Wait a minute. He was listening to a radio during his morning commute? There’s no radio service in the subway. Was he driving?

Yes, everything in the budget is a guess, but it needs to be reasonable. The MTA budget depends, in part, on real-estate tax revenues. No one knows exactly what those revenues will be. But only a fool would assume they are going up.

As a regular LIRR rider, I can tell you that they receive invoices for thing which are likely not budgeted. In the last week alone, we had a train collision and a derailment. Five railroad cars and a bunch of track and switches need to be repaired. Also, LIRR has had to pay for endless “gap”-related lawsuits and station fixes, not to mention passengers’ ripped pants. I wonder if the MTA’s sub-agencies have to pay each other every time a service disruption results in fares being cross-honored. Obviously, no one could predict the cost of diesel fuel used to operate some of the locomotives throughout 2008.

I’m sure there’s a pot of money in the budget labeled “miscellaneous”, “unallocated” or something like that. I have no idea how big it is, but I’m sure it’s used up every year, simply to justify its place in the budget the following year. But it’s a guess.

Almost everything in the budget is a guess. I’d be curious to know how much the MTA spent in relation to its budget over the past few years.

I would have preferred to see them do something a bit more creative. For instance, leave service intact and jack up the fare high enough. Then, challenge the legislature to approve tax increases if they don’t want their constituents to be paying $3.50 a ride.