December 16, 2009

MTA OKs wide-ranging cuts to bus and subway service

Far-reaching subway and bus service cuts — including the elimination of the W and Z trains — today were approved by the board of the Metropoltan Transportation Authority to close a projected budget shortfall near $350 million.

The 12-0 vote only initiates the public hearing process for the changes; it does not put them in place immediately, Jay Walder, the board’s new chairman said.

The NY1 report says the doomsday budget will “affect nearly every transit rider in some way.” The plan adopted by the board would end free MetroCards for school children as well as massively cut back weekend and overnight service on buses and subways. Members of the public, city council members and others criticized the board for a pattern of dishonesty.

“I think it’s fair to say that New Yorkers are simply tired of this MTA budget dance that is quickly being known as the hustle,” Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer told the MTA board ahead of the vote.

“This is a body that was charged with having cooked books,” NYC City Councilman Charles Barron said. “We don’t even know if you really have a deficit, or when you have a surplus, or what you do with the money when you do have a surplus. You ned to stop playing games with the people. You respond slower to the peoples’ need than the C train and the G train on the weekend.”

Gene Russianoff, head of the Straphangers Campaign, was also critical: “I think this badly undermines your credibility. The riding public was told last May that there would be no direct service cuts when the legislature bailed out the MTA. Riders held up their part of the bargain with a fare hike where the fare went from $2 to $2 and a quarter and a 30-day pass went from $81 to $89. But now they’re threatened with almost the exact same list of service cuts again.”

Walder, who endorsed the emergency cuts on the table today, promised major changes.

“In the two months that I’ve been here, it’s apparent to me that we don’t operate in a way that ensures that every single tax payer dollar that we receive is being used as efficiently as possible,” Walder told the board. “So I think that in addition to the other discussion that we’ve been having so far, we also need to focus our attention on fundamentally changing the way that we do business. We need to rethink every aspect of our operation. We need to permanently reduce the costs of what we’re doing. In short: We need to take the place apart.”

Some MTA board members put the budget blame on others, comparing their situation to being in a dysfunctional relationship with two deadbeat dads or an animal caught in a trap forced to gnaw off its own limb to survive. More than once, the transit union workers were blamed for the raises its members were awarded through independent arbitration; legislators in Albany were blamed for the budget miscalculation, failure to allocate enough money, failure to allow tolls on all major bridges and tunnels in the city and failure to fund the school transit costs in the first place.

The New York Times report notes that none of the cuts would take effect before June but a 7.5 percent fare hike discussed earlier is still on tap for 2011.

Picture credit: Amy Langfield/NewYorkology.

Earlier: New 50-cent taxi tax jacks up JFK flat-rate to $45.50
MetroCard fare rises to $2.25 today for subway, bus

December 16, 2009 12:17 PM in Transportology

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