a weekly or monthly pass, as long as you use your OMNY card (or a credit card or phone hooked up to OMNY) to pay per ride, if you do take 12 trips in any given week, trips after that are free. (You will still have to tap, but it will “remember” your previous rides.) 

This effectively gives people who end up using the train a lot a weekly pass — and, if you do it four weeks in a row, close to a monthly pass for only $5 more than paying for the month upfront.  

The MTA will offer similar bulk discounts on Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road. 

So if you want to try to get back to the office more often to add more structure to your life, and you want to combine doing that with some fun stuff before or after work, this might give you a nudge. 

This effort is slow — why February? — but at least the MTA is trying, and it has to maintain a balance between getting people back on trains without getting passengers accustomed to too deep discounts that the pols will balk at reversing later. 

But a big reason riders with a choice — which tends to be the more affluent ones — are staying away from the trains isn’t the money. They’re staying away because they feel unsafe.  

They said so. As acting MTA chief Janno Lieber said last week, a survey of 123,000 riders shows that the “overwhelming majority are concerned about their personal safety” because of “crazy and unsettling incidents.” 

We’ve all read the stories of the pushings and the vicious assaults. Just last week, a perp attempted to sexually assault a woman taking the subway at 8:50 p.m. from the City Hall station.  

Last month, 23-year-old Bew Jirajariyawetch was beaten, robbed and sexually assaulted at Herald Square, targeted not just for her gender but, possibly, for her Asian race. 

Though the almost entirely male “transit advocacy” community dismisses such incidents as rare, they’re less rare than they were.  These attacks will nudge other women to take a cab or bike instead. 

Men aren’t safe, either. One man had his spine broken in a subway pushing this month.  

January through November, total violent felonies on the transit system were up 10 percent compared to pre-COVID 2019. Adjusting for far lower ridership, that means each individual rider is at much higher risk. 

What’s not rising? Police enforcement. Arrests in the transit system are down 43 percent this year from 2019, and fare-beating arrests are down 68 percent. Civil summonses are down 16 percent.  

That’s important: The suspect who attacked Jirajariyawetch jumped the turnstile. If police had stopped him when he stole the fare, they would have prevented a bigger crime.  

“Again and again,” Lieber said last week, the MTA has asked Mayor Bill de Blasio’s NYPD for more help. Let’s hope Mayor-elect Eric Adams and Sewell will be more responsive. “Public transit is good for them,” says MTA chief customer officer Sarah Meyer of MTA customers.  

Yes, and good for the city’s recovery — but too many people don’t think so.  

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.