Category: MTA Economics

It’s fairly ironic that Sheldon Silver, New York State Assembly speaker, is earning kudos for his brave step in embracing East River Bridge tolls to save the MTA. A little less than a year ago, transit-watchers were railing on Silver for quashing congestion pricing in committee, and had Silver seen Mayor Bloomberg’s plan through the Assembly, the MTA wouldn’t be in nearly as dire financial straits as it is today.

But for now, we’ll have to let congestion pricing bygones be bygones. The MTA needs this bailout, and based on the misguided opposition of State Senate Democrats and illogical rumblings from Marty Markowitz, Silver and his proponents have an uphill battle.

To that end, Silver seems to have at least two of the major city newspapers lining up behind him. The Daily News begrudgingly embraced Silver’s plan while noting the absurdities in protecting drivers:

On the lower East Side, represented by Speaker Sheldon Silver, 82% of households do not own cars and more than half the commuters take mass transit to work. Across the river, in Williamsburg and Bushwick, represented by Assemblyman Vito Lopez, three-quarters of the households don’t own cars and less than 2% drive to work.

Even so, it took until last night for Silver to float a sketch of a plan for scaled-down tolls, and Lopez has trashed tolls. You’d expect better from pols with districts that would be hammered by service cuts. Silver’s constituents would lose the W line and get fewer trains on 10 other lines. Three bus routes (M6, B39 and X25) would be dumped, and others would have weekend and night service service chopped. Lopez’s district would lose the Z train and get fewer runs on the M, J and L. The B39 bus would vanish, and weekend and night service on other lines would be wiped out.

The transportation patterns are similar in legislative districts across the city. Lawmakers must come to their senses and protect the well-being of the bulk of their constituents with properly funded mass transit. To reject tolls without a smart alternative would betray the greater good.

Today, The Times opines in favor of the Silver plan as well. Like the News, the Gray Lady’s editorial board is less than thrilled with the watered down version of the plan but sees it as the MTA’s last hope. While recognizing that Silver is “probably the only one in Albany with enough clout to sell such a compromise,” the paper calls his efforts to deliver this toll “mak[ing] amends” for killing congestion pricing.

At this point, it doesn’t matter how it gets done or who does it. It doesn’t matter what Silver did ten months ago or how he’ll feel ten months from now. If he is the one with the political will to save the MTA, we’ll have to hope for the best. MTA officials know that Silver’s plan won’t go far enough, but that’s a bridge we’ll have to cross after we toll it.

Just a day after Albany promised fast action on the MTA’s financial situation, proposals are making their ways through the Senate and Assembly. While Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is primed to endorse a modified East River Bridge toll plan in the Assembly, Senate leaders from the New York City area have yet to embrace the plan, leaving the MTA’s financial future in doubt.

Silver’s proposal, while a start, would set initial toll levels at $2 a ride, on par with subway fare but well below the figure set forward by Richard Ravitch. In other words, Silver’s plan would probably be the worst of all worlds. The MTA would still need to raise fares and cut services to cover its deficit, and politicians would be up in arms over tolling. If that’s all he thinks he can deliver, so be it. It is, as some opposing Assemblymen noted, far easier to raise the tolls later on than it is to get them implemented in the first place.

According to The Times, Silver is ready to combat outer borough pols who misguidedly do not believe the East River bridges should be tolled. He’ll also have to face down Senate leaders who won’t embrace the Ravitch Commission recommendations as well. Jeremy W. Peters reports:

But by proposing new tolls — albeit more modest ones than what a state commission proposed in December — Mr. Silver has put himself at odds with many legislators in Albany, particularly those from boroughs outside Manhattan and the suburbs who represent people who drive into the city regularly…

“I put forth a plan that I thought was fair and reasonable,” Mr. Silver said as he was leaving a meeting with the Assembly Democratic conference in the Capitol on Wednesday evening. “Obviously there are some who don’t like the toll. And I put that in the juxtaposition of, ‘Look, this is the only game in town.’ ”

Some Assembly Democrats were already resisting the speaker’s plan on Wednesday. “Tolling the bridges is just not acceptable to me,” said Rory I. Lancman, who represents Queens. “Once you cross the Rubicon on tolling bridges the future conversation is merely, ‘How much is the periodic increase going to be?’”

“No one wants to have to do any of this,” Assemblyman Micah Kellner, who proposed his own plan a few months ago, said. “But we’re going to have to pay for the M.T.A. one way or the other.”

Meanwhile, in the Senate, Outer Borough representatives are spinning the same old tired rhetoric as they oppose all tolling plans at the expense of the MTA. If that is in there, there’s no way I’m going to vote for it and you can take that to the bank,” Ruben Diaz, Sr., a State Senator from the Bronx, said.

Do these politicians not realize that far more of their constituents will suffer if the MTA enacts its Doomsday budget than if tolls arrive on East River crossings? As that chart at right shows, only about five percent of all Manhattna-bound commuters from Brooklyn cross the bridges each day while over 32 percent rely on the subway. The numbers are substantially similar for the Bronx and Queens. Yet politicians are willing to sacrifice the subways for their precious free bridges that should be tolled anyway.

Furthermore, nearly as many Manhattan-based commuters used the bridges too. While these politicians are claiming that this plan penalizes the Outer Boroughs, that cry is far from the truth.

In the end, Kellner’s point of view will have to win the day. One way or another, the Assembly and the Senate are going to have to pay for the MTA. How they do so remains to be seen.

MTA Chair Dale Hemmerdinger talks about middle class drivers during his trip to Albany to fight for the MTA. (Via Elizabeth Benjamin on Vimeo.)

When New York State elected Eliot Spitzer as governor, transit advocates had high hopes for the future. Spitzer, a New York City native, seemed to understand just how important sensible transit policy and funding would be to the future of the city and state. Spitzer, however, met an inglorious end, and with him died the hopes of many.

Now, the state is stuck with an unpopular governor who is trying to stave off financial disaster. Yesterday, on a rather pessimistic day for the MTA, David Paterson threw what political weight he has behind the financially beleaguered transit authority. In a statement, Paterson urged immediate action from Albany for the MTA.

This week I asked Richard Ravitch, Chairman of the Commission on Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Financing, to come to Albany to advance my goal of enacting the recommendations outlined in the final Ravitch Commission report. This proposal is critically important to the people of New York. The fare increases and service cuts that will happen without this legislation will do further damage to our fragile economy and bring added financial strain to New Yorkers already suffering during this economic downturn. I have discussed this with the Legislative leaders, and they agree that this must be addressed before our final budget deliberations are underway. To this end, the Senate and Assembly have scheduled conferences for tomorrow to discuss this MTA issue.

The time to do this is now. These Ravitch Committee recommendations have the support of business and labor, civic groups and straphangers. I will speak with lawmakers who have any doubt about the critical nature of this issue, and have asked Mr. Ravitch to remain in Albany tomorrow to hold further discussions and bring this process to a close. We must get a final agreement in place within the next week.

And how did Albany respond? Well, no one can really tell. The Daily News’ New York political blogger Elizabeth Benjamin summed up Tuesday’s hearings:

MTA Chairman Dale Hemmerdinger ended his day of lobbying state lawmakers on Richard Ravitch’s tax-and-toll bailout plan much the same way he started it: Completely unsure whether it will pass in time to stave off massive fare hikes and service cuts.

“We are selling as well as we can,” Hemmerdinger said. “The alternatives are not pleasant. We will have to cut service. We will have to raise fares by 30 percent if this doesn’t pass or something like it.”

Asked to respond to lawmakers’ concerns that taxing the East and Harlem river bridges is unfair to working-class people who need their cards to get to work, Hemmerdinger responded: “I suggest they don’t drive. Take a bus take a subway. We don’t want to be unfair. We want to be fair but there is a presumption that people who can afford a car and they want to drive to work, that’s their choice as long we provide them with a reliable, reasonably cost reasonably reliable alternative and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Hemmerdinger’s words ring true to this transit advocate, but the politicians — the ones holding the purse strings — are being noncommittal. “At this point, we’re weighing all the facts, but we are going to do something on the MTA – I would tell you that in no uncertain terms,” Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith said. “Between now and next week, we are going to make a final decision on the MTA.”

On the Assembly side, Sheldon Silver, seemingly suffering from multiple-personality disorder when it comes to transit, couldn’t even commit to a timetable as Smith did. He again called the cuts “unacceptable” but wouldn’t reveal alternative plans or a timetable for a bailout. With exactly one month to go before the MTA Board must vote on the Doomsday budget, the clock’s a-tickin’ ever closer to midnight.

Things are not looking good for the MTA. With just 40 days left until the MTA Board is set to vote on a draconian package of service cuts and a fare hike, the prospects for a Richard Ravitch-inspired bailout are growing dimmer and dimmer.

The problems crept up on Monday when I noted how Westchester and Long Island pols were not embracing a 0.33 percent payroll tax. Today, the news gets worse. As William Neuman writes in The Times, no one is too thrilled with any of the possibilities. He writes:

When Richard Ravitch revealed his financial rescue plan for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in December, the harshest criticism focused on a proposal to place tolls on the East River and Harlem River Bridges.

That made the plan’s centerpiece, a proposed new tax on payrolls in the 12 counties served by the authority, seem painless by comparison.

But since then, resistance to the payroll tax, which would raise $1.5 billion a year, has been building, especially in areas farther from New York City with less access to mass transit.

And opposition is coming not just from businesses that would pay the tax but also from public officials worried about schools and health care. That is because the tax envisioned by Mr. Ravitch, 33 cents on every $100 in salaries and wages, would apply equally to private businesses, nonprofit organizations and government agencies, including school districts.

The quotes from public officials are what you would expect. “Opposed, opposed, opposed, opposed, absolutely,” Orange County rep Aileen Gunther said to Neuman. “It” — meaning the tax — “is going to be devastating.”

“The thing that irks us is we’re really paying for somebody else’s problem,” Ken Eastwood, an Orange County school superintendent, said. “It’d be nice if we could turn around and say to the M.T.A., ‘We’d like to tax each of your riders X amount of dollars for our school district.’ They’d freak out.”

The flip side to this, of course, is that the economy will suffer a far more drastic downturn without this tax than with it. Transit will become a problem rather than a integral part of a commute. The region — known for relatively speedy access from suburbs to the economic hub of New York City — will suffer. Property values will go down; wages will go down; productivity will go down. Those schools will lose a lot more as people’s tax burden drops than they will under the Ravitch plan.

It all sounds very doom-and-gloom, but that’s reality. Still, no one in the government is putting it that way. Gov. David Paterson keeps talking about an upcoming push to support the plan, and I hope that enough New York City representatives can garner the support needed to pass it. We can’t afford not to bail out the MTA, and no one knows that more than Richard Ravitch himself.

“Nobody likes taxes, nobody likes tolls, nobody likes fare increases, nobody likes service cuts,” he said to Neuman, “and everybody should be terrified by the idea of the system not continuing to be in a state of good repair and starting back on a slippery slope.”

“If drivers win, riders lose,” says The New York Times editorial board. I couldn’t agree more. It’s an important message and one worth quoting at length:

Facing big deficits, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is threatening big fare increases — from $2 to $3 for a subway ride, for instance — for everyone who uses public transit. Gov. David Paterson and other politicians are trying to head this off, or reduce the pain. Here’s one suggestion: Ask drivers to start paying tolls on the bridges that cross the Harlem and East Rivers.

Just about every commuter pays a fee of some sort — except for drivers who use those bridges. This is manifestly unfair to millions of others who take the bus, subway or railroad in this area to get to work.

Charging drivers their fair share was an important part of proposals offered last year by a commission led by Richard Ravitch, who once ran the authority. To put the entire system on a stronger financial footing, and to avoid both drastic fare increases and service cuts, the commission’s plan required contributions from riders, businesses and people who drive cars.

Riders would endure a modest increase in the cost of their trips. Businesses, governments and unions in the 12-county area around New York City would do their part with a modest tax per employee. And drivers would start paying new bridge tolls.

The paper of record urges Mayor Bloomberg to voice unconditional support because the East River tolls can help him achieve his congestion-cutting goals. It also urges Sheldon Silver and David Paterson to throw their voices behind this plan.

In the end, though, it’s an issue of fairness to all, and The Times recognizes this as well. They conclude, “If everyone contributes, no one would have to suffer the drastic cuts in service and draconian increases in fares now proposed by the M.T.A.”

It may not be the most popular path, but it is the one the city as a whole needs to support both its economy and its mass transit system.