Any hope that the state government will fix the MTA ended last week when Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio released a disappointing reform plan. In the guise of promoting efficiency, it would weaken the last checks on Cuomo’s authority and disempower forward-thinking managers such as New York City Transit president Andy Byford. Meanwhile, the plan ignores the MTA’s biggest issue: the agency’s labor contracts require unaffordable overstaffing of its day-to-day operations.
Once, though, New York City didn’t need to beg the governor for help. From 1940 until 1968, New York City ran the subway itself. City officials, or city-appointed board members of the New York City Transit Authority, could choose subway managers, negotiate labor and construction contracts, and make improvement plans, without asking Albany for permission.
In 1968, though, the NYCTA and Robert Moses’ Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority merged into the MTA, on whose board the city gets only 4 of 14 votes. Though NYC still owns the subway, the MTA leases it on terms that give the city no control over subway operations.
The merger made sense in 1968, as it let the MTA use bridge and tunnel tolls to pay for subway improvements. But, as City Council speaker Corey Johnson recognized in his State of the City speech Tuesday, it’s time to reconsider. Johnson has proposed combining NYC’s subways and buses, as well as the Staten Island Railway and the MTA’s bridges and tunnels, into a new city-run organization called Big Apple Transit, separate from the MTA.
Johnson’s plan removes the biggest obstacle to improving the subway: state officials who abuse their control of the MTA. Cuomo, for example, has ordered many of the MTA’s worst decisions, such as forcing it to redecorate the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and bail out state-run ski resorts. He has also intervened in labor disputes to force the MTA to agree to unaffordable deals.
State politicians and MTA board members have also lavished subsidies on the MTA’s wastefulcommuter railroads. New York City contributes 68% of the MTA’s revenue, but between 2015 and 2019, the LIRR and Metro-North — which carry only 7% of the MTA’s ridership — receivedalmost three-quarters of all the MTA’s spending on expansion projects. The commuter railroads are subsidized four times as much per rider as the subway, even though their riders are mostly rich white-collar workers.
To be fair, de Blasio, who has spent his mayoralty taking 12-mile SUV rides to the gym and whose signature transportation initiative is an expensive ferry system, has a mixed record himself. But de Blasio, unlike New York’s de facto governor-for-life, will be gone in three years, and NYC has knowledgeable transit advocates and millions of daily subway riders who can hold the city government accountable.
Johnson’s plan will face funding obstacles. The new entity he proposes, Big Apple Transit, would spend $6.4 billion per year more than it gets in fares, and any plan to fund it from current MTA subsidies or from new city taxes will need approval from Cuomo and the state legislature. Congestion-pricing revenue, estimated at $1.1 billion per year, could fill some of the gap, but Westchester and Long Island politicians are demanding a huge chunk of congestion-pricing revenue be reserved for suburban projects. As a last resort, NYC could unilaterally take back the subway by canceling the MTA lease — if it could find room in its $89 billion budget to fund the subway entirely by itself.
But Johnson’s plan, whatever its political difficulties, is worthwhile: City control is the only way to fix NYC transportation. The subway’s problems have festered because the state politicians overseeing it, unlike city officials, will not suffer if it fails. It’s long past time for Gotham to take the subway back.
This piece originally appeared at New York Daily News
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Connor Harris is a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in New York Daily News