Transit chief: Get off my $40B back

NYC Transit President Andy Byford wants the city’s community boards to get out of his way.

With the passage of congestion pricing in Albany over the weekend, the self-described railwayman now has a dedicated pot of money to pay for his $40 billion Fast Forward plan, which aims to transform New York’s subway and bus networks over the next decade.

But in order to get the job done, Byford said, he needs the nitpickers and naysayers to keep their typical “not in my backyard” attitude to themselves. “Fast Forward is dead in the water if we have just absolute NIMBYism across the city,” Byford said Wednesday at a panel discussion hosted by the U.K. government on W. 18th St. in Chelsea. “We absolutely have to embrace that if we all want better transit as a system, then we’ve got to think the big picture.”

Byford took a not so subtle shot at community groups and elected officials who are opposed to the MTA’s plan to cut stops on the sluggish lower Manhattan M14 bus route in order to replace it with select bus service. “If every single thing we want to do, like speed up buses by taking out just a few stops, gets ‘nope, you’re not doing it’ [then] I’m wasting my time,” he said.

The transit chief is also concerned with community groups holding up plans to construct new substations, which provide electricity for subway lines. “There’s only a certain geographic radius that a substation can be located or it doesn’t work,” he said.