(The following article by Joshua Robin was posted on the Newsday website on September 30.)
NEW YORK — The MTA adopted an ambitious plan yesterday to expand and renovate the region’s mass transit amid unanswered questions about how the deficit-plagued agency would pay for the $27.6 billion program.
The doubt prompted Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s four delegates to the MTA board to abstain from voting on the five-year plan.
“The plan is quite empty as a plan on how we are going to fill the resource side,” said Mark Page, director of the city’s Office of Management and Budget. He called for greater “state-based support for the costs of operating and the capital costs of the plan.”
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has accounted for about $15.5 billion in funds.
MTA chairman Peter Kalikow would not say how he expected to pay for the rest, but added that “we would not have proposed the program if we didn’t think there was a correct way to fund it.”
He added that he anticipated using bonds, even as the agency is under fire for too heavily relying on them in the past.
A spokesman for Gov. George Pataki also would not say how the state intended to fund the plan.
The capital plan now requires approval in Albany from the four-member Capital Program Review Board.
The debate is expected to be contentious – especially when it comes to $9.9 billion set aside for the system’s first major expansion in 60 years. Those projects include work on the Second Avenue subway, connecting the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal and work on an LIRR tunnel to lower Manhattan.
Gene Russianoff, staff attorney for the Straphangers Campaign, said he was concerned the transit system might decay if officials do not devote $17 billion of the capital plan to keep the system up to snuff.
But Russianoff added that he was hopeful that election-year politics might force Bloomberg to commit to keeping the subways working properly.
“He has to turn to the voters when he’s asking for their support and say what he’s done to improve the subway and bus system,” Russianoff said. “And if he’s sitting on a fare hike, cuts on buses across the city, closing 164 booths and reducing the program to fix the subway system, he’s got a lot of explaining to do.”