New York transit advocates won a partial victory when the MTA recently announced it would reduce its proposed fare hikes and service cuts. The MTA said a sudden $330 million transit budget windfall primarily comes from previously underestimated revenues from real estate taxes.

While expressing some relief, mass transit supporters continued to press Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg to do more, urged the MTA’s inability to keep a closer eye on its books, and pointed to the looming finance problems still ahead. The new Save Mass Transit Coalition, a large alliance fighting the MTA’s fare hikes, service cuts and under-funding by state and city, said "the underlying problem has not been solved, not even a little bit. Until there are new sources of city and state aid for mass transit, threats of service cuts and fare hikes will remain on the horizon." The Tri-State Campaign is a member of the coalition. It is seeking support from organizations large and small across downstate New York. Please join us in the fight by visiting www.savemasstransit.org.

Public hearings for 2005 fare increases and service cuts begin this week.

Meanwhile, elected officials at city and state levels remain in denial about the scope of the MTA’s problems. They continue to try to separate themselves from it, even though the Governor, state legislators and city government approved the huge spate of borrowing for the MTA’s 2000 capital program that is causing debt costs to severely pressure the fare and the budget for running buses and trains.

Mayor Bloomberg told the NY Times this weekend that a commuter tax and East River bridge tolls, two possible options for new transit revenue, were "politically impossible to enact." However, the mayor has never paid either concept anything more than passing lip service (compare efforts to the campaign the mayor has been willing to wage to build a new Jets stadium), while Governor Pataki is even further afield. Over the weekend, the governor’s office once again voiced its opposition to new taxes and tolls, perhaps raising the likelihood that the administration will try to postpone MTA and state DOT capital program enactment until after the 2006 elections. 

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