MTA Cuts Leave Riders With Fewer Trains, Buses

For millions of subway and bus riders across the Tri-State, Monday's commute was more crowded, more confusing and slower.

It was all due to cuts in subway and bus service from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, an organization that commuters affected by the changes had choice words for when they talked with PIX 11 News about the situation.

"I'm not feeling sympathy for the MTA," Olivia Sellers told our reporter. Her bus, the Q24, is among fourteen bus routes in Queens that have been either shortened or canceled altogether, forcing her to walk to the J Train instead. She had advice for the MTA that would help to save money the transportation authority says it desperately needs, " Get rid of the big people. Cut their salaries to five figures. Cut them and give us back our services."

The MTA says it has an $800 million budget shortfall that has to be made up anywhere it can, and that the subway and bus changes that went into effect Monday for the first time during a morning commute will save the authority $100 million. The cuts include MTA jobs, with hundreds of bus drivers and bus maintenance workers set to be laid off along with the bus routes on which they were assigned.

The MTA eliminated 38 bus routes, and decreased service on 76 bus routes in New York City. Also, Long Island Bus has 11 lines eliminated and shorter runs or decreased hours on seven lines. On the rails, two trains -- the W and the V -- are eliminated. While the Q line will be extended to Astoria Queens to replace the W, and the M train will cover some stations in lower Manhattan that used to be served by the V, overall there are fewer stops, longer waits and more crowding.

It was enough to spur this reaction from Steve Schmidt, a commuter PIX 11 News encountered in Jamaica, Queens, "Why make the people suffer? We're hard working people barely getting by. They want to give us less and charge us more. There's something wrong with that."

Posters and brochures have gone up at subway and bus stops to warn commuters of the cuts, but some were still unaware. Told about the changes, they were resigned.

Ernesto Arce, a disabled former armored truck employee who takes the bus from Brooklyn to Manhattan to visit relatives and doctors, told the Associated Press that as late as Friday he had no idea his bus was being canceled.

To make the same trip now, he says, he has to take a bus, transfer to a train and then to another bus.

"It's just time consuming, but what are you gonna do?" said Arce, 50, of Brooklyn. "And then the fares are gonna go up and what's gonna happen the following year, more cuts?"

In Brooklyn, three disabled women sued Friday in state Supreme Court, claiming the MTA cuts would limit their mobility. There are no handicapped-accessible subway stations in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst, where they live, attorney Sal Strazzullo said at a news conference. Two of the women are in wheelchairs, and one woman uses a cane.

"They do not have the ability to get to places in the city if the MTA goes through with these cuts," Strazzullo said.

A judge denied a request to suspend the changes, but ordered the MTA and parties to court July 22 to review how the transportation gap will be filled after the cuts go into effect, according to city councilman Vincent Gentile, who supported the suit.

As for the hundreds of bus operators and mechanics scheduled to lose their jobs, Transport Workers Union President John Samuelson said he would not accept the MTA's latest offer, which would save those jobs and possibly rehire employees already laid off, because there was no promise that there wouldn't be layoffs in the future.

The MTA also is trying to reduce overtime costs and to offer buyouts or lay off administrative workers.

The agency is scheduled to release an updated budget for 2010 and its budget for 2011 in July. The agency had originally said it would raise fares in 2011 by 7.5 percent, but that figure may change. The current one-way bus or subway fare is $2.25.

PORTIONS OF THIS ARTICLE WERE SUPPLEMENTED BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS