New York MTA: Suburban Passengers Get $7 Per Ride, Subway Riders, A Buck
NYs MTA Chief said his agency contributes more than $7 to each Long Island Railroad passengers ride, compared to just over a dollar per subway ride.
Joe Lhota came out swinging Thursday in defense of the payroll mobility tax struck down by a state court Wednesday.
Lhota held a press conference in Grand Central Terminal to call the ruling flawed and erroneous. He showed up armed with some figures. Suburban rides on Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad receive a bigger subsidy per ride, than NYC subway rides.
.....(snip).....
Now, there are millions of subway riders and only hundreds of thousands of LIRR riders (and were tracking down the additional figures to flush out this kind of comparison) but Lhotas point is that the subsidy isnt exactly a suburbs-to-city stream of tax money. The biggest winners are the riders of Long Island Rail Road, coincidentally, exactly the people who vote for Nassau County (aka Long Island) Executive, Ed Mangano, the man who filed the lawsuit challenging the mobility tax. ..................(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://transportationnation.org/2012/08/23/mta-suburban-passengers-get-7-per-ride-subway-riders-a-buck/