Must control our transit ‘destiny’
City Council Speaker Corey Johnson wants to wrest control of the MTA from Gov. Cuomo.
Johnson spent the entirety of his first “State of the City” address Tuesday laying out a sweeping transit vision for Gotham, calling for the creation of a new mass transit authority Johnson dubbed “Big Apple Transit,” or BAT.
The new agency would oversee the city’s subway and bus systems, currently blanketed under NYC Transit, as well as the MTA’s bridges and tunnels. It would form a new MTA as an ancillary agency, overseeing commuter lines and capital construction.
“The city doesn’t control the MTA — the MTA is an authority that is controlled by the governor,” Johnson said. “We must take control of our destiny. We must have municipal control of our mass transit system. I’m deadly serious about this.”
Johnson modeled his reenvisioned transit authority after the city’s water system, which is run by three different agencies. His plan would form a BAT board, the majority of which would be appointed by the mayor. A “mobility czar” would oversee the agency, as well as the Department of Transportation and the Taxi & Limousine Commission.
To create the agency — which Johnson says would be run out of the mayor’s office, which he is widely expected to seek in 2021 — the state would first need to cough over control of the MTA.
Gov. Cuomo, though, sees the whole issue differently. “The city already owns the New York City transit system,” Cuomo spokeswoman Dani Lever said.
The pitch to blow up the MTA and bring its local parts under municipal control is nothing new. Johnson has been floating the idea publicly for months.
Former MTA Chairman Joe Lhota also proposed the idea six years ago, as did Christine Quinn during her mayoral run.
“It’s refreshing to see someone stand before the people and say, ‘Hold me responsible, hold me accountable,’ ” said Lhota. “Mayoral control of NYC schools took years to achieve. So did NYPD control of the Transit Police and Housing Authority Police. The wait was long, but it’s been well worth it.”
The push for local control runs contrary to Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio’s pitch to reform the MTA and bring on a six-person advisory board to oversee its operations.
Those reforms are being floated as a part of the state’s next budget, which is being finalized this month and also includes MTA-funding congestion pricing.
De Blasio spokesman Eric Phillips said a city takeover of the subways would take years to achieve in a “best-case scenario.”
“While he appreciates the speaker’s transit vision and contribution, the mayor is focused on immediate actions to fix the broken subway system,” said Phillips. “Our subways are in the middle of a crisis that needs an immediate solution”
That mind-set was echoed by transit advocates, who said that passing congestion pricing should be the priority.
“Once we have billions of dollars to fix the subway, we will have ample room to talk about how it should be governed,” said Riders Alliance spokesman Danny Pearlstein.