SEE, I CAN SO RIDE SUBWAY

Blaz touts new fund strategy on R train trip

Mayor de Blasio took the subway Wednesday morning — an event that's rare enough to be newsworthy.

“People really depend on their subways — they need their subways to work, and they're frustrated because a lot of people I talked to said, ‘I don't know when I'm ever going to get to work,' ” de Blasio said.

That's what Hizzoner gleaned from his subway ride, which for most New Yorkers is just a typical commute but for de Blasio was an unusual reconnaissance mission as he stumps for a plan to fund the subways with a mix of congestion pricing and taxes on marijuana and internet sales.

De Blasio took the train from Park Slope to City Hall — only after he'd been driven from Gracie Mansion on the Upper East Side to the Park Slope YMCA, where he works out each morning. The city vehicles that accompany the mayor everywhere he goes still had to drive from Brooklyn to City Hall, despite his decision to use mass transit.

“I've ridden the subways for decades and decades. I understand what folks are going through. I ride the subway a lot as mayor,” he said when asked about his car commutes.

On the ride, de Blasio handed out flyers to straphangers and chatted them up about the details of his proposal.

“It's publicity stunt-y, but better than not,” one young woman the mayor spoke with observed after he'd moved on to talk to others.

The riders did not have stellar reviews of service along the R line.

“Better than the '70s,” commuter Jill Vinitsky quipped.

“I want to see more elevators,” Assunta Piompino, of Bay Ridge, told de Blasio.

Piompino — who has a home in the same village in Italy that de Blasio's grandfather came from, prompting him to declare her a “paisana” — told the Daily News she didn't expect elevators at every single stop, but that there ought to be more.

“I don't drive, and I go shopping — look, with the cart, I'm going to Macy's, shopping,” she gestured to a

. “When I go home, I'm going to get off at a different station where they have an elevator, and then take a car service or a bus going home.”

De Blasio said he was hopeful congestion pricing ould pass in Albany — even hough it has died there beore. “Clearly there are strong emocratic majorities in both he Assembly and the Senate,” e said, adding he'd had “extensive talks” with leaders in both chambers.

“I'm saying this now as a Brooklynite, the minute the governor's commission suggested a plan that took the bridges out of the equation, I can guarantee you that a lot of us in Brooklyn and in Queens thought, ‘Now this is something we can have a different discussion about,' ” he said.

The mayor has previously been an opponent of congestion pricing, and said the deal he hammered out calls for “hardship” exemptions. But he said the finer specifics of those would be up to the Legislature.