Parent's outraged over transit cuts for kids

MTA axes student fare

By Kate Pastor

Students used to getting a free ride are now getting thrown under the bus.

Families in Riverdale and Kingsbridge are furious over The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s plan to cut student discounts as a way to help balance its budget. Without the half- and full-fare discounted MetroCards currently distributed to students, they will be forced to come up with the money themselves for buses and trains, and for some, the expense will be too much to bear.

“We did the math,” said Arcenio Vasquez, a seventh-grade student at The David A. Stein Riverdale/Kingsbridge Academy, MS/HS 141.

His family found that the elimination of student discounts would cost them $100 a week, just to send two kids to school, he said.

According to Gene Russianoff, staff attorney and chief spokesman for the Straphangers Campaign for NYPIRG, a New York City-based public transport advocacy group, on the low end, the additional costs comes to $650 per annually for a single student.

Student cards allow for three swipes per day on buses or subways for transportation to after-school or extracurricular activities.

So for a student who takes more than two trips daily, buying him or her a 30-day unlimited MetroCard will come out to about $890 a year, Mr. Russianoff said. And, of course, many families send more than one child to school on trains and buses.

Jaysbert Perez, an eighth grader at RKA, says living without the discounts will be hardship for his family.

“If I get a free MetroCard, the $4 they spend on me, they could spend on something useful,” he said.

Doing without

If the change goes through, he said, his mother will either have to find a way to bring him to school, or do without the much-needed cash.

Riverdale, Kingsbridge and Marble Hill students are often given half-fare MetroCards to help with the cost of transportation to local schools, while those who travel longer distances are given full-fare discounts.

The middle and high school choice programs enacted by the Department of Education ensures that many students travel far.

Local students attend Manhattan East on East 100th Street for middle school or The Bronx High School of Science, east of Van Cortlandt Park, for example, and during the morning peak about 20 percent of city’s buses are filled with school kids, Mr. Russianoff said.

No choice

Mar vin Shelton, District 10’s Community Education Council president said of the discount phase-out, “It basically eliminates choice for a lot people.”

“The high school choice program is based on kids being able to travel for free, or a reduced fare,” he said.

All of this has been heard before.

The cuts, which are almost identical to ones proposed last December and later fought back by the Albany legislature’s bailout, “have a depressingly familiar look to them,” Mr. Russianoff said.

To Nina Velazquez, a Riverdale resident and a parent, it looks like a mass exodus.

“If I moved to Yonkers, if I moved to Westchester, if I moved out of state, kids ride the yellow school bus,” she said, wondering why parents would opt to stick around.

If New York City and state do not step up to help, the MTA plans to phase-out student discounts by moving everybody to half-fare cards in September 2010 and requiring all students pay full-fare by 2011.

“If you take away my Metro- Card, it’s gonna be a problem,” Chastity Boone, an RKA seventh grader, said outside school.

The proposal approved by the MTA board also includes the elimination of two subway lines and 21 local bus routes, reduced service on additional bus and subway routes and cuts to the Access-A-Ride program.

This is part of the December 24, 2009 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

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