New York. Most bus and subway riders face fare increases of between 4% and 11% in January. A to Z Couriers NYC Inc. will pay 400% more to cover its subway rides.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is considering ending the $89 unlimited 30-day MetroCard that enables the company’s messengers to spend all day riding Manhattan subways delivering packages. The MTA would instead sell a pass good for 90 rides over 30 days, according to people familiar with the matter. The messengers—some of whom take 20 subway trips a day—would go through one such pass a week, according to company owner Adam Dally.

The cap is meant to help keep the cost of a 30-day pass from rising higher than $99—the level under consideration by the MTA—in January. Seven percent of current 30-day pass users would be affected by the cap, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The MTA’s management, facing a budget shortfall of $800 million, must present its board with a balanced budget for 2010 and 2011 on July 26. Half the budget gap was closed by service and cost cuts earlier this year. The MTA has been consolidating operations, laying off workers and trying—unsuccessfully so far—to win concessions from labor to deal with the remaining deficit.

MTA officials have said they intend to hold the net fare increase to the 7.5% agreed upon when the state bailed out the agency last year. But board members say a larger increase could still be proposed. The fare increase would be finalized after public hearings in September. It would go into effect in January.

Many courier services took to the subways when the MTA introduced the unlimited MetroCard in 1998. The pass was part of a plan pushed by then-Gov. George Pataki to boost ridership. It worked. The unlimited cards have also brought deep discounts for their users, whom officials say tend to be among the MTA’s more affluent riders. Currently, the average 30-day pass user pays $1.29 per ride—though that’s likely brought down by extreme users such as messengers.

A courier riding 20 times a day would pay about 22 cents per ride. The average rider who buys a pay-per-ride MetroCard with a bonus—officials say these include poorer people who can’t afford to spend nearly $100 at once—pays $1.96.

The MTA’s fare-increase proposal is aimed in part at narrowing that gap. Average fares for pay-per-ride users would go up 4%, while 30-day passes would rise 11%, according to people familiar with the matter. Weekly unlimited passes would also be capped.

“Everybody gets negatively impacted. The fare is going up. The question is who gets negatively impacted the least,” said Mitchell Pally, an MTA board member from Long Island.

The switch by couriers to the subways from bicycles came as the system’s reliability improved and crime declined. Rising costs for worker’s compensation insurance for bike messengers also contributed. Now subways are crucial for many messenger services—and they’ll likely stay that way, despite the outsize fare increases they face.

“I could buy the subway system in its entirety” for what it would cost to pay insurance for bike messengers, Mr. Dally joked. Cost and tax increases “always come out to be quite a lot, but not enough to change the way you do business,” he said.

Source:

Andrew Grossman andrew.grossman@wsj.com

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Taking a bit more of home while traveling…

S.K. Jain, Mumbai, India

(Do you have a story to tell us ?.  Please email your story to team@chakkr.com .   Let the world know about your CHAKKR experiences.  Moreover, we may also reward you with a surprise gift!).

My daughter was going for 1 year internship abroad. And we started planning beforehand what she should take along with her. It was a pretty long list, as you can guess. I tried my best to talk her out of some needless (in my view) things (with partial success .

But still, she had too many things to carry with her. With a 20 KG check-in baggage limit that we have, we realized that we may end up paying a hefty sum as extra baggage fee, to the airlines.

Most airlines allow a maximum baggage allowance of 20-30 Kilograms (considering the economy class tickets). The extra baggage fee varies from 5 USD to 50 USD per “extra” Kilogram, depending on the airline, route, flight conditions etc. So, even if you have just 10 Kilograms of extra “home” with you (could be your clothes, your favorite books etc.), you may end-up paying upto 500 USD as “extra baggage fee” for that luxury.

I’m a frequent flyer myself.  Most often I used to travel with just a hand-bag. That’s mainly because those are very short business trips, and there is not much of “home” that you have to take with you.

After seeing my daughter’s plans, I was thinking why should not frequent travelers like me (who travel with just their hand-bags, or very less luggage), not be helpful for infrequent home-sick travelers like my daughter, by “sharing” our luggage space.  If one or two people are willing to share their “baggage allowance” with my daughter, then we dont have to worry about extra baggage fees, and my daughter could take more of “home” with her.

Curious to see if there any such processes or initiatives, I googled a bit. Quite soon, I ended up on exactly something which I was thinking about, CHAKKR (www.chakkr.com ). The website is a sort of market place where people request and offer each other courier services (send packages through travelers), shopping services (ask travelers from abroad to buy what you like to have) etc.

I checked if someone was willing or offering to take extra baggages, on my daughter’s travel route. Well, I couldn’t find any. I saw a few offers where people were offering to take some thing with them, or get something for someone etc. on their travel route., all for very small nominal fee. But, I couldn’t find anyone who was offering to “share his/her baggage allowance”, on my daughter’s travel route.

Nevertheless,since it was all very fast, and free, I placed a request there so that any traveler who is willing to help (and earn some money) could contact us.

A couple of days passed by, and I didn’t get any updates from CHAKKR.  I was telling to many people about this website, with the “selfish” thought they might pass it further, and maybe then I’ll find someone who will offer to share his/her baggage allowance.

There was only 3 days left before my daughter’s departure date. We started packing, but were very very strict in what to take and what not. (her books took the first priority!).

That evening we got a mail from CHAKKR, informing us that somebody is making an offer to our request. The message said that he could “offer” up to 15 Kilograms of baggage space. He wanted to have 40 USD for that.  Well, on the first outset, the offer sounded pretty attractive. With our allowance of 20 Kilograms, plus the “bought” allowance from the CHAKKR offer, we will be at 35 Kilograms allowance. That’s a reasonable volume of our “home” which my daughter would have liked to take with her.

We agreed to the offer. The person who was making the offer was from our same town, and he was flying to the same city as my daughter, on the same day, in the same flight. We exchanged our phone numbers, and agreed to meet at the airport, outside the check-in counter (he said that he would like to see the contents of the baggage first. (security concerns!)).

The meeting went very well. Well, in fact, it went a bit “funny”, because my daughter knew this person somehow. He was her senior in her school, and took admission in the university an year before. He had come home recently for a short time, as part of his summer holidays., and was going  back now.

Well, what more I can say about this!.. CHAKKR helped my daughter to have some more of “home” with her without paying a hefty extra baggage fee. Moreover, it also helped her to meet an old acquaintance who was not only sharing just his baggage allowance with my daughter, but also the complete journey until the destination, and well, probably the some assistance at the university as well.

I’m really thankful to CHAKKR for that. Its a very different (but nice way, of seeking help, offering help, making small money, and to top it all, meeting people as well!.

I’m using now CHAKKR quite often to send gifts and other missing pieces of her “home” to her.  Its fast and easy, never knew that sending things internationally can go so smooth and cost effective like this.

Whenever I’m travelling, I’m also posting offers on CHAKKR. Most often, I meet nice people, and its a always a pleasant feeling when you know that you are bringing joy to someone. Moreover, sometimes I take some payments as well (depending on how high was my travel shopping expenses .

S.K. Jain, Mumbai, India

(Do you have a story to tell us ?.  Please email your story to team@chakkr.com .   Let the world know about your CHAKKR experiences.  Moreover, we may also reward you with a surprise gift!).

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