Show us your MetroCards!
Only one of the state senators holding out on the plan to reduce drastic fare hikes for bus and subway riders could produce a yellow-and-blue MetroCard when asked by The Post in Albany yesterday.
And one of the lawmakers who came up empty-handed, Sen. Ruben Diaz (D-Bronx), exploded when asked if he ever rides the transit system.
“Don’t ask me if I ride or don’t ride. It doesn’t mean anything,” said Diaz. “Who rides the subway doesn’t matter. You don’t listen to me. It doesn’t matter who rides the subway. I don’t care who rides the train or who doesn’t ride the train.
“Listen to what I’m saying,” he said on a continuing tirade. “English, English, English. I don’t care who rides the train who rides the train or not. Whoever rides the train or whenever they ride the train, I’m offering the best plan.”
That plan, one that he said would hit straphangers with only “a 4 percent” fare increase, was slammed by Gov. Paterson, the MTA and transit advocates as having bad math. It would actually carry a 17 percent fare increase, they said.
“I’m here representing a community,” Diaz said. “For the community I represent, I’m offering four things: No layoffs, no tolls, no cut of services, and a 4 percent increase of fare.”
Three other senators — Pedro Espada (D-Bronx), Ruth Hassell-Thompson (D-Bronx) and Kevin Parker (D-Brooklyn) — said they ride the buses and rails, but said they couldn’t produce a fare card.
“I have a MetroCard,” Parker said. “I don’t know if I have it on me. I’m also in Albany, where I have to drive 3½ hours.”
A spokesman for Queens Sen. Hiram Monserrate, who was recently indicted for felony assault for allegedly slashing his girlfriend in the face, said he had no comment. The only holdout who could show he was a card-carrying transit rider was Sen. Carl Kruger (D-Brooklyn), who pulled an envelope out of his pocket holding his card.
Kruger said he was riding express buses into Manhattan even before the MTA took it over.
“The service was never improved,” he said.
Straphangers have been flooding Albany lawmakers with calls since the MTA board on Wednesday approved fare hikes that would send a single ride to $2.50 and service cuts that would eliminate two subway lines and more than 20 bus lines.
The painful plan could have been avoided, the MTA said, if the holdout senators would vote for a rescue plan that would toll 13 now-free East and Harlem river bridges.
Espada, who said he didn’t have a MetroCard on him, said he grew up in the shadow of the elevated tracks of the No. 5 line.
“I don’t use the car, I use the subway all the time. I’ve always been a mass-transit baby and now I’m a mass-transit old man,” he said.
Hassell-Thompson, who said she had a MetroCard but not with her, tried to prove her allegiance by saying her husband drove a bus for 21 years.
She admits to blocking a bailout for the riders.
“I blocked the plan because we have to be sure that what we’re paying for is what we’re really getting,” she said. “If the service isn’t improving, why the hell am I giving them more money?”