FYI
https://www.thecity.nyc/2021/12/5/22...our-peak-fares
Hundreds of thousands of commuter railroad riders unwittingly overpaid for peak fares during the pandemic, MTA data shows — even as cheaper off-peak prices have remained in effect for 20 months.
At least 340,000 peak tickets were purchased between April and December of last year, figures that emerged from 2020 Long Island Rail Road ticket sales data obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request by The LIRR Today blog and verified by THE CITY.
The MTA said it has issued approximately 7,000 refunds for single-ride and 10-trip packages that were mistakenly purchased at peak prices — a little more than 2% of the total sold — but could not say how much commuters had overpaid.
“That’s a lot of people, that’s a lot of money,” Lisa Daglian, executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, said of the hundreds of thousands of overcharged tickets. “And that’s for something that shouldn’t be that difficult to change.”
The transit agency did not remove the higher-priced option for traditional rush hours from ticket-vending machines for the LIRR and Metro-North until Nov. 1, when a banner was also added to the MTA eTix app reminding riders that “off-peak fares remain in effect on all trains until further notice.”
The MTA did not provide numbers for Metro-North as part of the information request and said it does not have figures for how many riders have paid for peak fares in 2021.
In the Dark
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