The money train

Amidst the coronavirus crisis, everyone agrees that doctors, nurses, EMTs, pharmacists, grocers, shippers, cops, firefighters, sanitmen, electric and water utility workers all have to get to their essential jobs to keep the rest of us going, especially here in New York City, which has more cases by far than anywhere else in America.

And nowhere in America do more of those life-savers and life-sustainers travel by mass transit.

So just as other essential services need federal assistance, so does the MTA, which has been clobbered not only by off-the-cliff ridership but by other dried up revenue streams, including tolls and taxes.

Even with far fewer passengers, the MTA is correctly keeping service at normal levels.

That allows for medically necessary distancing on rail cars and buses. But it also costs money.

Pat Foye, the MTA chair, projects his agency will need $4 billion for the next six months to start to close a newly yawning gap. We hope it doesn’t rise to that much, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s $1.8 trillion package, with less than $2 billion for the MTA, is unquestionably too chintsy. McConnell should ask his wife, Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, how people move in and out and around America’s greatest city.

Without solvent subways, buses and commuter rail, the New York City economy can’t survive and thrive. Without the New York City economy, the national economy is nowhere.

A nation staring down the barrel of a recession that could become a depression must rescue the MTA.