By: Ilana Siyance

The MTA will need to drastically cut service and possibly eliminate subway lines unless the government steps in with a significant aid package, says an advocacy group.  As reported by Crain’s NY, the Riders Alliance has warned that the transit authority is in the midst of a financial crisis, and in the absence of close to $4 billion in federal aid, communities across New York City will suffer the demise of the transit service on which they depend.

The MTA is now ailing from the biggest financial crisis in its history, with a $10 billion deficit from fare and toll revenue loss and is losing up to $500 million a month.  In March, when Covid-19 hit, ridership levels plummeted 90 percent.   The MTA has remained committed to keeping service intact for riders and to keeping fares from spiking.  The MTA has only received half the funding it anticipated needing to make it through the 2020 pandemic.  The MTA has already secured $1 billion in bank loans.  Attaining additional loans will be unlikely as the Authority is heavily mired in debt.

To avoid this “doomsday” MTA scenario, the federal government would need to deliver a stimulus package of $3.9 billion to help the organization continue operations at its current levels.   That package would be in addition to the $3.8 billion already provided in the CARES Act, which has already been exhausted, as per the agency.

Without the aid, the Riders Alliance estimates that the MTA will need to cut $650 million in expenditures per month.  That would mean that MTA may be forced fully eliminate 12 subway lines, or eliminate all buses and commuter rail service and opt to keep full subway service.  Alternatively, it can cut subway and bus service so severely that the crowding would create a risk of a second wave of COVID-19, advocates said on Wednesday.

The Riders Alliance predicts that many communities would become isolated without transit –with key lines including the 7 train, 1/2/3 trains and the J and Z trains possibly eliminated.  The G, one of the only north-south routes serving the outer boroughs, would also be taken off the map.  As per AM NY, essentially that means about half of all service lines could be cut, Policy Analyst Danny Pearlstein said.  Those cuts would be roughly 20 times greater than in 2010, after the Great Recession, when the MTA made $400 million in cuts to subway and bus service, eliminating the V and W routes and affecting as many as 110 bus lines.

The potential breakdown in transit would most adversely affect minorities who most heavily depend on the mass transit system. Pearlstein believes major cuts using any of the options presented would denote a new form of racial injustice.  “New York is not a car city and too dense to be a car city… Two-thirds of our population depend on public transit infrastructure,” Pearlstein said. “We produce 10% of the nations GDP and if we go down we drag the national economy down with us.”