Former MTA Chief Comments On Challenges Facing New Chairman, Suggests Tolls To Offset Budget Problems
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Governor Andrew Cuomo will soon name a new MTA chairman, and officials and commuters alike say that whoever takes the position next will be faced with several challenges, most notably from an ailing budget. NY1’s Tina Redwine filed the following report.Richard Ravitch, a former Metropolitan Transportation Authority chairman, is widely credited with rescuing the system from near collapse in the early 1980s. He’s said that whoever steps in next should have the management, financial and people skills to get the money the MTA needs during these tough times.
“You have to persuade a lot of people to spend a lot of money, whether they are taxpayers or whether they are transit riders,” said Ravitch.
The new MTA chief will inherit a $10 billion hole in the authority’s capital budget for maintaining bridges and tunnels, tracks and stations, and buying new trains and buses.
Advocates say borrowing would be irresponsible since the authority pays $2 billion a year in interest on money it already owes, and it's only been able to keep the system operating by massive service cuts and fare increases three years in a row.
Riders are angry they're paying more for less.
“There should be more trains, there should be more workers to clean up the place,” said one commuter.
Ravitch said the new chairman should lobby politicians to slap tolls on free bridges into Manhattan and keep a special payroll tax on companies operating in areas served by the MTA.
Even with that, straphangers can expect more fare hikes in 2013 and 2015. Advocates say the system can't be allowed to decline again.
“We need to maintain quality of service, while at the same time we make the system more efficient,” said Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign.
One of the new chairman's first challenges will be to negotiate a new contract with the 34,000-member Transport Workers Union. The current operating budget counts on getting the TWU to accept no pay increase for three years.
Until the governor announces his pick for MTA chairman and it is confirmed by the state senate, the MTA says the vice chairman of the MTA board, Andrew Saul, will be in charge.