Keep Blaming Cuomo
Joe Lhota’s abrupt exit Friday as chairman of the MTA won’t make the subways any better, nor the rest of the city’s transit system. Even a top-notch successor can only do so much, unless and until Gov. Cuomo faces reality.
As Lhota put it mildly on his way out, the MTA “still [has] a long way to go to achieve the performance that New Yorkers demand and deserve.”
Yes, the $800 million repair plan he launched in his first month seems to have stopped the crisis that prompted Cuomo to bring him in. And Lhota hired top talent, such as Andy Byford, to lead the subway system.
But he could do nothing to fix the MTA’s finances, which just took a serious turn for the worse. It’s now staring at deficits that will be north of $600 million a year by 2022 — and that’s without figuring out how to pay for Byford’s Fast Action plan to modernize signals.
At this point, as Nicole Gelinas noted in The Post last month, even imposing congestion pricing on Manhattan won’t bring in half what the agency needs.
Plus, that “need” keeps growing: And while the pricetag for that was rumored at $30 billion or so, Politico reports that the MTA may soon ask for $60 billion.
Wage and (especially) benefit hikes are easily the agency’s least-controlled costs, yet there’s zero sign that Cuomo is willing to face down the Transport Workers Union. And as long as the gov remains such a fan of the construction unions, MTA President Patrick Foye won’t have much luck reining in the agency’s bloated capital costs.
Cuomo can overhaul MTA management, as he hinted before Election Day — but no leaders can do what Cuomo won’t allow.
If the gov’s eyes are indeed on a White House run, it’s not even clear he’ll want to address the MTA’s long-term troubles: He’ll be looking for whatever good news he can get over the next two years, and leave deeper issues to his successor.
Unless New Yorkers keep loudly telling Democrats all across the country that they’re furious at how Cuomo failed the subways, the gov won’t get serious about doing better.