MTA to spend $242 million on service improvements, LIRR train repairs

An improved financial outlook from just four months ago will allow the MTA to spend more than $200 million on service and maintenance improvements, including needed fixes to Long Island Rail Road train cars, agency officials said Wednesday.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority Wednesday provided an update to its four-year financial plan, originally presented in July. The plan, which goes through 2019, includes $447 million in additional revenue, including from higher-than-expected real estate taxes and tolls.

The budget did include some bad news, including a $10 million annual drop in taxi surcharge revenue that the MTA blamed on the rising popularity of alternative ride providers, such as Uber.

If the MTA cannot meet its goal of $1.8 billion in internal cost-cutting by 2018, and also does not stay on its current schedule of 4 percent fare increases every other year, a projected $55 million surplus in 2018 could become a $446 million deficit, according to MTA chief financial officer Robert Foran. By 2019, the budget shortfall could reach nearly $1 billion.

"There's a lot of things that can happen out there, but what we're trying to do is trying to be reasonable in our projections, but let you know that there's still significant risk out there," Foran said. "We have to maintain our focus."

The MTA began aggressively cutting costs in 2009 as it faced an unprecedented budget deficit of nearly $2 billion. While the agency has steadily increased its savings goals since then, finding places to cut has also become more difficult, MTA chairman Thomas Prendergast said.

Where the agency found ways to cut "millions of dollars in one fell swoop" years ago, smaller cuts of around $250,000 are more common, he said.

SEE PHOTOSLIRR trains and commuters through the years

"It's getting more difficult to hit those targets," Prendergast said. "But if you don't keep that pressure in the organization, you just assume costs and loaded overhead structure that you don't really need."

The MTA said it will invest $242 million of its newfound money on service and maintenance initiatives, including $21 million that will go to various maintenance projects, including $8.9 million replacing "threshold plates" at the doorways of M-7 electric trains to shrink the gaps between the trains and station platforms. The MTA said the plates have been "experiencing an unusual rate of corrosion." In addition, it would spend $7.5 million on M-7 doors and $4.3 million on M-7 traction motors.

By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com@alfonsoreports

Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.