Although the MTA will not officially unveil its plans to close a $200 million budget gap until Monday, the Daily News is reporting that the Doomsday cuts are back on the table. As I speculated on Wesdnesday, the MTA will be proposing the same sweeping service reductions the agency nearly implemented earlier this year before Albany’s half-hearted bailout came to be.
The sweeping reductions would include the deaths of the W and Z lines, the overnight shuttering of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn stations along the BMT Broadway (N/R) line and the elimination of numerous low-ridership bus lines in the city’s outer boroughs. Pete Donohue has more:
Facing a massive budget crisis, the cash-squeezed MTA is moving to implement sweeping service cuts – again – including shutting down dozens of bus routes. Two subway lines also would be wiped off the map and four stations would be shuttered overnight under the plan expected to go before a Metropolitan Transportation Authority committee on Monday. If it sounds familiar, it is. The lineup is the same roster of reductions threatened earlier this year when the MTA was lobbying for a state bailout. The cuts never happened.
But in recent weeks the MTA has been rocked by bad news. The state – struggling with its own budget mess – slashed transit funding by $143 million. And cash from state payroll taxes is coming in about $200 million short of what the state had planned for mass transit. Even with 2010 service cuts, the MTA will have to find other ways to plug the sudden budget gap, sources said.
“We’re not going to rely on anyone else to do anything for us. We’re going to rely on ourselves,” MTA board member Mitchell Pally said.
Transit watchdogs were quick to bemoan the latest news. Relying on its call to use stimulus funds to cover the budget gap, Gene Russianoff and the Straphangers Campaign came out swinging today: “For the MTA, reviving these cuts would shred their credibility. The riding public was told last May that there would be no service cuts when the legislature bailed out the MTA. Riders held up their part of the bargain with a fare hike last June, yet now they are threatened with getting substantially less while paying more. Riders have every right to be mad as hell.”
Russianoff acknowledged that the latest budget problems are a result of “actions by Governor Paterson and the state legislature.” He stressed, however, his opinion that the MTA should do anything possible to avoid cuts to service because those cuts are rarely restored lately when the financials improve. “The Straphangers Campaign,” he said, “believes the MTA has the resources to prevent the service cuts, especially if it uses available federal stimulus funds and capital funds now coming out of the operating budget.”
Meanwhile, in the Daily News article, new TWU head John Samuelsen urged the MTA to look inward. “Before the MTA takes any action that adversely affects riders or workers, they should look to cut their own wasteful spending,” Samuelsen said. Considering the public opinion of TWU workers these days, Samuelsen should be careful with his words. Most riders may not be big fans of the MTA, but they are hardly on the side of the employees either.
In the end, I want to toss the ball to another player. Michael Bloomberg campaigned heavily on a plan to fix the MTA and improve mass transit for all New Yorkers. He has been noticeably silent this week as the MTA’s financial picture has taken a huge hit. It’s time for the Mayor to step up to the plate for the MTA. He can use his political clout to gain some monetary concessions for the authority, and he can show to those who voted for him that they were not misguided in putting faith in his transit proposal. Now’s the time; next week just might be too late.
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