Subway Buck-Passing

Last Friday’s papers were filled with news of Gov. Cuomo’s fight with Mayor de Blasio over who’s supposed to pay for subway repairs. Meanwhile, riders were fretting over something else: a derailed rush-hour Qtrain that prompted yet new misery.

Workers had to evacuate 135 riders; service was suspended on parts of the Q and B lines. And that was just the latest of the near-daily subway mishaps (derailments, track fires, signal problems) that justify Cuomo’s term “the Summer of Hell.”

Consider the disconnect: To the pols, it’s all about shifting blame and demanding someone else foot the bill. Riders? They just want to get where they’re going.

Take Cuomo’s assertion Thursday that “it’s the city’s legal obligation” to fund the subway —“even though we stepped in on a moral level.” (That followed his preposterous claim some weeks back that he has little control over the MTA.)

Cuomo asked folks to “look at the law,” which he says gives the city ownership of the transit system and makes it “solely responsible for funding” the subways.

Others disagree, but in any event, recent practice has been for Albany to pick up the bulk of the tab. Anyway, even MTA boss Joe Lhota, who backed Cuomo’s legal assertions, admitted that riders couldn’t care less about which pol has to pony up.

And why should they? Truth is, riders themselves cover 58 percent of the cost of their rides — with their fares. And while the city, state and feds cover the rest with public dollars, most of that money comes from taxpayers who live in New York City or the surrounding areas served by the MTA.

More important, as the Manhattan Institute’s Nicole Gelinas tweeted last week, the “MTA’s problems today (the ones people notice) have nothing to do with money.” Rather, it’s the agency’s “operational failures” that are at fault.

And even money issues are related to how the subways are run: After all, if the agency made better use of the funds it already gets, it wouldn’t need as much.

Transit employees, for instance, enjoy lucrative pay and benefits, compared to comparable workers. Control that and Cuomo and de Blasio would have less cause to fight over funding. (In an MI report due out next week, Gelinas takes a hard look at MTA costs; no doubt, it’ll shed light on the agency’s real money problems.)

Still, some officials, like MTAboard member Peter Ward, immediately went to the old standby: tax New Yorkers more.

Please. Only eight years ago, Albany supposedly bailed out the agency with two new levies: a 50cent taxi surcharge and a payroll tax. That was on top of the numerous other taxes meant for the MTA.

Sure, more money could help fix the subways. But not if it’s wasted — while the pols spend all their time passing the buck.