If the Metropolitan Transportation Authority can’t get its act together, “I’d rather have the City of New York run it,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. | William Alatriste/New York City Council De Blasio adopts a more aggressive posture toward the MTA

Mayor Bill de Blasio staked out a new front in his ongoing war with Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday, arguing that there is indeed a strong argument for mayoral control of the subway, which is now controlled by the governor.

If the Metropolitan Transportation Authority can’t get its act together, “I’d rather have the City of New York run it,” de Blasio said at an unrelated press conference, likening the idea to that of mayoral control of city schools.


“Twenty years ago, if you had said mayoral control of education, it might have seemed crazy,” he told reporters. “But now, the city is more and more effective and it works.”

Even so, he said, adding a note of realism, mayoral control of the MTA is “not going to happen anytime soon.”

Rather, he said he would focus his energies on getting the MTA to spend its money more wisely. To that end, he said he will seek to focus attention on transit problems, in part by personally taking the subway more, as he did Wednesday in an episode captured by a New York Times reporter on Twitter.

He also said he will advocate for the governor and the MTA to come up with a plan that more proportionately allocates resources toward the subway system, which carries the majority of MTA users.

De Blasio’s comments, coupled with his rare subway appearance, represent a new level of aggressiveness in his advocacy for an apparently deteriorating subway system. For weeks now, the mayor has shied away from the issue, prompting critics to argue that he was abdicating his bully pulpit to avoid a prickly political issue.

Meanwhile, Cuomo and the MTA he controls have continued to suggest that the subway’s declining reliability is not the governor’s fault, but the mayor’s.

Thursday was no different.

“There is no mystery to maintenance — it’s funding,” said MTA spokeswoman Beth DeFalco. “We have the plans, but we need the money and we need the city to pay their fair share of operating funds because their shortchanging mass transit is shortsighted for New York."

For his part, the governor went on NY1 Thursday and continued to argue that he had funded the largest MTA capital plan in history, an assertion that’s only true if you don’t account for inflation. According to the non-partisan Citizens Budget Commission, Cuomo’s capital plan is actually among the smallest in recent years.

It also apportions funding improperly, de Blasio argued Thursday.

“The reality is the MTA has a very substantial budget, including the $2.5 billion we gave them, and the money is not being directed at our subways sufficiently,” he said.

It’s “the biggest imbalance in the world,” he added.

De Blasio is not alone in that thinking.

“Certainly in the capital budget — East Side Access has overwhelmed the expansion budget,” said Manhattan Institute transportation expert Nicole Gelinas, referring to the new $10 billion terminal the MTA is building for Long Island Rail Road customers beneath Grand Central Terminal.

The Citizens Budget Commission, meanwhile, directed POLITICO New York to MTA documents demonstrating that the subway riders pay more of the cost of their ride than Long Island Rail Road customers, who benefit from more generous MTA subsidies.

Those numbers don’t even account for the fact that New York City taxpayers underwrite much of the state’s budget, writ large.

In 2015, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer issued a report that found, “the City’s contribution—through its riders, drivers, resident and business taxpayers, and the City budget—is far greater than most transit observers are aware of or have acknowledged.”

“The total operating contribution to the MTA from New York City’s residents and businesses was over $10.1 billion in FY 2014,” his report found.