Gov, now it’s time to show us the money

Finally — some progress. To angry subway riders who have vented on social media, petitioned their elected officials and even marched outside the governor’s office, MTA Chairman Joe Lhota’s improvement plan is like that hint of a breeze on a hot and crowded platform: a sign that relief is on the way.

New York’s subway system is reaching a breaking point after decades of underinvestment: Delays have skyrocketed, subway meltdowns are common, and trains are literally coming off the rails.

Gov. Cuomo (photo bottom) charged the Metropolitan Transportation Authority with outlining a rescue plan, and on Tuesday, Lhota announced a set of short-term fixes to address the most frequent causes of delays and breakdowns.

The plan is smart and thoughtful: Ideas include accelerated maintenance work on tracks and subway cars, repair teams spread throughout the system to get broken trains back in service quickly, and better communication with riders when something goes awry. The MTA will cut back on practices that have particularly irked riders, like automated announcements that seem untethered from reality.

The MTA knows what it needs to do. The next question is: Does Cuomo?

Lhota’s short-term plan comes with a price tag exceeding $800 million, which is not unreasonable to stabilize the transit system that supports the entire regional economy.

And that’s just for the next couple of years: A lasting solution will require a long-term plan that goes beyond these temporary patches, by investing in new signal technology and modern subway cars that can manage a load of 6 million daily riders. Lhota put an early price tag of $8 billion on that plan.

In order to make all these ambitious plans possible, Cuomo must secure a fair and sustainable revenue source to pay for the modernization of our transit system. The system deteriorated over the course of decades, and it can’t be fixed in a year. That’s why we need a revenue source that the MTA can rely on for years, rather than an unenforceable promise that more funding will be found, somehow, in the future.

Cuomo doesn’t only control the MTA; he also plays the dominant role in the state budget and in the legislative process that funds the MTA and sets the rules for how it does its job. Millions of transit riders are looking to his leadership: not just to demand changes from the MTA, but to create a long-term source of funding that will set the agency on a path to recovery.

Cuomo has taken a lot of flak for letting the subways fall apart on his watch. But he can also be the leader who rescues the subway and fuels a new generation of prosperity for the city and the state.