A People’s History of MTA Fare Hikes
Here’s a fun fact: during the two World Wars and the Great Depression, the price of riding the subway stayed the same. When the system opened in 1904, the fare was a nickel and would remain so for decades. Since the first fare increase, though, there have been 15 more, five of them just in the last 20 years. And the MTA hopes to raise it again, perhaps making the price of a monthly Metrocard more than 20 percent higher: $125. People are outraged. “That’s insane!” wrote our own Kristin Iversen. People have always had strong feelings about subway fares, and we can prove it: we investigated the archives of the New York Times, mostly its letters and editorials, to bring you a New York People’s History of Subway Fare Increases.
