NY transit agency board approves doomsday budget that includes service cuts

NY transit agency board approves 2010 budget

NEW YORK — The board of the nation’s largest transit agency reluctantly approved a 2010 budget Wednesday that includes service cuts and could leave New York City children without free rides to their public schools.

But several Metropolitan Transportation Authority board members characterized the vote as merely the beginning of the budget process. They were required to pass a budget by the end of the year.

The MTA, which is facing a $383 million budget shortfall, will hold public hearings on specific aspects of the plan and then vote again. That leaves an opening for an 11th-hour rescue by the city or the state.

In the meantime, the agency’s new chairman, Jay Walder, said he’d work hard to cut wasteful spending. “We need to take the place apart,” he said.

The earliest that any of the service cuts could take effect would be the middle of next year.

Charging students full fare would end a policy of free or discounted rides that has been in place since 1948. Some 417,243 students now receive free Metrocards and another 167,912 get half-fare cards.

Students could end up paying nearly $1,000 per year in transportation fees. The costs would be significant in a city where 80 percent of public school students have family incomes low enough to qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.

In other large U.S. cities where thousands of students ride public transportation, their rides are subsidized.

Under the MTA plan, New York City students who get free rides would start paying half fare in September 2010 and full fare in September 2011.

Elected officials last wrestled over the student Metrocards in 1995 and came up with a deal that had the city and state each kicking in $45 million a year and the MTA paying the rest. The state recently cut its contribution to $6 million.

Transit advocate Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign, whose two daughters use student Metrocards, said he hopes someone can save the program once again.

“The mayor and the MTA and the governor have to figure out a way to solve the problem the way they did back in 1995,” he said.