The MTA won’t make threatened service cuts and layoffs at least through 2022 — thanks to an influx of federal cash, transit officials said Thursday.
Public transit agencies across the country have been decimated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and New York’s MTA has been no exception — losing billions of dollars of revenue typically generated by fares and taxes.
The agency had previously said it may need to cut service nearly in half and over 9,000 transit workers could lose their jobs.
On Thursday, however, MTA Chairman Pat Foye told agency board members that $8 billion in federal funding, $3.4 billion in loans and better-than-expected finances had staved off immediate fiscal disaster.
“We have been able to eliminate the worst case service reductions that had been previously on the table for 2021,” Foye said.
“With improved financial results from last year, we are now able to take these worst case reductions off the table in 2022 as well.”
However, the agency’s new financial plan includes a wage freeze — which had labor leaders fuming that management was reneging on its negotiated commitment to a 10 percent salary bump over the next four years.
“If the MTA wants to go to war with its work force, then they will get a war,” TWU Local 100 President Tony Utano said in a statement. “We have a contract. We expect that contract to be honored.”
Meanwhile, the MTA’s $54 billion modernization plan, which officials put on hold due to the pandemic fiscal crisis, will finally commence with a $6 billion investment in 2021, officials said.
Future cuts are still on the table for 2023 and onwards, and officials suggested the MTA could “right-size” service even sooner to match ridership, which is expected to top out at around 86 percent pre-pandemic levels once the city reopens.
On Thursday, however, Foye expressed optimism that major cuts could be avoided with more federal funding.
And at the same time, US Sen. Chuck Schumer promised to deliver another “$6 billion-plus.”
“Delivering the billions in dollars needed to save New York straphangers, suburban commuters and over 9,000 MTA workers from severe service cuts and fare hikes was — and remains — job #1 for me because transit is the lifeblood of this town, and because the pandemic has taken such a toll,” Schumer said in a statement.
“Right now, I am working to deliver another $6 billion-plus, in addition to the $8 billion already delivered for the MTA, that will not just get us through this transit disaster, but energize the whole system for rebirth and revival.”