The idea of the city taking control of the subways of the state MTA is something that many aspiring mayors used to launch their campaigns.
Former mayoral candidates Christine Quinn and Anthony Weiner proposed it in 2013. Candidate Joe Lhota suggested taking over the MTA’s most lucrative departments; the toll on city bridges and tunnels. And while it still seemed possible that city council president Corey Johnson could run for mayor, he promised to do so in his 2019 state of the city address.
Most current mayoral candidates expressed skepticism about the city taking over the subway in the midst of a fiscal crisis – during a forum on January 25, Scott Stringer said it was “impractical” for the city to take on debt service. Andrew Yang, however, is in favor of the high but painfully complicated proposal. In the same forum, Yang dodged the other candidates, arguing that although the numbers “are not pretty … it is difficult to get the city back on its feet if the largest artery is not under its control”.
“In a vacuum, it’s not a bad idea. It’s good because it always indicates that a candidate for mayor is at least interested in the transit system, ”said Nicole Gelinas, senior researcher at the Manhattan Institute, Gothamist. “But it kind of falls apart when you enter New York’s complex political economy.”
A point that is very easy to understand: the subway does not pay. The tariffs cover about half of the $ 17 billion in annual operating expenses. And they don’t even affect capital costs. The MTA depends on Albany’s ability to collect a variety of taxes from all New Yorkers to pay for the MTA. Everything from the passenger transport mobility tax, gas tax, to the most recently approved Internet sales tax, and the mansion tax.
“You can’t really operate the metro system without all of these tax sources,” said Gelinas. “The only way for you to say this [mayoral control of subways] seriously, it would be an attempt to reform the New York City property tax structure and give the subway system a large percentage of the property tax levy. ”
Although the MTA remains a state agency, New York state legislators, many of whom rarely use the subway, maintain great control over the system and are interested in maintaining that control.
“Only at this week’s state legislative hearing on the MTA budget, lawmakers across the state were urging the MTA to use more suppliers from the interior for its capital plans. This includes big wagon manufacturers like Bombardier in Plattsburgh, ”wrote Rachael Fauss, of the good government group Reinvent Albany, in a statement. “While municipal control of the subways can be politically attractive, state funding and interest on capital expenditures from the MTA would be difficult to disentangle and Governor Andrew Cuomo is unlikely to fully relinquish control due to his micromanagement of the agency.”
The MTA declined to comment. Governor Cuomo’s office did not respond to the e-mail for comment, nor did Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office.
Speaker Johnson, who is a strong advocate of mass transportation, supports the Fair Fares program and has favored control of the subways by the city, said that now is not the time to make wholesale changes to such a complicated system.
“I strongly believe in municipal control of subways and buses. It makes sense, ”Johnson wrote in a statement. “But this pandemic has obviously put the entire future of public transport at risk, so the immediate concern now must be to fight for federal funding to save the MTA and quick vaccinations so that we can recover the number of passengers and our economy as quickly as possible. What we can also do now is to continue improving our urban landscape with bus lanes, bus routes, cycle paths and pedestrian space, which is what my master street plan is for. Finally, the most immediate thing is that the metro must reopen the service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. “
Highlighting how much the New York governor controls the MTA, the agency’s president, Pat Foye, has repeatedly said that the 24-hour subway service will only return when Cuomo declares an end to the pandemic.
A single person in New York who could be held responsible for a system that New Yorkers depend on was one of the most compelling arguments that Mayor Bloomberg put forward for the mayor’s control over the school system. So, why not the subway?
If New York was curious about how it works, we could look at London, where the mayor has had control over the subway, buses and street control for 18 years. That’s why congestion prices have been around for years and New York City is still waiting. That’s why they have more exclusive bus lanes and can transport five times as many passengers per day on buses compared to New York City, according to Charles Komanoff, transportation economist, Hunter College professor and staunch advocate of transportation public.
“If, instead, all of that authority rested with the City Council and the mayor, I think we could have a different outcome and we could also ensure that traffic and transportation and city streets are a number one, two or three issue in New York City, instead of falling to the bottom of the pile, as usual, ”he said.
On Monday, Yang’s campaign co-manager Sasha Ahuja told Gothamist that they are advancing research on subway control around the city. “We cannot expect Albany to deliver to New Yorkers,” said Ahuja.