Mta Quotes

I came to view the world as a word puzzle and, with no special aptitude I can name, fixed on the whys and wherefores of language from my earliest days. Song lyrics. Signs. The stories read in first and second grades. My parents almost always read to us at bedtime. Poems by Whittier. Scenes from Oliver Twist. Kidnapped. Treasure Island. The names alone intrigued me. Dr. Livesey, Squire Trelawney. The name Balfour sounded the knell of the romantic. Robinson Crusoe. I loved to hear read the exploits of Natty Bumppo. Authors had an aura of the godlike to me. The Latin prayers fascinated me as an altar boy. I can still recall carved names on buildings I saw from the MTA train when I was a youngster. Who can explain why? Words were magic to me. I once inadvisably glued my finger and thumb together at the Magoun Library in fourth grade trying to amuse a pretty little girl on whom I had a crush, and when the librarian came over angrily to inquire what the problem was and I pointed with a shrug and replied, “Mucilage”—a word that always made me laugh—she very coldly stated, “You are more to be pitied than censured.

This process, known as Pointing-and-Calling, is a safety system designed to reduce mistakes. It seems silly, but it works incredibly well. Pointing-and-Calling reduces errors by up to 85 percent and cuts accidents by 30 percent. The MTA subway system in New York City adopted a modified version that is “point-only,” and “within two years of implementation, incidents of incorrectly berthed subways fell 57 percent.

Cuomo and de Blasio also agreed to cut $3 billion from the capital program and reduce funding for the second phase of the Second Avenue subway from $1.5 billion to $500 million. In October 2015, the MTA board approved a revised capital program. The Second Avenue subway advocates, however, still had some political clout. At a rally on 96th Street, a coalition—including city council members, state legislators, contractors, the Regional Plan Association president, the city comptroller, the Manhattan borough president, environmentalists, and labor unions—urged the MTA to restore the $1 billion that was cut from the project’s second phase. They were afraid the MTA would abandon future phases after it opened the stations at 72nd Street, 86th Street, and 96th Street. Extending the subway to East Harlem had become an issue not only of transportation but of environmental justice, with the funding cut seen as a slap in the face to East Harlem’s predominantly Hispanic community.18 State legislators all across the city understood the need to relieve crowding on the Lexington Avenue line, according to Assemblyman Brennan. He said, “The concept of abandoning the Second Avenue subway, especially for the Manhattan delegation, was not even discussable, not even conceivable.” Even though the mayor had agreed with the governor in private to cut funding for the second phase, de Blasio joined all of Manhattan’s elected officials in criticizing the MTA.19 Behind

Given the difficulties of working with New York’s regulations, its unions, and the MTA’s bureaucracy, not as many firms bid on the large transit projects in New York compared to other cities, an important factor behind the Second Avenue subway’s high construction costs. News reports have insinuated that the MTA’s bidding process is “rigged” to favor certain contractors who have close ties with MTA officials. This is a costly perception because fewer firms prepare bids for projects when they think the deck is stacked against them.

Instead of funding the completion of the Second Avenue subway, billions of dollars may very well be used for other transportation megaprojects in the New York metropolitan area, such as constructing a sorely needed new Hudson River railroad tunnel for New Jersey Transit and Amtrak, replacing the world’s busiest bus terminal at 42nd Street, and improving rail connections to the region’s airports. The MTA still needs to finish the Long Island Rail Road connection to Grand Central Terminal, a project that started along with the Second Avenue subway in the 1960s. Nagaraja, who as president of MTA Capital Construction was once responsible for its construction, referred to this project as “one of the biggest disasters in transit history.

In the foreseeable future, New Yorkers are likely to find themselves in familiar territory—waiting for the completion of a new subway line that is too popular to be canceled and too expensive to build. That was the situation when the Second Avenue subway was delayed for several years in 1932. Likewise, in 1944, Fiorello La Guardia told city council members that “the preparation of engineering plans for the construction of the Second Avenue subway has not been interrupted.” In a similar manner, the subway was postponed for further study in 1953. When construction was halted in 1975, Mayor Abe Beame declared, “We cannot abandon the Second Avenue subway; we must, however, defer it.” The following year, when asked whether the line would ever be completed, the MTA chair, David Yunich, responded, ‘‘Well, ‘ever’ is a long time.”57 In 2004, New Yorkers were told that an 8.5-mile Second Avenue subway with sixteen stations would be completed by 2020. Its completion—along with a subway system in a state of good repair—remains decades away.

While MTA officials were completing the assessment of their needs, they learned that President Carter was not going to be the system’s savior. On November 4, he lost his reelection bid to Ronald Reagan, a California Republican who wanted to slash federal aid to urban areas. Three weeks after the election, the MTA board issued a detailed report proposing a ten-year, $14.4 billion capital program to restore the system to a state of good repair. Most importantly, the board suggested ways to pay for the capital program and new legislation that would streamline the process so that projects could be completed in a more cost-effective and timely manner.44 Ravitch said, “I will not cease for a minute petitioning the government to provide more capital funding. But on the other hand, we should not put our heads in the sand and think that we have fulfilled our responsibilities at the MTA merely by exhorting elected officials to provide funds which, as a practical matter, are simply not available.” That is why Ravitch was prepared for the MTA to take on billions of dollars in new debt to pay for improvements. He suggested increasing the maximum amount of bonds that the MTA’s Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (TBTA) could issue, and allowing its bond proceeds to be used for transit improvements, something it had never done before. He also proposed that the MTA be able, for the first time, to issue bonds that would be paid back from future fares.

One legislative staffer said about the MTA, “It’s a Catch-22. The service is so bad nobody wants to say give them more money to spend—but if they don’t get more money to spend, service will never get better.” Not only did the assembly and senate need more than two days, but the Democratic leaders in both houses did exactly what Carey had feared would happen: they called on the governor to trade in the federal funds earmarked for Westway to help pay for the MTA’s capital program.

Carol Bellamy, the city council president, who also served on the MTA board, supported Ravitch and publicly feuded with the mayor over the MTA’s capital program. In March, she said, “There is so much posturing. All the characters—the governor, the mayor, the MTA, the comptroller, the legislative leaders, the council president—trying to avoid responsibility, and meanwhile the system collapses around us.” An exasperated Ravitch remarked, “There are always four factors involved in these types of decisions. They are personalities, political interests, geographic and economic interests, and substance. In this case, we have an excess of the first three.”61

The MTA had become increasingly reliant on borrowing money against its future revenue rather than on funding from the state and city. The State of New York had contributed $1.8 billion for the MTA’s first five-year capital program, but nothing for the 2000–2004 program. Meanwhile, successive mayors cut New York City’s contributions to the MTA’s capital programs. The public did not understand the MTA’s predicament. A citywide survey indicated that most New Yorkers thought the MTA earned a profit on its subway service. In fact, subway riders paid only 44 percent of the authority’s operating costs, with taxes and tolls making up the rest. In 2004, the fastest-growing portion of the MTA’s budget was the interest expenses on its debt. The MTA’s outstanding debt had skyrocketed from $9 billion in the early 1990s to nearly $20 billion by 2004, and its annual interest payments were over $800 million.95

Ravitch was hoping to change the public debate so that the media reported on the transportation network’s long-term needs rather than just its short-term financial woes. That would help him generate support for his plan to restore and then perpetually maintain the MTA’s physical network. Ravitch’s detailed list of needs and financing ideas gave his plan credibility. Now all he had to do was gain approval from the governor, mayor, state assembly, state senate, US House of Representatives, US Senate, and US president. Not exactly a walk in the park.

The MTA had limited flexibility to cut its expenses. The subways had very high fixed costs and the Transit Authority needed to provide enough services for the four-hour peak commuting period. While a private business would have tried to replace full-time workers with part-time workers or scaled back salaries and benefits, those were not feasible options for a state-run enterprise whose workers were politically influential. Instead, a new union contract in 1968 allowed transit workers to retire with half pay after twenty years of work, exacerbating the MTA’s financial problems and affecting service quality after most of the car maintenance workers and 40 percent of the electrical workers retired in the next two years.75 With

Although Cuomo could not get much support in the legislature for changing the MTA’s structure, Ravitch decided to resign anyway. He was frustrated and exhausted after four years of intense pressure in a position that did not pay him anything. He gave Cuomo only an hour’s notice before an August press conference announcing his resignation. The MTA chair did not want to give Cuomo an opportunity to say that he had pushed Ravitch out.78 In his autobiography, published in 2014, Ravitch wrote that both Carey and Koch had staffed their administrations with the highest-quality people they could find and did not try to micromanage them or begrudge them credit. Control, he said, “was not uppermost in their minds.” Ravitch then took a dig at New York State’s fifty-second and fifty-sixth governors (Mario Cuomo and his son, Andrew), saying, “This was not and is not the Cuomo style.

Many East Siders pushed the MTA to add a station at 96th Street. Metropolitan Hospital, a city-owned facility located at 97th Street, sent about one hundred doctors, nurses, and other employees to the hearing. One of its directors charged the MTA with “brutal insensitivity toward the sick poor” and said it was not a coincidence that Rockefeller University and New York Hospital, where the governor was a major benefactor, would have much more convenient access. After the hearing, which lasted four hours and fifteen minutes, the MTA board subsequently voted to add a new station at 96th Street. The Bronx did not have as much political clout as the Upper East Side.

The MTA had even bigger problems than financing the Second Avenue subway. In 1971, a Wall Street bond specialist said that working together, the Mad Hatter (a wacky Alice in Wonderland character) and Mr. Micawber (an ever-hopeful Charles Dickens character who landed in debtors’ prison) could never have dreamed up anything as strange as the Transit Authority’s finances. Fares, tolls, taxes, and federal funds have never been able to keep up with the MTA’s needs. At times, the state has tried to solve the problem by levying fees and taxes that most people would not notice. For example, only a year after the MTA was formed, the state legislature increased the tax that homebuyers pay when they take out a mortgage, and dedicated the additional revenue to the MTA.72

In March, Koch threatened to stop Westway if the state did not provide funding to protect the fare at the same time that it passed an MTA capital program. That was not an idle threat, since federal officials did not want to be caught in the middle of a local battle. The US Department of Transportation had clearly stated that federal funds for Westway would be awarded only if both state and city officials agreed that it should be built. In response, the governor told reporters that Westway would be built and that he was not planning on meeting with the mayor to discuss the issue. He said, “If the mayor wants to come to a meeting, tell him to bring money.” Deputy Mayor Bobby Wagner pointed out that “traditionally the politics of mass transit brings out the worst in public officials.”60

After the MTA released its $14.4 billion plan in November 1980, a governor’s aide told Ravitch that Carey was not interested in entertaining a fare hike or a tax package for the MTA. Carey preferred holding down the fare rather than financing a multibillion-dollar capital program. The governor also saw Ravitch’s proposal as a threat to Westway. A coalition of thirty-seven civic and environmental groups had filed suit in federal court to stop the highway project. They wanted the state to take the federal transportation funds designated for the project and use them for transit improvements instead. If Carey admitted that the transit system was underfunded and starved for capital, it would have played into the hands of the Westway opponents.48 Faced with resistance in Albany, Ravitch began a lobbying effort that no state official other than Robert Moses at the height of his powers could have undertaken. He started by pleading with the governor and his staff, explaining that without new sources of revenue he would have to dramatically raise the fare. Then he took his case directly to the public. Rather than minimizing the transit system’s problems, Ravitch made sure that reporters learned about all the delays and breakdowns occurring in MTA facilities. He visited editorial boards and told them, “If you don’t pay attention, the politicians won’t.” He talked to every reporter who called. Unlike his predecessors, he admitted that the MTA’s services, particularly during peak hours, were “deteriorating at an accelerated rate.” The newspapers, he said, were “my shield and my sword.

People like to talk a lot of shit about the MTA, but it’s really an amazing system, when you think about it. The trains run twenty-four hours. It serves something like four million people daily. Over a billion rides a year. And it does a pretty good job staying on schedule. Yeah, it could be a little cleaner, but it’s not so bad.

The default mode in New York is nothing happens. You need a powerful coalition of interests that politicians and bureaucracies can’t say no to.” When Yaro told Sander that he wanted the coalition to make the Second Avenue subway a priority, Sander initially thought Yaro was joking, because it seemed so far-fetched. Sander was convinced of the project’s viability only after talking with one of his colleagues, Sheldon Fialkoff, who had worked for Bob Olmsted at the MTA.62

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