People win victory over transit rate hikes

Transit riders in Buffalo have a right to feel excited about their efforts to stop a two-phased, 50-cent rate hike—25 cents now and another 25 cents in six months.

The Niagara Frontier Transit Authority has been pushed back. It has announced that, following public protests at the rate-hike hearings in Buffalo and Niagara Falls, the transit board will try to find other sources of funding for its second increase in six months.

It is a partial victory. But it wouldn’t have happened if angry riders and their supporters had not come together in powerful resistance to this particular attack on the poorest of the working class, many with disabilities. Most important, this victory gave the people a greater awareness of their strength when they come together in common interest against those forces that constantly try to grind them down and take away all their resources.

The board may have thought that few people would attend the hearings. They may also have believed that, if people came, they would be overwhelmed by statistics or intimidated by the arrogant, highly paid suits—mostly white males. They were wrong on all counts.

Community members posted No Fare Hike leaflets at all the rail transit stations and at major bus stops in the city. Ellie Dorritie, a spokesperson for the Buffalo/Western New York International Action Center, saw that most people still did not know about the hearings. So activists distributed leaflets in downtown Buffalo.

The stories riders told about how the fare hikes would negatively affect their lives were so moving that the IAC called the media to come to the transit stations to listen to these riders. Announcements on the major television channels and a large picture story in the Buffalo News helped assure good attendance at the Dec. 3 hearing in Buffalo.

More than 100 angry riders and their supporters showed up, determined to let the NFTA board know how devastating these fare increases would be on their lives and how they were not going to take this quietly without fighting back. The mostly low-income students, seniors, oppressed and disabled riders spoke to the fact that the statistics presented by the board did not tell the whole story.

People objected to the exorbitant pay of executives, wasteful spending on management vehicles and the self-defeating tactics of cutting services while expecting more riders. Many noted that none of the board members rides the transit; they do not know what the problems are.

One speaker protested that whenever working and poor people need anything, there is no money. However, when the banks need it, the government takes our tax money and bails them out. She finished by saying that this is going to stop and we will not go on letting this happen.

The riders protested when no deaf interpreter was provided for a disabled person, making the board promise to hear her testimony with an interpreter the next day. Participants booed attempts of a board member to monopolize the time meant for riders to speak. At 10:30 p.m., when the hearing was closed, people were still coming in and asking to speak.

The NFTA is responsible for overseeing air, rail and bus travel in Buffalo, Niagara Falls and the Western New York communities surrounding these cities. This entire region, where tens of thousands used to work in the large steel, chemical and automobile companies, is now one of the poorest in the country after decades of plant closings.

Buffalo is the third most segregated city in the U.S. Most African-American, Latin@ and other people of color live inside the city, while most jobs are outside the city. The very high unemployment rate among African-American men has been attributed to the fact that they do not have transportation to get to jobs in the suburbs. Many speakers addressed the inadequacy of current routes and called for extensions to their jobs, health care offices and schools rather than the proposed cutbacks.

The commissioners started out the evening saying that their job was to convince those present to be partners in their efforts to “save” the transit in these times of economic crisis by cutting back routes and raising rates. Not a single person supported that. In fact, the essence of the public testimony was that the only way to build a good transit system was to provide more service, bring in more riders and, as one person said, bring more money to the people, especially jobs.