Angry straphangers and elected officials gathered at the Sheraton LaGuardia East Hotel in Flushing on Tuesday for the borough’s public hearing on plans for massive service cuts intended to close the MTA’s $750 million budget deficit.
In Queens, the MTA proposed not just eliminating the W subway line and numerous bus routes, but also city-wide cuts in Access-a-Ride and the termination of 585,000 subsidized student MetroCards. Jay Walder, the chairman of the MTA and other board members sat stoically through the hearings as disgruntled commuters held up signs protesting the proposed cuts and chanted “Enough is enough” and “No more tolls.”?
Local politicians, including Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) urged the MTA to consider other alternatives, apart from service cuts and fare hikes — asking the transit authority to make better use of federal stimulus money to bridge the budget gap.
The agency has received more than a billion dollars in stimulus money, but a chunk of that cash has already been earmarked for a variety of projects, including upgrading stations in Brooklyn, completing the Second Avenue line and building the Fulton Street transit center in Manhattan.
Earlier in the day, Quinn and other politicians delivered a petition signed by 41,000 commuters to the MTA, protesting imminent fare hikes and service cuts. “People are sick and tired of paying more and more and getting less and less,” she said.
Councilmembers Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Astoria) and Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Sunnyside) were among the Queens politicians who stressed how their districts were going to be hit. “How dare you toll and tax our bridges and beaches when you are giving raises and free rides to family and friends,” Vallone said.
Talking about how 7 train service cuts were damaging commerce in Western Queens, Van Bramer said the “continuous disruption of the trains is a window into our nightmare.” Referring to the cuts in Access-a-Ride, he said: “Locking our disabled and senior citizens in their homes is just not right.”
However it was Jimmy Vacca (D-Bronx), chairman of the council’s Transportation Committee, who elicited a raucous response from the crowds as he rattled off zingers like: “Mass transit is no longer for the masses.” “We are headed for a train wreck,” he said as people chanted “Enough is enough.”
However, the hearing took on a more somber tone when commuters went to the microphone. “How do you have the audacity to eliminate student fares,” one resident asked, “when 65,000 MTA employees each gets a free ride?” referring to a newspaper report that indicated the MTA handed out almost 15,000 MetroCards to its retired employees and several thousand more to its current employees, costing the agency millions of dollars each year. The resident complained that with the MTA also reducing the number of personnel at each station, the city was losing its vital “eyes and ears.” “We have had so many foiled terror plots,” he said, adding “why would we even want to think of that?”
Another Queens resident, Julio Mora, sat observing the heated proceedings, clutching a yellow piece of paper that indicated he had signed up to speak at the public hearing. The Flushing resident spends more than an hour and a half each way commuting from Queens to Tribeca every day and was particularly agitated by the proposed elimination of student MetroCards that would affect his family’s finances. Mora’s daughter, who attends Bayside school, was hit by the service reduction on the Q31 bus route. “Who was the genius that wasted 6 million dollars renaming the Triborough Bridge when we could have used the money for the MTA?” he asked.
Jacob Laite, a resident of Rego Park, sat in the back of the room with his buddies — waiting to make his voice heard about the proposal to discontinue the Q74 bus. Recovering after an operation on his spinal cord, Laite said he would often wait long periods for the bus. A political science student at Queens College, Laite said he was often late to class and had started resorting to hitching rides from friends now.
But the most emotional protest was made by 17-year-old Flushing resident, Aleksandr Rozentsuit. Suffering from a speech impediment, he begged the MTA via the sign-language interpreter to reconsider the service cuts, especially in the disability service Access-a-Ride. “I have a few friends who use the service,” he said. “Sometimes the vans are not clean and they get left in places a little short of their destination. They feel very scared,” he added, making it clear that the service cuts would strike a huge blow to anyone looking to get anywhere in the city.
This piece first appeared in Queens Chronicle
