It’s the year 2022. A woman boards the 7-train at 34th Street and 11th Avenue and takes it to Citi Field for a Mets game.
She enters the subway by merely tapping her smart card; she doesn’t even need to take it out of her purse.
And on the way to the game, she can check voice mail and e-mail underground, since the whole system now has Wi-Fi and cell phone service.
There’s just one catch: Her unlimited MetroCard costs $171 a month.
Since 1998, the price of a 30-day unlimited MetroCard has jumped 65 percent. If the MTA keeps increasing the fare at that rate, riders would pay $171 for a monthly MetroCard 12 years from now.
“It’s certainly within the realm of possibility,” said Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign. “It’s not unfair to extrapolate that figure in the next decade from what we’ve seen.”
“Once people hear the horror of that number, maybe the Legislature may react and actually do something,” said MTA board member Andrew Albert.
9 Things to expect of the MTA by the year 2022
1 Riders will connect to 10 lines at the Fulton Street Transit Center, including the R and the PATH train.
2 Every station will have countdown clocks that tell you when the next train arrives.
3 All 277 underground stations will have cell and Wi-Fi service.
4 First phase of the Second Avenue subway is finished. East Siders can ride the Q from 63rd Street to 96th Street.
5 LIRR riders can go direct to Grand Central Terminal. Metro-North’s Hudson and New Haven lines stop at Penn Station.
6 Swiping MetroCards is a memory. All subways and buses read smart cards.
7 The 7 train has two new stops: 34th Street and 11th Avenue and 41st and 10th Avenue.
8 Moynihan Station, an extension of Penn Station, is open.
9 Still no ARC tunnel from New Jersey to Penn Station. “Even if there’s a sea change in the political atmosphere, that tunnel wouldn’t be completed by 2020,” said Russianoff.
