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MTA mulls subway, bus fare hikes to cover $500M debt

By Philip Newman

Transit chief Elliot Sander said it as plainly as possible – the MTA is so strapped for cash it may have to raise bus and subway fares next year.

“We are going over a cliff,” Sander told a legislative committee in Albany last week, adding that it would take hundreds of millions of dollars to rescue the transit system.

“I am asking the governor and the legislature for additional financial support,” Sander told the New York State Assembly's Corporations, Authorities and Commissions Committee in Albany on Wednesday, June 11.

After a steady, years-long flow of cash from fees from a sizzling real estate market, the MTA is now looking at a deficit of perhaps $500 million to $700 million, Sander said.