News last week that New York City and the MTA had agreed to reach an agreement at the end of June about transferring the city’s franchise bus fleet to the MTA left the main question unanswered.

The MTA has said repeatedly that it could not assume responsibility for the 1,300-bus city fleet without new resources to pay for its operation. Some of those new resources now may come in the form of a fare increase for the city-run routes. The fares are very likely to match NYC Transit’s scheduled increase to a $2.00 base fare.

That will still not make up for the subsidies the city wants to eliminate. Newsday said a week ago that city support may be phased out over several years — a conflict with the Bloomberg administration’s goal of shedding the cost immediately.

There have been suggestions that an MTA takeover would create economies of scale to reduce the franchise operation‘s cost. But it seems likely that a phase-out of city support unaccompanied by new revenue would mean a phase-in of significant service cuts, or else escalating costs for the MTA.

Some have considered that East River bridge tolls would be part of such city-MTA negotiations, but it’s impossible to tell whether they are part of the bus discussion. This weekend, the Daily News said toll discussions were ongoing between the city and MTA, but it will be difficult to know how serious that is before an official announcement is made. 

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