After the MTA announced Wednesday it was delaying raising the subway fare, as it had initially planned to later this year, advocates say the agency should expand its discount fares program.

The MTA board was expected to raise the fare to $3 in August. The transit authority has implemented 4% increases nearly every two years since 2009.

OMNY, the MTA’s tap-to-pay system, will be the only way to pay come January.

NY1 asked if the delay was so riders aren’t hit with a new payment system and a price hike at the same time.

“I’ve never been called a man of few words, but the answer is yes,” MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber said. “We are thinking of eliminating the complexity of trying to do fare changes separate from the big change in the fair fare payment system that’s coming, which is the retirement of the MetroCard.”

That could mean the increase will come next year.

“I’m glad they’re not raising [the fare]. It helps everybody bring more people into the system,” rider Ron Grunwald said.

“They shouldn’t increase the fare at all, in my opinion,” rider Keisha Jeffrey said. “Rent is high. Food is high enough. People are living from paycheck to paycheck and it’s not fair that they have to raise the fare again.”

Advocates and City Council members say the Fair Fares Program that provides low-income New Yorkers with half-price OMNY cards needs to be expanded to include more New Yorkers. The Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee (PCAC), an advisory body to the MTA, wrote so in a letter to Mayor Eric Adams.

The Fair Fares Program caps eligibility at $22,000 for an individual or just over $45,000 for a family of four. They say most working-class New Yorkers currently make too much to qualify for the program.

“Mayor Adams has said that he is sticking with the job for the working people who elected him. This is his opportunity to prove it by expanding fare fares to 200% of the federal poverty level and covering families of four up to $60,000 a year,” Danny Pearlstein, Policy and Communications director for the Riders Alliance, said.

Only 27% of eligible New Yorkers participate in Fair Fares and an expansion would only cost about an additional $60 million a year, according to a report from the PCAC to the MTA. If it isn’t expanded, the hope is that the MTA takes other actions.

“A lot of people don’t want to see the 30-Day Unlimited go away and that is something that they can keep in OMNY if they want to, in addition to the seven-day fare cap that is currently being offered,” Brian Fritsch, associate director for the PCAC to the MTA, said.

The PCAC would also like to see a weekly CityTicket — the already reduced fare for the railroads for riders within the city limits.