MTA Chairman Warns of "Crisis"

Last fall, MTA chairman Tom Prendergast took the wrapper off the agency's long-term plan to fund big projects like the continuation of the Second Avenue Subway. In January, he was waiting for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state legislative leaders to come up with $15 billion dollars to fully fund it.

"If you've been around long enough," he said at MTA's January board meeting, "this is the start of a process."

But the process unspooled unevenly. Cuomo was lukewarm. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver — who had previously helped secure billions for the Second Avenue Subway — was indicted. And in April, the MTA was still waiting for its funding partners to take action. Prendergast said he was watching two dates: "When the city budget gets approved in June, and when the Legislature goes home in June."

But now it's June, nine months after the Capital plan was unveiled. And in an appearance before the City Council on Monday, Prendergast told elected officials he was there "to sound the alarm, if you will, about a crisis facing the MTA and our city: the severely underfunded 2015 to 2019 MTA Capital Program."

But even though he called it a crisis, he was hesitant to talk about deadlines — perhaps because it seems increasingly likely that nothing will happen before the scheduled end of the legislative session on June 17.

"It's reaching the point where we need decisions so we can move forward," Prendergast said. When is that point? "We're fast approaching that point."

"I don't know if I would use the word 'crisis,'" said Gene Russianoff, head of the Straphangers Campaign. "I would use the words 'shocking indifference' by the governor's office."

Russianoff, who in the past has whipped out a giant "CuomoCard" at MTA meetings to inspire the governor to commit more in transit funding, didn't limit his anger to the executive branch.

Referring to a recent bill under consideration in Albany that would allow diners to bring their dogs to outdoors cafes, Russianoff said it pointed to a lack of legislative will to take up MTA funding. "We're not even up there with the dogs eating at the cafes," he said. "We're nowhere."

Now, Prendergast has his eye on December. If no additional funding is found by then, he says, the MTA will have to decide which projects to go forward with, and which to defer.