MTA Economics

I live in a transit-rich section of Brooklyn. I’m nearly equidistant from four train stops and have my choice of bus routes that run north-south, east-west. When the MTA’s service cuts come, I may find myself paying a bit more for service and waiting a few minutes longer during those pesky off-peak times, but my life won’t be dramatically altered.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for millions of New Yorkers. The elderly and infirmed who can’t navigate the many flights of stairs in the subway, the bus riders, the late-night commuters — they all stand to find themselves facing a drastically altered commute. Their trains and buses won’t come as often, and sometimes, those buses won’t show up at all.

The worst hit though will be those hard-to-reach areas of the outer boroughs — and one neighborhood in Manhattan — that doesn’t enjoy subway service. For these areas, the 24-hour transit network that most of New York City currently enjoys will fade into the past a distant memory.

Over the weekend, the Daily News tackled four neighborhoods soon to find themselves seriously inconvenienced by the MTA’s Doomsday plan. Pete Donohue tackled the impact of the cuts on the far West Side of Manhattan; Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn; Woodlawn past the 4 in the Bronx, and Oakwood Beach, Staten Island. According to an MTA survey, residents in these four neighborhoods will face walks of up to two miles just to reach the next closest bus stop.

On the chopping block is weekend service on the crosstown M50 route…Its demise would leave some workers and residents west of 11th Ave. a mile from mass transit, according to the study.

Residents in Gerritsen Beach, a corner of Brooklyn near Sheepshead Bay, would fare worse during the wee hours of the morning. Some parts of the neighborhood would be nearly 2 miles from another bus route if the B31 is shut down as planned between 1:30 and 4:30 a.m…

On the city’s northern border, Woodlawn residents may lose the Bx34, which runs along Katonah Ave., the heart of the neighborhood, connecting with the last stop on the No. 4 subway line. Some sections of Woodlawn would be left with “no transit service within a walkable distance” during some overnight hours, the study states…In Staten Island, some residential blocks and beach areas in the Oakwood Beach area would be a mile from mass transit on weekends if the cuts go through.

The news gets worse. The MTA figures that New Yorkers will take nearly 35,000 more car trips daily as they combat the elimination of nearly 30 bus routes and two subway lines. Those trips will exact a very high economic and environmental cost on our already overcrowded and over-polluted city.

I can’t drive home this point enough: Albany has to act to do something. This isn’t about bailing out the MTA or rescuing it. Those terms make it sound as though the MTA has done something wrong when the agency has not. This is about formulating a smart and responsible transit strategy for New York City that provides for the current funding of our transit infrastructure and the future potential for growth. This about correcting past mistakes of paying everything off with future debt. This is about recognizing the economic and environmental impacts a poor transit system would have on New York City.

Each week, real Doomsday ticks closer. Those folks in these isolated neighborhoods may suffer the most, but they won’t be the only ones losing out. All of us will be too.

For much of the last few months, David Paterson, the accidental governor of New York, has showed a stunning lack of leadership. As the MTA floundered and Doomsday approached, Paterson didn’t — or perhaps with a disjointed and disunited State Senate, couldn’t — take the bull by the horn to deliver an intelligent and thorough funding package for the beleaguered transit authority.

Today, though, Paterson, the governor slammed the state legislature for its inaction and inability to fund the MTA. The Senate, he said, is displaying a complete lack of “professionalism” as numerous Senators claim that no real solutions are on the table.

“No, we’re not starting all over again, because the issues are right there; they’re right on the table. We thought we had a good plan,” he said this morning. “I don’t understand how there aren’t 32 senators that won’t pass that legislation.”

For the most part, though, the governor hedged his bets. Paterson’s name-calling and words won’t mean much if he doesn’t act. He says he won’t keep the state senators in Albany during the upcoming Passover/Easter week. He says he won’t force a timetable and trusts the Senators to understand that the MTA’s situation is “critical enough” to require action. Is that naivete or stupidity? Had the Senate understood that a month ago, we wouldn’t be talking about this.

The final paragraph in Elizabeth Benjamin’s Daily News write-up basically sums up David Paterson’s response to the MTA:

“In the next few weeks, I would think that we would move forward with a resolution or we’re going to have to find ways to make the Legislature only address that issue,” he said, adding that he is prepared to use “any means necessary” to prevent the massive fare hikes recently approved by the MTA, (which, for the record, was a vote he did not try to prevent).

Leadership we can’t believe in.

There is an air of finality surrounding the news out of Albany tonight. The New York Times, Daily News and Newsday all reported the same sad story: Right now it looks as though there will be no MTA bailout.

According to numerous reports, the prospects for any sort of state action on the MTA in advance of the May fare hikes and service cuts have grown significantly dimmer than they were just 24 hours ago. The Assembly has gone home for the weekend; the Senate is still bickering over the state budget; and with a short week on tap next week and no solution acceptable to a majority of the Senate on the table, any chances for a real rescue plan are nearly dead. Meanwhile, one Senator is laid up in the hospital with pneumonia, and the Democrats would need her vote for any legislative action whatsoever.

“There are Democratic senators who won’t vote for the tolls and the Democratic senators who won’t vote for the mobility tax, and then the Republican senators, all of them, who won’t vote for anything,” Gov. David Paterson said yesterday. “So Right now, I think that, these elected officials have got to sit down, the senators, and at least have a plan.”

If this is starting to sound like Groundhog’s Day on a downward spiral, that’s because it is. Every day, the news gets a little worse, and more State Senators sound as though they have no idea what they’re talking about.

To whit, comments made on Wednesday by Craig Johnson and Brian Foley, two of the four suburban Senators opposing the payroll tax, via Newsday:

Johnson shot back that the payroll surcharge would be crippling to not-for-profits and spur higher school property taxes. He blamed MTA officials for the authority’s $1.2 billion deficit. “At this juncture we need to say ‘no’ and put it upon the MTA to come up with a reasonable solution,” he said.

Foley agreed, saying Suffolk businesses derive less benefit from mass transit than those in Nassau and New York City. He accused the MTA of “brinkmanship, trying to force our hand . . . and I won’t countenance that.”

Luckily, I don’t need to defend the MTA here. Richard Brodsky of Sheldon Silver’s suddenly rational New York State Assembly, did it for me:

Brodsky (D-Westchester), a frequent MTA critic, said such a financial review already has been completed and a state commission offered a “balanced” bailout plan in December that includes the payroll tax, modest fare hikes and tolls on the now-free East River and Harlem River bridges.

“Nobody loves the payroll tax, but you have to do more than say, ‘no.’ What is [the senators’] alternative?” he said.

Silver himself added a dig at the Senate too. “I think we need a time out,” he said. “Basically, they can’t be opposed to everything.”

Oh, Shelly, they can and are opposed to literally anything. Remember how Gov. Paterson organized an independent commission led by Richard Ravitch to conduct a thorough examination of the MTA’s finances and possible solutions for the budget gap? Remember he came back with a very long and very thorough tax-and-toll plan that called upon everyone to contribute?

Still, State Senators are insisting that the MTA has not set forth a “reasonable solution.” Still, State Senators are calling this “brinkmanship.” At some point, we the straphangers have to send a message to these State Senators: Get in touch with your constituents or get lost. These comments by Johnson and Foley are just another set in a long of idiotic statements that show an Albany ready, willing and able to throw New York City under the bus.

So as the MTA has begun reprogramming MetroCard machines and fare infrastructure in anticipation of enacting this Doomsday budget in May, we should rest uneasily knowing that the people who can avert disaster seem to know absolutely nothing about the MTA’s financial difficulties, let alone how to solve them.

With word early this morning that Senate talks have all but broken down, transit advocates in New York are feeling the sting of rebuke. They’re also well aware that New York is sitting on the precipice of an transit abyss, the likes of which the city is ill-equipped to face.

The real problem is that, while this 2009 Doomsday plan looks bad, the MTA will have to enact something like this every year until their debt payments are gone. Many New Yorkers believe that if the Senate fails to act this year and fares go up while service gets scaled back, it will be a one-year cut. Next year, the MTA will operate with reduced schedules, but we’ll adjust. Life will go on, right?

Wrong.

Over the next three years, as the MTA budget documents available here show, dept service payments are going to balloon to a projected $2.2 billion by 2012. As other costs increase, the MTA will have to continue to cut service and raise fares to cover this gap. This is the real reason why transit advocates have been urging permanent action.

Eliot Brown, writing for Politicker NY yesterday, explored the MTA’s downward spiral. He does not paint a positive picture:

Should no new money come from the Legislature in Albany, entire lines would be cut, stations would grow dirtier and fewer booth operators would be around to help. The train cars and tracks would deteriorate rather quickly, giving rise to even more “signal problems” that so often hold up trains, boosting the number of “slow zones”—which are pretty much what they sound like—and increasing the number of derailments.

It wouldn’t exactly be New York in the 1970s, but a decaying transit system, if it gets bad enough, actually begins to undermine New York’s status as a vibrant urban center, interrupting the flow of a system that gives over 2.6 billion rides a year, doing damage to a central feature of the city’s business position and general quality of life.

Workers won’t be able to get to work on time. Business areas — transportation hubs — will be underserved. Up and coming neighborhoods will stagnant, and capital projects will remain half-finished and going nowhere fast.

The city, meanwhile, will suffer. Employers will find disgruntled workers who can’t work the hours they need to be putting in and will begin to turn elsewhere for employee bases. As Hope Cohen from the Manhattan Institute said to Brown, “It’s a vicious spiral—if there’s less and less service, and less and less people want to use it. That’s when it becomes more derelict and crime-ridden and all those things.”

This bleak picture is really what it’s all about. Transit advocates have to start pushing the reality that, barring state action, the MTA will be left with no choice but to cut, cut, cut until New York suffers from a barebones subway system that is in a state of disrepair. That is a reality no one wants to confront and no one can afford, but if Albany does not act, if New Yorkers do not demand a solution, this dystopic transit future will arrive sometime around 2012. It’s that close to reality.

Last year, on April 1, I ran a post with the headline “MTA announces plan to shutter subways at night.” At the time, any plan to close or reduce subway capacity seemed so far from the minds of New Yorkers that we could sit back and laugh about our 24-hour transit system.

Today, I wish I were writing this story as an April Fools joke, but I am not. In a stunning development, State Senate negotiations over an MTA rescue package are on life support with only the barest of pulses. Three Senators officially killed the tolling proposal advocated by Richard Ravitch and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver on Tuesday morning, and a few hours later, talks over other possible solutions ended when four Senators representing Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester counties vowed to kill the payroll tax provisions as well. Baring any further developments, the MTA will have to implement its Doomsday budget.

William Neuman and Nicolas Confessiore reported this bad news in The Times, and their sources are painting a dire picture. “It’s not dead but it’s definitely not in good shape. I think we’re nowhere,” one anonymous Senate insider said to the reporters, contracting a NY1 report proclaiming the plan dead.

This news comes on the heels of what was shaping up to be productive day, at least by Albany’s standards. While the morning starting out with the certain death of the bridge toll plan, Democratic leaders were confident they could find other ways to solve the budget gap. “I think what’s most important,” Silver said a press event on Tuesday, “is we’re dealing with the one thing the three of us agree: The actions of the M.T.A. board cannot be allowed to stand. We have to get together and provide the revenue and ensure these 31-percent fare hikes do not stand.”

Gov. David Paterson announced the death of the tolls this morning. “The framework I see is that the Senate has really eliminated what my choice would be, which would be to have the tolls. If that’s the case, then we’re going to have to try to find alternative ways to come up with several hundred million dollars that would replace what would have been the revenues generated by the tolls,” Paterson said of the then-ongoing negotiations.

The Senate though was rumored to be considering numerous other options to replace the lost revenue, including auto registration fees, gas taxes, parking fees and even taxi surcharges. At this point, anything is better than the stunning inaction we have seen so far.

These provisions were supposed to be coupled with a payroll tax implemented among businesses in the 12 MTA counties. But disaster struck in the afternoon when four State Senators vowed no support for any MTA plan that included this tax. Those Senators — all Democrats — represent suburban counties: Craig Johnson and Brian Foley come from Nassau and Suffolk, respectively, and Andrea Stewart-Cousines and Suzi Oppenheimer represent the Metro-North lands in Westchester.

With this opposition, Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith and his Democrats find themselves far away from the 32 votes they need to pass a plan. They’re even further away from coming up with a proposal that can approach the $1.2 billion in money the MTA needs.

Meanwhile, all sorts of insults and scathing editorials are being shot toward Albany. Vielkind called it the city where transportation plans go to die, and Peter Goldmark, former Port Authority head and Ravitch Commission member, wondered what our State Senators are smoking as they delay on a very serious issue.

As time ticks closer to Doomsday, only one thing is for sure: The MTA will have to keep cutting and raising fares. The debt is projecting to balloon over the next few years, and my April Fools post from last year may become reality under ground before we know.

Right now, I’m really hoping for the Senate to wrap up its budget talks. As the New York State budget stews, the MTA has landed firmly on the backburner, and while Albany will soon put forth an MTA rescue plan, right now, all we’re getting in the news is rhetoric.

It is, of course, the same old rhetoric the State Senate and Malcolm Smith, its majority leader, have been spewing for months. While I am trying to find optimism in the words, it all rings a little hollow as this late date. “It’s an emergency situation,” Sheldon Silver, Assembly speaker and one of the few Ravtich supporters in Albany, said to The Times today. “I would hope to do it as quickly as possible.”

While Smith himself acknowledged that “everything is on the table,” those words are simply not true. At this point, the Senate has all but killed the Ravitch toll plan. Rumor has it that steep increases in driver registration fees could be levied against the counties serviced by the MTA. Even that, plan, though is facing some opposition.

According to The Times, David Paterson and his advisers were hoping to implement an increased driver registration fee plan to fund New York’s road and bridge construction project. The Senators whose support this plan would need tend to agree. They believe that funds from drivers should be reinvested in the roads the drivers need and not in mass transit. That is, after all, how we got into this toll mess in the first place.

Meanwhile, some upstate senators seem to be grumbling about the increased focus on the MTA. As William Neuman and Jeremy Peters report, “lawmakers say that in the past, the authority’s capital program and the state’s road and bridge program have usually been treated in tandem, to balance the needs of the city and the rest of the state.”

Right now, Senators are trying to find a New York City-centric way to address the MTA’s capital and operations budgets with little regard for upstate trade-offs. I firmly believe that upstate New York will just have to wait. The needs of the MTA and the millions of people who depend on it daily are far more important than a pork-laced project to repair and maintain roads outside of the city.

While Albany delays, it Sheldon Silver who has become the state cheerleader for the MTA. “We are going to examine the alternatives that are available to us and we will succeed, I believe, in overturning the draconian service cuts and the outrageous increases in fares that the board has proposed,” he said. I hope he’s right.

While Albany may be nearing an MTA rescue plan, transit advocates shouldn’t lower their guards yet. The so-called Fare Hike Four remain a threat to adequately funded transit, and last week, State Senator Velmanette Montgomery — representing an area where 70 percent of households are car-free and transit commuters outnumber drivers by a 10-to-1 margin — joined their ranks.

On Friday, my friend and fellow subway rider Todd passed on the following e-mail from Montgomery’s office:

Thank you so much for reaching out to me about the MTA “Doomsday” plan. I am working with my colleagues in the Senate to find an alternative to the unacceptably harsh ideas suggested by the Ravitch Commission. The Senate Majority plan provides the MTA with more operating capital than the Ravitch plan, does so with a lower fare increase and with no tolls on bridges. In addition it provides for the ongoing future fiscal health of the MTA by requiring a thorough forensic audit of the MTA to root out excesses and duplications. It is unacceptable for the public to be continually subjected to fare increases and be denied any oversight of the MTA finances. With your continued support for the Senate Majority proposal, we can assure the continued responsible health of our transportation infrastructure.

Today, Streetsblog took the Senator to task for supporting a nonsensical plan with questionable math. Her support of this plan is, in the words of Ben Fried, “laughable” in light of her supposed commitment to both working families and mass transit, and it is becoming more and more obvious that the people we send to Albany are unqualified to be running our government. Montgomery ran for her Senate seat unopposed, and New York City is now paying the price for this political ineptitude.

For months, the New York State legislature has resisted efforts to save the MTA, and last week, the MTA Board approved a package of fare hikes and service cuts designed to eliminate a budget gap in excess of $1.2 billion.

But finally, with New Yorkers’ collective backs against the proverbial wall, the State Senate is on the verge of passing something that will save the MTA. According to reports from the weekend, a political stalemate may be on the verge of breaking as the Senate will soon unveil a rescue plan insiders believe to be adequate to stave off fare hikes and service cuts. Whether this plan will solve the MTA’s financial problems or simply postpone the need for a permanent solution to a future date remains to be seen.

No matter what happens, the legislature will have to act fast to ensure passage and implementation before the MTA is set to enact its own cost-saving measures in May. Glenn Blain and Pete Donohue had the details:

State legislative leaders said Friday they expect to soon have a plan sparing riders from jarring fare hikes and punishing service cuts. Revenue-raising measures under discussion don’t include tolling East and Harlem river bridges but Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith (D-Queens) said all options remain on the table.

Either way, a final package wouldn’t let drivers off the hook completely, sources said. If not tolls, motorists would have to help plug the MTA’s massive budget gaps through higher vehicle registration fees or some other driving-related charge, sources said. The rest of the plan is expected to include two other key recommendations from a panel headed by…Ravitch: modest fare hikes and a payroll tax on businesses in the MTA region, sources said.

After they emerged from a closed-door meeting with Gov. Paterson, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) and Smith said they expect to finish hashing out the details of the doomsday-derailing plan early in the week. “Based on the conversations we’ve had of late, I think it won’t be in the budget bill but I think we’ll be passing it around the same time,” Smith said.

As the weekend ticked on, nothing else leaked out, but Senators expressed their belief that a deal could be reached early this week. The quotes NY1 dragged up from the Senators are rather priceless too. “The Democratic conference was always committed to do something responsible to stop the fare hikes, to improve service, to not develop tolls which exacerbate the problems of the working class in this city,” Bronx Senator Pedro Espada Jr., said.

Said Ruben Diaz, Sr., one Senator who probably doesn’t ride the subways, “My conscience is telling me that we in the Senate are having the best package for everyone that rides the subway.”

I will wait to reserve judgment on the adequacy or effectiveness of this plan until the details are released. It sounds as though Comptroller William C. Thompson’s driver license fee plan may be back on the table.

As is always the case from Albany, the Senate will now end up claiming the fare hike/service cuts high ground. They can craft a media image as rescuers of the MTA and earn undeserved political points for a financial crisis of their own doing.

Obviously, this story is far from over, but I am optimistic that the MTA’s Doomsday budget will be avoided. For now.