Half-Price MetroCards for the Poor Gain Support, but Not From de Blasio

NEW YORK — It sounds like a proposal straight from Mayor Bill de Blasio’s liberal playbook: paying for discount subway and bus rides for New York City’s poorest residents. The idea has been adopted in other cities and would help address inequality in an increasingly expensive city, while potentially cutting the number of people arrested for evading the fare.

But the mayor, who sees himself in the vanguard of left-leaning Democrats aiming for the national stage, has a curious position: He’s stubbornly against it.

Or, at least, he doesn’t want to pay to see it happen.

Instead, de Blasio wants to find the money by resurrecting one of his favorite ideas — a new tax on millionaires. But that would have to be approved by the state, meaning, at the end of the day, by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. And that means the MetroCard plan is held hostage to the ceaseless feud between the two men.

But now, the mayor, who wants to make New York City the nation’s “fairest,” is under mounting pressure from the City Council and poverty activists to pay for the plan with city money. The fight has called into question de Blasio’s priorities, even from allies, especially after he announced significant new funding to expand the city’s ferry system.

“I don’t understand how you can justify subsidizing $6.60 for every ferry ride, but not helping people who live in poverty get on the train,” the council speaker, Corey Johnson, told the mayor’s budget director at a recent hearing.

Beyond New York, the notion of offering transit discounts for low-income riders has been gaining momentum. The Seattle area started a program in 2015, and Toronto is implementing a similar plan. Boston and Denver have also considered the idea.

In New York, the price of a MetroCard swipe keeps rising, even as the subways and buses have descended into crisis. The current fare is $2.75 per ride — up from $2 a decade ago — and is expected to increase again next March.

The proposal, known as “Fair Fares,” would cover only the poorest residents, providing half-price MetroCards to people with household incomes below the federal poverty level, which is about $25,000 for a family of four.

Johnson and dozens of other City Council members have pressed de Blasio to spend $212 million on the MetroCard program. At the same time, de Blasio is asking for an additional $300 million for his ferry service, which carried fewer riders last year (about 3.8 million) than the subways do each day (about 6 million). The administration spends about $30 million annually to subsidize ferry rides, officials said.

De Blasio does not oppose the idea of subsidizing fares — “I think the Fair Fare idea is the right idea,” he has said — but does not want to give more money to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is controlled by Cuomo, a Democrat. The two leaders have been locked in an ongoing battle over who is responsible for salvaging the failing system.

Cynthia Nixon, an actress challenging Cuomo in the Democratic primary, expressed her support for the proposal for the first time in a statement to the The Times. “But it will be difficult to do until the governor realizes he runs and must fund the MTA,” a Nixon campaign aide, Rebecca Katz, said in the statement. She did not specify how the plan should be funded.

Peter Ajemian, a spokesman for Cuomo, said the governor embraced Johnson’s plan. “Fair fares is a great idea and we applaud the City Council for proposing it and the city should pass it,” he said.

The mayor’s reluctance to embrace an idea that so seemingly fits with his agenda has frustrated transit advocates, who view it as perhaps the most glaring example of how his constant sparring with Cuomo has cast the mayor in an unflattering light. “If he’s refusing to do this because he somehow doesn’t want to give the governor something, I think low-income New Yorkers are going to find that very petty and frankly unfair,” said Rebecca Bailin, a campaign manager for the Riders Alliance, an advocacy group.

The Fair Fares campaign began two years ago in response to growing concerns that high transit fares were a barrier for low-income New Yorkers trying to improve their lives. Darlene Jackson, a single mother living in the Bronx, considers herself part of the city’s “working poor.” She earns about $1,600 per month working at a community board in Harlem and often struggles to pay $121 for a 30-day MetroCard.

“People who can’t afford a MetroCard — it’s not just people who are homeless or in the shelter system or couch-surfing,” Jackson said. “People are living paycheck to paycheck because the cost of living in New York City is outrageous.”

Jackson and more than 100 other low-income subway riders are seeking a meeting with de Blasio to make their case. “I’d be lying if I said I’m not getting upset at this point,” Jackson said. “He needs to do what’s right.” Supporters of the plan are hopeful that Johnson, the council speaker, can win over the mayor. He recently ratcheted up the pressure — in an unusual move — by releasing a video calling on New York City residents to contact de Blasio and urge him to support the proposal.

De Blasio insists that times have changed in Albany and that his millionaire’s tax proposal has a greater chance of passing than other transit ideas, like charging drivers to enter Manhattan, a proposal known as congestion pricing that died during recent budget negotiations.

“If you put a millionaire’s tax up against congestion pricing or a commuter tax, to try to figure out which one is the most viable in the new Albany, I would argue it’s the millionaire’s tax,” de Blasio told reporters at a recent news conference.

De Blasio has pushed for a millionaire’s tax before — to fund universal prekindergarten — and Cuomo has dismissed the idea, arguing it was unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled Senate.

As many as 360,000 people could sign up for a half-price MetroCard early on, and as many as 800,000 could qualify, according to a 2016 report by the Community Service Society, an anti-poverty group behind the campaign.

“This is not a subsidy to the MTA; this is about helping what could be 800,000 New Yorkers living in poverty,” Johnson said in an interview. “The mayor has said he wants this to be the fairest big city in America and we believe that fair fares is a cornerstone of making that mantra a reality.”

In New York, riders who are 65 or older and those with disabilities are already eligible for half-price MetroCards. The City Council proposal would add low-income residents and veterans enrolled at New York City colleges.

The city spends about $120 million a year subsidizing rides, according to figures provided by City Hall, the majority of which goes to student fares and the rest to older riders, the disabled and about 40,000 people who receive cash assistance.

Subway officials are open to working with the city on the proposal, said Jon Weinstein, a spokesman for the transportation authority, though the city would have to pay for and administer the program. The subway’s new leader, Andy Byford, was supportive of the idea when he led Toronto’s transit system before coming to New York, as long as the transit agency was not responsible for the costs.

Transit advocates have been angered by de Blasio’s focus on ferries — and a possibly defunct streetcar proposal — instead of on more ambitious plans for subways, buses, bikes and roadways. This is the first year Citi Bike is not expanding in several years, having yet to reach the Bronx or Staten Island.

De Blasio’s aides defend his record on transit, citing the need for more options than subways and buses and pointing out that during his tenure, the city has expanded Citi Bike, rapid bus service and city-subsidized ferries. De Blasio has characterized his approach to transit as pragmatic.

“Maximum options and a heavy focus on the places that have not been served traditionally,” he said. “My core philosophy is: I’d love to see a more expansive subway system, but I’m not living in a fantasy land.” City Council officials believe that only a portion of their $212 million request would be spent in the coming fiscal year — since many eligible people will not immediately sign up — opening the possibility for de Blasio to reach a deal with Johnson that includes some, but not all, of the money the program would ultimately cost. (The mayor declined to comment on such a possibility.)

One sign that the proposal’s chances have brightened: MTA officials met recently with staff from the Community Service Society, an anti-poverty group, to discuss the possible logistics. The group suggested that the city’s Human Resources Administration could create a database of New Yorkers who qualify. Subway officials said the process could be similar to how student MetroCards are distributed through the city’s Department of Education.

In his office, Johnson pointed to the ballooning city budget — now nearly $90 billion — as a reason for de Blasio to back the proposal.

“There are many things that we put in the city budget that we could peg at having an outside, dedicated revenue stream; we don’t do that, because we prioritize certain things,” Johnson said. “There’s money to do this.”