No Fair Fares until ’20 for most of needy

The majority of low-income New Yorkers will have to wait until 2020 to get half-price MetroCards through the city’s new Fair Fares program.

Mayor de Blasio finally announced the time line for the initiative’s rollout Monday night, following months of criticism over delays and lack of transparency.

The roughly 130,000 people who live below the poverty line and receive cash assistance or SNAP benefits will be able to apply online for the discounted rides in April. The program will open up to lowincome CUNY students, veterans and NYCHA residents on a to-be-determined date “in the fall,” adding another 84,000 potential applicants.

Those groups account for around 27% of the 800,000 people thought to be eligible for the half-priced swipes— the other 586,000 low-income New Yorkers won’t receive the Fair Fares MetroCards until at least January, when the city unveils an online platform to handle the glut of requests.

“They [city officials] were certainly slower than we had hoped,” said Nancy Rankin, vice president at Community Service Society of New York, the nonprofit that spearheaded Fair Fares. “But I think the bigger news and what’s important is that we have a time line to this program.”

A pay-per-ride option for the Fair Fares cards will be implemented this month, just in time for people to cash in on MetroCard bonuses that will disappear in April when fare hikes go into effect.

The segmented rollout is due to the challenges of verifying the incomes of hundreds of thousands of riders, according to de Blasio spokeswoman Jaclyn Rothenberg. “We have to make sure we have checks and balances,” she said.

The Department of Social Services has already reached out to 45,000 residents receiving cash assistance or SNAP benefits, inviting them to sign up for Fair Fares. The city also announced it will be making three months worth of digital ad buys to promote the program, targeted at the 25 zip codes with the largest population of people who could qualify.