Fare Increases Unfair: NJTransit Hikes Fees 25%, Cuts Service

The Tri-State Transportation Campaign put it best in a statement released immediately after NJ Transit proposed their budget-busting changes this afternoon.

“The service cuts and fare hikes announced today will have a devastating effect on transit riders, forcing people to pay more for less service, [make] longer commutes and [wait longer for] crowded buses and trains.”

Although the immediate impact is clear, the long-term effects of these cuts appear less so.

Buses and trains may no longer look like practical alternatives to recovering SOVs (single-occupancy vehicles for the non-transportation folk), thus launching fleets of SOVs back onto the roads en masse. The roads will be full of SOVs and Route 1 will look like a Walmart parking lot on Black Friday.

Low-income transit riders rely on NJTransit for inexpensive and reliable transportation to and from work. Fare increases coupled with service cuts is a double-whammy for low-income transit riders. More time and money will be spent on transportation. Psychic costs will take their toll on these riders, too, as they wait for buses delayed by roads full of SOVs. Commutes will be longer, relationships strained, and jobs jeopardized by these budget-busting proposals.

Why penalize loyal transit riders when there’s a greater budget-buster in our midst? It’s not some mythological bird with magical curative abilities that will solve all our problems, but it is better than shifting the burden onto transit riders and it will get a whole lot of SOVs off the road.