More subway lines to go dark at night
Straphangers can expect to see more subway lines shut down overnight for repairs, MTA Chairman Joe Lhota said Sunday — while vowing to find creative ways to get the funding.
Speaking on John Catsimatidis’ 990 AM radio show, Lhota said he doesn’t foresee the entire subway system shutting down overnight at the same time, but explained that it was the best time to do the work given that the system runs 24/7.
“It’s the only complete system that’s open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year,” Lhota said.
“We’re seeing more and more shutdowns late at night, from 11 o’clock at night to 5 o’clock in the morning, so we can get a lot of intense work done. You are going to see more of that going on.”
Lhota noted that permanent nightly closures — like those in London, Moscow and Paris — are “not in the cards.”
“The last thing I want to do is take away from New Yorkers something they’ve enjoyed, which is 24-hour-a-day service,” he said. “We may have some temporary disruptions, but we’re not going to have anything permanent.”
Lhota, who also served as MTA chair from 2011 to 2012 but stepped down to run for mayor in 2013, said he doesn’t want to saddle commuters with fare and toll increases, either.
“We are going to find efficiencies,” the chairman said. “I don’t want this problem to be on the back of the customers, on the back of the riders. You know, that’s not the fair way to do it.”
Mayor de Blasio has criticized the MTA and the state government that oversees it for being too slow to address delays caused by the subway system’s crumbling infrastructure. But de Blasio has taken his share of lumps, too, with critics saying he should devote more city cash to the MTA.
Lhota, who last week unveiled a $836 million plan to address the hobbled system, blamed the economic downtown in 2008 and 2009 for revenue cuts at the MTA that led to a 3,000-person staff reduction and delays in maintenance.
“If you’re supposed to look at something every three months and you decide to do it every six months, bad things will happen,” he said. “It finally caught up.”
Team de Blasio declined to comment on Lhota’s statements but noted the MTA spends more per ride on commuter rails like the Metro-North and Long Island Rail Road than it does on the subways .
“The MTA — which is run by the governor — spends $19 per commuter rail rider, while ponying up just $4 per city straphanger,” said City Hall spokesman Austin Finan. “That’s an inequity about which the mayor has been quite vocal.”