MTA Chairman Joseph Lhota appeared on The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC Radio this morning to discuss his New York City Subway Action Plan. The Chairman took calls from listeners, discussed ways to improve bus service, outlined the 30-day plan he unveiled earlier this week to make immediate short-term improvements to the subway system, and the need for all parties to come together and fully fund the plan. Audio can be found here: http://www.wnyc.org/story/mtas-joe-lhota-man-plan/

Excerpt:

Lehrer:  And Mayor de Blasio issued a press release in response to the Governor’s speech this morning asking about funding, including will Governor Cuomo move to return the $456 million dollars that the state syphoned from MTA riders since 2011. And how much of the 1 billion dollars that the Governor committed to the MTA will go towards your plan? 

Lhota: So the Mayor is actually talking in riddles. It’s a canard. The fact of the matter is that if I showed you the books – and they are very public, and they are on line. Every year the state of NY has given more money than the previous years to the MTA. When advocates say that think more money should have been given, and therefore when the state doesn’t give it, the state cut back – listen – if you look at last year, we got more money this year and going all the way back all the way in time in doing it.  I don’t understand why the Mayor keeps going back to something that is just illogical in so many different ways. The money – the one billion dollars that’s for capital that the Governor talked about – was for a brand new signal system, new cars. That’s where it’s going. The almost 800 million dollars for this new program – the majority of it is operating dollars. You can’t use capital money for operating purposes. I sure hope the mayor knows that. And you know, the Governor this morning also committed to putting up half, and we’re looking to the City to be our partner in doing this.

Full transcript:

Lehrer: It’s the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again everyone and I am very happy to have with us the recently appointed chairman of the MTA, Joe Lhota. As some of you remember, he ran the system for the year 2012, and got high marks across the political spectrum for his leadership which included preventing damage from Hurricane Sandy and recovering quickly from the damage that did take place. He was then the Republican candidate for Mayor in 2013 against Bill de Blasio, many of you remember. And despite that, Mayor de Blasio has praised his appointment by Governor Cuomo to lead the MTA again. In the '90s, Joe Lhota was a key deputy to Mayor Giuliani including serving as budget director, deputy mayor and more. We all know about the recent spate of subway derailments, track fires and extended delays that have led Governor Cuomo to declare a subway state of emergency. On Tuesday, Chairman Lhota released a short term action plan aimed at shoring up the basics quickly and the bones of a longer term plan to go with it. Maybe you’ve heard the more eye catching proposals like standing room only cars on the  train and Times Square Grand Central shuttle to ease overcrowding delays but there’s a lot more to it than that. Chairman Lhota thanks again for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC and welcome back to public life.

 

Lhota: Thank you Brian, great to be here.

 

Lehrer: And listeners you can call in with your questions or suggestions for the new MTA chairman Joe Lhota on how to dig us out of the current subway service decline. 212-433-WNYC. 433-9692. Let’s start with some background. Since you ran the MTA in 2012, have things gotten much worse in these last five years in terms of daily reliability or are we having a moment of media obsession on the chronic imperfections of the big transit system?  

 

Lhota: No, the numbers actually show that there has been a decline. It really started in the last year, even less than that. You know there’s a lot of statistics, a lot of data on the MTA website and I encourage people to go there and you can start to see it. And so you know, there are some basic things we need to do to make the system faster, to prevent delays, to make it cleaner. The MTA’s got to do a better job of communicating with all of its customers. There are some really basic things. What I announced earlier this week really – someone described it to me as blocking and tackling and that’s exactly what it is. We’ve got to get back to some of our basics.

 

Lehrer: But what changed between 2012 and now to cause the current problems, to cause a spike of problems in the last year to use your time frame?

 

Lhota: You have to go back before 2012 because back in 2008, 2009 when the economy went south because of the mortgage crisis, we went into a recession. The state was losing money. The city had a decline in revenues. So did the MTA and the MTA at the time had to make very very quick maneuvers to maintain, to not allow them to go into a deficit, which they’re not allowed to do. And so one of the things that they did, in addition to cutting back on a lot of routes – bus service was cut back, headways, which is how much time between trains-- that expanded. And then they also expanded the intervals for maintenance. And things that were looked at every three months were then looked at every six months. You saw reduction. There was almost a 3,000 headcount reduction over a 2 year period of time at the MTA. Well when I was there in 2012, we brought pretty much all of the service back, but we didn’t extend the intervals of maintenance and that’s continued on over the last 5 or 6 years and it’s just catching up. So we’ve got to go back. You know it’s an old system, opened in 1904 – many of our cars have an average age of 40 years old. It needs some tender loving care.

 

Lehrer: With 20/20 hindsight, were there signs of decline toward the current problems that you either didn’t see in 2012 or now wish you had acted more proactively on in 2012?

 

Lhota: The numbers, when you look at the statistics, the amount of delays in 2011, 2012, and 2013 were nowhere near where they started to pick up in this past year.  And so yeah, if you look at the charts, the numbers were all declining in 2012 or going in the right direction. For the most part, it wasn’t there. But yeah, in hindsight we should know things like this. When Gov. Carey, through the financial control board, cut back so much of what was allowed to happen in NYC in the 1970s, that came back to haunt us with increase in crime and graffiti and lots of other things because we reduced the number of cops. You gotta remember: when things come back, to bring it back because if you don’t, an old city requires maintenance.

 

Lehrer: Let’s go through some of the points in your action plan. One is a stepped up signal repair program because signal problems cause a third of the major delays, how quickly can people notice a difference form this set of repairs?

 

Lhota: So noticing a difference is going to be interesting. I can put down charts and information on a daily basis to notice what’s happening with delays, how quickly trains are coming into and out of the stations and all of that. Your earlier question related to potentially there’s a frenzy going on. You know, the other day when we had a fire in the system due to trash, a reporter, quite young person, basically had never heard of a fire in the subway before. It was almost as if they’d never heard of anything like that.

 

Lehrer: But there are multiple fires every day.

 

Lhota: Not only every day but I go back to 1981. There were 5,871 fires on the subway system and last year there were about 685 fires. And this year, we’re on track to get about the same number of fires. But what’s interesting is that because people don’t have that frame of reference, things get exacerbated. Even brand new railroads and brand new subway systems like they have in Washington have derailments and things like that. It’s not just age. These are mechanical machines.

 

Lehrer: But how quickly could people notice a difference from signal repairs?

 

Lhota: I think from signal repairs what we should be able to see are trains coming more frequently and less delays.  And we’re going to have to monitor that and tell everybody that. As I mentioned to you, we have to do better at communications. We’re going to have to put all that out.

 

Lehrer: We had the President of TWU and he said signal inspection used to be every 30 days but it got cut back in the 1990’s to every 90 days and that had long term corrosive impact and we should go back to 30 days.  Sounds like you agree with him?

 

Lhota: John and I before the presentation I put together, John and I have talked a lot in the last 3 to 4 weeks. We absolutely agree with each other what the core problem is.

 

Lehrer: You also proposed doubling number of staff with medical workers because sick passengers are another major cause of delays and tripling the number of emergency response teams to cut response times from an average 45 minutes to 15 minutes when mechanical  problems crop up unexpectedly. Are those two plus the signal repair project the big three?

 

Lhota: They’re part of the big three. There are a couple of others. Cleanliness becomes very important. And I’ll describe why cleanliness is important. Not just fires. Everyone wants to think about track fires.  But the NYC system on a beautiful clear sunny day, even on a day like that, we take 13 million gallons of water out of the system. It’s a subterranean system—they have the same problems in Paris and London and Washington, D.C. And what’s really important is that when trash gets down there, it clogs that drain, water starts ponding. Our subways are electrical. Electricity and water don’t go together. The thing that’s very electric through all the tunnels is our signal system so anything we can do to maintain the power within the signal system is extremely important.

 

Lehrer: And before we take some phone calls, just one more thing on the signals because they seem so central and the riders don’t think about signals much except sometimes we maybe look to see if there’s a red light to see if we just missed the train. Longer-term, you proposed installing a whole new signal system with more modern technology. What does that mean? Replacing every stop light on the tracks--

 

Lhota: So we’ve done that already actually on two lines. One of them is already open. The  train has a communications based CBTC system and the  trains go a lot faster than any other line that we have.

 

Lehrer: The  train used to be one of those lines that was butt of jokes. Like the  train is now and some other ones, and then the  train got good.

 

Lhota: Well the  train became good because people started to take it. With all of the growth going on in Brooklyn right now…you’re right, in the mid-'80s there was serious discussion about shutting down the  train completely. Now it’s probably the most crowded line that we have in the system. Now the number  train. That starts out in Flushing and comes all the way into Manhattan, goes over to the West Side Yards. That line is going to have communications-based control in early 2018. I will tell you it’s in right now, what we’re working on with the manufacturer— it’s computerized – and so we’re working on the software related issues.

 

Lehrer: That’s thousands of physical points of work system wide. How long would it take?

 

Lhota: That’s the issue. The issue is it takes way too long. You know we have a system, unlike any other system in the world where we’re open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Other places shut down in the middle of the night and that’s when they do their repairs, their maintenance, their cleaning. And they can do a significant amount of work. Now, five years ago when I was at the MTA we started FASTRACK. FASTRACK allowed us to shut down whole sections of lines for five nights in a row. And that also helped tremendously in doing it. But Brian, let me talk about communications for a second. You know, folks who see FASTRACK, they’ll get a sign in their station that’ll say, you know, ‘This station will be closed from 11 o’clock at night 'till five o’clock in the morning. It gives alternatives. But what it doesn’t do is it doesn’t say what we’re gonna do down there—what work we’re gonna do. Because I think the people need to know that. We had over 1,200 workers in the system last night, working in our system. I want all of the riders—all of our customers—to know that we’re working diligently on their behalf to get the job done.

 

Lehrer: So is there a chance that the MTA will take entire lines or sections of lines out of service for longer periods of time than overnight or weekends to make serious repairs?

 

Lhota: Yeah, no. Right now we’re only talking about overnight. We’re not talking about complete shutdown of lines. I don’t think we can do that to the economy of the city. We obviously have a situation with the L line when we have to shut down due to the tunnel. And, you know, you mentioned what happened in Sandy. At the time, I said to everyone about that that we were able to get the water out, we were able to get the subway system up-and-running relatively quickly, and I was very very concerned about the negative impact the saltwater was gonna have on the tunnels. And in fact, we’ve seen numerous tunnels shut down at different points in time, you know, between Brooklyn and Manhattan, and this is the very next one.

 

Lehrer: My guest is MTA chairman Joe Lhota, just recently appointed by Governor Cuomo to try to turn around the recent decline in subway service. And Robert in Queens, you’re on WNYC. Hello, Robert.

 

Robert: Good morning. Can you hear me OK?

 

Lehrer: We can hear you fine.

 

Robert: Good. You know, I’ve been wanting to talk about this problem for quite a while. It just hits me, just a suggestion. You kinda breached it just a minute ago. Wouldn’t it be better just to shut the system down between 11 and 5 and get in there a massive cleanup and a massive job. Taking care of the signals and everything. If you did that for let’s say a year straight. You’re already putting people on buses at night anyhow. I know because I take the trains all the time at night, and there are so many places that I have to go, and I end up being thrown on a bus. Because this line is stopped, and this line is stopped, and we don’t even know that. But if you said to people—

 

Lehrer: So I gotcha and I’m gonna move on for time, but Robert, we’re gonna take your question seriously. He’s saying rip off the Band-Aid. Have a few tough years, or he’s saying one year. And get it done like that.

 

Lhota: We’re gonna do something similar to that, but what we’re not gonna do is shut down the entire system during that whole period of time. That’s not possible. We don’t have enough workers to do that. So we’re gonna do it line by line. We are gonna have intensive FASTRACK programs, just as you said Robert. 11 o’clock at night to 5 o’clock in the morning and get a significant amount of work done. You know, I’m glad to hear you like that idea. It’s one that is really important. In a city like New York, with whatever eight and a half, nine million people, you’ve got a variety of different approaches. Some people, some of your neighbors may not like it. So, one of the things we need to do is, we have to deal with this problem. Because we want the system open all the time, so we have to maintain it, we have to put it in better shape.  So thanks, Robert.

 

Lehrer: Renee in Manhattan, you’re on WNYC with MTA chairman Joe Lhota. Hi Renee.

 

Renee: Good morning, good morning. Thank you so much for addressing this. My question is about the buses. I frequent the M5, which used to run all the way from Harlem all the way downtown. And now they’ve cut the service where you have to transfer at 31st Street and get a 55. I want to know what the logic is to that. And the second thing is, when buses come, that problem of all of them coming at once after waiting 30, 40 minutes—and some of them are limited—is really frustrating. And by the way, Brian, thank you for having him on. It’s much better than the mayor. Thank you.

 

Lehrer: Thank you. It’s not an either or situation. And the mayor will be on tomorrow by the way. But you know, when John Samuelson the head of the union was here, he also said one of the solutions is more bus service and better bus service. Because there was a time in New York City where bus service was more user-friendly. Now people try to avoid the buses more because they’re so slow, even with the Select Bus Service, you know, express options that are available in some places. And that puts even more people on the subways, which causes even more delays. Do you agree with that?

 

Lhota: I agree with everything. And Renee, I’ve been back at the MTA for three-and-a-half weeks. My focus has been exclusively on the subway system. But I have the same issues as you have. The bunching up. I need to understand why that’s happening. It doesn’t need to happen. There are ways in which this can work. But Brian you also– So I will look into this M5 situation and why you have to change at 31st Street. That kinda doesn’t make sense. But I think it’s really important to– Look, on the way here, I saw six different trucks or vehicles in the bus lanes right now. We have got to get to a point where no one is allowed in the bus lanes but the bus. And that’s how we’re gonna be able to speed it up. Quite honestly, I spent a lot of time near 34th Street on the Far East Side at First Avenue and I’ll head over to Penn Station. On certain days, I’ll take the bus. I literally can walk faster than the bus. That is unacceptable. We need to be able to get traffic moving again. And I’m working with the NYPD right now about enforcement related issues. They understand the problem, but we need to get everybody making deliveries and everybody in the city to understand the problem.

 

Lehrer: Stuart in Brooklyn, you’re on WNYC with MTA chairman Joe Lhota. Hi, Stuart.

 

Stuart: Yes, hi. Hi, Mr. Lhota. I just have to say that I’ve been a resident here for over 25 years. And I think the problem is there’s a disconnect between the reality of what the MTA perceives and what we experience. There are not enough  trains. There never have been enough  trains. I get to Jay Street on an  train … A  comes by … An  comes by … and still no  train. It’s always been underserved, and it continues to be underserved. In addition, during that budget crisis, they took away a lot of our bus lines. B71 was a straight line between Carroll Gardens and Park Slope. It would connect the Museum, the Botanic Garden, the Main Branch of the Brooklyn Library. Gone. Gone completely. Seniors used it. Students used it. There’s no reason for us not to have service. You don’t want more car traffic, and then you take away our bus service, and we don’t have enough  service. Every hour of the day on the  is rush hour. And I beg you or somebody to ride it – not in those off-hours, but ride it when people actually use it. And you’ll see. I feel like we’re unfairly being treated. This neighborhood is being underserved and ignored.  And it’s not the ’50s and the ’60s. There’s a lot of professionals that go back and forth from Manhattan to Brooklyn. And the MTA needs to catch up with the reality of who’s living here.

 

Lehrer: By the way, even if they were working-class people, they should be served, but go ahead.

 

Lhota: Absolutely, everybody should be served. I’ve lived in Brooklyn now for 29 years and I know about the  train. And we are in the process of buying more trains so we can get them on the  train. I mean that’s one of the issues. We’re not holding back the use of trains. We need more vehicles to get on the trains. And the  train which I’ve taken many many times to and from Park Slope visiting friends. I live in another area of Brooklyn Heights very close to where you are, I think in Carroll Gardens. And I will also look into the bus service that goes between there and the museum because that’s a very important part of it. I do feel your pain. I am a New Yorker. I am somebody who takes the subways. I am somebody who also takes the bus. So, you know, there’s somebody in charge of the MTA now who will have that sense of what goes on in that neighborhood. But the reality is, you know, there’s also been a lot of changing demographics in Brooklyn. And quite honestly, I’ve asked some folks to look at, now people are living in parts of Brooklyn that we never even thought. They were very industrial areas. We really need to rethink how that works. I mean, one of the things just as an aside … At one point, every bus in Brooklyn went to the Brooklyn Navy Yard because that’s pretty much where everybody worked. Well, they retooled it for something else. We need to constantly be changing it because there are demographic changes all throughout the borough.

 

Lehrer: But is this also part of the signal and other technological structural problems? Because the other lines too, in addition to the  where people would say, ‘Oh the trains run…’ Like people who live on the West Side say the  train runs so much more often than the  or the  train. And is that because the signals and the tracks are more modern on the number  line? So they can take more trains?

 

Lhota: Actually just the opposite. The number  train on the West Side and the IRT system was the very very first one built. And it is by far the most robust system within the entire system. It was built by a private company at the time. Eventually the city was given it in the 1930s when mayor LaGuardia was in office, but we call it within the MTA the A system, the number lines, the B system are the letter lines – they were built by the City – and they are not as robust. They don’t have the same redundancy. You’ll notice when you are on the upper west side – all of a sudden when there’s a train broken down you can actually go around it because they built multiple different tracks. The number  train, the IRT, are by far the most robust in the system, and it’s the oldest.

 

Lehrer: There’s news this morning, Governor Cuomo spoke with the Association for a Better New York and he proposed Public/Private partnerships, and I don’t know if this means corporate sponsorships of individual subway systems, you’ll tell me. [*plays sound from Governor discussing partnership this morning.] They tried corporate naming rights for individual stations in the past, and I think it failed before it got off the ground. What is the Governor referring to, do you know?

 

Lhota: He’s really referring to a version of adopt a station. But what he meant before that was this is our MTA. Let’s not look at it as the people who work at the MTA vs. everybody else. It’s our MTA, and we want to keep it clean. We want to keep it efficient. Corporations have come to the table. This is a program that's really being driven by corporate New York. They want to find a way to help, and we need as many partners as is possible. They want to help with some of the funding. We’d like to get the Mayor to help with funding. It’s all part of that program. You know, we have adopt a highway program – we have adopt a park program. And one of the things we’d like to begin is the process of adopting a station. We think it goes a long way to making people feel good about their stations, participating in its cleanliness and various other different aspects.

 

Lehrer:  And Mayor de Blasio issued a press release in response to the Governor’s speech this morning asking about funding, including will Governor Cuomo move to return the $456 million that the state syphoned from MTA riders since 2011. And how much of the $1 billion that the Governor committed to the MTA will go towards your plan? 

 

Lhota: So the Mayor is actually talking in riddles. It’s a canard. The fact of the matter is that if I showed you the books, and they are very public, and they are online. Every year the state of NY has given more money than the previous years to the MTA. When advocates say that think more money should have been given, and therefore when the state doesn’t give it, the state cut back, listen, if you look at last year, we got more money this year and going all the way back all the way in time in doing it. I don’t understand why the Mayor keeps going back to something that is just illogical in so many different ways. The money, the $1 billion that’s for capital that the Governor talked about, was for a brand new signal system, new cars. That’s where it’s going. The almost $800 million for this new program, the majority of it is operating dollars. You can’t use capital money for operating purposes. I sure hope the mayor knows that. And you know, the Governor this morning also committed to putting up half, and we’re looking to the City to be our partner in doing this.

 

Lehrer: On capital vs. operating dollars, Peter Kalikow, who as you know headed the MTA from 2001-2007, wrote an op-ed piece in the Times saying the MTA already has enough money. And he wrote there’s currently a $32 billion five-year capital plan that contains 21 billion in the renew category that is the nuts and bolts of the system…track signalization, fleet replacement - another nearly 10 billion is for service enhancements or service expansions. If that money is spent wisely, he says – it’s already there.  You have the resources you need. Do you disagree with Peter Kalikow?

 

Lhota: No. I don’t disagree with Peter Kalikow. In fact, interestingly enough Peter and I just spoke a little while ago, and one of the things, he’s now writing a new op-ed because he realizes what they are talking about there is new signals and putting in new track. What I’m talking about is the work we need to do to maintain it. Two very, very different things. You can’t use capital money for maintenance. And we need to do just as you referenced before, what John Samuelsen said, if we’re gonna look at the tracks every 30 days, let’s do it every 30 days and not every 60 or 90 days.

 

Lehrer: There’s been a lot of press about the op-ed by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel who said Chicago doesn’t have the same service problems because they focus their spending on operations, not on new capital spending. We can easily fault the Mayor of Chicago for grandstanding, but Peter Kalikow wrote essentially the same thing in that op-ed, “the 80 year old signal system must take precedent over enhancement and expansion projects. This may mean that extension of the Second Avenue Subway and the Long Island Rail Road third track may have to be deferred, but this is the price to pay for ensuring an existing system that’s safe and reliable. While new projects like Moynihan station are nice, they deliver little transit benefit. How much do you agree or disagree with that?

 

Lhota: I don’t agree with that. I’m a New Yorker all my life. New York is not a place that stands still. We need to expand. City planning types are telling us to expect another million people in New York by the year 2030. That’s just a few years from now. We need to do both. We need to fix the existing system and we need to expand based on where people are living. If this city is to survive, and I do believe the subway system is the circulatory system, the life blood, it’s how we get to school, it’s how we get to work, it’s how we get to doctor appointments, we need to have it as robust as possible. So having it stand in place. Look, New Yorkers can do more than one thing at one time. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can fix the existing system and expand it at the same time.

 

Lehrer: Also on Moynihan station, for people who don’t know what that is, that would be part of the new expanded Penn Station where the old post office is now. Nicole Gelinas from the Manhattan Institute critiqued that in an op-ed as Governor Cuomo recently saddling the MTA with growing debt toward that, recently increased debt to more than half a billion which he said should be more Amtrak’s responsibility, and that you should stand up the Governor on that. Does Nicole Gelinas have a point?

 

Lhota: So I encourage both you Brian, and I’ll take Nicole down there to look at the new Long Island Rail Road station underneath Moynihan station, right now it’s now being used by Amtrak, it’s being used by us. New York State needs to be a partner in building the station named after Senator Moynihan. As Senator Moynihan rightfully said when he came home every week from Washington, D.C., he felt like a rat scurrying out of the ground at the old Penn Station. We have to change it. Look, partnership is an important thing when it comes to infrastructure. The City, the state, the federal government, we all have to come together. We can’t keep finger pointing at each other. We have to build a tunnel over New Jersey because, I actually look at it as a national security issue. You can’t get to New Jersey by rail into New York and on to Boston, we have a significant problem. Infrastructure requires everybody to work together. There’s a role for the MTA, there’s a role for the City, there’s a role for the state. There’s a role for the federal government.

 

Lehrer: We have a few minutes left with MTA Chairman Joe Lhota. I don’t know if you’ve heard the new WNYC community initiative called, “We the Commuters.”

 

Lhota: Yeah, one of your representatives was at our Board meeting yesterday.

 

Lehrer: So I’m going to read you two of the most common questions that we’ve been hearing from riders, one about operating, one about capital. Many riders say they distrust MTA announcements because they are vague and often inaccurate. That’s one of the most common questions we’ve been getting. How will you address riders distrust and improve communications?

 

Lhota: So I am deeply frustrated as I mentioned before as a rider. I’ll be on a train, and the next thing I know I’m being held for train traffic. I generally curse under my breath when I hear that because I don’t know what train traffic is. No explanation comes. The other thing that bothers me a lot is that it’s being stopped for a police action, and I really want to know what’s going on. So we have started already on some of the lines communicating directly from our control center, and telling folks why they are stopped. Last week, ten days ago, we actually had,

unfortunately somebody at 125th Street jumped down onto the tracks, they’ve hurt themselves, we can’t move our trains until that person is moved. We then said the EMS had been called, the fire department has been called. We then went on and gave another announcement shortly thereafter that the ambulance service, EMS, had shown up. We then said the person on the track had been taken off the tracks, and we’ll be moving in the next two minutes, and then in the next two minutes, we moved. That’s the kind of communication we need to give. We live in a different time. We all have all kinds of communication devices in our pocket. You know, the people who were on the train actually at the time were tweeting out the messages that they were getting, which I thought was very, very helpful but it’s also emblematic of the situation. No matter what we do down there, we’ve allowed most of the system to be Wi-Fi. It’s going to ultimately be all Wi-Fi. The impact of that is people are going to be able to communicate while they’re in the tunnel.

 

Lehrer: And the capital question we’ve gotten from a surprising number of listeners in Queens: how come the  train doesn’t extend further into Queens. Is  train extension anywhere on your list of priorities?

 

Lhota: I’ve seen plans for a  train extension. The RPA has been pushing that for some time.

 

Lehrer: The Regional Plan Association, think tank.

 

Lhota: The Regional Plan Association. So I will look at that, about that as an extension over. There’s been a lot of discussion, you know, a lot of movement, you can’t really get from Brooklyn into Queens without going through Manhattan. A lot of people are working in both boroughs now and we’ve got to find alternatives.

 

Lehrer: We’ve done the overwhelming amount of this, not on what’s been in the headlines, which is you and the mayor going back and forth about, on whether the city needs to contribute more money for all of this, but I do want ask you about the point that he seems to keep making, which is that the extra 2 billion plus that city contributed two years ago, 90 percent of it hasn’t even been spent yet.

 

Lhota: Yeah, let me address that because I think it’s really important. The city hasn’t given us $2.5 billion, we’re not sitting on the cash investing it like an asset management firm. They’ve given us a commitment for $2.5 billion. We have an agreement with the city, an agreement that goes back to when I was budget director, that the last dollar used in the capital program is the city dollars. And if the mayor wants to reverse that agreement and we spend their money first, we’d be more than happy to do that. But it’s completely disingenuous when he said he’s given us $2.5 billion. He’s given us a commitment for $2.5 billion. He’s making it sound like we’re sitting on the money and we’re being greedy and we’re not using it. And a lot of the money that’s being used by the city dollars is to buy new trains. It takes three and four years to build the trains. And while we’ve made small incremental payments, the bulk of those payments are when you receive the trains. When you buy a car, you don’t pay for it before you get it. It’s the same thing on a train track. Listen, when the mayor says he’s given us $2.5 billion, ask him for the check. I want to see a canceled check.

 

Lehrer: And last thing: money from Washington. I know that that Governor Cuomo went to D.C. yesterday to meet with Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who has pretty good connections to Congress since she happens to be married to Mitch McConnell. What did the governor ask for and what did he get, if anything? I know some conservatives in Washington because I hear this on conservative talk shows, say this is not the federal government’s problem. Maybe Amtrak is, but local mass transit like the MTA is a local issue for each region to fund on its own rather than ask taxpayers in Kansas to help pay for the  train. How would you respond to that and how did the governor have any success in Washington?

 

Lhota: So the idea that we’re asking people in Kansas to pay for this New York City subway system is really absurd. New York City, New York State, pays more to Washington than it gets back from Washington. If anything, New York’s dollars are going to Kansas. And the fact of the matter is, the federal government for the longest period of time, has been a partner in the building of infrastructure in this country. President Trump, the one thing I might have agreed with him on when he was candidate for president, was how he wanted to expand the infrastructure programs. Not one bloody thing has been done since he’s been elected about that. And the fact of the matter is, it was a great idea, it is a great idea, he wanted to talk about creating jobs in this country, infrastructure in this country creates jobs in this country. And that’s exactly what we need to do. The federal government has always been a partner and will continue to be a partner. You know, Brian, I think the numbers are something like 19 percent of the entire G.D.P. of the United States of America is in the New York metropolitan area. This is how we get to work. This is how we provide enough economic activity for the entire country. This regionalism argument just doesn’t hold muster especially when we are a net lender to the rest of the country.

 

Lehrer: Did the governor make any progress yesterday?

 

Lhota: He did. He did make progress. There was a discussion, less so on the subways, more so on the new tunnel that we need between New York and New Jersey, and more about the funding on what are called the TIFIA loans, which we sorely need.

 

Lehrer: The new chairman of the MTA, Joe Lhota. I agree with the caller who said, not instead of the mayor but in addition to the mayor, you should come on on a regular basis. We’ve had such a response from the callers. So if you can, let’s do this from time to time.

 

Lhota: Thanks Brian. Have a good time with the mayor tomorrow at 10.