As the first round of the city’s illustrious mayoral campaign hits its homestretch, we’ve heard and dismissed a lot of bad ideas concerning transit. A Republican hopeful called for monorails while the leading Democratic fundraiser drew a bunch of lines on a map and called it the Triboro RX bus route. I’ve been critical of these supposed campaign promises, and as Ted Mann explored a few weeks ago, so have a few others. Is there anything worth debating?
One idea I’ve shied away from discussing keeps coming up again and again, and it is one proposal worth mentioning. That is, of course, city control over the MTA and, to a lesser extent, city control over bridge and tunnel fares. Joe Lhota has been pressing for the latter, and a few candidates the former. These topics have their origin in city history and no easy answer.
Originally, the city did control the subways through the Board of Transportation, and it was a problematic relationship to say the least. Due to a need to appease voters, mayor after mayor refused to raise the subway fares. The precious nickel remained in place for decades, and inflation meant that the subways were generating pennies in revenue compared with their initial takes in the early 1900s. The over-simplified version of history is that through an effort to shore up the Transit Authority’s finances and push Robert Moses out of power, the state-run MTA came to be. The state assumed responsibility for funding the subways and, in return, the state controls the MTA through board appointments.
As mayoral control over the MTA has waxed and waned as a campaign issue, Dana Rubinstein a few weeks ago offered up an overview of the debate:
The chance that Albany legislators representing the city’s suburbs and, whose constituents rely on the authority’s Long Island and Metro-North railroads, would voluntarily cede control of their favorite hobbyhorse to the mayor of New York City is approximately zero. The notion that the state would transfer power to the city and continue to fund mass transit at the current rate is unlikelier still.
Nevertheless, it’s a lot easier to talk about mayoral control than to discuss finding new revenue streams for the transit agency. Which is why Quinn and her rivals have been talking about mayoral control the way they have. On Friday, at a Queens press event about a proposed three-borough select bus service route, Quinn once again said the mayor should make the majority of appointments to the M.T.A.’s board, and appoint the head of the M.T.A.’s bus and subway division, New York City Transit.
“Right now, 90 percent basically of the ridership of the M.T.A. is people using buses and subways,” she said. “There is no question that bus and subway riders in the five boroughs, the majority of them New York City residents, are the economic engine of the M.T.A. But we have the voice of a piston on the board.”
On the record, the MTA and its current leadership are not looking to see the current political structure change. In a radio appearance on the Brian Lehrer Show, MTA CEO and Chairman Tom Prendergast responded to the campaign. “The underlying premise of the creation of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority was the need, and this is some farsighted individuals back in the 60s, that realized you needed to deal with transportation on a regional basis,” he said. “If we look just at the needs of Long Island. the needs of the lower Hudson Valley that Metro-North provides services to, or New York City in terms of its bus and subway system, we will miss that regionality. So if we start to hive off sections of the MTA and manage them specifically from the needs of that constituency base, we’re gonna get hurt on a regional basis.”
It’s hard to assess claims of regionality from the MTA simply because the organization is still so siloed. Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road don’t get along and lack interoperability. The fare structure isn’t harmonized across the various agencies and promises to streamline operations have been slow to become reality. Still, the idea that the MTA benefits the entire region is still valid. Just because the vast majority of rides originate in the five boroughs doesn’t mean the only people who benefit are city residents, and the mayor appoints four board seats, second only to the Governor’s six nominees.
So what’s the right answer? Is there one? Mayoral control of the MTA brings with it mayoral responsibilities and obligations. It’s a non-starter for political reasons, and it isn’t something New York voters should rush to embrace for economic reasons as well. It will, however, never not be a campaign issue because it sounds good on the surface. Ideas that sound good on the surface though often aren’t underneath.
42 comments
Not sure why transit activists are so dismissive of mayoral control. Sure, it’s a long shot – chances to fundamentally reform transit in New York only come around every other generation or so. But it’s been nearly 50 years. The flaws – the fact that it’s run by people elected from way outside its service range – are obvious. Rockefeller cared about the subways, but he was the first and last of the governors to care. (Maybe Spitzer would have, if he’d lasted long enough.)
And things may start to come to a head at the MTA. The last decade saw a lot of new capital projects, but it also saw massive cost escalations – the multi-billion dollar Sandy black hole being the most recent (more to repair a station than to excavate one?!) – and it’s not clear that there’s going to be money for expansion beyond maybe phase 2 of the 2nd Ave. subway.
This may not bother the current political establishment (in fact I’m sure it doesn’t), but I wouldn’t be surprised if it starts to bother some people in the not-so-distant future.
I have a feeling that unless something borderline revolutionary happens, we just have to wait for the Silvers and Skelkoses to retire, which may mean waiting for them to die. Then there is the whole matter of actually getting a competent crop of replacements for them. People like Brad Lander may want to actually see transit reform, but they also need to learn what it is and that you need more than just subways and buses to have a good transit mix.
New York has always depended on importing its talent from elsewhere, but the legislators (and higher-level bureaucrats) aren’t or can’t be imported and therefore usually suffer from extremely provincial myopia. It’s no surprise the last transformational leader the MTA had was Walder, who had vast international experience. And it’s impressive how quickly the NY political establishment managed to be rid of him!
At the rate Shelly’s been piling up minor scandals as of late, he may not last too much longer.
There has been a lot of talk about Mayoral Control. But what have the Mayors appointees to the MTA Board had to say over the years? Anything? Does anyone even know who they are?
Mayoral control is a simple matter of devolution, and doesn’t confer any permanent right on the city. The state can revoke mayoral control at any time. What’s the harm in trying it? The fear that it might be successful?
What we’re doing now is not working, despite Prendergast’s talk of a “regional basis” for planning. As I said on Streetsblog the day that interview came out, Prendergast also dismissed the idea of the 7 to Secaucus. Regional basis? Har. Except arguably for a few paltry bus services, the only kind of regional integration the MTA got around to (well, is getting around to in a few years) is East Side Access.
There are a lot of reasons why the Mayor (and even more important The City Council)should be kept away from Transit, but here is the BIGGEST one. NIMBY’s check this out.
“Silver-maned “Mad Men” star John Slattery is coming out strong against the mayoral front-runner — all because she approved a 10-story sanitation garage in his Soho neighborhood five years ago.
Slattery, 50, and other A-listers spent years campaigning against the city’s $400 million mega-garage on Spring Street near the West Side Highway.” http://www.nypost.com/…/.....UxzT9BGK9K
I can only imagine what the City Council would do, if the Council was offered the choice to spend (or not spend) money on something that a few wealthy local people do not want, even though it would benefit the masses (such as a Subway Station near a building). As bad as the MTA is, I love them compared to the alternative of The City.
Your link doesn’t work.
I really don’t see the MTA being particularly immune to NIMBY demands. Part of the reason SAS is a deep bore monstrosity is NIMBYism, afterall. Not to mention batty shit like losing a third track on the LIRR. And I would count the way each agency is sort of its own fief as a form of NIMBYism too; LIRR probably could have used the existing GCT infrastructure, and certainly NJT could have, saving taxpayers billions.
Mayoral control requires a strong mayor willing to annoy people to do what’s best for the system. It’s a job John Lindsey didn’t want after the 1966 transit strike — rather than either having to toughen negotiations with a TWU or be the one to announce further rounds of fare increases to fund both salaries and maintenance, he simply punted the whole thing to Nelson Rockefeller, who never had any problems at all in wielding power, but who was smart enough not to make himself directly responsible for the less-popular requirements of running the buses and subways.
Hence, Bill Ronan, the MTA which acts as a buffer between the public and the pols in both New York and Albany when bad things happen and someone needs to be blamed (Andrew Cuomo has taken this to a ridiculous level in the past year, where any bit of good news is announced by the governor’s office, while all news that might irk people is handed off to poor Tom Prendergast. Lhota’s pushing for mayoral control because he feels comfortable running the buses and subways after serving as MTA chairman, and it might work if he was willing do dole out the bad news with the good. But odds are most mayors would want to go the Cuomo route, but with no buffer in place to take the flack, the subways would end up back with the same situation as 50 years ago, with M&O being cut so the mayor can score short-term points with voters.
(On the other hand, the old TA logo is way better-looking than the one the MTA has, so if they brought back the Transit Authority you’d have at least that possible side benefit…)
There are different kinds of control. The mayor could control planning and capital construction, leaving operation more or less at it is.
IMHO, pensions and benefits should be centralized in one state-level office. That can cut H.R. redundancy across the state as each agency currently has its own infrastructure for dealing with that stuff.
I’d say it makes more sense for the mayor to control operations than capital projects, especially since NYC alone isn’t going to pay for most of those big-budget projects. Operations is also more relevant to local interests than regional, and things like GO’s can be better coordinated with NYCDOT (theoretically, though probably not practically).
Insofar as tax revenues collected in NYC are spent around the state, NYC pretty well pays for everything the city and state do in or on behalf of NYC.
I’m not sure I agree operations are more relevant. Capital construction addresses local problems that need solving, while operating is a pretty clear-cut process of using the tools and infrastructure that exist. New York needs new subway lines, which don’t have hugely meaningful regional implications. Something like ESA does have regional implications though.
The other extreme would be to redirect all of the money for Capital Construction to the RPA, which does have some very good ideas for transit expansion across the region. This would be similar to the Minneapolis model, where a popularly elected regional planning board has the power to start capital projects and institute new taxes.
As much as I respect the work the RPA has done, they’re a non-profit planning org. Their expertise is in putting out studies, not constructing massive infrastructure projects. It’s not really similar to Minneapolis in a way that would lead me to believe they are qualified to oversee such a board.
You are probably right. OTOH, they are probably preferable to future Mayor Quinn, who couldn’t grope her way out of her own ass with a lantern and a copy of Grey’s Anatomy.
I actually like Henry’s idea, though the way to do it would be to reform the MTA to make it possible. I still think there is a need for a NYCTA to at least get powerful input from New York City politicians.
While the Twin Cities Metropolitan Council is indeed a model for regional planning, particularly in water management, it is not popularly elected. The only popularly elected equivalent is Metro, the Portland area regional government, which in addition to its duties as the MPO for the region, is also responsible for managing the region’s urban growth boundaries and has additional planning responsibilities.
While RPA is indeed a respected organization, Ben is right that it is ill suited to be the basis for a regional decision making authority. If we were to pick an agency, the logical choice would be a MPO in the region. The region has several MPOs of varying sizes, with NJTPA and NYMTC the largest of the bunch. Due to their clearly delineated study areas (neither crosses state boundaries) cooperation on large projects has been less than ideal, and has helped to continue the lack of cooperation between the regions transit agencies.
I don’t know if we could ever have a region-wide, elected planning organization the likes of Metro in Portland, particularly because outside of New York City, the entire region practices highly devolved and powerful local governance. Removing those decision-making powers from those governments and consolidating them in a regional authority would be a tough sell, even if it generated greater societal benefits.
This is one of a laundry list of issues that come down to regional cooperation and interoperability.
When the random lines of municipality were laid down 100-200 years ago, the borders may have been arbitrary but at least to a degree they did represent somewhat truly autonomous communities. When the Eastern Queens elites decided to break off Nassau, at least at that time there was an argument to be made for true independence.
Today the entire region is so interconnected and interdependent that to politically lean on the influence of the borders is the type of folly only to be pursued by politicians and misled taxpayers.
Add to the mix that NYC also has limited control over its future thanks to Albany, and it borders on farce. In a region and a state where everything more or less depends on NYC, it seems like only the Mayor of New York is actually fighting for the city and everyone else is just fighting to see what they can squeeze FROM it. Free-riding is the name of the game.
If you want to see where this path leads, just look to Detroit.
Really, if we were to start from scratch today without the baggage of preexisting borders, common sense would dictate that municipalities would be unified out to their widest exurbs and that “states” consist of things like water sheds and food sheds that support the dense population. Of course, such logical planning would make it much hard to racially or economically discriminate and make it harder to free ride.
There are problems with metropolitan government – it becomes possible to have a mayor who is anti-urban running a large metro area.
Exhibit A is Rob Ford.
Really. Sheldon Silver or Dean Skelos might be Mayor of a regional government, and neither represents city residents.
Ontario’s cities are largely like that because they spent much of the late 20th century amalgamating them with suburbs. The result is the urban cores are outvoted by the suburbanites that make up the majority of the amalgamated whole. Imagine Staten Island having more than just outsized influence, but actual majority control.
Concur with Larry though. In too many ways, the state is a second municipal government for the city.
Peel region for example. Peel consists of Brampton, Burlington, Mississauga & Oakville to name a few communities.
On the transit front, both Brampton & Mississauga have bus systems that rival or exseed the size of Bee-Line & NICE. Combined it’s about the size of MARTA.
*Just Mississauga, Brampton, and Caledon (which is a small exurb still). Oakville and Burlington are in a separate regional municipality, Halton.
And both Peel and Halton are all-suburban. Mississauga has more jobs than employed residents, but those are suburban office parks – think White Plains.
With control comes fiscal responsibilities as well. The state has frequently ignored the funding/financing/borrowing issue until it reaches crisis proportions, and even then the state isn’t willing to fund MTA any more than it currently is. Proposing new revenue streams for dedicated transit have gone nowhere due to lawsuits – the payroll tax being one.
It’s easy for some candidate to claim that they want mayoral control, but what would the City do in terms of better financing the MTA? They aren’t in any better fiscal shape than the state to provide the funding, and it would mean coordinating with the suburbs – some of which aren’t even in NYS.
The City can barely fund its existing infrastructure obligations for roads and bridges it does control. It would have an even tougher time with the MTA.
Now, that doesn’t mean that there’s ways to address funding the infrastructure better. Spreading the costs of the bridges and tunnels – imposing tolls on the currently “free” bridges would help balance use, reduce tolls on the existing tolled facilities, or it could generate new revenues to fund both bridge/road maintenance and transit.
People who use the bridges/tunnels hate that a portion of the tolls goes to transit, but they ignore that without the transit, they’d have commutes that stretch into the hours since the roads/bridges simply can’t accommodate the rush hour for everyone trying to get into the City – the days and weeks after Sandy proved that.
Maybe mayoral control doesn’t make sense and yes the authority should be integrated across the region.
However, if 80% or more of the MTA’s riders live in the 5 boroughs, it does not make sense that the mayor appoints 4 members, the outer counties appoint 7 members (1 per county), and the governor appoints the other 10. The governor is elected by the entire state and gives the MTA about $100 million per year.
A more equitable situation would be if the mayor appointed 20, Nassau and Westchester appointed 2 each and the other counties and the governor each got 1 appointee each, for a total of 30 members.
Only 3 of the counties nominate a voting member – Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester
The other 4 – Dutchess, Orange, Rockland, and Putnam – nominate one member each BUT cast a single collective vote.
Wich is one of many reasons why the outer counties want out of the MTA
A quarter of a member versus four members for the city is still gross overrepresentation for each of those four counties.
I like the photo!
If downstaters can tell people in the Adirondacks how to use their land, then Upstaters can tell downstaters how to run their mass transit systems. Its only fair …
Cut off your nose to spite your face, eh?
If NYC taxed its corporations properly there would be plenty of money for the MTA.
Huh?
NYC undertaxes its corporations?
You kidding?
I’d like to see certain Corporations, like Goldman-Sachs, taxed out of existence to be honest.
You put mega taxes on GS, and London or Singapore will take them and their high paid jobs tomorrow morning.
Reinstate the tax for trades on NYSE…. and NASDAQ.
The bankers don’t dare avoid that; London already has such a tax, as does Singapore.
The next mayor of NYC will be a Democrat. NYC owes 100 billion in debts, and is cutting services across the board. Likely, taxes will go up and services will go down as the debt as to be serviced.
You just might get your wish.
Meredith Whitney, the analyst who put out reports about the poor health of the banks in 2007 before the great collapse in 2008, is saying the city will lose 100k jobs on Wall Street in 18 months, due to a combination of layoffs and replacement in technology. A lot of the banks have moved a number of operations out of NYC, and currently a lot of people are being laid off on Wall Street.
NYC, like other cities and towns in NY, lost its industrial base. The city’s tax base is far too dependent on finance.
No doubt upstaters get their water from the mass transit system downstate too.
Plus, it’s ridiculous that 8M people should have both clean water and good public transportation.
I think the Catskills Reservoirs should serve the people of the Catskills not NYC … I love NYC but jeez get your own water locally. But this is getting off topic …
Because the Catskills needs all the water it has, right?
If the Downstate region seceded (or even the five boroughs) New York would be just another Rust Belt state.
The Catskill communities should be allowed to sell that water to NYC and be properly compensated. Just pointing out the consequences of being too eager for “local control” here.
Well, “proper compensation” wouldn’t be nearly as much money gets funneled upstate now.
I’d also point out that there aren’t that many metro areas in the US that pay other states for their water – most of it is water sharing agreements.
Fine, get the amount of money that’s a fair price for water. You’ll be surprised how little that is.
NYC itself is a rust belt city, only kept from entirely being that way because of the financial sector and education. Industry collapsed under mayor John Lindsay, when the city lost one million jobs and huge parts of it became ghettoes. And thinks have never really recovered.
The city was trying to use gentrification to undo the ghetto transformation of much of the city (by the 80s huge parts of Manhattan where ghetto) but lets see how these neighborhoods in transition fare as Stop and Frisk has been ruled unconstitutional.