On Friday afternoon — a very good time to deliver some bad news — Gov. David Paterson did just that. The state, he said, faces a projected budget deficit of nearly $50 million over the next three and a half years, and to close a gap of $3 billion for the current fiscal year, the Governor has proposed a slew of cuts that include pain for the MTA. The state may cut $113 million in MTA subsidies, and that dreaded F-word may be back on the table.
For the MTA, this news is bad. Although the budget proposal requires legislative approval, it’s hard to imagine the already-stingy state subsidies surviving these fiscal cutbacks unscathed. As William Henderson, the executive director of the MTA’s Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee said to The Times, “I would never bet against the state taking money back from the MTA.”
Meanwhile, the MTA’s finances are precarious as it stands now. With fewer state subsidies, the agency would be thurst again into a politically-charged financial crisis. How, then, would the MTA address th? Why, by foisting into the riders through either fare hikes, service cuts or some combination of both. Michael Grynbaum explores the pain the MTA might have to suffer through:
Any loss of financing means cuts, and the authority would have to choose from a limited list of unpleasant options. Fare increases may be the least likely option. In July, the authority announced a budget with no fare increases in 2010, a reprieve that was characterized as a sort of miracle after the crisis of late spring, when a last-minute rescue plan from Albany closed a gaping shortfall.
An abrupt fare increase could be a political disaster. Still, fare increases of 7.5 percent are planned for 2011 and 2013, so a sudden loss of financing could spur an accelerated schedule. “The money has to come from someplace,” Mr. Henderson said. To make up a $100 million shortfall, the authority would have to raise fares again by roughly 2 percent, assuming no other cost-saving measures. Fares and tolls rose about 10 percent this summer.
Service cuts could also help close the gap, but even significant changes rarely amount to big savings. Removing nearly 300 station agents from the subways last month saved $5.7 million. Overnight closing of four downtown stations on the N line would save $390,000; eliminating the W train would save $3 million; and closing the Z line and shortening the M would save $2.4 million, according to authority projections in March, when those closings were being considered.
Paterson’s office claimed that the budget cuts would not leave the MTA in an untenable financial situation, but a spokesman noted the across-the-board impact of the state deficit. “Whether it’s the state government, or the city government, or the MTA,” Matt Anderson, an Albany spokesman said to The Times, “everyone has to manage reductions in resources responsibly to maintain their credit rating.”
And so we are left right back where we started the year — or the decade. The state is going to try to further reduce the money it sends to the MTA, and an agency straining to meet ridership demand for service is going to see its budget slashed further. We need a true commitment to mass transit funding, and as the state may be in fiscal straits, the MTA will suffer for it.
10 comments
As someone who recently moved to New York from Detroit, I am constantly amazed at how cheap transportation is in this city. Less than $90 a month for 24/hour transportation is a great deal. I would gladly pay a 2 percent far hike. Heck, they could raise the monthly card to $150 tomorrow, and I would still be getting a good deal compared to what I used to pay for transportation in Detroit–even considering that cars are a bit more convenient.
Is there anywhere on the 2nd Avenue Sagas site a survey of public transportation costs around the US/around the world? If not, I’d be glad to help out collecting information from a few cities. Let’s find out once and for all whether NYC public transportation is SO expensive! We should compare distances, too.
Diane: once in a while I post comments with worldwide transit fares. Basically, New York is one of the more expensive ones, together with London and Berlin. Paris, Milan, and Madrid are substantially cheaper; Seoul is much cheaper; Osaka and Tokyo are cheaper for short- and medium-distance trips.
Can I assume these figures are adjusted for purchasing power parity?
If anything, I’d really like to see some sort of “Transit Index” that takes into account things such as: route miles/km, hours of operation, passenger loads, service frequency, on-time performance, mean distance between failures, median age of fleet, number of cars (or perhaps, interior volume of cars) per route mile, number of stations, etc etc…..
think you see where I’m going w/ this.
And then would be compiled into a number, sort of like the DJIA (which, of course, isn’t an average), that’s easy to understand and compare across systems.
An enormous task (especially since I imagine not everyone compiles the same data), I’m sure, but extremely useful in gauging our own system and comparing to the rest.
Yes, they are. This is generally unfavorable to the US, since the dollar is trading at less than PPP against both the Euro and the Yen.
I have no idea whether such an index exists. The problem with making one is that there are too few large developed-country subway systems to compare. The kind of multiple regression you’re proposing would give good results for 1,000 data points, not for the 20 or so that we have.
DJIA is only 30
The DJIA is an average price of shares. It’s easier to average the price of different shares than to average different attributes like coverage, frequency, and reliability.
And my point about only having 20 subway systems isn’t about that – it’s about the fact that when you have so many attributes, you’d better have a lot of subway systems to test different weights on. When you only have 20, it’s a mug’s game.
From my travels, I’ve found that New York’s transit fares are pretty cheap compared to other global cities. London, Tokyo, and Hong Kong have transit fares substantially higher than New York’s (or at least they did when I last visited those cities). Paris’s were a little cheaper last time I went.
Thanks, Alon, for the fare information. That is good to know–that we are indeed expensive… However, we do have service 24/7!
[…] October, when Gov. David Paterson announced a statewide financial crisis, he threatened to cut $113 million in state subsidies to the MTA. Yesterday, the state legislature passed their revised appropriations […]