NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- The MTA announced Monday a new program of discounts and quality of life updates designed to boost paltry ridership rates.
“Bringing riders back to mass transit depends on three variables – reliability, safety and price,” said MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber. “We’ve made it a priority to get creative on fares.”
Starting Feb. 28, OMNY, a digital pass that covers subway, bus and commuter rail rides, will start fare capping after 12 trips. That means free rides for the rest of the week after hitting the limit.
Twelve rides at $2.75 a trip is equivalent in cost to one week-long pass which costs $33. This means straphangers will no longer have to calculate whether or not the pass is worth it each week.
Starting Feb. 25, the LIRR and Metro-North will offer a new 20-trip ticket that will be 20% cheaper than buying 20 peak tickets. Monthly tickets for the commuter rails will be discounted by 10%.
The CityTicket program, which currently offers a reduced fare on weekends for Metro-North and LIRR trips that start and end in NYC, will now also work on all weekday off-peak trains.
All commuter rail fares will remain off peak through Feb. 28.
The program is designed to encourage ridership, which has suffered drastically during the pandemic.
The latest ridership statistics from the MTA show subway and bus usage is still hovering around half its pre-pandemic rate. Commuter rails are in even worse shape, with the LIRR at an eight-day average of 40.25% the 2019 ridership rate and the Metro-North at 39.5%.
Meanwhile the implementation of OMNY, which involves installing new fare readers on turnstiles, is $181 million over budget.
In December of 2020, federal money helped the MTA narrowly avoid a catastrophic collapse made possible by loss of revenue from pandemic closures. The federal government gave the beleaguered transit authority another COVID relief grant of $6 billion in January.
The MTA plans to run the pilot program for at least four months, though MTA Chief Customer Officer Sarah Meyer said the program could be extended or made permanent if it succeeds at boosting ridership.
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