NEW YORK – Without another stimulus effort from Washington, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is poised to decide on extreme service cuts and layoffs after sounding the alarm for months of a billion-dollar deficit caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Major budget-saving measures could be decided next month and passed in December, MTA President Pat Foye said Friday.
“Our estimate, if we were to make the service cuts we outlined a couple of months ago, up to 50 percent on Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North, up to 40 percent on the subway and buses, laying off about 8,000 people, “Foye told Steve Scott of WCBS 880.
The MTA board is scheduled to take the budget and financial plan at next month’s meeting and give approval in December, Foye said.
“Nobody in the MTA wants to do this, and frankly, it’s in the interest of the New York City regional economy, but also the national economy, that we get this funding, as the New York economy accounts for about 10 percent. percent of economic activity across the county, “Foye said.
The MTA received $ 4 billion from the federal government earlier this year, but has requested an additional $ 12 billion. It is unclear if additional money for transit assistance will be included in future COVID-19 stimulus bills.
New York’s motorists and transit users are already facing fare and toll increases next year. Tolls and fees are set to rise 4 percent in both years, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said earlier this month.
Failure to address the issue “would mark the end of regional public transportation as we know it,” DiNapoli said Tuesday in a conference call with reporters.
Passenger numbers plummeted more than 90 percent on the subway during the height of the pandemic, and riders have only started to return slowly in recent months. Metro ridership remains below 70 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels, DiNapoli said, well below the MTA’s projections from several months ago. Traffic on toll bridges and tunnels also dropped considerably.
The number of subway passengers exceeds 5 million per day during normal hours.
“Any projection is problematic at this point,” DiNapoli said, referring to the number of public transportation passengers. “But the general expectation is that you won’t see a return to pre-pandemic levels until 2023. And that’s obviously a big ‘yes’. Much remains to be determined.”
Even if normal passenger numbers return by 2023, the MTA still projects budget deficits totaling more than $ 19 billion through 2024, according to the DiNapoli report. Included in that is a projected deficit of $ 6.3 billion in 2021, which would be more than 50 percent of total revenue. The report called the gaps “historical in nature.”
Projected rate and toll increases would raise $ 145 million in 2021 and rise to $ 650 million by 2024, according to the report.
Increased cleaning and disinfection of the subway, train and bus systems, which has included the rare step of closing subways overnight, is costing the MTA about $ 1 billion in unplanned spending, DiNapoli said. He did not have an estimate of how much the MTA is saving from the night closings, but said the savings are likely to be outweighed by cleanup costs.
– .
