The M.T.A. Cuts Show They Mean Business

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.

Hey M.T.A. Cut The P.R. Before You Slash Service

It's well known that the M.T.A. has engaged in some wasteful behavior but the notoriety hasn't stopped them from continuing it. With all the talk of service cuts and fare hikes, the transit authority is serious about making the straphangers pay for economic bad times. The only problem is they aren't doing their part to make it easier on us, instead the M.T.A. wants to fool us into thinking it isn't that bad. For that mission, they are certainly spending quite a bit.

From The NY Post:

The MTA is weighed down with managers, marketing types and p.r. staffers - fat the agency should trim before it slashes service, hikes fares or creates new bridge tolls, state auditors told The Post.

The agency has a growing roster of 70,000 employees - including thousands of redundant and nonessential positions - and is still slated to hire hundreds more, the auditors found.

MTA records show 288 New York City Transit employees in "corporate communications," 70 Long Island Rail Road staffers in "market development and public affairs," and 52 at MTA headquarters in "corporate and community affairs."

Now most of those 70,000 employees are necessary to make the transit system move but plenty of excess jobs can be cut. The problem is those at the top want to keep the plum jobs even in bad times. In exchange, all we get are deceptive advertisements in the subway cars that try to convince us that the price hikes aren't as bad as we make them out to be. Also, claiming that the 2nd Avenue line is "overdue" is grossly misleading. Perhaps if it was supposed to be finished last year or the year before, o.k. Yet the damn thing had broken ground for the first time in 1929, yes, 1929!

Now quit it with those shameful ads and cut the fat before cutting the already crowded trains!!!