MTA says it can't afford to keep up LI Bus subsidy

Metropolitan Transportation Authority chairman Jay Walder Monday said his agency cannot afford to continue compensating for Nassau County's failure to "pay its bills" for Long Island Bus, but said he was open to letting the county phase in a larger contribution.

Walder's remarks came before a private meeting Monday with Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano.

The MTA has said it must end its subsidy of the bus system, which would put the county in the position of paying $26 million more per year. Mangano has said a payment of that magnitude would be impossible.

Nassau currently contributes $9.1 million to the bus system's $133-million annual budget. The bus system, which serves about 100,000 riders a day, is owned by Nassau but has been operated by the MTA for nearly four decades.

In response, Mangano has solicited bids from private bus companies to take over Long Island Bus operations.

Speaking about the meeting, MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan said that " . . . it is clear that the county has no intention of meeting its obligation to fund its bus system next year or in the foreseeable future."

Nassau spokesman Mike Martino, in an e-mail, countered that "although County Executive Mangano today made a good-faith offer to the MTA, they clearly have no interest in retaining LI Bus." He said Mangano will continue to explore privatization.

Earlier Monday, at a Long Island Association breakfast, Walder said that over the past 10 years, the MTA has covered $140 million on Nassau's behalf.

"The fact that it was allowed to go on for so long is wrong," he said, adding that it was unfair to other counties, including Suffolk, that pay for their bus service without such subsidies.

Speaking to what could have been a hostile audience - many businesses resent the payroll tax that helped bail out the MTA - Walder instead got a respectful, if muted, welcome from several dozen people at the Molloy College Center at Republic Airport, in East Farmingdale.

Walder, who has been on the job for about a year, said he's overseen "the most aggressive cost cutting in the history of the MTA," with $500 million worth of cuts, but he warned against the temptation to cut investments in mass transit. Building and rebuilding the system not only is a jobs program in its own right, but it also will keep the region from stalling economically, he said.

Even without the jobs benefit, the work is vital to help the economy grow, Walder said.

The LIRR returned to normal service Monday after a second weekend of launching and testing a computerized switching system, railroad spokesman Joe Calderone said.

Though the number of on-time trains was 84 percent - 9 points lower than normal - that was because rain and wet leaves made the rails slippery, Calderone said.

With Andrew Smith