The MTA called an emergency board meeting on Wednesday to outline the most draconian cuts it would make if the federal government doesn’t deliver on its request for $12 billion before the end of the year.
The agency says it needs the funds to balance the budget and get through 2021. In November, they will present next year’s budget options to the board, which it must vote on by December 31st. (Last year’s operating budget came in at $16 billion.) If the $12 billion doesn’t come through, the MTA is considering slashing subway and bus service by 40 percent, and commuter rail service by 50 percent.
Layoffs and fare and additional toll hikes other than the planned ones are also on the table. Nearly all capital projects would be put on hold under this plan.
In July, the agency estimated that it was losing $200 million a week from a combination of the dramatic drop in ridership and tax revenue and the increased cost of cleaning buses and trains to lower the risk of coronavirus infection. Subway service is down 75 percent from pre-pandemic levels, and buses are down 45 percent. Foye says if service levels continue at this rate the financial shortfall will be far worse than the Great Depression.
The MTA exhausted its first round of $3.9 billion in federal relief funding at the end of July. Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate went on recess without passing a second relief bill.
“The future of the MTA and the future of the New York region rests squarely in the hands of the federal government, the U.S. Senate specifically,” Foye said. “If they fail to do so, horrendous choices lay ahead.”
The MTA estimates that cutting subway and bus service by 40 percent, and laying off 7,200 transit workers would save the agency $880 million a year.
But the president of the Transit Workers Union Local 100 and board member John Samulsen said there’s no way the union would accept these cuts. “We’ve paid with blood,” he said, “That you’d come to ask the workers that just put their necks on the line by being on the frontline of this fight against Covid-19 is ridiculous.” The union says nearly 100 transit workers suffered COVID-related deaths.
The MTA’s CFO Bob Foran also predicted the agency would need to cut 50 percent of commuter railroad service to balance the budget, leading to 850 Long Island Railroad job cuts.
Speaking Wednesday, Governor Andrew Cuomo added the state doesn’t have enough money to prevent these types of cuts. “It’s not mathematically possible,” he said.
Sen. Chuck Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said they’ll fight to secure the funding.
17 comments:
NO federal funding! Get the money by cutting off all freebies to the moochers you've happily welcomed from all over the world who NEVER should have gotten them in the first place. Hell, there'd be a budget SURPLUS if this were done.
These criminally insane Progs really are something. Bash Trump endlessly, then ask him for money. Then again, this bunch banished the concept of shame long ago so now they probably don't know any better.
It's what you New Yorker's can expect. You are losing your tax base. Now guess who gets to pick up the slack?
Now is that the first set of books or the second one they were busted keeping a few years back?
"Now guess who gets to pick up the slack ?" Ah me and the Smucks !
Don’t worry we got Burn Loot Murder murals in all the right places
Will they still eliminate bus stops as they planned on doing before the pandemic began?
I bet all the new bike lanes look good now even to the bike HATERS here on Queens Crap.
Moe said...
How anyone could vote for Any Democrat at this point just amazes me.
@I bet all the new bike lanes look good now even to the bike HATERS here on Queens Crap.
No they don't look good.
The bike lanes belong to communist China!
“ It's what you New Yorker's can expect. You are losing your tax base. Now guess who gets to pick up the slack?”
Many states including red states will lose their tax base as well. The ones not locking down just prolong the pandemic and destroys the economy for a longer time based on anecdotal comparison of two cities during the Spanish Flu. The one that locked down got out of it faster and their economy recovered faster. Look at Asian countries like S Korea and even Vietnam.
New York has been losing its tax base for quite some time mainly due to the failed policies of the elected Democrat establishment. The pandemic has simply accelerated taxpayer flight. A net one-million taxpayers left NY state since Cuomo took office and those numbers are pre-pandemic. Ironically, this type of flight and economic destruction makes the ruling Democrats even more entrenched and powerful. As productive citizens flee, then only poor and on-the-dole Democrats are left. In political science circles, it's callled the "Curley Effect." That's how what haooened in Detroit, Trenton, Camden, Parerson, Newark, and dozens of other failed Dem-run cities around the country. It is also the reason that, if he wasn't term limited, DeBlasio would be reelected in a landslide.
@The ones not locking down just prolong the pandemic
What pandemic?
You can't be serious.
Look at Sweden, look at Belarus.
Locking down?
https://greatgameindia.com/belarus-world-bank-coronavirus-conditions/
Is Bill Gates a doctor? For God's sake even the head of the WHO Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is NOT a medical doctor.
Surely he is a defacto Marxist on the Chinese payroll.
Him as his buddies are responsible for these type of events:
https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/search/Results.aspx?perpetrator=2127
Looks familiar?
To all NYC Demorats please stay out of Texas !
Indiana stands with Texas; Don't New York my Indiana! Stay in NYC and suffer, liberals.
This is what happens when commies run out of other peoples' money.
Who cares? He has his security detail (feel sorry for the cops!) being driven around in a large SUV, so much for global warming.
We should all be happy now, plastic bags are illegal.
Or just call it for what it is, passing down the cost of business to the unsuspecting customers in the name of the environment.
Is not just NY. Take a look around the country.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/megan-fox/2020/08/28/judge-denies-qualified-immunity-for-kentucky-child-welfare-workers-who-illegally-strip-searched-children-n861686
CPS strip searching kids while the mother is buying muffins for them?
On Monday 8/30/20 expect the layoff notices to be handed out.
Civil Service workers get 30 day notice under contract.
Then the bumping game starts.
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