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Hold on to your purses, subway riders!
The constantly cash-strapped MTA yesterday announced plans to sock commuters with another round of fare and toll hikes — this time in 2015 — to plug multimillion-dollar shortfalls in its budget.
The increases will raise fares and tolls by a combined 7.5 percent.
Agency brass had already said they will hike fares by the same percentage in 2013.
The last 7.5 percent hike, enacted at the end of last year, pushed the cost of monthly MetroCards from $89 to $104.
“How much money am I going to have left after traveling to and from work?” said Fetije Kuqi, a housecleaner who lives in The Bronx. “Not much!”
The MTA budgeted the hikes as part of its five-year financial plan, which the brass will bring to the agency board today for review.
Even with the hikes, the agency’s fiscal situation remained grim.
There’s a $54 million shortfall for the 2014 budget, while 2015 — the year the newly announced fare hikes will take effect — is still $178 million in the red, according to the preliminary budget.
The MTA will also try to draw out deep concessions from its unionized workforce, demanding that employees forgo raises for three years — saving $347 million by 2015.
But the Transport Workers Union — which represents the majority of MTA workers — has repeatedly said they will not forgo cost-of-living raises.
The MTA also yesterday announced a complicated funding formula to replenish the funds in its capital budget, which includes asking the feds to loan it $3 billion.
Most of that dough will go toward a massive project to bring the LIRR into Grand Central Terminal.
“Every five years we say we should never borrow all this money for our capital plans, and then we do it again,” said William Henderson, head of the MTA’s Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee.
“The problem is there doesn’t seem to be a good alternative.”
There was some good news in the MTA’s plan.
It capped a $247 million deficit projected for the 2012 budget, mainly through serious spending cuts within the agency, and kept its pledge not to enact more service cuts.
The constant toll and fare hikes could backfire by driving the MTA’s customers away, said City Councilman James Vacca, chair of the Transportation Committee.
“It’s a never-ending pattern of fare and toll increases,” he said. “People are not going to use the system if the fares and tolls keep going up.”
Toneise Holmes, 23, of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, agreed.
“I feel like eventually everyone will have to ride bikes to work,” she said.