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.
