Even With Service Cuts, MTA Is Short $400 Million

I one time watched 7 MTA workers stand around another worker chipping away at a small accumulation of ice on the platform.

I fully support cutting the student metrocard program. Let the DOE and the city foot the bill for transporting their kids to school. It's not the MTA's job.

Someone forgot to carry the 1 again.

"Oh oops. there's more."

Until there is a federal law that cancels ALL pensions and non-salary payments to government or former government workers, this will continue.

The MTA is broke because they pay former ticket clerks $100K a year in retirement benefits and healthcare.

That's not why the MTA is broke. They're broke because the state forces them to rely on unstable revenue streams.

I always find comments about bad management at the MTA funny. It's the most poorly and improperly funded transportation system in any large metro area in this country.

In their world, that's actually high praise.

The MTA is like a psychotic ex-lover who promises you again and again that they have changed their ways, only to disappoint with some pathetic rejoinder about how your personal sacrifices for them just aren't enough.

To the MTA: Stop hurting us with your ridiculous misuse of the limited brain power you have. How much can it possibly fucking cost you to run the M train? If you want to cut costs, why don't you just hire a lobbyist to persuade our very powerful Senator to find appropriations or additional subsidies instead? Why don't you *stop* hiring corpses who cannot respond to simple inquiries like "Help, I'm being raped/attacked/insert additional dilemmas here."

Why don't you perform a fundamental overhaul of the way you do business instead of fucking us and especially the G train?

the people that are bitching here are probably the same people who said that congestion pricing was a bad idea. maybe if we tolled our bridges and made driving in a limited resource (manhattan roads) we wouldn't be in this predicament.

yeah, right...

...Just like all that cigarette tax money has led to free health care.

Congestions pricing would've been simply a new revenue stream to be abused.

It's not that they don't take enough in... it's that the money isn't used properly.

New revenue streams just lead to new abuses.

Cigarette taxes have saved the taxpayers billions in Medicare costs. Nobody could ever have reasonably thought cigarette taxes would pay for free health care, seeing as we spend about $2.3 trillion on health care/year (according to the Office of Actuary Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services)

2.3 trillion. yeah quote what entire NATION pays when talking about the NYC tax on smokes. good use of statistics their Einstein.

Exactly. The MTA needs to start using the money they have more useful.

More money will equal more corruption and much more wasteful spending.

+1

Exactly. The MTA needs to start using the money they more useful.

More money will equal more corruption and much more wasteful spending.

Interesting to see all the people complaining about fare hikes. Sucks, I know, but you realize the current fare doesn't even begin to cover the cost of your train ride, let alone maintenance, upgrades, construction, and gross mismanagement. $2.25 is far too low to cover the costs of even a modest transportation system.

That's true, $2.25 doesn't pay the full cost. That's one of the reasons my taxes are so high.

Perhaps it's time to start cutting labor costs?

betcha, in two years subway fares will be 3 dollars one way, and they still will be broke.

remember when MTA was loaded with money 5-6 years ago? wasteful construction(along with the usual kickbacks,etc), meaningless projects, wasteful renovating interior of trains(not actually getting new ones), insane and powerful unions, overstaffed MTA police force, insane overtime shifts for many employees, and the usual corruption here and there - BAM - 400 million deficit.

Does the MTA review its books on a weekly basis? I swear there's a headline about doomsday budget cuts every time I tune in the local news.

In other news, all governments and municipalities keep coming up short (like 2 postings ago on Gothamist).

This is a joke, $400 million will soon become $2 billion, and soon enough we'll all be paying $4 to ride a train that comes once every 38 minutes.

Somebody please just put the MTA out of its misery already.

While we're at it, banning labor unions would be a positive step forward. Anyone realize how screwed NYC and NY State are with pension burdens? I soon might convert to libertarianism and move to Kansas.

Haven't they said this 3 times already in the past few months, so it's at 1.2 billion right now? I think the first round of firings need to happen in their finance dept., because clearly they don't have a clue how to do their jobs.

the financial industry should give money to the mta instead of their insane, outrageous and infuriating bonuses. 400 million is chump change.

Um, what did you think was going to happen when they got their bonus check? The state would have taxed it at 50% and used the money to pay the MTA, among other things.

Except now, because of the public ridicule they decided to take it in stock options and deferred comp, which pretty much gives them more money with less taxation later and bends us all over one more time with the lost funding now.

Way to go populists!