Updated 4:30 PM
Local Leaders: MTA Can Take Action To Prevent Service Cuts
By: NY1 News
Elected officials, labor leaders and transit advocates said today that there are ways to prevent the massive service cuts the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has planned, a day after the agency unveiled that its financial situation is even worse than before.
The group gathered with straphangers this morning in Lower Manhattan to call for people to vent their frustration and demand action. They met at the Broad Street station where the M train stops, but possibly not for much longer.
The M line is one of two lines on the chopping block, along with several bus routes and free student MetroCards.
But community leaders say the agency can lessen the severity of cuts by redirecting stimulus funds to operating costs.
"Boarding up and shutting down the M line doesn't make sense," said Transit Workers Union President John Samuelsen. "Making our children pay bus and subway fares to go to school doesn't make sense. Subjecting four-million New Yorkers to significantly longer waits at bus and subway stops doesn't make sense."
"When the stimulus federal money was distributed, the federal government realized that New York and other jurisdictions would unfortunately most likely have operating shortfalls. That's why the law explicitly allows this, in a transparent way, to happen," said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.
Despite the calls to move the money to the operating budget, MTA Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jay Walder has said money in the capital budget would remain there.
The agency announced yesterday it is facing a $400 million budget gap this year, as the payroll tax that was supposed to help pay transit bills came up short.
That tax was implemented as part of the state Legislature's MTA bailout last year.
Meanwhile, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said all this could have been avoided if the state had adopted his congestion pricing plan to put tolls on East River bridges and charge drivers for coming into Manhattan during peak periods, with the money raised going to mass transit.
"We could have improved the safety and the quality and the frequency and reliability of mass transit in the city while at the same time unclogging our streets. That didn’t fly," said the mayor. "Maybe the state will take it up and adopt it as their own and that’s fine with me. But they have to come up with some ways to fund the MTA or the MTA will have to raise rates dramatically or cut service dramatically or more likely some combination of the two."
Riders say they have had enough.
"It's the same old story over and over again," said one straphanger. "They bring out the same threats and then they do some of them, they don't do some of them. You can't take them seriously, but at the same time, we're worried about the cuts."
"We thought we were going to get better service and we're not," said another rider. "I don't know what to say anymore. It's just disgusting."
The agency has said it does not plan to raise fares this year, but is planning to raise fares by 7.5 percent next year.
Meanwhile, the state's economic projections are growing even bleaker.
Governor David Paterson says the projected deficit for the next fiscal year has jumped from $7.4 billion to more than $8 billion since he unveiled his budget last month.
He blames the widening gap on the recession, which has caused tax revenues to dip and demand for Medicaid to rise.
Paterson will unveil a proposal to make up the new gap next week.
In a separate report, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli says the governor's budget relies on unrealistic revenue projections and savings assumptions.
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