The chief executive, Janno Lieber, said the agency, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, would emphasize basic stuff to make sure the system doesn't fall apart after Gov. Kathy Hochul's abrupt move last week to halt a congestion-pricing plan that was to finance capital projects.
Among the future projects at risk was the next phase of the Second Avenue Subway line. The authority will now have to scramble to hold onto a $3.2 billion federal grant it had secured to help pay for extending the line.
He also said the authority would fight like hell to avoid having to make service cuts that could plunge the city's transit system into the kind of dysfunction that defined it in the 1970s and '80s.
Mr. Lieber's remarks on Monday were his first public statements about the implications of Ms. Hochul's 11th-hour decision since she announced it last Wednesday, saying she had directed the authority to indefinitely pause the congestion-pricing program out of concern that it would create another obstacle to our economic recovery.
#transit-system-safety #funding-shortfall #impact-of-budget-cuts #public-transportation-projects #economic-recovery-challenges
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