Andy says MTA is like Frankenstein

Gov. Cuomo ripped into the MTA Thursday during a Manhattan lunch, vowing to rebuild the beleaguered agency from the ground up in exchange for a controversial congestion pricing plan.

Cuomo cast the Metropolitan Transportation Authority as a bureaucratic “Frankenstein” that refuses to innovate — citing the averted L train shutdown as his “wake-up call” to how the agency operates.

“No more finger pointing. We need a dramatic increase in performance and innovation,” Cuomo told the well-heeled crowd at the Association for a Better New York luncheon. “We need progress and we need it quickly.”

The governor, who is responsible for the MTA and chooses its leadership, wants to consolidate his control of the agency even as it has already bent to his will, particularly on the planned L train shutdown he prevented with new construction techniques.

The reforms Cuomo promised to put in his updated budget proposal will be linked to congestion pricing fees for drivers in Manhattan that he proposed earlier this year. The fees will be in a “lockbox” that will be used for capital work.

Without it, he warned that fares and tolls would go up 30% to cover the repair work, as MTA officials have said.

“If we are to continue to grow we must be able to move,” Cuomo said. “We must have a functional regional transit system.”