How can people commuting each day afford to pay $5 to and from work?
This one is by far my favorite spurious line of argument. The vast majority — nearly 90 percent — of straphangers right now do not pay the $2 base fare. They pay reduced fares through the pay-per-ride discount or they pay under $2 by using unlimited ride cards. In my MetroCard challenge, I paid $1.11 per ride over the duration of the card; the average fare is somewhere around $1.40. Anyone who employs this argument is battling straw men because the only people who should pay the full $2.50 under the new scheme are tourists and one-time riders. Anyone who commutes 10 times a week on the subway and isn’t using a pay-per-ride or Unlimited Ride card is simply throwing money away. A $104 30-Day MetroCard is too expensive. I agree. A $104 MetroCard is too expensive. I don’t know why the MTA doesn’t propose a London-like solution. In the Tubes, the non-discounted base fare starts at £4.00 while the Oyster Card fares are over 50 percent less. The MTA should really propose a $4 base fare and a
