Statement by Ellyn Shannon, PCAC Associate Director
MTA Expand Service to Grow the MTA Out of the Deficit, Rather than Cut Service
At the MTA Board Meeting
MTA Headquarters, 2 Broadway, New York, NY 10004
October 23, 2019
Good Morning, I’m Ellyn Shannon, also of the PCAC. Today is a momentous occasion. We anticipate that you will vote to award more than $500 million to initiate the Congestion Pricing plan. We should ring it in and celebrate the hard work of Sam Schwartz, Alex Mathieson, Riders Alliance, Tri-State Transportation Campaign, the Straphangers Campaign, the Governor, and our elected officials who came together to acknowledge our surface transportation crisis.
So, it’s a turning point day! And it’s time for another significant mind shift, that should take place here in this room by this Board, and by our elected officials. It’s time to say that we are going to find an additional funding stream and grow ourselves out of the MTA deficit rather than cut our way out by cutting service. The reason we can do this is because of the consistently improving performance numbers we have seen over the past year. Improved speeds, throughput, on-time performance, and dramatically fewer delays. And how is the public responding? With their MetroCards!! And what do these improvements mean? They mean that over the last two years, the track capacity of the system has increased. We also see our bus capacity rising with the new bus cameras, SBS routes, and the bus redesigns, which all increase bus throughput.
Moving forward with congestion pricing should be accompanied by a new Get On Board!! marketing campaign. One that adds service, and doesn’t take it away. You can do a cost-benefit analysis on how many riders we need to balance the budget, and then add that service to make it happen.
You can make the city and region thrive, with the power of our MTA system that our Operating Agency Presidents and their teams of people have made possible. Thank You!
Download here: 102519 PCAC MTA Board Grow Us Out Of Debt