NYC mayor wants to tax the rich to fix the city's subway

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled a proposal on Monday for a "millionaires tax" to help fix the city's beleaguered subways.

The

plan would tax city residents with annual incomes of more than 500,000

US dollars in order to raise money for the Metropolitan Transportation

Authority's subway improvements, de Blasio said at a press conference on

Monday.

"People do not want to see this madness

continue," de Blasio declared, citing people getting work reprimands,

picking their kids up late and missing doctor appointments because of

subway delays.

The roughly 0.5-percent income tax

hike would apply to the roughly one percent of the city's taxpayers

would generate about 800 million dollars annually, and it would also

fund reduced-price MetroCards for low-income riders.

(New

York Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks at a rally where he announces a plan

to fund MTA improvements on Monday, Aug. 7, 2017, in New York. /AFP

Photo)

The mayor called for lawmakers in New

York State, which runs the MTA, to pass the proposal "so the rest of us

can live our lives here in the city."

Joseph J.

Lhota, MTA chairman, rolled out a nearly 1-billion-US-dollar emergency

subway repair plan in late July, promising to put the brakes on

nightmarish delays and derailments of the subways within one year. He

suggested the city and the state split the cost evenly.

New

York's subway has long been the lifeblood of the city. However, the

number of subway delays partly due to the aging infrastructure tripled

in the past five years, to 70,000 per month, according to a report

released last month. About 5.7 million people take the subway on an

average weekday.