M.T.A. Cuts Prompt New Talk of East End Agency
(01/28/2010) After imposing a new tax on businesses throughout its service area last year, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced last week a series of cuts that would include eliminating train service to the North Fork except on summer weekends.
Given that eastern Long Island receives very little service from the state authority to begin with, the move prompted state and county officials to reiterate calls for an independent transit authority based entirely on the East End.
State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. said on Tuesday that after imposing a tax of 33 cents on every $100 of payroll — a new expense that Southampton Hospital, for instance, expects to cost $150,000 annually — the M.T.A.’s eliminating service is “about as tone deaf as you can be.”
For the past few years, East End officials have been vetting a proposal, devised by a private group called Five Towns Rural Transit, to institute regular and reliable train and bus service in the region. Last year, a consulting division of the United States Department of Transportation reviewed a plan for its feasibility and generally endorsed it as well as the cost projections for it.
The only thing the plan lacks is funding. But with tens of millions of dollars estimated by Five Towns Rural Transit to be going from the East End to the M.T.A. in Albany in the form of mortgage tax revenues, sales tax, and surcharges on utility bills, an independent authority might have enough money to function — assuming that what now goes to the M.T.A. is fully transferred to the operating and capital costs of the new entity.
As he has in the past, Mr. Thiele this week proposed legislation, along with Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, to create the East End authority. He said this was the first time he could remember in all his years as a legislator that such a proposal might have a chance of passing. “It’s still a heavy lift,” however, he said. “We still have to deal with the New York City delegation, which is the primary beneficiary” of M.T.A. service.
“The speaker of the Assembly, the Senate majority leader, and the governor all come from the city,” he pointed out. Still, he said, in the far reaches of the state transportation system, and even in the city, “there is a certain drumbeat against the M.T.A. and for more than just token reform.”
Shelter Island residents receive no direct public transportation from the authority, although they were able to travel to the island by ferry from the Long Island Rail Road station in Greenport. Only two trains a day have been running in each direction from Ronkonkoma to Greenport, however, so many were already taking the Jitney to travel between the city from the North Fork anyway.
A handful of Shelter Island residents who were interviewed seemed chagrined about the North Fork’s service cut, but indicated that they still favored more public transportation in the region, not less.
Shelter Island Town Supervisor James Dougherty said on Tuesday that he supported Mr. Thiele and Mr. LaValle’s efforts to revive calls for a localized transit authority and to provide a coordinated East End train and bus service. His town would benefit from new bus service if the Five Towns plan were enacted.
Because his town has so few employees, Mr. Dougherty said, he has not followed the effect of the payroll tax, but he said it was “outrageous to increase taxes and decrease service.” Even if the train service had continued, he said, “it’s just a stopgap. It’s not fulfilling the needs of a lot of people.”
Mr. Dougherty said the town board would pass a resolution endorsing the state legislation for a new local authority.
Bridg Hunt, the general manager of the North Ferry Company, said that many of his customers use the train, but that “we get a lot of bus customers as well.” He did not know how many take the ferry from Greenport to Shelter Island, he said, except that it varies greatly between the summer and off-season months.
Mr. Hunt said he often took the train himself, particularly to get to Kennedy Airport. “I’m in favor of public transportation,” he said. “We all have a responsibility to reduce our individual carbon output.”
“I prefer that the train would stay,” said John Kaasik, the owner of Gopher Taxi on Shelter Island. “I don’t go into the city a lot, but I have a lot of friends and family who do.”
He questioned why the authority would reduce service when “the infrastructure is there,” saying, “The train is not a capital investment.” On a typical weekend, Mr. Kaasik said, he might pick up 25 passengers from the ferry, a portion of whom he assumes reached the north ferry by train. Since the train and bus often arrive at the same time, however, he said he could not be sure of exact numbers.
“If it makes more people drive, it’s bad for everybody,” he said of the train service cut. He noted that it would also be more expensive if people had to take the Hampton Jitney instead of the Long Island Rail Road.
Georgiana Ketcham, the owner of a real estate firm on the island, said the discontinuation of the trains would not affect her business, “but it affects me personally. I do take the train and my family likes to ride on the train to visit me on Shelter Island. It’s really not a good thing.”
As a business owner, she also resents paying the payroll tax for service she’s not receiving, she said, adding, “It’s a travesty.”
This week, a number of letters and statements were directed to Jay Walder, the M.T.A. chairman and chief executive officer, protesting the cuts and that only one hearing would be held on Long Island, on March 1, and that it would be held in Carle Place.
In a joint statement, Mr. Thiele and a North Fork assemblyman, Marc Alessi, said, “At the very least, the M.T.A. could allow our constituents to be heard without having to travel over an hour for that to occur.”
They and Suffolk County Legislators William Lindsay and Edward Romaine requested that another hearing be held in Riverhead to address the needs of the East End.
Mr. Lindsay noted that Suffolk County residents paid the authority more than a quarter billion dollars in taxes each year and that that was before the payroll tax added another estimated $97 million in costs. Not scheduling a hearing in Suffolk County was a “slap in the face,” he said.