At a protest held Tuesday morning on the Upper West Side, more community advocates, high schoolers, and local politicians, including City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, rallied against the MTA's plans to cut free student Metrocards. The event at Martin Luther King Jr. High School followed similar protests this past weekend in Harlem, and came on the heels of the passing of the MTA's "doomsday" budget, which included the phasing-out of the free Metrocard program, which will affect more than 500,000 students.
Quinn told reporters, "If your family can't afford to get a MetroCard to go from the North Shore of Staten Island to Bronx High School of Science, you can't go...Then maybe you can't get into the best colleges in the country and maybe you can't have all the opportunities that would lead you to be the best that you can be."
The Daily News reports that Quinn, "urged the MTA to use some of the money set aside for construction and maintenance projects," including $100 million dollars in federal stimulus money, and a federal program called "Pay-Go-Capital," to help plug the projected $400 million budget gap for next year.
MTA Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jay Walder also blamed the majority of the budget problems on the state for cutting millions in subsidies, telling NY1, "If we're able to get the financial support to get free rides for students of New York City, we'd be happy to see it happen." And Chris O'Leary of On Transit points out a larger disconnect between pol's, writing"the key reason that the MTA suffers from a lack of state and city funding is a lack of understanding among public officials."
