Although the public relations department is still fully staffed (or more aptly overstuffed) many jobs at the M.T.A. are going to disappear along with the service that they brought. Unless some serious cash infusions from the state or federal level come in soon, straphangers will be paying 50% more for a lot less.
From The NY Daily News:
The MTA's doomsday budget will wipe out the W line, zap the Z line and ax more than 1,500 NYC Transit jobs, the Daily News has learned.
The list of bus and subway cuts the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will unveil at its monthly board meeting Thursday is extensive and potentially bruising, sources said.[...]
According to sources, the cuts include:
- Elimination of at least a handful of bus and subway routes, including the W and Z subway train lines.
Fewer transit workers in the subways because 600 or so station agent positions will be axed and about 350 administrative posts.
- Longer gaps between scheduled trains at midday and between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m.
- Expanded subway loading guidelines to allow for more crowding of trains.
- Eliminating bus service during late nights and weekends on dozens of routes that have low ridership.
The cuts at Administration and the low-ridership routes are good ideas, but everything else here stinks. It is obscene that they are reducing the quality (meh) of service to such a degree when the authority expects us to pay $2.50 or $3.00 per ride. Cover the place with advertisements if you like and beg for state and federal assistance like there is no tomorrow, but please stop making the people that use the system take this much of the burden. We've been paying too much already for being crammed into trains as it is.
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