NEW YORK, NY — The MTA will cut weekend subway service even if it gets a state bailout, officials said Monday.
And, for the first time in six years, the number of weekday riders dropped 2% in January, suggesting job losses have begun to thin the throngs of straphangers riding the rails.
MTA Planning to Cut Weekend Subway Service
NEW YORK, NY — The MTA will cut weekend subway service even if it gets a state bailout, officials said Monday.
And, for the first time in six years, the number of weekday riders dropped 2% in January, suggesting job losses have begun to thin the throngs of straphangers riding the rails.
Real estate tax revenues this year are $75 million below already scaled-back budget expectations, Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials said.
If the pattern continues through December, the MTA faces a $651 million budget gap – even if whopping fare hikes and other severe measures go into effect later this year.
“They’ve been horrible,” MTA Chief Financial Officer Gary Dellaverson said of recent real estate tax revenues at one of a series of committee meetings.
MTA board members today will again lobby state legislators to pass a bailout package crafted by former MTA Chairman Richard Ravitch. The bailout plan includes imposing tolls on the now-free East River bridges and creating an employer-paid payroll tax.
Authority officials previously said the bailout would raise enough money to cancel most, if not all, service cuts in the adopted 2009 budget.
NYC Transit, the bus and subway division, revealed Monday that gaps between weekend trains on 10 lines will increase from eight minutes or nine minutes to 10 minutes this June – bailout or no bailout.
Some 2 million riders use the affected lines: the A, D, E, F, G, J, M, N, Q and R. The agency says that will save $4.4 million a year.
NYC Transit President Howard Roberts said the adjustment wasn’t triggered by the need to save money but to better manage train traffic through the maze of construction.
“This is something we would have done anyway,” he said.
Andrew Albert, a nonvoting MTA board member, scoffed at that notion and blasted the change. “This is a major service cut for folks,” Albert said. “I think this is a terrible, terrible move.”
NYC Transit said on four lines the 10-minute schedule, if adhered to, would be an improvement to what riders now see because of construction-related woes. Also, the C train, now regularly suspended on weekends, would be able to run.
