With mass-transit fares about to go up - yet again, most New Yorkers would add wearily - this is a good time to pry a statistic out of the recesses of wonkdom where it usually huddles. It is called the farebox operating ratio, an unlovely phrase for calculating what riders pay out of their own pockets to keep a transit system going.
If that ratio is high, then government support for rail and bus systems is relatively low. With the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, you may not be surprised to hear, the figure is appreciably higher than that for other big American cities.
First, it must be recognized that subways and buses cannot operate solely on money taken from passengers. At least, it is impossible unl ess fares are raised to levels so high that they induce nosebleeds and incite the populace to rebellion. So governments have to chip in - a lot - to keep the wheels rolling.
One way to measure how they're doing is to look at the farebox operating ratio. For the transportation authority, it was 54 percent in September, the most recent reporting period. In other words, riders throughout the region covered more than half the cost of their commute.
Not all passengers are equal, though, in this regard.
The burden is significantly greater for New York City subway riders. Their ratio is 72 percent, according to an analysis by the National Transit Database, part of the federal Transportation Department. It means that nearly three of every four dollars needed to run the subways come directly from MetroCard swipes. For city bus riders, the comparable ratio is only 37 percen t. It is 49 percent for those who use the Long Island Rail Road and 59 percent for those on Metro-North.
The federal study also shows that the subway ratio is a good deal higher here than in other cities. In Atlanta, it's 34 percent, in Boston 50 percent, in Philadelphia 51 percent, in Chicago 53 percent.
There is an uplifting way to assess the numbers.
“What it indicates,†said Aaron Donovan, a spokesman for the New York authority, “is that the M.T.A. is more self-sufficient than almost any other transit agency in the country, if not any other, in terms of generating revenue from itself without relying on a taxpayer subsidy.â€
Another way to look at it is that, on a percentage basis, New Yorkers pay a good deal more than others at the turnstile, and Albany and City Hall are less generous than state and local governments elsewhere. How useful is this sort of comparison? Well, said Gene Russianoff, staff lawyer for the advocacy group called the Straphangers Campaign, “it's the only metric that measures how much of a burden there is on the riding public on a nationwide basis.â€
The burden for New Yorkers may yet grow heavier, with looming fare increases being but part of the problem.
In a broad tax deal reached a year ago, the governor and the Legislature exempted some businesses from a payroll tax that was created in 2009 to prop up the ever-troubled transportation authority. That payroll tax was exceedingly unpopular in many quarters, notably with suburban lawmakers. Those new exemptions cost the authority $310 million but, Mr. Donovan said, Albany made good on a promise to cover the losses by tapping other sources.
Over the summer, a new threat emerged, one tha t could cost the authority $1.8 billion, when a state judge on Long Island declared the entire payroll tax to be unconstitutional. But transit bosses, confident that the appellate courts will rule in their favor, seem unworried that the $1.8 billion is about to disappear.
Still, these battles in the courts and in Albany reinforce how creaky mass-transit finances can be and how tough it is to spread the burden so that riders alone don't take it on the chin.
Some ask why anyone who doesn't ride the subway should help pay for it. Actually, they don't ask so much as protest. The short response is that pretty much all New Yorkers benefit from mass transit, whether or not they use it.
They include businesses that would like employees to show up on time, stores that want customers to reach them, car drivers who don't wish the roads to be more clogge d than they already are and real-estate developers whose properties are enhanced by a sound transportation network. All of them are taxed or tolled for a reason.
Without subways that work, the city shrivels, and then so does the entire state. This is an economic fact of life.
“The whole philosophy of funding subways and buses is that everyone who benefits pays,†Mr. Russianoff said. That definitely includes the riders. But it shouldn't mean only the riders, he said.
E-mail Clyde Haberman: haberman@nytimes.com
