Hop it, take the other 50% off

No sooner than the MTA announced plans to reduce fares for the holiday season they have been hit with criticism over their seemingly generous fare cuts. They are hoping the reduced fares will ease traffic during the holiday season (we all know how smoothly the MTA runs during rush hour) and that commuters would rather line the coffers of the crooked MTA rather than those of crooked Arab nations through gas prices.

Everyone in New York as well as all the non-taxi using tourists can tell you the MTA is garbage. From unexplained train shutdowns at Times Square, never-ending weekend construction to small families of mice playing beneath my bench and Christian women throwing Bibles at you, it's hard to commute in peace.

The MTA has already started to turn me into a savage. I literally hand-checked some short Mexican bitch who thought I was the person in the bus line she should cut not too long after I got into a verbal argument with what may have been a junior high school girl who decided that resting her head on my hand was a good idea.

When I heard first heard of the half-price plan I thought the fare was going down to $ 0.75 because I still haven't gotten over the fare raise from $1.50. Dammit, I still remember when fares were $1 and the paper passes from school. I helped lay the tracks for the 2/5 line dammit. That's how old-school I am.

Fare reductions are deserved and well-earned for the unexplainable inflation in price paired with the degradation of service. But I trust the MTA like I trust that trenchcoat dude in Macy's trying to sell me his own watches. No one should forget the debacle where they raised fares claiming to be in debt, only to have revealed, another set of accounting books showing a large surplus.

Reducing the fare over the holiday is short sighted solution and generally stupid. It's your typical MTA solution. I'm not sure if it's a Bloomberg ploy to generate some goodwill in his direction following his failed Jets Stadium bid, but it solves nothing and using the gift of foresight, it will probably make things work. The MTA still forsees debt in its upcoming budget years and has plans to raise fares in 2007 and 2009.

Good idea or bad idea, please believe I will be in line to buy the 40 day $76 pass on November 23.