London in New York? The MTA might soon be doing it the UK way, and you won’t necessarily like it.
Instead of doing work on nights or weekends, the MTA could shut down entire segments of a subway line, even on weekdays NY1 reports.

Speaking of international influences, the New York Times features the wonders of the air-conditioned Delhi Metro in India.

New Yorkers might have a reason to be jealous with New Delhi commuters this summer.

State legislators in Albany are now over a month late passing the 2011 budget. While the Assembly continues kicking the fiscal can week after week, state agencies are left waiting to see how big the cuts will be.

For the MTA, budget numbers keep coming in worse. This week the agency reported an additional $72 million shortfall as tax revenues it had been counting on came in below expectations. This is on top of the $450 million already projected.

Riders in the city will soon begin to see the effects. Train lines will disappear, rides will take longer and be more crowded, and a fare hike could be coming soon. While city riders are being told to expect less for more, the city and state, say transit advocates, can’t afford a crippled transit system.

“The city is going to lose employment. It happened in the 70s and early 80s; it can happen again,” said Robert Paaswell, director of the University Transportation Research Center at the City College of New York. “By starving the MTA we’re really starving New York City.”

New York City provides state coffers with more than half of its net revenue. With the state’s budget security so tied to the city’s economy, anything that could make it harder for workers—like a poorly operated public transit system—could have a ripple effect.

“The fundamental issue is that the MTA needs long-term committed sources for capital,” Paaswell said. “The problem is that the legislature is so afraid of the tax word.” He favored a number of possible taxes, including a gasoline tax and tolling on the West Side Highway.

“The only reason New York is what it is today is because of our transit system,” said Tri-State Transportation Campaign’s executive director Kate Slevin. She said that the economic rebound from the 1970s and 80s was tied to the investment in the city’s transit system. Defunding now, she said, would have a negative future effect.

Elected officials in Albany, however, have few encouraging words for those hoping for a funding reversal.

“The state is doing what it can to get additional funds to the MTA. Generally speaking what it can do for the MTA it has done,” said Graham Parker, a spokesperson with state senator Martin Malavé Dilan of Brooklyn. Senator Dilan chairs the Senate’s transportation committee.

“People are used to is how this authority has been operating for the past several decades,” he said. “I can understand how in the long view they can’t foresee it working differently.”

Yet that’s exactly what Dilan and other state elected officials appear to be telling the MTA, and the riders it serves, to expect.

— Colby Hamilton

2 and 3 trains in Brooklyn join their L counterpart in having countdown clocks. Now more people in the borough can be deceived into believing their train will be on time.

The Daily News reports that a fourth suspect in the alleged plot to terrorize transit riders during rush hour has been identified…in Pakistan. The extradition process could get sticky.

The Brooklyn Eagle reports on secret subway exits.

The Working Families Party, their faux ads attacking the MTA bucked by the agency, have decided to get the idea off their chests and on to yours.

From alleged plots to blow up the subway to violence on the 2 train, safety on the subway has become a hot topic in New York City. While these issues have made headlines, transit officials have continued with plans to layoff hundreds of station agents across the city.

Even now, riders coming out of Times Square’s south exit will see a plywood and 2×4 wood barrier around what used to be a booth. As the MTA continues to get rid of agents as part of cost-reduction efforts aimed at filling a now-$400 million dollar shortfall, transit advocates and union officials warn the agency it’s making a mistake.

“It’s no way to treat the customers. It’s just leaving us down there, in many locations, without anybody we can go to for help,” said Gene Russianoff of NYPIRG’s Straphanger’s Campaign. “What are you going to do knock on the electrical closet?” He said he is concerned that, along with safety issues, fare dodging–which the MTA has said is a point of concern–will become more rampant.

“It would seem to me that they’re trying to eliminate the human element in the system,” said Transit Workers Union stations vice-president Maurice Jenkins. He was referring to the MTA’s decision over the past few years to eliminate station agent positions, including 300 in the fall of 2009. Another 450 have been added to that number in the most recent round of cost-cutting measures.

“This is a national crisis actually. It’s not just a crisis in new york city,” said Kate Slevin, executive director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. “We obviously don’t have enough money to keep our transit system as safe as we would like it to be.” Slevin, an urban planner by trade, noted that funding to transit agencies across the region has been slashed. Her organization is calling on city, state and federal officials to make mass transit a funding priority.

An MTA representative pointed to record-low overall crime rates as an indicator that the police have the situation under control. Whether or not police alone can manage as large and porous a transit system as New York’s remains to be seen. What is for certain is that riders will continue to see fewer red-vested station agents as they make their daily commutes.

— Colby Hamilton

The cash-strapped MTA rejected a month-long ad campaign – and a potential $25,000 to $50,000 in revenue – last week, calling the ads too obscene for public trains.

The posters, created by the Working Families Party, criticized the MTA and Mayor Bloomberg for allowing the agency’s financial problems to be passed on to riders, in the form of service cuts and rumored fare increases.

That controversy, partnered with unused ad displays on trains, fuel questions about how well the transit agency is capitalizing on potential advertising revenue. Cash from posters and signs hasn’t kept up with ballooning expenses, according to MTA budgets.

Ad payments are categorized with miscellaneous revenue sources in the MTA budget, making it difficult to know exactly how much money comes from advertising. However, the “other revenue” category – which is largely composed of ad sales – is budgeted to fall by 6 percent this year.

(“Other revenue” also includes property leasing, trademark licensing and equipment sales.)

If the 2010 budget stands, the MTA’s expenses will have risen 41 percent since 2005. Revenue from taxes and government subsidies will have risen at least that much.

But “other revenue” will have increased by just 26 percent.

The transit agency has tried to expand advertising dollars, but those efforts have been “very much harmed by the economic downturn,” said spokesman Aaron Donovan.

He noted that the MTA has launched several new advertising options in recent years: motion ads on the sides of buses, cylindrical ads on Grand Central turnstiles and wrap-around ads that have transformed Shuttle trains into giant traveling commercials for Google Maps, the History Channel and Vitamin Water.

— Simone Sebastian

At the MTA headquarters in Midtown earlier today, the public was given a final chance to persuade the transit agency’s board not to make real the proposed cuts to subway and bus service throughout the city.

After weeks of public hearings, hundreds of individual testimonies and hours of discussion, the MTA board finally voted 11-2 to pass the cuts this afternoon.

Although the two rooms in the MTA headquarters on Madison Ave were packed with reporters and hopeful straphangers, the vote ultimately passed in an anti-climatic calling for “yea”s and “nay”s. The meeting quickly dissolved after the cuts were announced.

MTA Chairman Jay Walder, who sat through hours of hearings in each of the five boroughs and was the target for much of the public’s criticism, gave a short press conference where he talked about more challenges for the MTA in the near future. Asked about whether or not state legislators should–and would–come to the MTA’s rescue, Walder sounded leery.

“I think the state always has the ability to provide resources to the MTA. Obviously you have to look at the state’s ability to do that in the context of the $9 billion shortfall that they have at the state level,” Walder told reporters. “I think many people spoke today about the fact that they were not optimistic about that. I think it’s appropriate that the MTA has taken the actions that it has taken.”

For  more, see our live coverage

— Dana Rapoport and Colby Hamilton

Student activists met with MTA Chairman Jay Walder on March 17 to discuss how to avoid cutting free and reduced-fare MetroCards.

— Colby Hamilton

There’s been a slew of mass transit news since Friday. Here’s your update:

New Yorkers aren’t the only ones concerned about the MTA’s plan to lay off hundreds of station agents. U.S. representatives from other states are calling it a security threat, according to The New York Times.

Finally! The Post is reporting that MTA is soliciting proposals from contractors to install wi-fi at Grand Central Terminal, Penn Station and on the LIRR and Metro-North.

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle writes about an old MTA building that leaders say is a blemish on the Downtown Brooklyn’s resurgence.

Politicians from the Northern suburbs are calling for an end to the MTA’s payroll tax, according to the Poughkeepsie Journal.

It’ll be news the day that there’s not a rumor that the MTA is contemplating a fare hike. Today is not that day. The Post has a story on the latest fare-hike rumblings.

The 7 train is back – early! The Queens Courier has the announcement.

You have news that we missed? Let us know. Leave a comment or send an email to nyctracks@gmail.com.

NYCTracks’s exclusive interviews with Councilmen Charles Barron and James Vacca before the March 13 city council meeting on the MTA’s proposed cuts for student MetroCards.

— Colby Hamilton

Video: New York City Council takes on the MTA from NYCtracks.com on Vimeo.

The City Council’s transportation and education committees held a joint hearing to question the MTA on the elimination of free student MetroCards. The audience was surprisingly sparse, considering the passion witnessed at previous hearings on the MTA cuts. But some of the council members were riled up. We have a three-minute video summary of the two-hour meeting.

— Simone Sebastian