Stay at the controls, gov

Ayear ago, Gov. Cuomo was putting on the final touches and readying the party for a Jan. 1 opening of the Second Ave. subway. Little did he know that 2017 was going to be his year of the subway, and not because of the fancy new Upper East Side stations. For what he did with Second Ave., a project unveiled a month before the 1929 stock market crash, then unbuilt for 87 years, the governor gets full credit.

But exercising real gubernatorial leadership by turning around the breakdown-and-delayplagued state of the trains and finding a sufficient and steady revenue flow to run the trains — via congestion pricing for Manhattan — will prove to be achievements of far greater magnitude.

If, that is, Cuomo can prove his management chops by making the system work far more efficiently, and if he simultaneously follows through to win real change in the way subways are funded.

Next week, the governor is poised to take the biggest and most politically fraught step by, we hope, calling for tolls on the East River bridges, and taking other steps to properly price car and truck traffic.

That would kill two birds with one stone: making it less than infuriating for vehicles to move around city streets, and providing a new source of funding for a public transit system in need of one to be truly upgraded for the 21st century.

It’s a policy last championed, in a different form, by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a man with considerable powers of persuasion.

For Cuomo to succeed where Bloomberg failed, he’ll need to be persistent. He’ll need to use every tool at a governor’s disposal.

And he’ll need to demonstrate a willingness to, with MTA Chairman Joe Lhota, wrestle decisively with often bloated MTA budgets.

Over the years, the transit authority has wasted billions on misplaced priorities, along with a failure to attack structural dysfunction and bureaucratic waste that make already complicated infrastructure projects insanely exorbitant.

Fail to get the spending side of the ledger under control, and cowardly congestion pricing foes in Albany will cynically balk, saying the system has plenty of money sloshing around, if only the powers that be find efficiencies.

Attack the spending side up front via bold, groundbreaking (to use a word) steps, and the case for more toll revenue will be unassailable.

The governor has undergone a remarkable evolution this year — a transformation that we urged in this space on Jan. 3, writing that “he runs the subway” and “needs to keep his conductor hat on.”

At first, Cuomo tried to duck and dodge. But with encouragement, he finally stepped up, taking not only the glory on ribbon-cutting days but the heat on days of seemingly endless delays.

Then, equally remarkable, he came around from ruling out tolling the East River bridges to being on the brink of proposing tolls.

But in politics, there are few points for rhetoric. The real credit comes when you usher in change.

Mayor de Blasio, as the owner of the subway system, has only made it harder find the needed billions for transit and to curb traffic. His obstinate opposition to tolls has given cover to fearful legislators. Cuomo must overcome all of them to save the subway, for which millions will benefit.

Go for it, gov.