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