Remember way back when the MTA promised that part of the new fare hike would include some general system upgrades with a $30 million improvement package? Yeah well, the MTA has decided they’re just gonna hold off on that for a lil bit.
This is such bullshit, it drives me nuts. If this is the stuff they can get away with, they should have just promised to make $900 million in improvements. Either way, they weren’t going to do it in the first place.
Here’s what we’re not getting:
More frequent service on the G line in Brooklyn and Queens, extending B and W service on weeknights to 11 p.m. from the current 9:30 p.m., and shaving one or two minutes from waiting times for evening service on the 1, 4 and 6 lines.
So much for that plan. I guess at the end of the day, it just means more of the same for your commute. For the few of us that actually pay an strange amount of attention to the happenings of the subway, we will be the only ones that get ultra pissed.
But riders having to now pay higher fares should be pissed. Part of the “agreement” were these system improvements.
They say that if the MTA finance department can get their act together by June, the improvements might still have a chance. Forgive me if I don’t hold my breath. I love how these financial troubles are all of a sudden brought up now…after the fare hike has already happened. Where was this information earlier? Saying that the numbers weren’t in is just bull. It’s not like they are being sent in by carrier pigeon. All you need to do is look up the tax forecasts etc. and you would have been able to see that the MTA wasn’t going to make as much this year.
So they should not have offered the improved services in the first place, or upped the fare $0.25 on the single ride fare.
SUBWAYblogger 
Huh? If they hadn’t raised the fares, we’d be talking about service *cuts* now! Fewer trains, deferred maintenance, hiring freezes. This downturn in the real estate market is real (especially in the outer boroughs), and the MTA gets a significant portion of its budget from dedicated real-estate taxes.
Now you can try to argue that they should have predicted this better, but why should penny-pushers at the MTA be better at predicting macroeconomic trends than, say, Alan Greenspan?
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@Harlan: Doesn’t the MTA operate on a budget that’s decided well in advance? what happened to the surplus money they once had? Wasn’t that allotted to upgrades and improvements? Why are we now living check-to-check?
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@Jason, the *budget* may well be decided in advance, but the actual income numbers are projections. If they have to change the projections, because of new information about real estate taxes, say, they have to change the budget.
Just about the only organizations that typically do cash-basis budgeting are certain non-profits. WNYC, for example, has a full years cash in the bank before they start making outlays.
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[…] when the news came out that the MTA planned to invest some $30 million on service improvements? Remember when it was “delayed”? Well, now is’t just not going to plain […]
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Hello Guru, what entice you to post an article. This article was extremely interesting, especially since I was searching for thoughts on this subject last Thursday.
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