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

More disturbing news for NYC commuters. After a deadly weekend, new information confirms yet another concern for millions of straphangers.

“The two subway riders fatally stabbed along the downtown 2 line were attacked during a rowdy ‘train party’ — a fast-growing epidemic where youths, packing booze, smokes and sometimes weapons, take over a subway car in “wilding” episodes long after the bars have closed.

“It’s like something from the bad old days of New York,” a law-enforcement source told The NYPost.

Yesterday, 19-year-old Brenddy Garcia confessed to the stabbings but claims he was fending off a group of 7-8 drunken men who hit him in the head with a beer bottle.

Police have arrested three men in connection with the incident. Garcia of Brownsville, Brooklyn was also charged with criminal possession of a weapon, Gothamist reported.

With eliminating station booths and NYPD officers, due to recent spike in underground violence, security has been beefed up during high-crime period.

Two men stabbed to death, and a third man badly injured on the 2 train at 5 am Monday, according to NY1.

Police say Darnell Morel, 24, and Ricardo Williams, 24, were killed following an altercation with another group.

One of the men had a bag of trash and tossed it out the door as the train stopped at 14th Street. The trash struck one of four men boarding the train at that stop — and he pulled a knife, according to an eyewitness. Police stopped the train at the Houston Street station.

No weapon was recovered.

This week, service cuts were announced, but months before the MTA implements widespread transit cuts, the  agency has been already cutting on staff with fewer back-up drivers to save money, according to union officials and bus drivers, Gothamist said.

Today, Transit Blogger reported that the MTA officially announced the hiring of Robert E. Foran as the new Chief Financial Officer. Foran will replace Gary Dellaverson who retired in December. We wish him the best of luck, with handling the gigantic task on his desk.

To read and see more about who was on Madison Avenue this Wednesday, see our live coverage, round-up and slideshow.

Hundreds gathered in midtown on Wednesday, and waited for the MTA board to vote on the long discussed cuts.

Here are some more images from the event we covered live

The approved service cuts are dominating MTA news today.  We covered the event live, but if you want to see what the Queens Courier, the New York Post and the Daily News are saying, go right ahead.

The Post calls it the worst cuts in 35 years.

Speaking of history, Heater Haddon wrote a great amNY article about straps disappearing from the New York Transit system now that the Roosevelt Island Tramway  — the last place in the NYC transit system where one could find a real-life strap — is being renovated.  The term Straphanger, however, will not go so easily.

Also, our colleague at SecondAvenueSagas.com wrote a great post on the 110 year anniversary of the groundbreaking for the for the original IRT 1 line.  Ironic that that day — March 24th — coincides with the votes for service reduction.

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

We brought you the breaking news last night about the elimination of the V train. The M train will be picking up the slack but some Lower Manhattan stops will eliminated from the M route as well as part time service to South Brooklyn. The City Room at The New York Times has more.

Some homes near 94th Street along the Second Avenue subway route had been deemed unsafe–residents will soon have to move while construction continues. 1010 WINS spoke to some of the 28 residents who will have to move.

According to The New York Post, the MTA has cut back on new signage due to its budget woes.

Customers heading east from Queens might be losing a Long Island Rail Road route come this fall. 27east has more on service cuts in Nassau and Suffolk counties.

On Wednesday, the MTA will be voting on service cuts. The NYCtracks.com team will be live blogging from the board meeting tomorrow. The meeting starts at 9:30 a.m., stay tuned for up to the minute information.

The 7 train is making its way to the West Side of Manhattan—slowly but surely.

In February, Mayor Michael Bloomberg toured the future site of the 34^th Street & 11^th Avenue station. Tunnel boring machines are currently making their way to 42^nd Street where they will meet a currently unused subway tunnel.

Tunnel boring machines at the north and south tubes

The 7-line currently ends at 42^nd Street-Times Square. However, there has recently been much attention brought to what has been called the “West Side Extension.”

The project was given the green light in 2007 with an expected completion date of 2013. According to the NY Post, an independent engineer’s report finds that the project could be delayed until 2014.

Some are saying that the west side extension of the 7 train is barely an extension. Original plans called for a station at 41^st Street and 11^th Avenue but that station was scrapped shortly before the project began.

The Keyplan for the 7 train extensions

The new station at 34^th Street and 11^th Avenue will serve the Jacob K. Javits Center. It has been reported that an extra station would have cost the city $450 million. The price tag for the extension and single station was $1.14 billion in 2007, according to City Room. The current price tag is $2.1 billion. The new station will include platform doors which will cut down on track garbage and act as a safety feature.

–Walter Smith-Randolph