A People’s History of MTA Fare Hikes
A 1943 editorial about subway fares argues that the straphanger—”the man who spends an hour or so a day with somebody’s elbows in his ribs and somebody else standing on his corns”—needn’t worry about what fare he pays. “If he does not pay [the bills] in fares he pays them in direct or indirect taxes,” the paper wrote. The real issue was ensuring better service. “It is time we stopped treating the rate of fare as a heathen idol.” The piece also notes objections to new subway construction because it “is merely reshuffling our population… there is nothing gained in blighting the center in order to infiltrate the periphery.” Hey, who you callin’ a periphery?