
Transit advocates and local electeds are again calling on Mayor Adams to raise the threshold for a city program offering half-off subway and bus rides to lower-income New Yorkers, demanding that the discount be available to those making less than twice the federal poverty line.
That would make 650,000 more people eligible for the Fair Fares program, according to a report expected Tuesday from the Permanent Citizen’s Advisory Committee to the MTA.
“As the cost of living has gone up, the eligibility for Fair Fares has not gone up,” Lisa Daglian, head of the PCAC, told the Daily News.
The eligibility has been tied to the federal poverty level, which the government does revise each year. But advocates and transit officials agree that the nation-wide benchmark for poverty falls short of the mark amid New York City’s high cost of living.
When the program began in 2019, eligibility was set at those making 100% of the federal poverty level or less — at the time that meant a family of four making less than $25,750 a year.
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and transit advocates fought last year to raise the threshold from the poverty line — then $30,000 a year for a four-person household — to twice that number.

Ultimately, budget wrangling saw a more modest increase, with New Yorkers eligible if they made 120% of the federal poverty level or less — currently a maximum annual income of $37,440 for a family of four in the five boroughs, or $18,072 for an individual.
“At 120%, you are not reaching people who are minimum wage workers,” Daglian said. “We really need to be sure that people who are doing essential work all over this city can get to their job.”
For the second year in a row, advocates and various elected officials are expected to lobby Mayor Adams for the funding to expand the program to include those making 200% of the poverty level or less — $62,400 for a family of four or $30,120 for an individual.
In total, PCAC estimates some 250,000 people who already ride the subways and buses would benefit from the proposed expansion.

The analysis by PCAC staff predicts that an expansion to twice the poverty level would increase eligibility in a slew of neighborhoods across the city.
The Bronx would see the biggest per-capita increase in eligibility, with 16% of the borough’s population becoming eligible under the proposed threshold. Queens and Brooklyn would see about 13% of their populations eligible for the discount.
At the neighborhood level, more than half of the population across neighborhoods like Sunset Park in Brooklyn, and Morrisania and Highbridge in the Bronx would be eligible for half-off transit fares.
A quarter of the population would be eligible in Queens neighborhoods like Jackson Heights and Flushing.

The boost in funding would cost the city an estimated $55 million, and expand the program to include lower-wage workers who rely on subways and buses to get to work.
“If you’re making $50,000, $60,000 a year, you’re not rich — you’re still barely hanging on,” Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, a supporter of the expansion, told The News.
“This is your teachers, your paralegals, your crossing guards — your everyday New Yorkers who really do drive the city,” he said.
Asked the chances that this year’s push to expand the program would succeed where last year’s had not, Richards said he was confident City Hall would see the appeal.
“This is what you call political gold,” he said of lowering the cost of commuting for Gotham’s working class.
“I see the way New Yorkers are struggling,” he said. “If you’re not going to look at it from that standpoint, at least look at it from an election standpoint.”
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