New budget gap for the MTA
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- June
- 11
ÂÂ The MTA faces a new budget gap of between $500 million and $700 million next year because of a slowdown in tax collections, MTA boss Elliott Sander said today at a hearing in Albany.
When asked if that means tolls and train, bus and subway fares might go up, he said not if the state increases its aid to the transitÂÂ system. “It’s too early to say,’’ he said.
“I am asking the Legislature and the governor for more financial support,’’ he said at the hearing, conducted by Assembly Authorities Committee Chairman Richard Brodsky, D-Greenburgh.ÂÂ That’s considered unlikely since the state, too, is under intense fiscal pressure.
One more bit of bad news from Sander: the $20 billion MTA capital plan is “badly underfunded.’‘
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on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 at 3:58 pm by Jay Gallagher.
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Category: Albany, Tom Abinanti, transportation
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Let the people who ride the MTA pay for the MTA. I don’t hear their riders coming to the aid of all the motorists out there by supporting a gas tax holiday let alone paying for the gas itself, and that’s exactly what Elliott Sander is asking for here. Perhaps we motorists should fight back and make ourselves heard by asking for the state to pay our gas bills and lower the taxes to boot? That makes as much sense as the rest of us paying for the MTA riders, but that’s how Democrat’s and communists think, so we know in this state who will be getting the free ride… Buckle up motorists… you’re going to get rear ended!
I think Metro-North fares should be held down as much as possible, for various reasons. But if you look at the cost of a subway ride, in particular with the Metro Cards, and look at those costs in terms of weekly commuting, it’s a real bargain. If a ride costs $3 each way for commuting to work on the subway—that’s only $30 per week.
Discounts should be in effect for seniors, etc. And maybe the MTA could explore “zone fares,” and charge according to distance traveled, like Metro-North does.
PS: I meant that if a ride SHOULD cost $3 on the subway.
Wahoo, do you work in Manhattan? $120 a month is no bargain (in addition to paying for Metro North).
I have a monthly pass, which went up $5 earlier this year. Given the hours I work, I would probably do better just to put $20 on my card each week.
The MTA is one of the most poorly run operations in the state. The Washington DC subway is cleaner, quicker, and cheaper.
What the MTA should do is probably not run trains at 4 and 5 AM. These are money losers and cause the whole cost of the operation to go up. If the MTA is having real financial difficulty they should also consider having a hiring freeze or paying workers less prior to hiking fares.
This is apparently want they pay their workers. By comparison a rookie cop apparently starts out at $38,000.
There’s an opening for Manager of the 7 line. Salary: $124,800 – $208,500.
Telephone Maintainer: $52,000 (plus night & weekend bonus)
Plumber: $52,000 (plus night & weekend bonus)
Structure Maintainer (aka Painter): $52,000
Manager, Car Accident Investigation and Testing: $60,700 – $95,900
Administrative Associate: $48,000
Customer Service Rep: $53,000
The MTA should also not have been run by Schummer’s wife, Iris Weinshall, for all these years. Talk about nepotism.
Ian—I was thinking of those who live and work in Manhattan. Not those who also use Metro-North. I did say I think Metro-North fares should be held down. I also agree the MTA is run poorly, and I also agree Schumer’s wife should not have been in the picture.
Yeah, I think we are mostly in agreement. I would just disagree with your characterization of it as a bargain. Then again, with these gas prices…
Ah, the Internet. Refuge of good information.
Iris Weinshall ran the NYC Department of Transportation, not the MTA.
So, what is the Department of Transportation, a poetry organization?
I apologize for incorrectly stating that Weinshall ran the MTA but she did work hand-in-hand with the MTA and was responsible for certain oversight of the MTA. I still believe that she was appointed and re-appointed for political reasons but I stand corrected on the MTA and will be the first person to admit when I have made a mistake.
No, the consultant will be the first person to admit that you have made a mistake! :-)
Don’t blame me. :) I just replied that she should not have been “in the picture.” And she was in the picture. In more ways than one. Any wife of Schumer has to be in one picture or other. That camera-hog Schumer is in more photos than the Lincoln Memorial. Or “old Sparky.”
Sorry to be obnoxious about Weinshall, but if there is a politician to excoriate here, it’s George Elmer Pataki, not Sen. Schumer (one m).
The MTA’s finances are complex, but search for farebox recovery ratio on Wikipedia—NYC transit is the least-subsidized public-transit system in America—with the subway system recapturing 67.3 cents on the dollar at the farebox. The commuter railroads, for what it’s worth, are subsidized far more heavily—with LIRR commuters getting the cheapest ride of all, just 42.7 cents on the dollar, according to the MTA’s statistics.
I hope we can all agree that comparing the salary of the 7-line manager to that of a rookie cop is pretty strained, but the point is taken: You want the MTA to pay its workers less. Fine. Tell me how long a TWU strike we should have endure to achieve that?
24-hour service does lose money, but it’s a marginal amount—the real cost is in investing in and maintaining the capacity (tracks, cars, Metrocard vending machines) necessary to handle the twice a day rush (but that sits unused at other hours).
And that brings us to the MTA’s high and growing debt-service burden, which was put in place mostly during the previous administration, when the MTA boasted about surpluses and was urged to avoid necessary fare hikes and pursue grandiose, unaffordable expansion plans.
I don’t consider myself an expert on the MTA but the TWU contract expired on December 16. Having a contract that expires during the busiest season begged for a strike as it gave the TWU the maximum possible leverage in negotiations. If the contract expired in say September, a TWU strike would not have as much impact and they likely would have received a less generous contract.
Can you give us the data to back up your assertions? I am skeptical that 24 hour service only costs a marginal amount. I very well could be wrong, see above, but I would like to see some hard numbers first.
If you want to blame politicians, Pataki I am sure deserves blame, how about blaming Democratic politicians for not denouncing the TWU strike and threatening to do what they could to break the union over an illegal strike.
I never would have voted for Pataki had I known his middle name was Elmer. He does, however, remind one of a stopped-up bottle of glue. He and his patronage posse set a new standard for hypocrisy, exceeded only by his replacement.
Ian,
And the Democrats ran what, exactly at the time of the strike? The fact is that the Pataki appointees to the MTA had spent the previous four years boasting about its “surplus”—often with rider- and taxpayer-funded television ad campaigns narrated by an actor who sounded coincidentally like the “Governor.” No secret why the TWU thought it reasonable to demand their share.
The union was clearly wrong and no one—Democrat or Republican—stood in the way of pursuing civil and criminal penalties against its leadership: Roger Toussaint was in jail when the MTA board agreed to the current contract. But once the strike started, it was already too late—the city would have been severely harmed by its continuation, and we got the contract we live with today.
For what it’s worth, despite the media’s fascination with “and it’s Christmastime” stories, I’m not sure the city would have been better able to withstand a September strike (remember that the subways and buses carry a large number of public school students to class). MTA’s performance data: http://www.mta.info/mta/ind-perform/month/nyct-s-ridership.htm makes it appear that December is in the middle of the range for ridership, ranking about fifth among the months.
Fair question on my claim about overnight service—it’s such an unthinkable question that I’m not sure a public analysis has ever been done. I can tell you that unlike DC, NYC’s economy does run 24/7, and the trains are patronized all night long (although the farebox recovery surely slows). Still, 14% of the MTA’s income immediately flows out as debt-service, according to the budget documents available here: http://www.mta.info/mta/budget/feb2008/0208_1.pdf. I’m very confident that the costs of overnight operation are far less.
Let Mike Quill and John Lindsay handle it all.
Quill—“The judge can drop dead in his black robes.”
About two weeks later, it was TWU president Mike Quill who dropped dead, literally. January 1966 transit strike.
Pataki—Elmer’s Glue. And we know from which part of the horse it was made.
Gotta love old Mike Quill if only because he showed Mr. Linsley, er, Mr. Lindsay to be the ineffectual birdbrain that he really was. I remember that Quill never pronounced Lindsay’s name correctly, probably intentionally.