Metro

Corey Johnson proposes breaking up the MTA

He wants to take a “BAT” to the MTA.

City Council Speaker Corey Johnson on Tuesday proposed breaking up the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority and transferring city trains and buses to a mayoral-run agency called “Big Apple Transit” — or BAT.

Johnson, who is mulling a run for mayor in 2021, outlined his vision for improving mass transit during his first State of the City address at LaGuardia Community College in Queens.

The speaker hopes to bring the subways, buses, Staten Island Railway, MTA bridges and tunnels and portions of the authority’s headquarters under the mayor’s control to sidestep what he describes as political interference from Albany that has plagued city transit for decades.

“It will never be in the best interest of any governor to put the needs of the city above the needs of the rest of the state. But it will always be in the best interest of any mayor to protect the city,” Johnson said, calling the MTA’s current organization “a Frankenstein’s monster of transit subsidiaries with a 3,000-person headquarters layered on top.”





While the city currently gets just four votes on the MTA’s 23-member board, Johnson pledged to stack the BAT’s board with actual New Yorkers.

“They will be required to use the system. They will be required to live in the five boroughs,” he said.

Johnson’s key proposals hinge on state approval, which could be problematic.

For one thing, his proposal hinges on the passage of congestion pricing — the plan to tax Manhattan motorists below 61st Street — and its anticipated $1.1 billion in revenue.

The state is mulling such a plan, but it’s been met with some resistance. Johnson said the city could pass its own congestion plan if Albany doesn’t.

“Today I am here to say that if Albany doesn’t pass congestion pricing this session, the City Council will. The Council has the authority to pass a local law to toll our roads, and we are prepared to do it. We did it with speed cameras, and if we have to, we’ll do it again with congestion pricing,” Johnson said, referring to the reactivation of 140 school-zone speed cameras after the state-authorized program fell hostage to Albany politics and lapsed over the summer.





That move, however, required an assist from Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordering the state DMV to tell city officials who is registered to a given vehicle.

Johnson also seeks to expand the city’s taxing authority to fuel the BAT’s budget without relying solely on fare increases — another move that requires the state’s blessing.

City Hall pointed out nothing could happen quickly.

“A city takeover of the subways is a worthy goal that in a best-case scenario would take years to achieve,” a spokesman for Mayor de Blasio said, adding that he’s focused on getting more aid for the subways in the upcoming state budget.

The speaker also said he wants to rein in construction costs by addressing bloated construction union contracts and implementing more design-build projects to curb the cost of dealing with multiple contractors.





Johnson’s plan, outlined in a 104-page report titled “Let’s Go,” calls for a complete overhaul of how New Yorkers get around — with far less emphasis on driving and significant upgrades to the city’s bus and bicycle network.

Seeking to increase bus ridership 16 percent by 2030, Johnson is proposing new dedicated lanes, bus cameras and transit-signal priorities, as well as the creation of 30 miles a year of new lanes.

Bus boosters cheered the proposals.

“This is a great day for bus riders. The mayor and the speaker are campaigning to improve bus service for millions of riders who have been stuck for years. That’s the hallmark of a progressive city,” said Danny Pearlstein of The Riders Alliance.

On a related front, Johnson wants to create a “fully connected bike network” by 2030 that includes equipping “every square mile of the city’s street grid with bike infrastructure” — including dedicated lanes, the report says.





Johnson also said he’d like to see private ownership of cars drop citywide by 50 percent by 2050. And he suggested cutting the city’s fleet of vehicles — which currently totals over 31,000 — by 20 percent as of 2025.

The speaker raged against New York’s car culture, questioning the $4 billion planned overhaul of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in Brooklyn Heights and suggesting it might be wiser to do away with the highway altogether.

“The BQE only carries 150,000 vehicles a day. The Lexington Avenue subway line carries more passengers than that in a morning rush hour,” he said. “We shouldn’t assume that the best way forward is the old, car-centric way.”

After the speech, he walked off the stage to Queen’s “I Want to Break Free.”





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