722 Miles of Tears

WE CAN'T HELP but get a little chuckle every time the MTA starts crying poverty and making with the threats about service cuts and fare increases. It seems to happen every six months or so. We're amazed, starving as they all apparently are, that they even had the strength to issue their latest Report of Doom.

Billion-dollar budget gaps, they're claiming, that'll only get bigger as the years pass. The system's going to deteriorate and the service is going to get much, much worse. And you know who's to blame for it? We are! For taking advantage of their overwhelming generosity, for actually buying those discounted monthly MetroCards they offer, you, me and every other straphanger in this city is personally responsible for dropping the price of a subway ride from a posted $2 to a paltry average of $1.23! Shame on us!

The really funny thing about these regular reports is that they always cite the "overwhelming success" of the MetroCard discount program. But our question remains, "What choice do we have?" You want to ride the subway or take a bus, you have to buy a MetroCard-and if you use the system every day as millions of us do, you're going to buy a monthly pass instead of stopping by those oft-broken vending machines two or three times a week. They set up the system that way, and now they're blaming us for the "budget woes" that show up on the set of books they're willing to make public.

Sad thing is, when they start talking this way, it usually means something bad is going to happen. More jobs will be cut, more stations will be closed, fewer trains will be running, and we'll be paying more anyway.

Is it too late to say we're sorry for being such good customers?