Despite significant increases in the number of jobs and the population of New York City between 2003 and 2007, traffic actually decreased slightly while mass transit ridership increased dramatically.

“What you see is that for the first time since at least World War II, all of the growth in travel in the city has been absorbed by non-auto modes, primarily by mass transit,” said Bruce Schaller, New York’s deputy transportation commissioner for planning and sustainability, who wrote the study, which is to be released on Monday.

That massive jump in mass transit ridership in the late 1990’s, out of proportion to the increases in jobs and population, was a result both of the lower crime rate and the cost-savings available with unlimited ride weekly and monthly MetroCards.  Both the improved safety and the MetroCard’s relatively good deal have remained, so we see almost all new residents and new commuters using mass transit.

This of course is a very good thing, but what then are we to make of the MTA’s $1.2 billion deficit and plan to raise fares by as much as 23%?  When your customer base increases by almost 9% over the course of five years, you should be sitting on a sweet surplus, not a deficit.  One of the MTA’s more commonly used excuses is that revenue is not is great as expected because more riders than expected are using unlimited MetroCards rather than paying the “full price” of a single-ride fare.  But why should this have been a surprise?  Obviously most people who use mass transit to go to work five days a week are going to choose the least expensive option.  They should have been able to predict this.

And what will be the effect of the fare increase when combined with the planned decrease in service and maintenance?  Will we see the positive trend in favor of mass transit reversed?

We should take every member of the New York State Assembly who refused to support the congestion pricing plan (we lost not only the revenue from congestion pricing but also $354 million in federal grants for mass transit) and force them to work as rickshaw drivers to compensate for the service cuts.  Same goes for all the outer borough and suburban meatballs who drive into the city each workday because they think they’re too good for public transportation.  Same for every Upper East Side twit who takes a taxi to work.

No way:

If the state fails to work out a financial rescue of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the base subway and bus fare could rise to $2.50 and the cost of a 30-day MetroCard could rise to $104 next June, according to a study by the city’s Independent Budget Office.

Much better:

To head off those possibilities, a state commission has floated a rescue plan that would use the proceeds from a new regional payroll tax to help plug the deficit, along with a smaller fare increase.

Either way, service cuts are almost inevitable.  Yes, a 23% fare increase AND service cuts.

Along with MTA mismanagment, we can all thank upstate dufus George Pataki for this mess.  As governor, he led the repeal of the commuter tax in 1999 in a (successful) attempt to gain favor with suburban swine.  If you work here, you’re using the services here.  States with an income tax charge non-residents income tax, and NYC has the right to do the same.  We’ve lost over $5 billion since the tax’s repeal.  Bringing it back would generate an estimated $500 million annually.  That’s almost half of the MTA’s $1.2 billion deficit.