From the Daily Doom:

The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted on Wednesday morning to enact a series of fare hikes and service cutbacks needed to keep the transit system from going broke.

The vote was broken largely into three parts: fare hikes, toll increases and service cutbacks. After hearing from the public and the board members, the board approved each by a vote of 12 to 1.

“This is your last chance or forever hold your peace,” H. Dale Hemmerdinger, the chairman of the board, said before the final vote.

Nice. Bureaucratic attitude. More:

The authority’s board had hoped for a different outcome.

Gov. David A. Paterson and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver have championed a financial rescue plan for the authority that would have prevented the service cuts and allowed a much smaller fare increase.

That plan [pdf], put forth by Richard Ravitch, a former authority chairman, would have funneled new revenues to the authority by creating a new tax on payrolls and tolls on the East River and Harlem River bridges. But several Democrats in the State Senate opposed the bridge tolls and blocked the rescue package.

But at least this isn't serious stuff that a lot of very smart people have put a lot of thought into. And just because we have an all-Democratic government - for now - doesn't mean our guys, love them dearly, are going to work together or anything like that. This is New York. We do things differently, uglier. And it's not, god forbid, as if eight million people a day rely on the MTA.