Public Appearances Are Difficult To Pull Off When No One Recognizes You; Man-On-The-Street Interviews Few And Far Between (Like G Train Service!)

MTA CEO Elliot Sander gets the full-on Jews-for-Jesus treatment from commuters at Grand Central; exactly one citizen stops to talk:

MTA CEO Elliot Sander campaigned like a politician yesterday at the Grand Central side of the Times Square shuttle, handing commuters flyers describing the preliminary 2008 budget, which includes higher fares and tolls.

“Keep the fare down, bastards!” one man bellowed at Sander as the transit chief paused for a media interview.

One man heading from a train not only declined to take the flyer info but barked, “You’re blocking the way.”

When Sander told commuter Jean Callaham that the MTA faces $6 billion in deficits over the next four years, the Staten Islander replied that she feels she pays enough already.

“I’m angry they want to raise the fare again,” she said. “What are we supposed to do? How are we going to survive?”

The 30-minute platform campaign highlighted the difficulty the MTA may have convincing riders a fare hike really is needed since the agency has a surplus this year — and past predictions of deep deficits proved inaccurate.

That lady is everywhere:

Mr. Sander, dressed in a dark suit, began handing out leaflets at 8 a.m. to hurrying subway riders on the platform of the shuttle train to Times Square.

Very few people seemed to recognize him, and only one or two stopped for a chat. Most merely brushed past him: New Yorkers in a hurry to get on or off the train.

The leaflet was titled “The Fare Facts,” and it said that growing pension and debt service costs had made “modest increases in fares and tolls” necessary.

It did not mention that the rate increase in fares and tolls would average 6.5 percent. And it also did not mention that for the last year the authority has operated with a cash surplus of nearly $1 billion.

But the surplus was on the mind of one woman who stopped to speak to Mr. Sander. She asked him where the money had gone.

Mr. Sander told her that the authority was facing rising deficits, and he invited her to send her opinions in an e-mail message, through the M.T.A.’s Web site.

The woman, Jean Callaham, said it took her two hours to get to work from her home on Staten Island. She told Mr. Sander that the $20 she pays each week in subway fares and the $9 toll on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge that her relatives pay when they visit her were already high enough.

Speaking to a reporter afterward, Ms. Callaham, who works at a financial services firm, said she leaves her house at 6:15 a.m., drives to the Staten Island Railway and takes the train to the Staten Island ferry. After crossing the harbor, she takes a subway to Times Square and then takes the shuttle to Grand Central. She gets to work at 8:15.

At times she has taken an express bus, which cuts the trip to an hour. But the cost is much higher.

Ms. Callaham said that when she got off the shuttle yesterday morning she mistook Mr. Sander for another public official.

“I saw a distinguished-looking gentleman standing there, and I thought it was Mayor Bloomberg,” she said. “Then he handed me this flier, and I said, ‘Who are you?'”

No, literally everywhere:

Since the MTA is crying poverty it can’t afford a p.r. campaign. So Sander greeted commuters with “Fare Facts” fliers that try to justify the “modest increases in fares and tolls.”

One rider, Jean Callaham, of Staten Island, wasn’t buying the pitch.

“I told him that I’m tired of having to pay, pay, pay. I can’t afford to ride express buses and they want to raise the fare,” she said.

Another rider shouted, “Keep the fares down, bastard!” then stormed away.