As the area continues to dig out from the massive blizzard, to add insult to injury for thousands of mass transit riders and commuters who must drive into the city to work, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s fare hikes went into effect last Thursday.
It is incomprehensible to allow these fare and toll increases to happen, considering that people are already paying enough to get to work or school. The MTA should cut the salaries of all its top brass, not raise fares.
How is it that it and the city were not adequately prepared to deal with the blizzard? They should have called in all available workers the morning of Dec. 26 to prepare for the storm. It is inexcusable for scores of people to be trapped on trains on the elevated line in the Rockaways for more than seven hours.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg needs to call a meeting of all city agencies involved in the massive cleanup and find out what went wrong because something did. While nobody can control the weather, we need to be better prepared. Even the weather forecasters were not completely certain that this storm would hit us until Christmas Day, and that is when the warnings and watches went out.
Kudos to the weather forecasters — they hit the nail on the head.
John Amato
Fresh Meadows
