MTA committee approves budget cuts that slash NYC subway, bus services

By Pete Donohue
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

A key MTA committee approved a cost-cutting plan that charges students to ride subways and buses and drastically scales back service across the city.

The Finance Committee's approval moves the plan to the full MTA board for a vote Wednesday.

If the plan is approved by the full board, students would pay half fares starting in September and full fares in September 2011.

Service cuts - including the elimination of 21 local bus routes and two subway lines - would be phased in next year after a series of public hearings.

The service cuts would start mid-2010.

Approximately 555,000 students have received free or discounted MetroCards in a longstanding program that had been fully funded by the state and city until 1995, when they slashed subsidies.

The state - which had been contributing $45 million a year to the program - reduced its share to $6 million this year, transit officials said.

MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin said no other transit authority in the country covers the cost of students traveling to or from school, and MTA Chief Financial Officer Gary Dellaverson said the state and city reduced free MetroCard subsidies in the 1990s, leaving the MTA to absorb more and more of the tab.

This year, "the state for all intent and purposes has eliminated its contribution to school fares...," Dellaverson said. An MTA budget document says, "The MTA can no longer afford to subsidize this free service."

Transit advocates at the committee meeting said MTA isn't to blame for the fiscal crisis but insisted the agency not slash service and end free rides for students.

"We know its not the MTA's fault. Blame Albany, not the MTA," Ya-Ting Liu, advocate with the Tri-State Transportation Campaign.. "One wonders where Mayor Bloomberg in all this. The city's contribution to the MTA has remained stagnant."

Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign said riders were told earlier this year a combination of fare hikes and state subsidy increase would avert service cuts.

"Riders have every right to be mad as hell," Russianoff said.

MTA officials have been struggling to close a $383 million budget gap for 2010. The hole was partly the result of unexpected cuts in state funding for the subway, bus and commuter rail system.

About $91 million of the budget hole came from the contract granting raises to subway and bus workers drafted by an arbitration panel in August. The MTA lost a court case seeking to have the contract voided.

The service cuts will further reduced the MTA's unionized workforce through attrition - and about 700 layoffs, Dellaverson said. Almost all would be subway and bus workers.

Jeff Kay, an MTA board member representing Mayor Bloomberg, angrily raised the Legislature's cut of $143 million in state funding to the MTA just weeks ago. He also stressed the budget is "nothing but a plan.

There are many, many steps and changes before things get implemented."