Long Beach commuters weigh in on the inevitable: LIRR fare hikes

There are some changes coming soon that many commuters won’t be happy about. Starting on Aug. 20, Long Island Rail Road riders can expect a modest uptick — roughly 4.3 percent — in the price of their weekly and monthly tickets. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the LIRR’s parent company, voted unanimously earlier this month to raise the base fares for LIRR trips for the first time in four years.

A one-way ticket from Long Beach to Manhattan will cost an extra 50 cents, increasing from $14 to $14.50 during peak hours, and will rise from $10.25 to $10.75 during non-peak times.

Resident John Ashmead has been commuting into the city three days a week since the coronavirus pandemic began. Before that, he was a full-time commuter, and had a monthly ticket for 17 years. He doesn’t necessarily have an issue with the increase this time around, but he said he is concerned about the future, when fares will no doubt rise again.

“I think they’re modest, the increases,” Ashmead said. “My only concern is, I saw they expect to have multiple other modest increases over the next few years. So, ultimately, it’s a lot of money.”

Ashmead went on to say that the increases do feel like an added issue when coupled with ongoing complaints about train times and service. Ever since the Grand Central line opened in January, he has experienced a lot of delays. His commute used to be fairly efficient and consistent, but now it is at least 20 minutes, and sometimes 40 minutes, longer each way. That problem, combined with the fare hikes, makes those hikes seem worse.

“To get the fare increase on top of that is, it’s just annoying,” Ashmead said, adding, of commuting, “I do think it’s getting very expensive. For middle-class or working-class people that go in, it’s a lot of money.”

Pete Myers has been commuting from Long Beach for a long time as well — since 1984. He takes the train into the city five days a week, and purchases monthly tickets. He looks at the increases as something he just has to deal with, but, like Ashmead, couples them with the less-than-optimum train schedules.

“I’m not going to drive in, so I really have no choice,” Myers said. “I just have to accept whatever they throw at us. I just wish the train schedules were better at night, coming home.”

While the MTA customarily raises fares every two years, officials held off on an anticipated round of increases in 2021 for fear that they would discourage commuters from using mass transit at a time when winning them back was key. At the time, the agency still had billions of dollars in federal pandemic-relief funds that it could tap into.

The situation came to a head earlier this year, when the MTA said it faced a projected budget gap of $2.5 billion by 2025. The agency has since managed to stave off a financial meltdown and avoid making drastic service cuts after Gov. Kathy Hochul and lawmakers promised to provide millions of dollars in added funding.

“We have to face the harsh reality of MTA’s fiscal cliff,” Hochul noted in her 2024 executive budget address. “A problem that was created by almost the complete cessation of ridership during the pandemic — except for emergency workers, first responders, and health care workers.”

Critics, however, argue that the MTA’s budgetary problems reach back decades, and are attributable to questionable budgetary practices that resulted in expenses outpacing revenue.

The current fare bump — and those still on the way — are part of a roughly $1.3 billion bailout deal struck between the transit giant and the state, MTA chair and chief executive Janno Lieber said.

On balance, with the LIRR having reduced fares on monthly tickets by 10 percent last year, “the fares are still (comparatively) lower than they used to be, even though everything else in life has gone up,” Lieber said.

Additional reporting by Juan Lasso