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The silence from New Jersey’s loudest lawmakers was deafening last week after the Port Authority announced it would jack the PATH train fare from $3 to a whopping $4 over the next four years.
The lack of protest over the cost increase was particularly notable given that the news came less than a year after several New Jersey politicians cried Chicken Little as the MTA planned to launch its congestion pricing tolls, imposing a new fee on drivers entering Manhattan. Gov. Phil Murphy, Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill and Rep. Josh Gottheimer all led a charge to try to kill the tolls.
The contrasting responses serve as a reminder of car culture’s dominance in the Garden State. An estimated 92,000 drivers entered the congestion zone from New Jersey every day, according to the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council. That’s less than half the daily ridership on the PATH train.
Last year, Gottheimer compared the MTA to mobsters who were “whacking” New Jersey drivers through congestion pricing. He joined a lawsuit with Murphy, a fellow Democrat, that sought to block the tolls. (It ultimately failed.) Sherrill also spoke out against congestion pricing.
So what do Gottheimer, Murphy and Sherrill think about the 33% hike to PATH service by 2029? The current and incoming governor both declined to comment. After the initial version of this newsletter was published Thursday, Gottheimer issued a statement decrying the fare increase.
“I think it's a fair point on the hypocrisy of some elected officials that they were up in arms over congestion pricing and then quiet and silent about this,” said Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, whose term expires at the end of the year.
Fulop supported congestion pricing. He also said he supports the PATH fare increase because it's tied to service improvements. “Those things come at a cost. I think that we need to be realistic about that,” he said.
The Port Authority announced the fare hike would help pay for direct weekend service from Hoboken to the World Trade Center for the first time since 9/11, and other boosts to help overnight and weekend riders.
The Port Authority argues fares only cover a quarter of the cost of running PATH, which receives fewer public subsidies than other transit agencies across the country.
Jack McKee, an organizer with the transit advocacy group A Better PATH, said New Jersey lawmakers’ relative silence over the fare hike wasn’t surprising.
“ I think it is a fine example of car centricity — our culture where added costs to drivers is a news story and added cost to transit users is an afterthought,” said McKee.
McKee and his group support the fare increase, but urged the Port Authority to create a program like New York City’s Fair Fares, which offers discounted transit rides for low-income commuters.
“We understand that some service increases require an adjustment to the fares,” McKee said.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who pushed through congestion pricing last year after delaying its launch by more than six months, also supported the fare increase.
“Governor Hochul has urged the Port Authority to keep PATH affordable, especially for lower-income riders, while ensuring that it is able to run reliable, frequent service seven days a week,” said Sean Butler, a spokesperson for the governor.
The Port Authority board still has to give the fare hike the final vote, but it’s hard to see the measure failing with virtually no pushback from any elected officials.
NYC transportation news this week
Trash cans. The City Council last week passed legislation that will force Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani to continue putting big, rat-proof curbside trash containers in spots where people currently park. Earlier this year, the sanitation department wrote that the rollout of the on-street bins may take seven years due to protracted fights over parking. The new legislation follows that timeline, giving the city until 2032 to install the bins.
Airports are back to normal. The Federal Aviation Administration said air traffic controller staffing — which plummeted due to the government shutdown — has improved enough to end an emergency order and resume normal schedules at JFK, LaGuardia and Newark airports.
E-bike battery chargers. The city announced plans to install e-bike battery swapping and charging cabinets at 25 locations with the highest volume of delivery activity.
Queens slashings. Police said an assailant slashed two men in unprovoked attacks on the E train platform at the Union Turnpike–Kew Gardens station on Wednesday.
Wigmaker sentenced. Miriam Yarimi, a Brooklyn wigmaker who plowed her Audi into a family of pedestrians in Midwood back in March — killing a mother and her two older children — has been sentenced to three to nine years in prison.
Curious Commuter
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Question from James in Queens
How likely is it that taking an express train on one line will help you “catch” a local on the same line at one of the next few stops? Has anyone calculated probabilities and how often you can “catch” a local this way?
Answer
Savvy subway riders know hope isn’t lost when they miss a local train, so long as the station is also served by an express line. Hopping on an express in order to catch up to a local subway line can often work, but its effectiveness varies by route and time of day. Generally, a good rule of thumb is to estimate you’ll save one minute for every local station your express train bypasses. That doesn’t account for the time it takes to either scurry across a platform — or in some cases across some stairs — to make the transfer. Subway tracking apps are also handy for calculating the odds of “catching” the local train on an express.
