Few understand the real scope of the problem. The MTA has been made to borrow $billions for ongoing normal replacement -- maintenance really. It has mortgaged to the hilt to pay for an ongoing expense.

All those years it was reporting "surpluses," it was borrowing $billions. How is that a surplus? Because less was borrowed than budgeted.

The real deficit is about $3 or $4 billion per year, indefinately into the future. Soon half of the MTA's revenues will go to pay debts, pensions, and retiree health care -- not transportation.

Everybody was fat and happy while this was going on.

[...] our timeline on how the MTA’s finances unravelled so quickly, visit our previous post here. No comments | Posted in Infrastructure, New York City, [...]

My question is why MTA even needs to be implementing any cuts. What happened to revenue generated by the new 2009 MTA tax that local businesses and self employed individuals were forced to pay???

As a handicapped senior, I am appalled at the proposed cuts in Access a Ride, also by WNYC's failure to even mention this, compared to your nonstop reference to the potential damage to school children (agreed and lamentable) and to the discontinuation of a couple of low-ridership subway lines.

How much more difficult is the Fat Bureaucracy going to make it for Children and parents to get their children education?

How does a bureaucracy stand in the way of parental responsibility by not funding free fares? Before there were free fares to get to school, people didn't get their children to school? Abraham Lincoln has a free fare? If education is truly important, parents and children will can't find a way to get themselves to a "free" education? I applaud the MTA for their decision. It will build character and foster responsibility in both our young people and the parents of our young people.

The MTA is appauliing! They are crooks and out of touch morons. Their decision to make all these cuts will lead to a truancies to increase, crime to go up and dropouts to increase, fare beating will increase which also means courts will be over whelmed. I don't understand how could an entity like the MTA have cooked books two sets and no one goes to jail? Why even bother doing public hearings they are going to do what they want anyway. Bloomberg bought his reelection he shoudl use his money and loan it to the MTA. The MTA for decades have been run by greedy, selfish, incompetent people. People honestly need to be removed running that agency

this is outrageous-- How much more difficult is the Fat Bureaucracy going to make it for Children and parents to get their children education?
Politicians yap about education yet it is the first cut everytime
Wake up out there

Makes me realize quite starkly exactly how little we can rely on the government to subsidize our incomes for buying things like fares to trains.

If only we could remove government subsidies from the true cost of other parts of our lives, like food, pollution and education, we would know how much to charge our employers and/or customers for our work!

[...] also includes a 10% pay cut for non-union employees, was passed to close a $383 million gap that suddenly appeared after the state cut aid to the MTA, revenue from the payroll tax came in under the state’s [...]