New York Sen. Chuck Schumer said that's a good thing, because the existing tunnels — owned by Amtrak, and heavily used by New Jersey Transit — are in dire shape. "They're over a hundred years old," the Democrat said. "If they're to collapse, they could collapse at any time."

He spoke Friday in Penn Station at a press conference attended by U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, and officials from Amtrak and the Port Authority.

Wait, how bad are the existing tunnels?

"I didn't say they're going to collapse any moment," said Schumer. "I said they could collapse at any time, we just don't know." Later he walked that back even further: "I don't mean the tunnel is going to collapse. 'Fail' is a better word."

(Amtrak, which owns the tunnel, says it regularly inspects the structure for safety.)

Now that the review process has been expedited, it's expected that permits that could have taken six years to obtain will now take just two.

But the specter of a previous tunnel project looms large over Gateway — especially given the upcoming election. Could Gateway go the way of the ARC tunnel, ingloriously cancelled by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in 2010?

"We're making sure there is no one who can kill it," said Schumer darkly, "and they will suffer dramatic consequences if they do."

"We turned the hourglass over," said Anthony Coscia, the chairman of Amtrak. "We're building this project, there is no turning back, and we don't believe there's anyone who views there should be a turning back."

But lining up funding will take some time. "We cannot starve our infrastructure and expect it to perform," said Secretary Foxx. "Nor can make $23 billion appear overnight in grant funding."

The tunnel project is expected to begin construction in 2019.

And he wants all the work done by 2020.

While the $50 million in subway upgrades is more or less accounted for, the MTA's five-year capital program had only called for $71 million in Penn Station improvements. (See p. 87.)

"That is certainly a surprise," said MTA board member Veronica Vanterpool, who is also the executive director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. She said that while she was supportive of the Penn Station redesign, she had a number of unanswered questions, many of which she raised at the MTA board meeting Wednesday.

"Where is this $220 [million] coming from?" she asked Tom Prendergast, the Cuomo-appointed head of the MTA, adding that the governor had a tendency to "jump-start" transportation projects without identifying funding sources. "I'm particularly concerned about the impact that it's had — and going to have — on a lot of the projects in the [MTA] capital program."

"I'm sympathetic to your comments," said Prendergast, but he pointed out his hands were tied. "The governor has taken a position that says, 'Talk is over, it needs to get done.' I don't see a position where I, as chairman of the agency, can argue with that."

Prendergast said that the agency can't award a contract without identifying a funding source, so "that will be done."

The MTA's $26 billion capital program is the embodiment of the agency's building priorities. Think of it like the Constitution: it's a living, breathing document, so there may be future amendments. Shoehorning another $220 million into it wouldn't seem like a big deal — except much of the funding for the program already has a giant question mark next to it. State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli released an analysis of the MTA's finances Wednesday, stating that when it comes to the capital program, "The State and the City...have yet to identify the sources for $9.2 billion of their $10.8 billion contribution."

The governor's office did not respond to a request for clarification.

“No cyclist death is acceptable," said de Blasio in a press release, "and that’s why we’ll continue raising the bar to keep riders protected.”

But that bar is not being raised fast enough for street safety advocates. Alarmed by an increase in cyclist deaths, several groups held a protest ride to demand the city step up the pace of bike lane installation, as well as implement other Vision Zero safety reforms.

Almost 2,000 bikers took over Fifth Avenue on Thursday evening https://t.co/6mAzwILaPc #ridetogether #visionzero #bikenyc @transalt

So when it came time for Brian Lehrer's weekly "Ask the Mayor" segment Friday morning, it seemed likely that bike lanes would come up. Caller Chris from Soho did not disappoint. "The bike lanes are a fabulous thing," he told de Blasio. "I've been cycling in the city for 30-plus years."

But then the other shoe dropped: "You can't go five minutes in a bike lane without running into somebody illegally parked," Chris said. 

He then suggested something along the lines of a citizen red-light camera, in which cyclists' photos of bike lane blockers could be used to ticket offenders. The mayor said he appreciated the idea, but that traffic enforcement was best left to the professionals who could understand nuance.

"There are people stop in a bike lane to, you know, let someone off at an appointment or something like that, or just drop off kids at home or something quickly," de Blasio said. "That’s a different matter than someone who double-parks and leaves their car there."

Leaving that distinction aside, in fiscal year 2016 NYPD traffic enforcement officers issued 71,423 tickets to drivers who blocked bike lane according to city data. That's about on par with 2015, when 72,206 tickets were written. And yet to gauge from the experience of the average cyclist, it would seem that tens of thousands of tickets are both not enough — and can't prevent drivers from encroaching upon bike lanes.

"If you don't have good enforcement to go with that building out of the bike network, you're not going to make the bike network as safe and enjoyable as it should be," said transportation commissioner Polly Trottenberg. "We hear loud and clear we know cyclists want to see good enforcement in those bike lanes. We do too!"

Trottenberg said the idea of citizen photo enforcement, which Chris from Soho brought up on WNYC, was already on the table. "His question — there's a root in it which is something we've been talking about at DOT," she said. "which is 'can we make more of this enforcement automated in some way.'"

Camera enforcement of city roads is an Albany issue, so the city would need the state's permission before being able to photo enforce bike lanes. But Trottenberg said that the city would install the cameras for other purposes.

"Even if you don't have enforcement authority, you can use that data so that when the police go out, they can do smart enforcement, they can look at the camera feeds and see where they're seeing hot spots," she said.

@NYCTSubway On yet another 6 train this morning without a/c. Car 1662, Brooklyn Bridge bound, currently at 86th st. 6th train in a week

— Nick LaSpina (@NickLaSpina) July 14, 2016

The transit agency responded with a reference number and a promise to notify supervision. But on July 18, the same car was reported to the MTA. And again on July 28. Then on August 4. All told, 12 people tweeted at @NYCTSubway or @MTA, notifying the agency that car 1662's air conditioning was broken.

Despite MTA's assertions that the agency swiftly repairs hot subway cars once it learns of them, #1662 didn't get a permanent a/c fix until Tuesday, August 16.

MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz said the agency had known about the car's faulty a/c since June 1 — even before customers began tweeting about it.

"In all cases, our forces inspected the car (1662) and were able to reset the system to quickly restore the car to service," he said. "However, with the repeated malfunctions, we scheduled a major repair, which was completed [Aug. 17]."

But 1662 isn't the only subway car to be a repeat offender. Car 2042 has generated eight Twitter complaints dating back a month. Car 2307 has garnered seven. Car 2432 has half a dozen. All told, 20 separate cars have been the subject of at least five or more tweets to @NYCTsubway this summer. Does this mean the MTA is keeping them in service, rather than repairing them?

"That's simply wrong," said Ortiz. He said that when the agency learns of a hot car, it's repaired as soon as possible. "It's inaccurate to say that cars are running without a/c for months at a time."

But for riders looking to close the loop on their hot car complaints, satisfaction is hard to find. Armed with his MTA-given reference number, WNYC reporter Jim O'Grady tried to follow up on his hot car tweet, first by calling 511. But after being placed on hold for seven minutes, he gave up.

(Ortiz's reaction, when I relayed this: "If he really wants to know, he should have waited a little bit longer.")

Prompted by the nagging colleague who sits in the cubicle directly to his right — as well as his own curiosity — O'Grady then emailed the MTA. After nine days, he received a response...saying the MTA had received his email and would review it.

(O'Grady's reaction: "Terrible answer!")

Ben Kabak of Second Avenue Sagas had a more measured response. "It would be nice to know when and how long it takes them to fix hot cars," he said. "The question is whether they're doing anything with it. It's good that (the MTA) is encouraging people to report them...but what are they doing afterwards? You can't give people service where the answer is 'you have to ride in this stiflingly hot subway car for however long it takes.'"

Another issue: the MTA said it receives between 12 and 16 reports of hot cars each day. But its Twitter account received over 30 reports in the last 24 hours. (Ortiz: "That's still a minuscule number compared to the number of cars that provide our customers with air conditioning.")  As we reported last month, the majority of hot car complaints center on the 1 and 6.

The complaints are "so concentrated on these two lines," said Kabak, "it's going to be a challenge to fix it." He said the MTA may not have enough extra subway cars to provide service on these lines while taking dozens of hot cars offline to repair the air conditioning.

In addition to vexing public radio reporters, a broken subway car telegraphs a message to riders, said John Raskin, a transit advocate who heads up the Riders Alliance.

"Having air conditioning is one of those indicators that the basic infrastructure of the city is working," he said. "When people get into a hot car, it gives them a sense not only that they're going to have a crappy commute, but also that the city is not quite working in the way that people need it to."

Someday they will get the tech they need, in the form of Communication-Based Train Control (CBTC), which is an even more modern signaling technology being installed systemwide. But that will take years. (Want to know why? Watch the video at the end of this story.) Because the MTA has long linked CBTC to countdown clocks, their arrival on the lettered lines has seemed perennially remote.

But now the MTA is testing a workaround.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo — who in his State of the State called for an "expedited rollout" of countdown clocks — announced Thursday that the agency is piloting them at eight stations on the N/Q/R line in Manhattan.

Here's how it works: the platforms will have bluetooth receivers that use station Wi-Fi to communicate with beacons on subway cars.

"As the train enters a station," said MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz, "the system uses its arrival and departure time to estimate the time at which the train will reach the next stop in the line."

That (almost-but-not-quite-real-time-arrival) information will then be transmitted to LCD screens on platforms at 23rd St., 28th St., 34th St.-Herald Sq., Times Sq.-42nd St., 49th St., 57th St.-7th Ave., 5th Ave.-59th St. and Lexington Ave.-59th St. (The screens are an upgrade from the LED clocks currently in use on the numbered lines, by the way. Compare the above photo to the below.)

An LED countdown clock on the 1 train. (Kate Hinds/WNYC)

The MTA will test the countdown clocks for 90 days. If they work, the pilot will be expanded to more stations.

Here's one thing the pilot won't do, though: allow the MTA to run more trains. That will have to wait...for the installation of CBTC.

"This intersection is a nightmare," says Gabriella Rhodeen, a Bushwick resident who works a block away. "Because it's just kind of a free-for-all. And nobody seems to care when you have a crossing signal or not."

(Nightmare is one term for the intersection. Another is "corner of death," which is how nine-year old Lucas Maxwell referred to it in a video he sent to the city's transportation commissioner.)

But the problem is not contained to Kenmare and Lafayette. The city has just released a new study on left turn crashes, in which it found they're three times more prevalent than right turn crashes.

(WNYC reported on this issue last year. Read: Why Left Turns Are So Deadly)

There are a lot of reasons why. Drivers tend to make left turns at higher speeds. They're negotiating oncoming traffic. And car frames create blind spots that can limit a driver's field of vision.

Transportaton Commissioner Polly Trottenberg said that based on the findings of the study, the city has begun making changes to dozens of intersections — changing traffic light timing, adding time to the pedestrian walk light, and installing yellow-and-white plastic barriers in the middle of the street to prevent turning vehicles from cutting corners.

But that's just for starters. "We're doing similar work throughout the city," said Trottenberg. 'We're currently actually doing a hundred-intersection pilot project."

Work on those intersections should be complete by the end of the summer. If the redesigns prove successful, Trottenberg said they'll be expanded throughout the city.

"The majority of the hot cars that we've seen over the past couple of days have been the R62As," said MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz.

You probably know them as the 1 and 6 trains — as does the riding, tweeting public:

@NYCTSubway just FYI, car 2432 on the 1 doesn't have AC this afternoon

@NYCTSubway No air conditioning in car #2405 on the 1 Train.

@NYCTSubway can you PLEASE fix the air conditioning on the 1 trains? 2nd time time today my commute has been covered in sweat.

The R62As date back to the Reagan Administration, and therein lies the problem. "The technology at the time provided for one compressor for each of the air units in the car," Ortiz said. "So if you lost that one compressor, you basically lost all of the air for that entire car."

Newer cars — or older cars that have been overhauled — are built differently. "They have separate HVAC systems, where if one fails, you can use another within that car," said Ortiz. And repairing them is simpler: the HVAC systems "are easily removable from the top of the trains." Almost like Lego, a broken HVAC unit can be popped off a train, repaired, and popped back on. But "that's not the case with the older technology cars," he said, "where you have to work on the entire component as a whole to address it."

Meanwhile, the city is in the thick of a heatwave, which usually exacerbates so-called "hot car" complaints.

GRAPH: 90° Days in New York City

"Yesterday we had 12," said Ortiz.

Which may not sound like a lot of complaints, when you consider that the system has more than 6,300 cars. But when the percentages work against you, it's miserable: boarding a train with broken A/C feels like walking into a wall of hot, molten misery.

But you are not powerless, sweaty, beleaguered subway rider. If you experience a hot car, make note of the car number, line, and time of day, and let the MTA know: Tweet at NYCTSubway, email the agency through the portal on its website, or call 511.

"Once we receive notification that there's an issue with a car," Ortiz said, "then we will take it out of service at the completion of its next run."

Where the Hot Subway Cars Are

Another factor dogging the R62As: they're reaching the end of what the MTA calls its scheduled maintenance cycle. Every four, seven and 14 years, all subway cars, regardless of model, receive major overhauls. New A/C units typically get put in during the year seven maintenance work. And this is the year that the R62As are undergoing their seven year overhaul. So relief is coming — albeit slowly, like a local train on crowded stretch of track. Ortiz said it takes about 20 days to overhaul and test a car. And with over 800 R62As in service, the process of fixing them will take "a couple of years."

"The decision's already been made that they're going to move the bus terminal a block west," said Congressman Jerry Nadler, a Democrat who represents the West Side and part of Brooklyn. "And use eminent domain. That's unacceptable."

Speaking at the agency's monthly board meeting, Nadler resurrected an idea that New Jersey appointees to the bi-state Port Authority thought it had killed earlier this year: building the terminal...in New Jersey.

"I don't know what the right choice is," said Nadler, "but to automatically assume that nothing should be done in New Jersey, only in New York." He added, "It's just a very bad planning process."

The Port Authority has been struggling since 2013 with how to replace the bus terminal, which is overcrowded and growing old. In March, it moved forward with a design competition as part of a grand compromise: the New York side of the agency would agree to a new terminal for New Jersey commuters if the New Jersey side allowed the Port to go forward with one of New York's priorities — the redevelopment of LaGuardia Airport. 

That delicate compromise within the agency is now being threatened by opposition from without. 

"It makes no sense whatsoever to propose this without involving city agencies and all the local communities so you get some agreement," she said Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer.

As if that wasn't enough, state Assembly Member Richard Gottfried reminded board members that West Side residents have a good batting average when it comes to derailing large, neighborhood-displacing projects, like the Westway road and park project in the 1970s and 1980s — or, more recently, a stadium.

"Nobody has gotten to visit the Jets football stadium in Hell's Kitchen," Gottfried said. "There's a long history of people who thought they would beat the Hell's Kitchen community and didn't quite make it."

In response, Port Authority Chairman John Degnan defended the agency's planning process and said the $1 million design competition for the new terminal was just a preliminary step.

"Taking private property for purposes of building the bus terminal is to be discouraged," Degnan said. ("That's meaningless," Nadler later told reporters. "What 'discouraged' means is they'll give a reason why they should do it.")

Degnan continued, saying he was not Robert Moses, the famous master planner who railroaded projects through despite opposition.

"In the end, folks, the only thing that's going to be derived from this design and deliverability concept is a concept," he said. "There is no way that this bus terminal can be built by overriding the legitimate concerns of elected public officials and community board members and community members themselves. And of course, it goes without saying, the regulatory oversight that legitimately belongs with the city of New York."

The city wielded that oversight in a statement issued earlier Thursday by Deputy Mayor Anthony Shorris.

"New York City has significant concerns with the process that the Port Authority of NY and NJ has undertaken thus far," he wrote. "Replacing it represents one of the most significant infrastructure challenges in the city over the next decade and demands a rigorous and transparent planning process."

Shorris called on the agency to "reconsider the current competition process, and begin a comprehensive public engagement and planning process that considers all possible options for a new terminal and views the project in an appropriate regional context."

Degnan said the agency was in discussion to convene a meeting for Community Board 4 and design competition participants.

"Our buses are traveling at an average of 7 miles per hour," said Tabitha Decker of the group TransitCenter, which released a new report laying out ways to fix the under-performing bus system. "New Yorkers have been voting with their MetroCards."

According to the New York City Department of Transportation, last year there were 46 million fewer bus trips than in 2010.

The coalition, along with elected officials, rallied in downtown Brooklyn Wednesday to draw attention to what advocates call a "crisis" in bus service.

Transit advocates and elected officials rallying on Court Street for better bus service
(Kate Hinds )

"The bus should be a way to get around," said State Sen. Daniel Squadron, "not something you're forced onto when you have no other option."

Squadron pointed out that many parts of the city are not served by the subway system, and that many riders are elderly or disabled.

The coalition wants the MTA and the city's Department of Transportation to improve service by simplifying bus routes, speeding up the boarding process, and design streets to prioritize buses.

Veronica Vanterpool is the head of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign — and a newly appointed MTA board member. She said the group's suggestions were a combination of sweeping changes and easily achievable goals. "It's really about wiping the slate clean, thinking fresh about what to do. And that doesn't always have to involve a lot of money."

"It's about a reengineering, a reimagining of our bus network," she said, "which needs an overhaul."

That was music to the ears of 57-year-old bus rider Gloria Jones. The Flatbush resident says she relies upon the B12.

"Most of the time the wait is too long," she said. "And when the buses do come, they come in, like, threes and fours."

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he hadn't seen the report, but that his sense was that slow buses were more of a Manhattan problem. "If people in Manhattan are choosing to jump on the subway because the subway is faster, because there's traffic that a bus has to deal with, I mean, that's not an imprudent choice, right?"

MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz said that "many of the recommendations in the report are actions the MTA is already taking."

As the agency envisions it, the replacement to the MetroCard — which itself began taking over from the token in 1994 — aims to do away with (the often frustrating act of) swiping by embracing an open payment system.

Translation: transit passengers of the future will be paying their fares via credit and debit cards and cell phone apps like Apple Pay. (The agency has long said it wanted to "get out of the business of issuing the fare payment mechanism.")

The MTA recently closed the bidding process. The agency won't reveal details while it evaluates prospective vendors, but one company vying for the contract is making itself known: Cubic Transportation Systems. The company created the MetroCard, and also helped develop Chicago's Ventra payment system — as well as London's Oyster Card, considered a game-changer in the transit world for allowing riders to tap their way across many forms of transit. On Wednesday, Cubic entered into a licensing deal with Transport for London, giving the company the ability to market that technology to other transit systems. They hope one of them is New York's.

Matt Cole, president of Cubic, said when it comes to fare collection, lots of cities use tap-and-go cards. But what the MTA wants to do "is basically to leapfrog through that technology, kind of skipping over that generation of smart card system." 

But not for some time. Subway riders will still be swiping until at least 2018, which is when the MTA anticipates starting to phase out the MetroCard.

While legislators and Gov. Chris Christie battle over how much "tax fairness" is required to offset a proposed hike in the state's gas tax, the TTF will limp into August with barely $85 million. Hence Executive Order 210, issued by Christie last week and put into effect on Wednesday.

"In the absence of a legislative solution to replenish the Transportation Trust Fund," reads a Christie press release, "it is necessary to stop work temporarily on ongoing projects funded by the TTF by 11:59 p.m. on July 8, 2016 for a period of at least seven days."

That means hundreds of projects will wind down, putting potentially thousands of people out of work. (See the list of DOT projects here; NJ Transit's project list is here.)

According to Robert Briant, the CEO of the Utility and Transportation Contractors Association — as well as a Transportation Trust Fund Authority board member — the layoffs have already begun.

So far, he says over 480 construction workers, assigned to 59 projects, have received pink slips as a result of the TTF shutdown. And because summer is peak construction season, he says the timing couldn't be worse.

"A lot of these people need to make the money now to carry them through the winter time," he said, "and they're going to get hit terribly."

But Briant said there's no question that the TTF is insolvent and must be fixed.

"People say it's going broke," he said. "Quite frankly, it's been broke."

He said the TTF, which issues bonds to pay for transportation projects, pays about $1.2 billion a year in annual debt service — but only takes in about $900 million a year. The difference is made up from the state's general operating fund. 

Despite the political back-and-forth over how to fix it, Briant was optimistic. "I think there's an opportunity to get it done next week," he said.

But the fallout will be messy. Janna Chernetz, who is the New Jersey policy director for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, said "hundreds, if not thousands of workers, are going to be laid off until the governor and the legislature can agree that fixing New Jersey’s transportation network is more important than scoring political points."

She added: "By refusing to acknowledge the TTF funding crisis, Governor Christie is now creating an entirely different transportation crisis.”

The Senate's Transportation Committee is scheduled to meet on Monday, but so far, no TTF-related business is on the agenda.

"The number is $46.3, just to nail it down," Mike Lihvarcik, the agency's chief financial officer, told reporters at a meeting earlier this month.

That's $46.3 million. The amount the agency really needs to provide respectable service is likely much more. The latest federal statistics show NJ Transit trains racked up 213 major breakdowns in 2014. That's two-and-a-half times as many as Long Island Rail Road. Meanwhile, WNYC's Data News team found that in 2015, 30 percent of NJ Transit's morning rush hour trains arrived into Penn Station late, causing more than just inconvenience for commuters like Jack Dugan.

"It's gotten me into trouble with work quite a bit," he said. "They think I'm making it up. I don't even know what to say."

Most of those delays stemmed from the single, hundred-year old tunnel that NJ Transit shares with Amtrak. Years ago, NJ Transit began building its own tunnel, known as ARC. But Gov. Chris Christie cancelled it in 2010. He used that money, in part, to pay for repairs to roads and bridges. 

That financial diversion fits a familiar pattern. A study by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign found that NJ Transit moved more than $5 billion from its capital budget to cover operating expenses over the past 15 years.

"That’s why we’re looking at a number of necessary transit projects that are on the shelf," Janna Chernetz, Tri-State's director of New Jersey policy, said. Projects have languished for years, like extending the Hudson-Bergen light rail line ... into Bergen County, or building a rail line between Glassboro and Camden in the southern part of the state. 

While investment in infrastructure lags, the morale among NJ Transit staff members is tanking. Non-unionized workers haven't seen a raise since 2009 — not even cost-of-living increases. The agency is experiencing brain drain at the highest levels. It's lost a number of senior people in the past year, including its executive director, Ronnie Hakim, who is now running New York City Transit. NJ Transit has been trying to replace her for seven months, without any luck.

If you wanted a glimpse at NJ Transit's future should the agency continues down this path, you might want to check out "The Warriors." The 1979 movie is an admittedly overblown gang drama. But the plot line hit close to home for New York City commuters when it first came out: trying to get from one part of New York City to the other, on a dysfunctional subway system plagued by crime, graffiti, fires and fare evasion.

The same year The Warriors hit the theaters, then-New York Gov. Hugh Carey called Richard Ravitch, a lawyer and a municipal troubleshooter, into his office. Carey asked Ravitch to rescue the MTA.

"I looked at him and said 'are you crazy?'" Ravitch recalled in a recent interview. "I ride the subway system every day. You don't."

But Ravitch gave in, and took over an organization in a death spiral. Like NJ Transit today, the MTA had been cannibalizing its capital budget. There wasn't enough money to maintain its tracks, signals and train cars. The result: the average subway car broke down once every 6,000 miles. That's 20 times more frequently than today.

Ravitch knew he had to financially stabilize the MTA. His solution involved borrowing money, increasing state and local aid — and taxes. Five kinds of taxes, to be precise, including an increase to the sales tax, a petroleum business tax, and a real estate transfer tax. That investment lay the groundwork for a turnaround. And the system, did turn around: in 1979, average weekday ridership was about 3.6 million. Today, the system flirts with 6 million subway riders a day, and even a muscle-car lover like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo proselytizes for transit.

"That is going to be our future," he proclaimed at a recent event at LaGuardia Airport, where he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Vice President Joe Biden. "Moving more and more people through mass transit, rather than through cars. And I’m proud to be the governor who made the largest investment in MTA’s history."

That's not the case on the other side of the Hudson, where tax cuts — raather than tax increases — are referred to as examples of "fairness" and "equity." New Jersey's gas tax — which indirectly funds NJ Transit's capital budget via the nearly-insolvent Transportation Trust Fund — is the second-lowest in the nation. It hasn't been raised since Gov. Thomas Kean was in office. A bipartisan group of legislators this year has proposed to change that. But Gov. Christie is gearing up for a throwdown.

"They are advocating for a 23 cent increase — a more than doubling— of the gas tax," Christie told a group of Morris County business leaders earlier this month. "It’s time to fight the fight, everybody, and I am up for it. I am ready."

Jon Whiten, a vice president at the left-leaning think tank New Jersey Policy Perspective, said that when it comes to legislators and the governor, "everything is very centered on driving and car culture. Lawmakers all drive to Trenton. They all drive to their district offices and their district meetings."

Earlier this month, a reporter asked the governor his opinion about a proposal to add a stop in front of the Trenton State House to NJ Transit's River Line in the central part of the state.

"I'm a skeptic," Christie said about the chances of adding the station. "Use Uber."

The nominee, Charles Phillips, is the CEO of Infor, a company that manufactures business software. Two months ago, it was awarded a $27 million dollar job (p. 45) managing the MTA's entire asset base — a trillion-dollar's worth of equipment and property. 

Infor's contract with the MTA lasts for ten years. That means that for the next decade, the agency will need to make sure Infor does what it's paid to do. A senior Cuomo administration official said Phillips will be required to recuse himself from any matter involving the MTA and Infor.

But John Kaehny, executive director of Reinvent Albany, a government reform group, said recusing oneself doesn't necessarily remove the influence a board member can have over staff and agency decisions.

"And that's why having a person who's doing business with that entity as a board member creates a problem," he said.

Dick Dadey, the head of Citizens Union, another good-government group, said of Cuomo's pick: "The fact that he has been nominated and has a contract with the MTA board is a big red flag. The alarm bells are ringing."

On top of that, two years ago Phillips and Infor contributed $60 thousand dollars to Governor Cuomo's campaign.

An Infor spokesman said Phillips — who has served on President Obama's economic recovery board, as well as several nonprofits — has the necessary experience and more people like him should be volunteering for public service.

A spokesman for Gov. Cuomo defended the choice, saying that the contract was awarded through a competitive bidding process before the nomination was public.

"Charles Phillips is an eminently qualified candidate to serve as an unpaid member of the MTA Board," the spokesman said in an email. "As with all appointees, if confirmed, Mr. Phillips will be recusing himself from any discussions, deliberations or decisions affecting his company or any other related interest."​

The state Senate has yet to schedule confirmation hearings for any of the MTA board nominees.

"We're not rebuilding what was," Cuomo said. "This is virtually blank slate, building new."

Demolition gets underway this week on the $4 billion dollar project. One-third is being paid for by the Port Authority; the rest will be covered through airport fees and funds from the private consortium.

Port Authority executive director Pat Foye says that setup shifts financial risk from the Port to the builders."They've guaranteed that if they're wrong about the cost the construction," he said, "that's on their account, not the public's or the Port Authority's."

LGP will rebuild the airport's main terminal and connect it to new terminals being built by Delta, creating what the governor described as a "unified airport." The buildings will be shifted closer to the Grand Central Parkway, freeing up two miles of new runway space — which officials say will reduce gate delays.

The airport will continue to operate while the work is ongoing. Cuomo says it should be substantially completed by 2021.

"By far, the worst-damaged tunnel was Canarsie," said MTA president Tom Prendergast, naming the tunnel that carries the L train under the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn. He said workers did what repairs they could, and flushed as much of the salt out as possible, in the days and weeks post-Sandy. "But salt remains, and so the corrosion continues. And there's a ticking clock with that."

Now, the MTA is preparing to make what it says are vital repairs: replacing the concrete that lines the cast-iron tunnel; rebuilding the concrete duct bank that runs alongside the tracks and carries electrical components, and installing new tracks and signals. (The MTA will also add entrances and elevators to the First Avenue and Bedford Avenue stations.) However, that requires the tunnel to shut down.

Here's where things get tricky.

At a meeting Thursday night, the MTA will present the public with two scenarios currently under consideration.

Option A is designed to be a shorter, if sharper, shock: full closure of both tracks in the tunnel for eighteen months, beginning in January 2019. This accelerates the work — but limits the L train service to Brooklyn only. "That's sort of the mantra 'get in, get done, get out,'" said New York City Transit head Ronnie Hakim.

Canarsie Tunnel proposal: 1.5 years
(Image courtesy of MTA )

Option B preserves some service by keeping one track open. But "some" is the operative word here. Because of the need to single-track through the tunnel, "we'd reduce our service by about 80 percent," said Hakim. Meanwhile, the length of the work doubles...to three years.

Canarsie Tunnel proposal: 3 years
(Image courtesy of MTA )

Under each scenario, subway service on nearby lines like the A, C, G, J, and M would be increased, and the G would run full-length trains. The MTA would also run extra bus service over the Williamsburg Bridge, create shuttle bus service within Brooklyn to nearby subway stops, and consider new ferry service from North 7th Street to 20th Street in Manhattan. And once passengers get off the ferry at 20th Street, Hakim said, they'll be greeted by new Select Bus Service, the MTA's brand of bus rapid transit. "SBS on steroids," as she put it, "to bring people where they want to go."

(Here's what's NOT on the table: closing the tunnel on weekends only. The silica dust that gets generated by destroying the old concrete raises air quality issues — workers have to use protective gear, but the stuff floats around for days and they can't run trains until they test the air. Nor will the MTA build a brand-new tunnel under the East River before taking the Canarsie tunnel out of service.)

"At the end of the day," said Hakim, "the one thing that's very clear to us is that we need to repair the tunnel. That work is a top priority. It needs to get done." 

Transportation experts and transit advocates are leaning towards Option A. The Regional Plan Association said in a briefing memo that "the loss of the L train service to and within Manhattan for an 18-month period will be disruptive, but doubling the construction timeline, along with the higher associated costs and extending the pain of a huge service cut, is far less desirable."

Cate Contino, a coordinator with the Straphangers Campaign, agreed. "I as a rider would rather ‘quick and dirty,'" she said. "Get in, get out."

Four hundred thousand people use the L train on an average weekday, with about 225,000 going between Brooklyn and Manhattan.

MTA President Tom Prendergast said the agency will make a decision about which option to pick in two or three months.

More details about the L train work, as well as information about the MTA's two public meetings on the project, can be found here.

Previous articles:

L Train Shutdown? Wait for It. Then 'Boom!'

What the L: Residents Outraged By Possibility of Canarsie Tube Closure

MTA Chief: More Sandy-Related Subway Tunnel Closures Are Coming

Last year, the system served up 1.763 billion rides — the most since 1948 (when there were elevated lines to serve riders as well). Forty-nine weekdays had ridership in excess of six million.

NYC subway ridership, 1941-2011
(MTA)

But the growth has attendant problems. "Even minor disruptions now can create major delays,” said New York City Transit president Ronnie Hakim, and the latest statistics confirm that what riders (and the state comptroller) know well: you are waiting longer for trains, and the cars are breaking down more frequently.

System-wide, only about 76 percent of subway lines met service standards. Every single one of the numbered lines got worse over the past 12 months (see p. 31). Outdated signal equipment and an aging fleet are ill-equipped to handle the growing ridership. During Monday's MTA committee meetings, board member Andrew Albert called the performance of some of the legacy trains "miserable." 

MTA board member Charles Moerdler noted the Lexington Line was particularly beset by problems. "On the number 4 line, it's 60 percent. On the number 5, it's 61 percent, on the number 6, it's 58 percent. That fails! That's a failing grade!"

"There is no single solution, no single one thing that is going to push us over the goal line," said Hakim on Monday. She talked about the need to implement communications-based train control and purchase new subway cars — big-ticket items whose funding is tied up in the agency's yet-to-be-approved five-year capital program. "We do need to make better use of some of our available resources," she said.

Hakim said the MTA would continue to refine ways to get people on and off trains faster.

"NJ Transit has historically finished plus or minus over the years," said Dennis Martin. "That's just the natural course of business."

He told the Assembly Budget Committee that the agency was currently projecting a $45 million deficit this current fiscal year. That's down from a previous forecast, which put that number at $57 million.

But that number doesn't factor in the costs of its recent labor deal with rail workers.

The deal gives workers 21 percent raises over eight-and-a-half years, retroactive to 2011. In return, they'll pay more toward health care costs. (Unions are in the process of ratifying that contract, and as of Wednesday, four of the 11 unions had done so.)

But the terms call for the agency to pay those retroactive wages in two lump sums, in 2017 and 2018. At the budget hearing, Martin said because that sum was still being calculated, he couldn't ballpark the amount. Nor could he say where that money would come from.

"Since the settlement has happened recently," he said, "we're actually in negotiations with [the state treasury] right now to work out how we do that."

Legislators weren't placated by the lack of specifics — either over NJ Transit's budget or the state's larger transportation funding issues.

Democrats are locked in a battle with Gov. Chris Christie over how to solve the state's Transportation Trust Fund's upcoming insolvency. (In addition to funding roads and bridge maintenance, the TTF also provides NJ Transit with capital funding.) Depending on who you ask, the state's transportation funding is either in crisis — or much ado about nothing.

Democrats are firmly in the crisis column. When Martin restated the governor's commitment that NJ Transit fares would not be raised through fiscal year 2017, Assembly Budget Chair Gary Schaer turned icy.

"Commitment is wonderful," said Schaer, "but you’ll forgive me: this is the Budget Committee. We deal with more than best of intentions."

But funding specifics were not to be found, either from Martin or from Acting State Transportation Commissioner Richard Hammer, who said the TTF would have enough cash to survive until the end of the fiscal year — but not by much.

"We have some carryover that would go into the new fiscal year," Hammer said, "but probably not too deep into the summer."

How deep? "Early August."

That's because the TTF doesn't have additional bonding capacity. And the various mechanisms to replenish it — usually legislation involving raising the state's gas tax — are going nowhere.

"It's just a little bit difficult for me," said Schaer, "in the second week of April, knowing that we have this date hanging over our heads which at best is catastrophic."

"There is plenty of time for the collaborative efforts to take place between the legislature and the governor to come up with a solution," said Hammer. "So I'm not sitting here today saying there is a crisis. I do not believe there is one."

So when a bipartisan group of New Jersey legislators descended on the bus terminal Thursday for a press conference, they were there to both take a victory lap — and make something eminently clear to the New York side of the Port.

Senate President Steve Sweeney: "We're not going to back off."New Jersey Senator Joe Kyrillos: "We are not going to let the pressure up."New Jersey Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg: "We will be watching every single step of the way."

If that sounds odd, take a look at what was missing from the news conference: a bus terminal supporter from east of the Hudson River, in the form of either a New York-appointed commissioner or elected official.

The sole representative from the Port Authority itself was Commissioner Pat Schuber, a New Jersey appointee. He pointedly thanked Port Chairman John Degnan — another New Jersey appointee — while not mentioning the agency's New York-appointed executive director (Pat Foye, who battled Degnan at last week's meeting) or its New York appointed vice chair (Scott Rechler, who had earned New Jersey's wrath by wanting to explore building the terminal in the Garden State, an idea theoretically defeated last week).

"For us it comes down to a simple little mantra," said Schuber. "And that is: west side, yes. One-seat ride, yes. Two-seat ride, no."

Sen. Sweeney, making his second trip to Manhattan in just one week's time, said "we have come a long way." But, he added: "we're not going to back off until we see both projects finished."

Sweeney was referring to both the terminal and the Gateway project, the plan to build a new rail tunnel under the river and rehabilitate the surrounding rail infrastructure.

But Sen. Joe Kyrillos dispatched with diplomacy early on.

"Commissioner Schuber tells us that we gotta keep our eye on the ball," he said. "What is it about this big, large, bi-state agency, bigger than many state governments...We read about it all the time, we scratch our head about it all the time, non-communicative to people, to legislators, a big puzzle — or worse: that we still aren't sure. That says a lot."

The New York side of the Port had raised concerns about whether it was appropriate to include the bus terminal in the agency's capital plan, given the absence of a concrete price tag.

But that shouldn't stop the project from moving forward, said Michael Phelan, co-founder of the New Jersey Commuters Action Network.

"I can't think of the last project that was mapped out, soup to nuts, with how every dollar would be spent," he said. "There's going to have to be oversight and governance over the timelines and budgets."

On Thursday evening, a spokeswoman for Gov. Cuomo issued a statement regarding the bus terminal:

“Everyone agrees that a new bus terminal is needed," said Beth DeFalco in an email. "We look forward to seeing more information about the proposed project – particularly things like cost and design – to ensure fiscal responsibility, transparency, and consistency with the Port Authority’s regional priorities.”

Sen. Bob Gordon, who heads up the Legislative Oversight Committee, said he had scheduled a hearing on the bus terminal project for later this month.

New York Gov. Cuomo has made airport modernization a theme of his administration, and rebuilding LaGuardia's Central Terminal Building is one of his priorities. It's the responsibility of his appointee, Port Authority Executive Director Patrick Foye, to move that ball down the field.

But sometimes priorities of the two states don't mesh, and this was one of them.

The authority's chairman, New Jersey Gov. Christie appointee John Degnan, had previously said he wouldn't support the LaGuardia project because it was too expensive. But he changed his mind after board members agreed to support one of his key projects: to fund — and build — a new Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan.

"I am at the Port Authority to get things done," Degnan said, explaining his change of heart. "We did just that earlier in this meeting when the board committed to a new bus terminal in Manhattan and rejected the misguided notion of pursuing such a facility in New Jersey."

(That was a swipe at Vice Chair Scott Rechler, who had previously floated the idea of building the bus terminal in the Garden State, much to Degnan's dismay.)

A compromise was struck: the board voted to spend more than $4 billion on the new LaGuardia terminal. And it also voted to put a new Port Authority Bus Terminal in its capital plan — a remarkable commitment to a building that has yet to be designed.

That raised Foye's eyebrows. "Regardless of the cost?" he said. "The chairman yesterday threw out $15 billion as the high end of the range estimate for the bus terminal. Are we really going to crowd out $15 billion in existing spending?"

That angered Degnan, who said that estimate was "preposterous" and came up in a private conversation. "The resolution has passed," he told Foye, "you're out of order. Just sit tight. I know you don't agree with it, but you don't get a vote here."

"It's a matter of fiduciary duty," retorted Foye. "To not know whether we're talking about a hundred dollars, a billion, or $15 billion, a number you used yesterday."

"This is out of order," said Degnan. "Keep it to yourself."

After the meeting, Foye, Degnan and Rechler met with reporters and explained that what had gone on in the meeting was healthy.

"What you witnessed today is actually one of the most important Port Authority board meetings in history," said Foye. "I think it represents the single largest allocation of capital on one day in Port Authority history."

But what about the back-and-forth during the meeting?

"Openness and transparency — which have been urged on this Port Authority for years — and democracy — are messy," said Degnan. "But if they work properly, they get things done."

He added "I agree with Pat that this is the most significant step forward in contributing to regional transportation infrastructure that the Port Authority has made in its modern era. The fact that involved some disagreements, and some open disagreements? Don't complain about what you've asked for!"

Later, Scott Rechler explained the compromise.

"It's horse trading," he said. "There was concern in New Jersey that the bus terminal wasn't going to get the attention. And that concern was relayed, and as part of a trade, in terms of moving everything forward, there was an agreement that we would bring the bus terminal forward." 

At Thursday's meeting, the Port Authority board also voted to spend $35 million on preliminary work for the Gateway project, which aims to build new rail tunnels under the Hudson River and improve the region's rail infrastructure.

In previous months, agency officials have said they've had to fish for spare change under couch cushions to keep projects from getting delayed. But on Wednesday, MTA CEO Tom Prendergast indicated that wouldn't be an option much longer.

"June 30th of this year," he told reporters after the agency's monthly board meeting. "That's when we run out of money."

(To be clear, Prendergast said, that means the MTA "can’t make new awards for projects that are in the '15-'19 plan. For prior-approved plans, where we have money, we can make those awards. But for new plans, we can’t make those awards.")

It was a somber end to the meeting, which began with a group of transit advocates calling on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to make good on his $7.3 billion commitment to the MTA.

While Cuomo has promised the money, he hasn't indicated where it will come from, and his version of the state budget not only didn't actually include MTA funding, but indicates that the state will only pay its share when the MTA has exhausted all other available resources.

Gene Russianoff, the head of the Straphangers Campaign, called that a "magical IOU."

"That's a tough thing to do, you know," he told board members. "It's like in one of those fairy tales: I'll give you the money, but first go pick up a clover and some blonde hair, and then a magic potion."

Gene Russianoff, the head of the Straphangers Campaign, with a IOU sign
(Kate Hinds )

That concern was echoed in a less colorful way by MTA board member Jeffrey Kay, who said: "I really do hope that Albany comes to terms, passes our capital program...and hopefully there really is money we can point to."

"We've been talking for months," Kay added. "Now's the time."

The deadline for a new state budget is April 1.

So it's a bit of the buzzkill for the agency to have the crown jewel of the system be described in the press as a mess. Specifically, "a crumbling hot mess," "a disgusting, moldy mess," or a just plain "watery mess."

Icicles on the ceiling of the escalator shaft at the 7 Line Station @ 34th St-Hudson Yards #mta #subway pic.twitter.com/Gm5n7nb8Qz

MTA Capital Construction president Dr. Michael Horodniceanu put it more pragmatically at the agency's recent board meeting:

"The fact that we have leaks is evidence that the waterproofing system is not performing as intended," he said Monday, adding that the agency knew about leaks as long ago as the summer of 2012 and directed its subcontracter, Yonkers Contracting Company, to remediate them. 

He added that the material Yonkers had used to waterproof the station was different than the one the MTA had specified, "but it was believed to be equal."

Now, Horodniceanu said, Yonkers is hiring (and paying for) a specialty subcontractor to fix the problem.

End of conversation? Not hardly.

"I was listening carefully," said MTA board member Jonathan Ballan, "and I didn't fully understand why, with new construction, they couldn't figure out how to construct something that didn't leak." Questioning the MTA's choice to allow Yonkers to use a different material, he added "There should be an option that works. There should be no other option. It shouldn't be trial-and-error for $2 billion."

(More like $2.4 billion.) 

Several more minutes of tense discussion followed, with Horodiceanu verbally throwing up his hands. "Water travels," he said. "So if we have a hole in one place, it'll travel and it'll show up in a different place."

"With all due respect, Doctor, anyone who's ever owned a house knows that," snapped Ballan.

Meanwhile, other board members were doing the slow burn.

"The agency looks foolish," said Allen Cappelli, "and I'm not at all satisfied with the responses that I've gotten here today."

"I kind of learned about this in Gothamist," said Polly Trottenberg, who also is the city's transportation commissioner. "I think it'd be really helpful to have more information right now...we're just going on what's in the papers. That's not good for any of us."

And about that comment Horodniceanu made, saying the MTA knew the station was leaking in 2012? Fernando Ferrer, the board's normally jovial vice chair, said icily "I warrant you, no member of this committee knew, and no board member knew. And that is a problem."

MTA CEO Tom Prendergast told board members he would direct the agency's independent engineer to conduct a review. "The primary concern that I have," he said, "is not who shot John, or who did what to whom, as much as what did we know and what actions did we take with respect to trying to correct the conditions that existed there."

The contract covers 11 unions*, and they all must vote to ratify it. That might be a while, because many of the unions have yet to present the deal to their members. One union will discuss the contract this Sunday.

Meanwhile, neither side is releasing much in the way of details, but it's expected that the wage increases for workers will keep pace with inflation. The contract is retroactive to 2011, which means workers will be owed back wages, but it's unclear whether the cash-strapped agency will pay them immediately — or defer payments until later.

Gov. Chris Christie's office declined to provide more specifics about the deal on Wednesday — including how the state would pay for it — and referred to his remarks last Friday.

"I have no plans in this budget cycle to seek a fare hike," he said at that time. "So that would mean no fare hike through June 30 of 2017."

*American Train Dispatchers Association (Power Directors, Train Dispatchers); Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, IBT; Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division, IBT; Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen; International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers; International Brotherhood of Boilermakers; International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1573 and System Council No. 7, IBEW; National Conference Firemen & Oilers/SEIU; SMART-Mechanical, SMART-Transportation Trainmen and SMART-Transportation Yardmasters; Transport Workers Union; and Transportation Communications Union/IAM (ARASA Division, BRC Division and Clerical Division).

"You can all smile now," Stephen Burkert, a spokesman for the labor coalition, told reporters shortly before 7 p.m. Friday. "We have reached a tentative agreement. Thankfully for the commuters of NJ transit the crisis is averted. We thank our members for having faith in us in solidarity. We're going home to our families."

The agreement means trains will keep running after the union's strike deadline of 12:01 a.m. Sunday — a relief for the transit agency's 160,000 rail commuters, many of whom finished the work week without knowing how they'd get to work Monday.

NJ Transit admitted its contingency plans would have only been able to accommodate 38 percent of the commuters who ride into Penn Station. 

No financial details of the contract were immediately released. Gov. Chris Christie, speaking at NJ Transit headquarters shortly after the deal was announced, said both sides accomplished their goals.

"Everybody starts a negotiation at a certain point and has an end point in their mind," he said. "And I think both sides think they have done very well."

Christie also wouldn't explain how NJ Transit would pay for the wage increase, though he ruled out fare hikes until mid-2017. (The agency had previously said it could not afford a substantial raise for workers without raising fares.)

The governor had taken heat from the media and the public because he left the state earlier in the week to celebrate his 30th wedding anniversary with his wife. He said at the news conference that he had cut that trip short in order to deal with the contract negotiations.

The 4,200 rail workers, who are represented by 11 different unions, had been without a contract since 2011.

"It's not the job of the governor to negotiate this personally," he said before he left Monday. "It is the job of the governor to set down parameters for negotiation, which are executed by professionals."

Contrast that with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who, nearly two years ago, swooped in four days before a threatened Long Island Rail Road strike and brokered a deal while dining on seafood.

Photo: @NYGovCuomo hashing out final details of #LIRR agreement over lunch with @MTA and LIRR union leaders pic.twitter.com/6Qbi3phZuJ

"I have a day job also," Cuomo said at the time, "so if I don't have to get involved better I don't. But again, I thought in these circumstances, it merited it."

In case you had forgotten Gov. Cuomo brokered the LIRR deal, MTA chief Tom Prendergast subtly reminded reporters of that at a press conference Tuesday morning. When asked what the MTA's plans were if NJ Transit rail shut down, Prendergast said, "Everybody's working very hard to try to avoid a strike, much like we did, and the governor interceded for our Long Island Rail Road strike."

But initially, Cuomo wanted little to do with the LIRR negotiations. He suggested that Congress should solve it, and if it didn't, that a strike would be "a real pain, maybe, but not a disaster." What's more, in the end, the Democrat had good reason to intervene: 2014 was an election year, and he wanted to keep the unions in his tent and Long Island voters in his column.

By contrast, Christie, a Republican, may have reached the end of his public service career, so unions don't have leverage over him (if they ever did). Plus, his absence could be strategic. Christie won a showdown in 2010 with Democrats who threatened to close the state government over a budget impasse by calling their bluff and saying they could go ahead and shut down government.

"I’m going to order a pizza, I’m going to watch the Mets," he said at the time. "And when you decide to reopen the government, give me a call and I’ll come back."

(Then again, Christie had been in New Jersey working hard on that budget, while in this case, his constituents are very aware that the governor's attention and time has been elsewhere the last couple of years.)

In the meantime, face-to-face negotiations between NJ Transit and the unions will resume Thursday. In a statement, a spokeswoman for the agency said, "Today's discussions were productive and positive."  

But well before the transit agency made its plans public, some towns, rattled by the possibility of a rail stoppage, were already putting phone calls out to charter bus companies.

"We started reserving the buses several weeks ago in anticipation," said Timothy Quinn, the administrator of Morris Township.

Now, if rail workers walk off the job — or are locked out — four buses will leave Convent Station for 34th Street beginning that Monday at 6 a.m.

The trip is $25 round-trip — roughly the same cost as a train ticket. The town is giving first dibs to customers with parking permits for the station. And even then, demand may outstrip supply: Quinn says he has 200 seats to sell for 500 parking permit holders.

Quinn described it as "a day-by-day, no frills" plan designed so that locals could avoid having to drive to one of NJ Transit's park-and-rides.

"If for some reason, we don't fill up the four buses, then we will open it up to anybody," he said.

Neighboring Morristown is offering similar service.

Meanwhile, contract talks between NJ Transit and rail workers unions continued on Monday in Newark.

Seen from the 9/11 Memorial plaza, to the West, the tips of architect Santiago Calatrava's wings contrast with architecture from the early 20th century.
(Richard Yeh/WNYC)

Her first impression was favorable. Starting on Church Street, on the station's east side, she noticed the tips of what architect Santiago Calatrava considered bird wings (but which critics have derided as a dinosaur's rib cage) peeking out from behind some buildings.

"Whichever animal you choose, it has this animal quality, and curves, and lightness that kind of disappears into the sky," Lange said. "And especially when surrounded by all the tall office buildings that you see in Lower Manhattan, it is a striking object that does draw you to it." 

Inside the structure, the individual spires mesh together unless seen from head-on.
(Richard Yeh/WNYC)

After Lange and Hake took a circuitous route to find the hub's entrance — the World Trade Center area is still very much a construction site — they ended up on the other side, looking at Calatrava's structure from the 9/11 Memorial plaza. Here, the building's whiteness is striking — and somewhat disconcerting.

1 World Trade Center, the tallest building in the country, can be seen through the "spine" of the new Calatrava Hub.
(Camila Osorio/WNYC)

"This is the kind of architecture that benefits from looking perfect," Lange said. "It's supposed to be — "

"Pristine?" Hake offered.

"Pristine," she continued. "And if the white floors, the white exterior starts getting covered in dirt and tape and gum, it's not going to look right."

The concourse is light and airy, but still leaves Lange wondering why the Port Authority spent $4 billion on the project.
(Richard Yeh/WNYC)

Once inside the hub (where a custodian was already at work mopping the floor), Lange noted that the spaces between the ribs, or wing tips, let plenty of natural light float down to the concourse, glowing on the marble floor.

But given the hub's high cost and the limited purpose it will serve, Lange's overall assessment was lukewarm.

"I think that it is beautiful, it is effective," Lange said, "but the 'why' question is not answered for me by what I see here." 

One of the projects in line for the money: the PATH train station, which was completely destroyed. But officials didn’t want to just rebuild it. They wanted it to be the Grand Central Terminal of downtown. And so in 2004, Gov. George Pataki unveiled a design by renowned architect Santiago Calatrava.

"This is not a station," the governor said. "This is a tribute to those we lost on September 11th and a tremendous symbol of our confidence in the future."

The Freedom Tower can be admired from the middle of the new Calatrava Hub in New York City
(Camila Osorio/WNYC)

 Calatrava likened his structure to a bird taking flight. At first, it was budgeted for $2 billion dollars. Twelve years later, it's nearly $4 billion. The station will serve 50,000 PATH train riders a day. Meanwhile, 300,000 commuters scuttle through the decaying, overcrowded corridors in Penn Station. The outgoing head of the Port Authority, Patrick Foye, says the Calatrava Hub cost too much and does too little. "Frankly a billion, billion and a half or two could have been taken out of the hub and put into New York Penn Station, or put into the Gateway Tunnel, or put into Terminal A at Newark Airport," he said. "And in my mind that would have been a much more productive and efficient investment."

(To be fair, the Port Authority lengthened and expanded the PATH train platforms. But it can't run longer trains, or even more trains, until the rest of the system is upgraded.)However, the federal aid money was designated for transportation projects in lower Manhattan. But it turns out that $4.5 billion wasn't enough for a truly transformational transit project, like bringing commuter rail downtown and adding a direct train to JFK airport. And it’s far more than was needed to do a straight rebuild of the PATH station (that cost about $300 million). Like an overfed goldfish outgrowing its bowl, once the feds promised the money, it was going to be spent — mostly on the Calatrava hub.

Here's how it ultimately broke down:

How the Federal Transit Administration's $4.55 billion to post-9/11 transportation funding was spent
(Information from the FTA )

(According to a spokesman for the Federal Transit Administration, "decisions regarding which projects were funded, including their scope, were made locally.")

"It's the same thing we've seen happen on other projects," said Nicole Gelinas, an infrastructure expert with the Manhattan Institute. "The state tends to think this is free money because it comes from Washington. So we end up spending all of Washington’s money — and we end up spending our own."

Meaning: money from taxpayers. And the costs increased so much, the Port Authority had to put down its own money at a time when it has to fund a new Port Authority Bus Terminal, as well as new rail tunnels under the Hudson. But the hub is visually arresting. 'When you get down inside the terminal and look up," says Tom Wright, the head of the Regional Plan Association, "the sensation you have is total openness."

That opinion was shared by Tristen Anthony, who commutes every day to New Jersey. "It's beautiful, finally we are getting some infrastructure that looks like the rest of the world. Commuting is not fun, but this [place] lifts up your spirit."And Tom Wright says the hub is more than eye candy. The additional entrances and exits, not to mention the new passageway to multiple subway lines, will get commuters where they want to go faster. "If you just knock two or three minutes off of the trip for somebody in the morning and the evening," he says, "that’s five minutes a day, that becomes half an hour over the course of a week...It becomes very significant very quickly."Meanwhile, another train station ALSO heavily damaged in the September 11 attacks is still being rebuilt: three blocks away, the Cortlandt Street subway station on the #1 line won't open until 2018.

Except right now. The city effectively has only one active voting member: Polly Trottenberg, the city's transportation commissioner. Mayor Bill de Blasio nominated three others in early June, but they haven't been confirmed by the state Senate. That means New York has only 25 percent of the firepower it statutorily should have. 

"The power dynamic is really inequitable right now," said Veronica Vanterpool, one of the nominees-in-waiting.

She said the board is facing several New York City-centric decisions over the next few months, including how to move forward on projects like the next phase of the Second Avenue Subway. "And there isn't adequate New York City voting representation to help support those."

The other two nominees are City Council member Ydanis Rodriguez, the chair of the council's transportation committee, and David Jones, the president and chief executive of the nonprofit Community Service Society. 

Wednesday's meeting underscored Vanterpool's point. Almost all the board members appeared ready to sign off on a $430 million lease of the agency's former Madison Avenue headquarters to a developer. Only Trottenberg, the city's sole representative, balked. She cited "issues" with the deal and asked for more time.

"A question we need to work through," she said, is "about whether the MTA can just transfer its tax-exempt status to a private company for a 99-year period." 

At stake, she later explained, was potentially a billion dollars in tax revenue for the city over the life of the 99-year-lease.

Ultimately, the motion was tabled for another month.

The absence of the three board members is ironic because the city agreed to contribute an unprecedented $2.5 billion to the MTA's $26 billion, five-year capital plan, in return for "a stronger voice" in the agency's governance. 

A spokeswoman for Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Beth DeFalco, said the executive already passed along the names to the state Senate for confirmation. Calls and an email to Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan have not been returned.

Technically, two board members appointed by former Mayor Mike Bloomberg can still attend meetings and vote on the city's behalf, even though their terms have expired. But they rarely show up.    

"The city put forward three exceedingly qualified people to serve on the MTA's board, and we stand by all of them," said Wiley Norvell, a spokesman for Mayor de Blasio. "Given the enormity of the decisions being made that will impact our transit for decades to come, the people of New York City deserve their full representation. These able and dedicated nominees deserve a vote."

"It was a very, very difficult storm," said LIRR president Patrick Nowakowski. "We were obviously at it for several days before we got back to normal service."

He said the agency could benefit from additional snowfighting equipment, like more plow trains, as well as the trucks necessary to provide fuel. It also needs centralized train control to help keep track of where trains are at all times. Going into the agency's command center in Jamaica, Nowakowski said, is like "going into the Dark Ages."

But those upgrades are years away, and MTA board member Ira Greenberg said that what really annoyed riders was the lack of accurate information. "And that's not just this snowstorm," Greenberg said. "That's been going on for years."

Nowakowski said that's because conditions on the ground often change rapidly. "We don’t always know exactly what’s happening when it’s happening," he said. After the meeting, Greenberg said he hoped the exchange in the board room opened up a dialog about improving communication. "We're obligated to do better," he said, "because we need a better reputation with the passengers. We owe it to them."In recent weeks, those frustrated passengers have taken using the hashtag #WeDeserveBetter to vent their complaints on Twitter.

1. If the Brooklyn-Queens waterfront is doing so well, why does it need a $2.5 billion streetcar line?

Basically, to make the area do even better. Trottenberg acknowledged that residents of other areas of the city also need more transit — like the North Shore of Staten Island — but that in order to make sure the project is successful, people need to want to live and work there. Glen added that no other area of the city was growing faster in percentage terms. They both said that if this streetcar line works, they could bring the idea to other parts of the city. 

2. Won't the streetcar line divert tax revenues from other city priorities?  

The de Blasio administration says it won't. They surveyed 75 other cities and determined that transit improvements increase property values by 2 to 4 percent, conservatively. They said that would be enough money to pay for the project over 30 to 40 years. (Basically, the  city will borrow that $2.5 billion and then pay it back.) A similar scheme for Hudson Yards and the No. 7 extension hasn't worked out that well, however. Torres said the city will work to avoid a repeat. 

3. Why not build a very fast bus line for a tenth of the cost of light rail? 

Because buses aren't sexy. De Blasio's aides didn't use that term, but that's essentially what they said. Transit aficionados have been knocking the mayor's streetcar plan because it is glitzy. City officials say that's exactly why their plan will work: light rail will generate enough added value to pay for itself, whether it's because the rails embedded in the road bed connote permanence, or streetcars provide a roomier and more pleasant ride. But bus rapid transit hardly does anything at all in terms of tax revenue, according to their analysis. Who gets up in the morning excited to take a bus?     

4. Will there be free transfers from the streetcar to buses and subways? 

Yes, assuming the city can work out details with the MTA. The full fare will be the same as the subway's (currently $2.75), but the city's revenue projections are based on an average $1.33 a ride, which means the city has baked in free transfers, and discounts for students, seniors and the disabled.

5. Isn't this whole thing a giveaway to real estate developers? 

Yes. But again, de Blasio's aides were unapologetic about this. Glen said any new improvement by the city boosts property values. And whoever ends up buying condos from those developers will have to pay real estate taxes, which will be higher because of the streetcar. It is worth noting, however, that London imposed an extra 2 percent surcharge on top of property taxes to pay for its new Crossrail line, and suburban Washington, D.C., tacked on a similar percentage for the Silver Line.    

6. What about other transit priorities like the Utica Avenue subway?  

They said the mayor is still committed to other projects — since the streetcar is supposed to be self-financed, it won't hurt them. But Glen added that there are advantages to projects that can be done outside the parameters of the MTA: the city can push forward on the streetcar as fast as it wants, rather than having to negotiate with what is largely a state entity. 

7. How far will the streetcar stop from subway stations?

Up to a quarter mile, Glen said. That could make for long and inconvenient transfers: about a five minute walk for a healthy grown up, longer for elderly riders and children. 

8. When is it going to be finished?

Sometime in 2024, if all goes well. 

"I urge this board to assist us in any way to avert a possible work stoppage," said Stephen Burkert, the general chairman of the SMART union transportation division and a spokesman for the coalition representing rail workers. He told the board that laborers want to "come to an agreement at a conference table, not a picket line."

But speaking to reporters outside the board room, Burkert said the the ultimate dealmaking power lies not in Newark but 60 miles to the southwest. "We have been trying to negotiate with NJ Transit," he said, "but their answer was consistently, 'We need to get word from Trenton.' Yet Trenton never showed up at those meetings."

Because NJ Transit is a state-operated agency, Gov. Chris Christie can veto any labor deal within 10 days of board approval. It's unclear how involved, if at all, the governor has been in negotiations — or if he'd become more involved once he steps off the presidential campaign trail — but he controls the agency's increasingly strapped finances. 

Kevin Roberts, a spokesman for Christie, referred questions about contract talks to NJ Transit and said any union criticism of the governor's office was "pure posturing."

Meanwhile, workers have been without a contract for nearly five years, and although talks are ongoing, the two sides are far apart when it comes to insurance. "Heath care is the big thing," Burkert said. "They're looking for an 800 percent increase in the cost of the premium."

According to the federal labor board report, union rail workers currently pay about $81 a month for health insurance. The coalition's offer calls for workers to pay two percent of their salary for health insurance. NJ Transit wants workers to pay 10 to 20 percent of health insurance costs, depending on date of hire.

Burkert described NJ Transit's offer as a non-starter because it would increase health insurance costs to workers by "hundreds" of dollars a month, which he said was tantamount to a pay cut. NJ Transit would not confirm details of their offer.

"The subject of negotiation is not going to be done in public," said NJ Transit's interim executive director, Dennis Martin. "It's going to be done in private. And we hope to reach an affordable solution."

Martin said another round of talks was scheduled, but the coalition could not confirm.

At Wednesday's meeting, riders urged the two sides to come to a deal. "Go down to Trenton," Orin Getz of the NJ Association of Railroad Passengers told the board. "They have to give you the money that you need to keep NJ Transit operating properly and provide enough money to negotiate an equitable settlement. Five years of working without a contract is just dead wrong."

By the numbers: NJ Transit's rail labor dispute

Earliest date a strike or a lockout could legally happen: 12:01 a.m. on Sunday, March 13 Number of commuters who take NJ Transit trains on an average weekday: 160,000 Number of rail workers involved: approximately 4,220, represented by a coalition of 17 different unions Length of time workers have been without a contract: nearly 5 years Number of federal mediation boards who have ruled in favor of the unions: 2 Last time NJ Transit rail workers went on strike: 1983 Length of time that strike lasted: 34 days

"To our knowledge," Feinberg said, speaking on a conference call Monday held by U.S. Reps. Nita Lowey and Sean Patrick Maloney, "nothing has been done to date, physically, to change that crossing."

The NTSB has indicated that the Commerce Street crossing functioned properly, though there may be a problem with the design that officials have not yet acknowledged publicly.  

The actions of driver Ellen Brody, who was killed in the crash, have been under scrutiny. Her husband told investigators he believes she didn't know her car was on the tracks.

But Commerce Street is just one of over 400 grade crossings in MTA territory. Since last February's crash, the agency has partnered with Operation Lifesaver to mount a public awareness campaign and MTA police has stepped up enforcement. According to MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan, 4,905 railroad safety pamphlets have been distributed and 1,875 summonses at railroad crossings have been issued. 

Railroad crossing safety poster
(MTA /flickr)

The MTA is also conducting a pilot risk assessment program at 20 railroad crossings, and expects to expand the program later this year.

The NTSB will release a final report on the Valhalla crash later this year.

Drawn to the Uber offices in Long Island City through organizing efforts on social media, drivers said they were afraid they would have to work a more than 15 hours a day to make the same amount of money as they did before.

“Uber wants us to work 100 hours a week for us to make what we used to do in 60 hours,” said Ender Palmar. A former yellow cab driver, he said his wages decreased since he began working for Uber three years ago.

The protesters demanded the company raise rates again or lower the commission Uber charges drivers per ride, which is generally 20 percent or more. Uber also dropped the rate in 2014. 

Uber lowered the base fare for Uber X and XL services from $3 to $2.55. The per mile rate fell from $2.15 to $1.75, and the minute rate from $0.40 to $0.35. 

"They're just following the playbook for Economics 101," said Carolyn Said, a business reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle who covers the sharing economy. "They're trying to cut prices to spur demand."

Representatives from Uber told WNYC reporters they expected the cuts would not only benefit costumers, but drivers as well. Uber said its data showed that just this past weekend, drivers spent 39 percent less time without a fare and saw a 20 percent increase in hourly earnings compared to two weekends ago.

“But if for any reason the price cuts are not giving drivers more business and better earnings, we will consider changing them,” spokesman Matt Wing said.

Play the audio to hear WNYC Host Jami Floyd interview with Carolyn Said.

Amtrak train number 188 derailed while speeding around a sharp curve. So far, investigators appear to have ruled out malfunctions with the locomotive, track or signaling systems. But they're not yet ready to say why engineer Brian Bostian had accelerated to 106 miles per hour — more than twice the speed limit.

But in two separate interviews, Bostian — who suffered a concussion and other injuries during the crash — said he can't remember what happened immediately before the train sped up.

He described what happened in the minutes leading up to the crash, explaining that he sped the train up to 80 M.P.H. along a stretch of track that permitted that speed. But then, he said, "I don't have any other memories until after the train was already in the curve."

"I hesitate to use the word dream-like because it sounds like I was asleep and I don't believe that I was asleep at all," he told investigators. "But kind of a very foggy memory...it was more of a feeling...I remember feeling as though I was going too fast around a curve."

From the NTSB investigation into Amtrak 188
(via NTSB)

Bostian said he applied three separate braking maneuvers to slow the train down. "I remember holding onto the controls tightly and feeling like, 'OK, well this is it, I'm going over,'" he said. "And so I tried to brace myself."

The next thing he remembers, he said, was standing up in the train without knowing how he got to his feet.

Toxicology tests on Bostian and other members of the Amtrak crew found no evidence of illegal drugs or alcohol. The NTSB had previously said Bostian was not using his cell phone at the time of the crash.

Since the crash, Amtrak has installed and activated a crash prevention technology known as positive train control along most of the Northeast Corridor. All railroads are required to have it in place by 2018, according to federal law.

The NTSB is expected to declare a probably cause for the crash sometime this spring.

The L train tunnel was flooded with 7 million gallons of saltwater during Sandy
(MTA/Patrick Cashin /flickr)

Remember that 13 month closure of the R train? The MTA says those repairs must be made to the L train tunnel, too. But word about that long-term closure leaked well before the agency made contingency plans and began community outreach. So a group called the L Train Coalition called their own meeting, and they weren't happy.

"We're going to kill our community if we allow this to happen," said Elaine Brodsky of the Greenpoint Chamber of Commerce.

"This is a tragedy in the making," said Assemblyman Joe Lentol.

"You will devastate the community," said Bushwick resident Thomas Dodd.

(Meanwhile, the real estate community is watching very closely.)

The real estate impact of the L train shutdown
(Streeteasy )

That might sound a little dramatic. But unlike the R train, the L is the only game in town for many parts of North Brooklyn.

"There's no duplication, there's no other parallel line we could take," said Taylor Erkkinen of The Brooklyn Kitchen. "The walk to the J/M/Z station is pretty significant, in some cases."

The MTA sent community liaison Andrew Inglesby to the meeting to listen to concerns. He quickly became a piñata.

Does the MTA have a timetable for the work? Could he say if it would it be weekends only, or a long-term outage? Could he say when the public would have that information?

His response: "Not at this time."

At that, Felice Kirby, one of the founders of the L Train Coalition, politely showed Ingelsby the door.

"We're not getting any answers, we're not getting any solid information," she said. "I don't think it's personal, I'm sure this gentleman is doing an excellent job of not telling us anything they don't want us to know."

A spokesman for the MTA, John McKay, said, "The MTA is looking for the best ways to mitigate the service disruptions and customer inconvenience that will result from this critical repair work. As we have made clear both prior to and at the meeting, we are committed to maintaining a dialogue with the affected communities as we analyze the options. As the process moves forward, we will continue to listen to ideas from our riders, local businesses and elected officials.”

Instead, their budgets simply promised to find the money when the MTA needed it. Yet the MTA's sense of urgency at getting a hold of that money has disappeared.

"The word of the governor of this state and the mayor of this city is certainly good enough for me," MTA vice chairman Fernando Ferrer said at an MTA board meeting Wednesday. (He was filling in for ailing MTA chief Tom Prendergast.)

But Gene Russianoff, the head of the Straphanger's Campaign, was not as sanguine.

"The devil's in the details," he said. "Or in this case, the lack of details."

Russianoff said if City Hall and Albany fail to come through, the region's transportation network would be put in financial peril. 

Nick Sifuentes of the Riders Alliance said, "Albany has resumed its pattern of neglect, and left New York transit riders out in the cold." 

When does the MTA need that government-promised capital money? At its meeting, the board approved a $663 million contract for East Side Access. So how much money does that leave the agency for its other big-ticket projects?

All officials would say is "enough" — for now.

The MTA had announced the previous evening at about 7 p.m. that a little over 80 percent of LIRR service would be back online for the morning rush hour. 

And that was the last anyone heard from the LIRR...until Monday morning at 5:06 a.m., when the agency tweeted that service wouldn't start...until 7 a.m. (And the Port Washington branch didn't get back online even then.) 

Twitter quickly became a wonderland of complaints.

Not a good day to be taking the LIRR. Major delays in Mineola pic.twitter.com/5zdFqbXBvu

#NYC-bound train finally arrives at Huntington #LIRR at 7:20 am with 2-hour snow delay. It's packed pic.twitter.com/dsJDkeZ2mp

Once these commuters arrived at Penn Station (and only Penn, since service to Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn was also suspended), they were even more frustrated, having endured painfully long and crowded rides.

"It was really slow, and really packed," Farmingdale resident Austin Catania said. "I deal with it too much. I'm moving to Queens soon, so I won't have to deal with it anymore."

It wasn't just average riders who were surprised at the last-minute change of heart. Speaking after an unrelated event in Manhattan at about noon Monday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo didn't appear to be aware that the railroad had changed its mind at the last minute, but defended the agency nonetheless.

“I don’t know what they said when,” Cuomo said. “I know they ran into all sorts of weather complications, and I know they were working very, very hard. But there was a lot of snow out there. Don’t kid yourself. And there was a lot of snow on tracks, and frozen signals, and my guess is — I don't know — my guess is they ran into more complications than they expected when they put the trains back in service.”

The MTA said the reason for the delay was because "switches and tracks that had been prepared for service have re-frozen due to unexpected low overnight temperatures."

That's understandable, said Mark Epstein, the head of the Long Island Rail Road Commuter Council. "The railroad doesn't have control over storms." What's less understandable, though, was the lack of information flowing from the MTA to commuters. He described service alerts and announcements that bore little resemblance to conditions on the ground.

"They failed miserably in terms of communication," Epstein said of the LIRR.

That message was echoed in the MTA's board room Monday, where, coincidentally, committee meetings were taking place.

"There was contradictory information sent out through the night and even this morning telling people at one point there was no service, " board member Ira Greenberg told his colleagues. "Meanwhile there was service."

LIRR committee chair Mitchell Pally promised that the agency would look into it.  "We will be providing a full report next month," he said.

"We're doing a full investigation," said MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan.

With additional reporting from Stephen Nessen.

"Vision Zero is going to move ahead with even more intensity in the coming year," said de Blasio.

One area of intensity: left turns.

As WNYC has reported, the move is difficult for drivers — and can have disastrous consequences for pedestrians. In New York City, they account for 30 percent of vehicle-pedestrian crashes. Now, they're coming under increased scrutiny by the city, and the mayor says making them safer is one of his Vision Zero goals for the coming year.

"We're going to be doing something new," said de Blasio. "We're going to be improving left turn configurations...at 100 intersections across the city. And if it works as well as we think, we're going to expand from there."

The pilot involves installing plastic curb-like barriers on double-yellow centerlines to force drivers to make slower, more deliberate turns, as well as removing some parking spaces near corners to increase visibility (a practice known as daylighting).

While it's likely that the removal of some parking spaces will bring howls of protest from some residents — "I spent many many hours circling around my block looking for a parking space," said the mayor, "so I'm very sensitive to my fellow New Yorkers who are concerned about parking" — it sounds like de Blasio is ready to take the blowback.

"If the process of saving lives means we lose some parking spaces," he said, "that's a good choice."

City transportation officials said they're still determining locations, but that they'll be based on crash data.

"Mass transportation is the key if our region is to grow in size and strength," he said. "If our regions are going to grow, it must be through mass transit. We must move more commuters faster with less damage to the environment."

But when the budget was posted online, a quick romp through the capital financing plan revealed a series of zeroes, instead of annual allocations to the MTA's five-year capital plan.

From the FY 17 Capital Programming and Financing Plan
(Gov. Andrew Cuomo)

So where is the state's promised contribution to the MTA's capital program? As part of a deal to fund its five-year program, Cuomo promised $8.3 billion last year. The state appropriated $1 billion for the MTA in FY 2016, and that money is included. But the source of the remaining $7.3 billion isn't named.

According to a spokesperson for the governor, Cuomo's $7.3 billion commitment is in the legislation, which reads: "It is anticipated that state funds shall be required by, and provided to, the MTA."

From the 2016-17 New York State Executive Budget
(Gov. Andrew Cuomo)

That binds the state to its promise that the money will be there when the MTA needs it, says Cuomo spokesman Morris Peters. "The governor put unambiguous and ironclad language in the budget to make good on his commitment. It could not be more ironclad."

Depending on how you look at it, the absence of a clear funding path forward for the $7.3 billion could be a way for the state to remain flexible. Maybe, say, interest rates will go up. Or more bank settlement money will come in. Viewed through this lens, the lack of clarity makes financial sense. "The legislation preserves a variety of options for the state to fund the capital program," says the MTA's Adam Lisberg.

But some transit watchers worry that this language in the bill makes the state the funder of last resort and could put pressure on the MTA to borrow more money. "The plan is that there is no plan," said Nicole Gelinas of the Manhattan Institute. "They are promising to figure out a way to come up with the money when they need it."

Bill Henderson is the longtime head of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA. He pointed out that the governor took a billion dollars in bank settlement money and put it to the New York State Thruway as part of his plan to hold the line on tolls. "I guess I'd be a little bit more sanguine if they'd taken some known sources of funding and said, 'OK, we're going to spend this money on the MTA,'" he said. 

With additional reporting by Jessica Gould.

In a 41-page decision, a three-member Presidential Emergency Board recommended that the transit agency accept the unions' offer. The labor coalition is seeking an 18 percent pay raise for workers over seven years, retroactive to 2011.

Last year, a previous board had also sided with labor.

NJ Transit had maintained the unions' offer was unaffordable, but the federal mediators disagreed, pointing out that the transit agency was able to reach deep into their coffers to strike a 2015 deal with bus workers. The mediators also cited the 2014 deal that averted a Long Island Rail Road strike, as well as recent contracts with Metro-North workers, as evidence of similar wages paid by nearby commuter railroads.

NJ Transit again rejected the new report's findings.

"The latest recommendations are not affordable," said NJ Transit spokeswoman Nancy Snyder, adding that the agency "remains committed toward negotiating an affordable, fair and equitable settlement."

Steve Burkert, the general chairman of United Transportation Union Local 60, said the unions were “very gratified that the panel thought we presented the most reasonable offer.”

He added that although all 17 rail unions had voted to strike, they were all looking forward to getting back to the bargaining table. “We’d prefer to settle,” he said, “and keep on moving.”

The presidential board's recommendation is non-binding, but it's part of the federally-mandated process railroads and unions must go through during a labor dispute before either side can legally resort to lockouts or strikes.

Now, the two sides must wait 60 days for a 'cooling off period,' meaning that the earliest a strike could occur would be March. However the dispute is resolved could spell further financial trouble for the transit agency, which is facing a looming budget gap, and raised fares in the fall.

Read the PEB's report below.

"I don’t wasn’t to get in a train and feel like a sardine for an hour and a half on the way to work," he told a crowd of MTA officials, labor leaders, and politicians at the New York Transit Museum. "I don’t want to do that. I want to be able to sit in the seat, I want to be able to listen to my music, I want to be able to make the telephone call, connected to Wi-Fi. I come to expect that."

MTA Chairman Tom Prendergast (L) and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo
(Kate Hinds )

It was a change in tone for a governor known for his love for muscle cars rather than mass transit. But lately, in the run-up to next week's State of the State address, he has talked a lot about transportation initiatives. As with previous announcements, the governor spoke about the Founding Fathers — as well as the Erie Canal — in a message designed to evoke the Empire State's grandeur.

"You know how they say 'Oh, you New Yorkers, you're so high strung,'" he told the audience of journalists, elected officials and labor union members. "They're right! We're high strung! We're ambitious. And we built the greatest city and the greatest state on the globe because we are."

And, as with previous announcements, a lot of Cuomo's plans are already in the pipeline — but he wants to speed them up or expand upon them. He called for all 277 underground subway stations to have Wi-Fi by the end of this year, a year ahead of the current schedule, with cell phone service not far behind. And the governor promised to completely overhaul 30 subway stations, compared to the 20 outlined in the MTA's capital program.

But there's a catch: those stations would be entirely closed for six to eight weeks, and construction at each location could last up to a year, according to an MTA spokesman. 

A rendering of wi-fi and charging stations planned for the NYC transit system
(Gov. Andrew Cuomo)

"Let people walk in there and say, 'Wow, this is the MTA,'” he said. "This is the train station – amazing. Yes, we can."

Other proposals include an accelerated timeline for countdown clocks, mobile ticketing for the commuter railroads, and the next generation of the MetroCard, which could let you use your cell phone to go through the turnstile.

But where is the money for these initiatives coming from? Like the commercial for Prego spaghetti sauce, Cuomo promised reporters, it's in there.

"We have roughly a $140 billion annual budget, part of it is debt, part of it is revenue, and the state's contribution of $8 billion [for the MTA] will be in that $140 billion dollar financial plan," the governor said after the speech.

But that lack of clarity worries some transportation watchers. Nicole Gelinas of the Manhattan Institute was perplexed that on top of all that spending, the governor is also promising to reduce tolls on the New York State Thruway. That toll revenue, she pointed out, is supposed to be helping to fund another signature Cuomo project: the $4 billion replacement for the Tappan Zee Bridge.

"If we're going to continue to build infrastructure like that," she said, "then we do need to pay for it. So saying that drivers...will be paying less, means that in the long term we won't be building the infrastructure that we need."

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"It is ugly, it is dated architecture, it is a lost opportunity," he said. "Frankly, it's a miserable experience. Let me cut to the chase: it is a terrible impression of New York."

His solution, which he will expand upon in next week's State of the State address: move Amtrak across the street to the Farley Post Office building — something originally championed by the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan — and renovate the existing Penn Station, bringing natural light into what he called "a bleak warren of corridors." The two stations would have block-long entrances and be connected via an underground passageway. Cuomo is calling the new hub the "Empire Station Complex."

Predictably, this inspired a number of Star Wars jokes. 

I found another rendering of the Empire Station Complex. pic.twitter.com/GCPAcBRLqk

The governor made the announcement flanked by officials from Amtrak, the state's Economic Development Corporation, and Madison Square Garden — which may see its Paramount Theater partially demolished in what Cuomo called "a friendly negotiated condemnation."

(Cuomo added that it's "an unusual combination of words. But it is an unusual situation.")

The arena was not mentioned as an option for displacement in Wednesday's announcement, but Madison Square Garden has long resisted calls for it to relocate, so chairman James Dolan's presence on the dais with the governor was in and of itself significant. But it wasn't immediately clear how committed he was to Cuomo's vision. While he called the plans "long overdue," he stopped short of voicing his full support.

"As it advances," Dolan said, "if there's an opportunity to partner with the state, I will gladly take it."

But demolishing the Theater at Madison Square Garden (formerly called the Paramount) was just one of several options Cuomo tossed out to entice private developers, which will be key to financially pulling this off.

"The private developer will finance the Penn redevelopment in exchange for the retail development rights that are within the station itself," Cuomo said. "There are 650,000 people going through Penn."

That may be enough to entice a developer to sign on to what could be a $3 billion undertaking. Tom Wright, the head of the Regional Plan Association, said the governor's presentation "chummed the waters" to drum up interest in the project. "They've put enough...economic value on the table to hopefully get the private sector to start thinking very creatively about how they can generate some revenues and do something here."

But Wednesday's proposal amounted to more of a 'plan to come up with a plan' than a concrete path forward, and the unanswered questions abound: how will this fit into plans to build a new tunnel under the Hudson River, known as Gateway? And how much public money might be put into the project?

"It's a bit like, you know, you paint the outside of your house first," said Mary Rowe, the vice president of the Municipal Arts Society.

"You make it clear to folks that you have to probably overhaul the whole thing, but the first thing you're going to do is paint the outside."

He made his case before a group of business leaders: if the region wants to remain viable, he said, it can't have its citizens stuck in traffic."Congestion is going to increase by 25 percent by 2040," he told them. "Either you get ahead of that problem, or that problem is going to consume you."It's not a new idea. Ten years ago, the MTA tried to add that third track along a 10-mile stretch between Floral Park and Hicksville. But community opposition was ferocious, and a coalition called "Citizens Against Rail Expansion" was part of the reason the plan was abandoned. Cuomo said the new version would be far better, because it would impact just about 20 homeowners and 30 commercial property owners.

Right now, four branch lines carrying two out of every five LIRR commuters share just two tracks along that stretch. (See a LIRR map here.) Veronica Vanterpool, executive director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, says that configuration has consequences.  

"The Port Jefferson Branch and the Ronkonkoma branch are in the top three for delays and lost productivity," she said. "It’s good to see this is a project that’s moving forward, because it would shave 40 minutes off round trip commutes for LIRR users."Not only would the third track increase capacity for existing LIRR riders — but it would finally make it possible to commute from New York City to Long Island. 

"This project is the most important infrastructure project for transportation on Long Island," said Mitchell Pally, an MTA board member as well as the head of the Long Island Builders Institute. "As a result of only having two tracks, we can only run all the trains westbound in the morning and eastbound in the evening."

But another one of Cuomo's proposals wasn't greeted as warmly. The governor wants to spend $5 million to study the feasibility of building a tunnel under the Long Island Sound to the Bronx, Westchester County or Connecticut.

The idea of connecting Long Island with the continental United States, either by bridge or by tunnel, has also been kicked around before, most recently in 2008. 

"It's always worth it to take another look," said Christopher Jones, the vice president of research at the Regional Plan Association. "But it's a project that could actually create more problems than it's worth."

He said a tunnel would be costly, have potential negative environmental impacts on the Sound, and could increase traffic congestion on both ends of the tunnel. "So I think it's got a lot of hurdles to get over," Jones added.

The Long Island Rail Road's third track project is estimated to cost over a billion dollars. Outreach to the property owners will begin this month.

That now extends PTC from Washington D.C. to Boston — with one exception: the 57-mile Metro-North controlled territory between New Rochelle, NY and New Haven, CT. 

The MTA is in the process of installing the system. The region's three commuter railroads — Metro-North, Long Island Rail Road, and New Jersey Transit — all say they'll have PTC in place by 2018. That's a new deadline. Earlier this year, Congress extended the original one by three years.

The George Rhoads sculpture, which has been a fixture at the terminal since 1983, is encased in an eight-foot glass cube. Metal balls ricochet inside, dropping through metal bowls, clacking on tracks, and running down a xylophone. But because it requires precisely balanced mechanisms to work, it seemed to be broken more often than not. Finally, in August, it was sent to a company in Tuscon to be repaired.

When it is back up and running, it should look the same — with one difference: rather than being activated by a motion sensor when people walked by, the sculpture will run on a timer. The goal: to give it a break once in a while in what is the busiest bus terminal in the country. The sculpture will also have a push button, so that viewers can turn it on at will.

"We believe this will allow the sculpture to function more efficiently, turning on not due to random movement," said Port Authority spokesman Neal Buccino.

Here's what it looked like before leaving the terminal this summer.

The "42nd Street Ballroom" by George Rhoads is a 1983 artwork. It's been a fixture in the Port Authority Bus Terminal.
(Kate Hinds )

The information does not determine the cause of the crash. It's the documentation that the NTSB is looking at, including photos, inspection records, interviews with witnesses, and information about the grade crossing, which is where the car and the train intersected.

One of the mysteries surrounding the crash is why driver Ellen Brody was on the tracks in the first place, and didn't get out of the way when the bells started to ring and the gate came down. And for now that remains a mystery. The NTSB did not find drugs or alcohol in her system, and she wasn't using her cell phone at the time of the crash. Her husband told investigators that in his opinion, she didn't know she was at a railroad crossing. "I mean, even the idiot behind her," Alan Brody said, "it didn't seem to dawn on him that she wasn't aware that she was on a railroad crossing."

While the NTSB has said the crossing functioned as it was designed to, the town has said it considers it unsafe and it wants it eliminated.

Throughout the MTA system, there are over 400 grade crossings, and it's working with a consultant to try to see if it can make safety improvements. "You try to prioritize the crossings that have the most serious hazards," said  MTA chief Tom Prendergast Wednesday, "and we’re doing that with a third party.”

The overburdened Lexington Avenue line is especially feeling the pain. Just 66 percent of 5 and 6 trains meet agency headway standards — the scheduled interval between trains. The 4 is only slightly better, at 71 percent.

"The 4/5/6 is a very intense line," said MTA operations manager Peter Cafiero. "We're meeting weekly on [it]."

But all lines are feeling the crush. In October 2015, there were over 20,000 subway delays due to overcrowding. In October of 2014, that number was...13,805.

MTA board member Fernando Ferrer says waiting for a train during rush hour these days is not for the faint-hearted.

"The good news is a lot more people are using the subways," he said. "The bad news is an awful lot more people are using the subways."

Despite delays, ridership continues to boom. There were 15 days in October where more than 6 million people rode the subways. And the system set a one-day record on Oct. 29, when 6,217,621 people swiped their MetroCards.

The last time weekday subway ridership averaged more than 6 million people a day was back in 1948.

Meanwhile, crime is ticking upward as well. Major felonies on the subway system have increased by 9.2 percent this year over last. So far this year, there have been 699 sex crimes in the subway system — that's 106 more than last year.

Deputy Chief Vincent Coogan of the NYPD's Transit Bureau said the bulk of the crimes involved forcible touching, lewdness or unlawful surveillance. He also chalked up the increase to a combination of a public awareness campaign — and more cops being on the lookout for it.

"The reason there are more reported sex offenses this year is due to increased enforcement," Coogan said. "Many of these crimes come to light when officers observe elements of a crime and intervene."

But Coogan said the system remains safe — at least as evidenced by the number of people willing to whip out their valuable smartphones. "You notice when you get on a subway now," he said, "how safe the passengers feel. You go into a car at 1 or 2 in the morning, people are looking at their iPhones, listening to music, playing games."

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this web story listed the incorrect number of subway delays due to overcrowding in 2014. This post was updated at 11:45 a.m., Dec. 15, 2015. 

Margaret Donovan is with the Twin Towers Alliance, a group which has long battled with the agency and developer Larry Silverstein about the World Trade Center site. "You can and should tell Larry Silverstein and Rupert Murdoch to figure it out without us," she said. "They can well afford it."

The Murdoch-owned companies are considering renting about 1.5 million square feet. Agency chairman John Degnan said giving them a "modest" rent break made sense, because the proposed deal would help spur the construction of the building by landing a name-brand anchor tenant.

"Not to spend $9 million dollars against the benefit that the Port Authority would realize here would be, frankly, a dereliction of duty," he said.

His enthusiasm was echoed by outgoing executive director Pat Foye, who said the deal was "not [just] a good opportunity, not a very good one," he said, but "a compelling opportunity." The reason? "This is a project that’s going to generate $500 to $600 million in capital capacity for transportation."

If that estimate proves correct, it could be compelling indeed, given that the Port is facing enormous capital expenditures for a new Port Authority Bus Terminal, as well as providing up to half of of the funding for a new trans-Hudson rail tunnel.

Janno Lieber, an executive with Silverstein's company, said in a statement that "this is a deal that always made sense for the Port Authority...And it’s a deal that makes sense for the City, the State and the entire region because it will generate 10,000 construction jobs and 12,000 – 15,000 permanent jobs, as well as allow us to finally put back all of the office space that was destroyed by terrorists 14 years ago.”

But the giveaway marks a shift in thinking for the Port, which had previously promised not to spend public money on 2 World Trade Center. Foye called it a one-time deal. "I will not recommend that Tower 2 get any other subsidy for any additional tenant other than Fox and News Corp.," he said. "Period."

Foye will leave the agency next year. 21st Century Fox and News Corp. have yet to formally approve the deal.

But while the board put on a brave face, members of the public said Hakim's departure was a sign of how precarious the agency's situation is. "It is no secret that NJ Transit is in trouble," said Patricia Winship of the Lackawanna Coalition, a transit advocacy group. She cited the agency's financial problems, ongoing brain drain, and recent (not to mention stealth) service cuts.

Overall, Hakim was hailed as a strong leader who, over the course of her tenure, managed to close some daunting budget gaps, and restored a popular benefit to non-union employees. But transportation watcher Joe Clift brought up what he called "my biggest disappointment: the failure to develop a coherent capital program strategy." NJ Transit, he said, spends too much money on low-priority projects that don't benefit commuters in the here and now, when they should be focused on building a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River.

Hakim said she didn't always agree with what the transit advocates wanted, but she respected their opinions. Besides, she said, "We still have work to do, and I'll be working until my very last moment here."

NJ Transit says the search for a new executive director is underway. 

"We scored a trifecta victory," said the Sen. Charles Schumer at a news conference, which was held just above the rail yards where the new tunnel would come into Manhattan's West Side.

He said the federal government had finally gotten the "tunnel vision" necessary to back the project.

As WNYC reported Friday, the legislation includes a provision allowing Amtrak to reinvest the profits from its Northeast Corridor operations back into Northeast, rather than using them to subsidize less-traveled lines elsewhere in the country. According to the New York Democrat, that could mean $200 million to $300 million a year — which, over the course of 30 years, would be enough to finance a loan worth $6 billion to $9 billion.

The senators also touted changes to two funding streams. The Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing (RRIF) program, which is a $35 billion low-interest loan program, was reworked to be more favorable to Gateway.

"We put in the RRIF bill reforms that make it easier for the Gateway Development Corporation to use it," said Schumer. "And we will be at the top of the list for those RRIFs."

The bill also tweaked a second federal funding stream, known as New Starts, by creating a new evaluation method much more favorable to Gateway.

This makes the federal commitment to the project tangible, Schumer said, meaning the new tunnel "has a green, green light."

The federal government has committed to pay for half of the project, leaving New York and New Jersey on the hook for the rest, probably via the Port Authority. So how will the two states come up with the money?

It's not yet clear, but Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, says the RRIF program was restructured so states can borrow at favorable rates.

Both senators said time was of the essence. The existing tunnel is over 100 years old and was heavily damaged during Sandy; it remains plagued by power problems and could have as little as seven years left before needing to be closed for major repairs. The goal is to have Gateway in place before that.

"New Jersey commuters right now are facing hell," said Booker. "I mean, real hell."

He added, "When we get this project done, what it's going to mean for New Jersey commuters is to have hours of their lives — hours of certainty — return."

Now it costs $12.50 for a round-trip across the Lincoln or Holland tunnel and the George Washington Bridge during peak hours with an E-ZPass tag. That's even higher than the major MTA crossings, which cost $11.08 for a round-trip with an E-ZPass. (Cash tolls are higher on MTA crossings, but most regular drivers use the tags whether in New Jersey or New York.) 

Three Baltimore crossings are next in line in terms of price at $8 a round-trip (though Maryland E-ZPass customers can get discounts that bring it down to $2.80). 

Even San Francisco crossings don't come close: The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge costs $6 for a round-trip while the Golden Gate costs $6.25.

(The Chesapeake Bay Bridge costs $15 one-way during peak times but is not frequented by commuters; its peak times are Friday-Sunday during the summer.)

Listen to the full segment to hear Martin Roberts, the founding director of the Alan M. Vorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University explain why tolls have increased so quickly. 

"To a large degree," said Tom Wright, head of the Regional Plan Association, "it's kind of like declaring victory for not having lost more ground."

Both the MTA and NJ Transit had feared losing tens of millions of dollars in cuts under earlier iterations of the bill, but those cuts were erased in the final version.

The big news, says Wright, is that Amtrak will now be able to take what it earns from its most profitable route — the Washington, D.C.-to-Boston corridor — and reinvest it in ... the D.C.-to-Boston corridor.

"Finally, we're going to be taking the shackles off Amtrak in the Northeast," he said.

Previously, Amtrak had to use those operating profits to help its bottom line, which is dragged into the red by its money-losing long-distance routes in the rest of the country — routes that Congress has in the past demanded it operate, often without helping financially supporting it.

Even just including Amtrak in the bill was a victory, said Robert Puentes of the Brookings Institution. "Passenger rail authorization usually lives outside of surface transportation law," he said, "which is crazy."

Now, said Wright, Amtrak can put that money to good use in the Northeast Corridor, "improving and investing in...the tunnels under the Hudson River, and the bridge over Hackensack River."

But it's the first long-term transportation funding bill measure of President Obama's tenure, which is ironic considering that infrastructure and transportation were the cornerstones of his 2011 State of the Union address.

"Six months ago, a lot of people thought that we would be seeing a miserable bill. Or no bill," Wright of the Regional Plan Association said. That would doom America to a series of stop-gap funding measures until after the 2016 presidential elections.

But Puentes said the bill lacks vision, especially at a time when transportation is being rocked by increased transit usage and disruptors like Uber and Lyft.

"It doesn't have that far-reaching, strategic element," he said. "The bill is a reflection of the fact that the federal government isn't leading the discussion now. They're kind of coming in behind."

The bill doesn't, for example, raise the federal gas tax, but instead relies on a grab-bag of existing funding sources to pay the bill. "They've done what they had to do," Puentes said.

But New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said its passage was cause for celebration.

"We don't see good news that often," he said on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show Friday. "This one should be shouted from the rooftops."

Late on Friday afternoon, President Obama signed it into law — just before the current stopgap funding measure was set to expire.

According to NYPD Inspector Dennis Fulton, there have been 34,000 minor ones. Those involve property damage only, like side swipes and broken side mirrors. But there's another category.

"We have approximately 4,000 leaving the scene," said Fulton, involving "personal injury."

That means so far this year, there have been 4,000 instances in which a driver injured or killed someone — and kept going. And that number hasn't changed much in recent years, said Fulton.

"That's a staggering number," said Van Bramer, who called hit-and-runs "perhaps the most heinous of acts."

Fulton said 48 of those 4,000 involved "catastrophic injury."

Of those 48 catastrophic hit-and-runs, the NYPD has apprehended 28 suspects. Overall, the NYPD has made 480 arrests and issued 475 moving summonses.

That's not good enough, said Paul Steely White, who heads Transportation Alternatives. "There are thousands of these hit and run cases going completely uninvestigated," he said, "completely unprosecuted."

The Council is considering legislation that would increase fines for people who leave the scene of a crash without reporting it.

"It has been my honor to serve alongside each of you," he wrote. "Together, we operated with integrity."

Foye led the beleaguered authority since being appointed by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2011. During his tenure, he oversaw the reopening of One World Trade Center and led the charge on redeveloping LaGuardia Airport. But he's perhaps best known for helping to bring the 2013 George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal to light. Foye, who called the lane closures "hasty and ill-advised" and possibly illegal in a blistering email, later testified that it was not part of a traffic study, as had been claimed by some New Jersey Port appointee staffers.

That episode resulted in federal charges against three Chris Christie appointees. Foye called the episode "a low point" in Port Authority history and tried to move the agency past it. But his outrage over the lane closures riled some colleagues, including then-chairman David Samson, who complained that Foye was "stirring up trouble."

Christie and his team regularly denigrated Foye. One aide called him "a piece of excrement." But Cuomo, a well-known micro-manager, was also wary of Foye. Emails released just last week in the Bridgegate trial show top aides at the Port Authority debating how to keep a lid on what Foye made public.

In a deal announced the Saturday between Christmas and New Year's in 2014, Governors Cuomo and Christie announced they wanted to restructure the troubled agency. One action: the hiring of a new CEO, effectively rendering Foye's position obsolete. Although Foye competed for the job, he was not chosen in the first round of a selection process, sources say.  He then withdrew from the competition. 

Foye has said he'll stay on for the next four months to help with the transition. Here is the email he sent today:

 Dear Colleague,

I thank Governor Cuomo and Governor Christie for the opportunity to serve the people of our region at the most important transportation agency in the nation. It has been my honor to serve alongside each of you, the most able and dedicated public servants I have encountered.

Together, we refocused the agency on its core transportation mission after the massive World Trade Center rebuilding and together we have already sold over $1.5 billion in non-core, non-transportation assets.

Together, we established a national leadership position in public private partnerships. The Goethals Bridge PPP and LaGuardia Terminal B transactions are important projects for the people of the region and demonstrate the value of private capital intelligently deployed in the public interest.

Together, we returned operations to normal speedily and safely after the trauma of Superstorm Sandy and secured a $1.4 billion allocation from the FTA.

Together, we operated safely at PATH and each of our other facilities day in and day out.

Together, we are building two bridges--Bayonne and Goethals--at the same time, completing the World Trade Center, modernizing our airports and executing on a $27 billion capital plan.

Together, we welcomed new top flight colleagues in impact positions who will have an outsized effect on our region for decades to come.

Together, earlier this month, we were humbled when Governor Christie and Governor Cuomo announced agreement with the Federal Government on funding and governance for the massive Gateway tunnel project and assigned our agency responsibility for advancing the project.

Together, we operated with integrity.

I thank each of my Port Authority colleagues for all that and much more.  I look forward to thanking you personally over the next four months.

I informed the Board yesterday that I would decline to participate in a new CEO search and have agreed to remain and transition to new leadership for the next 120 days.

Lastly, I thank the Board of Commissioners for its support and counsel over the last four years.

Pat

It’s losing talent. In the past couple of months, its head of rail operations left for the Connecticut Department of Transportation; its capital program chief moved to Rhode Island; its travel forecast chief went to Metro- North. And now Hakim.  It’s financially floundering. The state’s Transportation Trust Fund, which helps fund the agency, has been dwindling for years, and Gov. Chris Christie has ruled out raising the gas tax. NJ Transit closed a $120 million budget gap this fiscal year largely by raising fares, which will be hard to do two years in a row. "2017 is very scary," said Janna Chernetz, NJ policy analyst with the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. Martin Robins, who helped found the agency decades ago agrees. "This is the most worrisome operating budget I’ve ever seen for NJ Transit." Chernetz predicts the gap will grow to $400 million by next summer.  No money = No growth. As NJ Transit struggles to pay its day-to-day expenses, long-term building projects get pushed into the backseat. The Hudson-Bergen light rail line, which would run from to Englewood, as well as a long-studied 18-mile line running between Camden and Glassboro, are stuck and, Chernetz said, "stunting the state's economic growth." Plus, without those new lines, the agency is strangling its ability to increase ridership and fare revenue. It’s got labor problems. NJ Transit rail employees have been without a contract for over four years, and both sides have failed to reach a deal. Now, the labor dispute is working its way through the federal mediation process. Once that is exhausted, the union can legally strike. Whatever happens, it seems unavoidable that the agency will have higher labor costs next year. Morale is low. It's not just the unionized workers who are unhappy. Three years ago, non-union employees lost their free transit passes, and many haven't seen a merit raise in eight years. Good luck finding a replacement for Ronnie Hakim. It took D.C.'s transit system a year to find a new general manager. New Jersey has a lame-duck governor whose commitment to funding transit is questionable. As mentioned above, many potential internal candidates have disappeared. "If I had her job," said David Peter Alan, the head of the Lackawanna Coalition, "I'd get out while the getting is good." Meanwhile, its lifeline to Manhattan is falling apart. The $10 billion federal committment and the creation of the Gateway Development Corporation has advanced the new cross-Hudson tunnel. But the timing is tough for the agency. "NJ Transit desperately needs to have a lot of input into the Gateway Development Corporation," said Martin Robins.

So what will happen now? Is the future relentlessly grim? Not necessarily, said Richard Sarles. He's a former head of NJ Transit who went on to run D.C. Metro. "NJ Transit is certainly at a crossroads," he said, "and the choice for the next executive director greatly influences its future.” 

NJ Transit did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trottenberg, who's charged with implementing the city's Vision Zero traffic safety campaign, is also on the MTA board. At the transit committee meeting Monday, she voted against the procurement.

"We need to find a bus design that's going to help reduce that pillar," she said, "which has clearly become an issue for bus drivers in terms of visibility."

Trottenberg is referring to the A-pillar, which attaches the windshield to the bus. The Transport Workers Union has said it can render pedestrians invisible. WNYC has also reported on A-pillars, which help protect the driver of a vehicle in case of collision — but can reduce field of vision.

James Ferrara, the interim president of New York City Transit, said the width of the A-pillar was deliberate. "It’s a protective device for the driver of the bus," he said. "It’s an integral piece for structure of vehicle. With that said, we’re still reaching out to the community of bus builders to see if there’s a better way in which a bus can be designed."

An MTA spokesman said: "if there is a way to reduce the width of the A-pillar without compromising its safety feature and the structural integrity of the bus, then we’ll certainly take a look at that."

But blaming blind spots for bus-pedestrian crashes doesn't satisfy everyone. Earlier this month, after an MTA bus driver killed a woman in a hit-and-run, the driver's lawyer cited visibility as a factor, drawing ire from the victim's family. And a statement from the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, which has fought for stricter penalties for drivers who kill or seriously injure, reads "blind spots are no excuse for failing to yield to a pedestrian."

Last month, the MTA began testing other technologies designed to reduce bus-pedestrian collisions.

The bus procurement comes to the full MTA board for a vote on Wednesday.

The answer: half, or roughly $10 billion of the potential $20 billion that's needed for the project. 

"It was a long struggle but getting all the parties on the same page is a very big first step," New York Sen. Charles Schumer said in a statement. "We will scour every part of the federal government to get our 50 percent and we know the states will do the same.”

According to officials, the new governance entity follows the framework laid out by Schumer earlier this summer. It will be called the Gateway Development Corporation and will be housed within the Port Authority and controlled by a four-member board with representatives from New York, New Jersey, Amtrak and the federal government. 

The existing trans-Hudson rail tunnel is more than 100 years old and in dire need of repair. But Amtrak, which owns the tunnel, says it doesn't want to take it out of service until a new one is built.

The Gateway project would double existing rail capacity by adding two tubes. Its $20 billion pricetag also includes the replacement of aging rail infrastructure that creates bottlenecks in New Jersey (Portal Bridge, we're talking to you). The project would also beef up capacity at the Frank Lautenberg-Secaucus Junction and expand Penn Station.

"It’s a big day," Amtrak spokesman Craig Schulz said. "Everybody is now on board, we have a program. We have a project. Up till now it’s been proposals and conceptual. This is real, this is making it real, and that’s significant."

But many questions remain about the project, especially who will pay for cost overruns — a concern that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie cited in his 2010 decision to cancel the ARC tunnel, the precursor to Gateway. Nor is there any timeline yet for when the tunnel might be built. 

Same for the entrances to the B/D/F/M trains at Broadway-Lafayette, on the southwest corner of Broadway and Houston in SoHo. Those account for just a couple of the 119 closed entrances across the system — remnants of brutal times for the city's transit system.

At its post-WWII peak, subways carried 6.9 million people each average weekday. But in 1976, ridership was about half of what it once was. Faced with declining revenues — and an increase in crime — the transit authority began closing entrances to save money and group riders together for safety-in-numbers.

But now ridership is once again approaching 6 million people a day. And those closed entrances are causing crowding, which in turn is causing delays. 

"You’re forcing people to enter at one or two access points," said Alan Minor, a board member of Neighbors Allied for Good Growth as well as a planning student at the Pratt Institute. People tend to congregate on the platforms near the stairways. And then, when it's time to get off the train, there are bottlenecks. Minor once timed the process at the Flushing Avenue station.

"It took almost two minutes for everyone to get off the platform," he said. "Which is to me insane."

The MTA knows the closed entrances are a problem. MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg said reopening them is "something we’re very actively looking at." But it will take time and money to figure out which of the 119 closed ones it's worth reopening.

In the meantime, some words of advice to riders: redistribute yourselves among the platforms, and have some patience when exiting.

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Update: An earlier version of this map had certain stations in the wrong location.

Where the sculpture used to be — and will be again, according to the Port Authority
(Kate Hinds )

Artist George Rhoads' "42nd Street Ballroom" is an 8-foot cube that's a cross between a mousetrap and a Rube Goldberg machine. But because it relies on balance and precisely weighted components, it's proven tricky to maintain. According to a 1995 New York Times story, "it has been moved, diminished and yes, broken, many times."

A few years ago, the sculpture — which was installed in 1983 — stopped working all together, and attempts over the years to repair it on-site were unsuccessful. Now, the Port Authority is taking steps to fix it.

In August, the Port sent the sculpture 2,400 miles west to Tuscon, where a company called Creative Machines will perform a $125,000 overhaul to get it working again.

In a letter to the Port, Rhoads wrote: "it gives me great satisfaction that another generation of visitors will be able to enjoy the sculpture in its original setting."

The Port Authority says the sculpture is expected to be back in place in its North Wing home by the end of this year.

You can see (and hear) the sculpture in happier days below.

Crews have completed eight miles of train tubes from Queens under the East River. 
(Amy Pearl/WNYC)

 About 1,800 workers are spending their days here, deep inside the earth, and are now building a gigantic passenger concourse for the MTA's East Side Access project. When complete, it will bring Long Island Rail Road trains to Grand Central for the first time. Commuters who work on the East Side will save up to 40 minutes a day, because they won't have to backtrack from Penn Station anymore. And it will free up tracks at Penn for Metro-North Railroad riders to come to the West Side.

East Side Access
(Kate Hinds)

Right now, the worksite is a gray monochome cavern dug out of bedrock. Piles of muck, or pulverized rock, are everywhere. But the MTA estimates that it w ill open by 2022, with — eight sleek white-tiled platforms here on multiple levels, served by 17 escalators. Crews have already finished the eight miles of tunnelling from Queens and under the East River. 

How dusty is East Side Access? This dusty.
(Kate Hinds )

The $10.2 billion megaproject is years behind its initial projected opening date — not to mention billions over its original budget. But Dr. Michael Horodniceanu, the MTA's head of Capital Construction, says it's absolutely vital to the region.

"The time of moving people in cars is gone," he said. "It's passé."

East Side Access
(Kate Hinds)

East Side Access
(Kate Hinds)

Future escalator, East Side Access
(Kate Hinds )

A rail tunnel in East Side Access
(Kate Hinds )

Graffiti on a piece of wood at the East Side Access job site
(Kate Hinds)

The MTA slashed $1 billion from its capital budget for the project last week, an amount that would have paid for digging the tunnel north from the Upper East Side to 125th Street in East Harlem. The agency said the decision was a practical one because it would not have been able to award that contract within the capital program period, which ends in 2019.

Last week, de Blasio reluctantly accepted the MTA's rationale for the cut. But on Tuesday, he revised his position.

"We were all surprised to hear some of the changes around the Second Avenue Subway, and I think that’s a conversation that must continue," he said. "I think that has to be reconsidered to make sure that everything is being done to move phase two — despite the challenges and the complexities — to move phase two as quickly as it can be done."

City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, unaware of the cut when she was asked about it last Thursday, also came out against it.

"It’s not acceptable," Mark-Viverito, who represents East Harlem, said. "We’ve been talking. I’ve got some next steps.” 

The first segment of the Second Avenue Subway, which runs from Midtown to the Upper East Side, is fully funded and is scheduled to open at the end of next year. The MTA last week left untouched another $535 million that will be used in the coming four years for preliminary work on the second phase. On Tuesday, in response to calls to restore more funding, MTA Chairman Tom Prendergast said the agency would do as much as possible. 

"We have committed that if we can speed up the schedule to begin tunneling the East Harlem phase sooner, we will pursue a capital program amendment to do so," he said in a statement.

At a separate news conference Tuesday at 96th street and Second Avenue — where the first segment of the line would end — about a dozen state and city lawmakers also voiced their disapproval for the move.

"What we're asking for is the relief that this community deserves," said State Assemblyman Robert Rodriguez, a Democrat who represents East Harlem. "The economic opportunity, the transit equity, and to make sure that we don't stop at 96th Street, that we keep going north."

The MTA Capital Program Review Board, a panel made up of members appointed by the legislature as well as by the governor and mayor, is expected to vote on the MTA's capital budget later this month. Lawmakers expressed hope that they could restore funding before then.

"The MTA has an awful lot to get through before they actually see the approval of their MTA capital plan in a budget vote," state Sen. Liz Krueger, another Democrat from the area, said.

State Assemblyman Keith Wright, a Harlem Democrat who sits on the capital program review board, did not attend the news conference. But he said through a spokeswoman that he would consider his veto power "if the capital plan shortchanges northern Manhattan residents." 

In May, MTA Chairman Tom Prendergast wrote a letter to a deputy mayor, asking the city for more money. Prendergast suggested that $1 billion would be earmarked for phase 2 of the East Side line, bringing it north from 96th Street up to 125th Street.

(MTA)

In July, Prendergast sent another letter, also suggesting the MTA needed that money to complete the 2nd phase. 

Then, last month, when the city still hadn't ponied up, Prendergast turned from coaxing to threatening and said the agency was preparing to cut the "urban portion" of the program. (Prendergast later walked that statement back.)

When a funding deal between the city and state was finally reached earlier this month, with the city contributing almost as much as it had been asked for, the MTA touted it as a win for everyone. It did not hint at major structural cuts to the program. Further savings, it said, would be achieved through "efficiencies."

But when the details of the revised plan came out at the MTA board meeting Wednesday, it turned out funding for the Second Avenue Subway had been cut 67 percent, from about $1.5 billion to just over $500 million. As WNYC reported, the agency wouldn't be able to begin the tunneling, or even award the contract for it, until 2020, instead only doing preliminary enginnering and utility work. The move was so unexpected that transportation watchers — not to mention the neighborhood's city council member and State Assembly representative — were caught off-guard. 

"It's an economic injustice for the Second Avenue Subway to stop at 96th Street and no substantive work happen to connect it to a lower-income community that certainly needs the access as much as the first phase," said State Assembly member Robert Rodriguez, who represents East Harlem.

Phase 1, which runs from 63rd Street to 96th, is scheduled to open next year. Pushing the tunneling contract into 2020 or later means it will likely be a decade or more before the line opens north of 96th Street. (It will have taken nine years for the MTA to dig tunnels and finish stations on the first phase.) Rodriguez said East Harlem can't wait that long, especially because it slated to be rezoned — increasing its population.

"The 4/5/6 is the most overburdened line in the country," he said. "I think it's short-sighted, it's outrageous, and it's completely unfair." The MTA, he said, is closing its budget gap "at the expense of East Harlem residents."

Soon after WNYC spoke to Rodriguez, Representatives Carolyn Maloney and Charles Rangel released a statement saying they were "deeply concerned" about cuts to the Second Avenue subway.

"New Yorkers have been promised a full-build Second Avenue Subway since the 1920s," the pair wrote. "Based on the current schedule, 100 years will have passed and we will still be waiting. This ‘go slow’ approach to the Second Avenue Subway is a huge mistake.”

MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg denied that the MTA was intentionally harming Harlemites. He said the MTA realized that it would not get far enough along in the next four years to let out a tunneling contract.

"We lost a year during the difficult process of getting funding for the Second Avenue Subway," he said. "What you see in the book now is a plan that will get us moving on the Second Avenue Subway next phase and get us as far as we can go."

Mayor Bill de Blasio agreed. "It's a complicated project," he said. "We know the first phase has taken a long time — much more than any of us could have imagined — and I think it was bluntly an admission that the second phase will take quite a while."

But Tom Wright, the head of the Regional Plan Association, said a tunneling delay is as good as a tunnel deferred..

"To take a full billion out of that is not a cut — it's a gut," he said.

He added that by pushing the project back, the MTA would end up paying more in the long run. 

"What we've seen with other projects, when they delay," he said, "it's not just that they take much longer, but the costs end up escalating enormously."

Another transit advocate said the good will that the MTA had built up by putting together the largest capital plan in the agency's history has evaporated.

"It's understandable that plans change," said Gene Russianoff, staff attorney for the Straphangers Campaign, "but they left it up to reporters and civic groups to find these changes, like needles in a hay stack. This lack of transparency has fueled concerns about fairness."

"I'm extremely grateful and relieved," said MTA Chairman Tom Prendergast. He compared the process of putting the MTA's capital program to bed to running a steeplechase, which he did in high school gym class. "If you know steeplechase races, they have different hazards."

But to slim down the program, the MTA pared a billion dollars from the next phase of the Second Avenue Subway, about two-thirds of what the agency had proposed spending a year ago. The cut reflected "funding availability and the ability to implement scope within the plan period," according to the program materials. 

The first segment of the Second Avenue Subway, scheduled to open at the end of next year, will go from 63rd Street to 96th Street. The agency had originally planned to pay for the tunneling north from 96th to 125th streets by 2019. But under the revised plan approved Wednesday, that work will be deferred until 2020 or later.

MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg said the move was a practical one, not a financial decision: the agency realized it was unlikely it could get to the tunneling work during the current capital program, so it reallocated the money. 

But Nicole Gelinas of the Manhattan Institute said the cut would have long-term consequences. "By stretching these things out, and sort of acting like they're doing something, it ends up costing more in the long run," she said.

She added that the MTA did not adjust funding levels for another of its ongoing megaprojects downward.

"If you look at the expansion part of the capital plan, East Side Access gets the bulk of that, and there is very little for projects that really help people who live in the city," she continued.

Funding for that project, which will bring Long Island Rail Road trains into Grand Central Terminal, is holding steady at $2.57 billion.

But the de Blasio administration took pains to stress that the revised plan did incorporate some of its priorities. In return for contributing an unprecedented amount of city money, the MTA will build a transfer between the Livonia Avenue stop on the L line with the Junius Street station on the No. 3 line in East New York. The agency will also study extending a subway line down Utica Avenue to a transit-starved part of Brooklyn, and begin planning for a bus rapid transit line on Staten Island's North Shore.

"These investments ensure that almost every MTA transit priority we outlined in OneNYC can now move forward," Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement, "representing a huge win for NYC riders across the five boroughs.”

Transit advocate Gene Russianoff, staff attorney of the Straphangers Campaign, said the additions were positive for the outer boroughs.

"Why should Second Avenue get a $4.4 billion, three-stop, fantabulous subway and Utica get bupkes?" he said in an interview earlier this week.  

Another new addition to the capital plan: the MTA will award a contract to revamp the Times Square Shuttle, reducing the number of tracks it uses and making it ADA-accessible.

Next, the capital program must be submitted to a state board for review. But Prendergast's steeplechase race isn't over yet. The governor hasn't said where the state's $8.3 billion contribution is coming from, and the de Blasio administration is hoping that funding mechanisms like value capture can supply $600 million of its $2.5 billion contribution.

But that's about all that is known about the new terminal.

"No specific decision on location, size of the building, design of the building, capability of the building, retail of the building, financing, cost, etcetera, is being made today," said Port Authority executive director Pat Foye. "Those decisions will be made in the months to come."

The agency's preferred site for a new terminal is west of the existing one in Times Square. But if the winner has a better idea, they'd be open to it.

Meanwhile, the board says there's a lot of other work to be done. It voted to hire a consultant to study future ridership projections. And it says it needs to open a dialog with neighborhood residents.

That conversation can't happen too soon, according to Christine Berthet, the chair of Manhattan Community Board 4.

"We are appalled at the idea of condemning two blocks in the heart of Hell's Kitchen south," said Berthet. She pointed out that the site under consideration by the Port is already home to "affordable housing tenants, a church, a food pantry, a nursery school, a farm, two affordable food supermarkets, and a number of retail stores...the Robert Moses technique of razing our neighborhood is not acceptable any longer."

Because no design has been picked, there's no budget for the project. But previous estimates have put the cost of a new bus terminal around $10 billion.

That was the message at the agency's board meeting Wednesday, when some angry passengers accused the agency of making "stealth" service cuts.

Joseph Clift told the board that by his count, "five trains mysteriously disappeared from the schedule without any prior notice."

The agency had notified the public of two proposed late-night train cuts in May. But Clift said the other five were news to him.

They include changes to the Morris and Essex line (last train out of Penn Station now: 12:34 a.m.; prior to the schedule change, it was 1:19 a.m.), the Gladstone Branch (now leaves Hoboken at 11:44 p.m.; formerly 12:34 a.m.), and the North Jersey Coast Line (if you want to go south of Long Branch, you'd better be on the 11:18 p.m. train; wipe that 1 a.m. departure from your memory.)

NJ Transit's executive director, Ronnie Hakim, defended the cuts, saying the agency doesn't have to inform the public of service adjustments when there are fewer than 100 riders per train impacted, or if the adjustment had a smaller-than-two-hours service impact. But that explanation didn't satisfy Clift.

"The argument is that it's a service adjustment," he said. "To me, a service adjustment is a few minutes. To me, this is like saying to Marie Antoinette, 'We're going to make a little height adjustment on you.'"

Faced earlier this year with a $56 million budget gap, NJ Transit unveiled its proposal to raise fares and cut some service at a series of public hearings in May. But as Bloomberg reported last month, the agency didn't disclose the full extent of how late-night train service would be affected.

The NJ Transit board in July voted in favor of fare hikes and service cuts. At the time of that vote, say some riders, the details of the new late-night schedules wasn't known.

"If we had known that we were slated to lose our last trains of the evening," said David Peter Alan, the chair of the Lackawanna Coalition rider's group, "we could have fought to keep those trains, contacted our elected officials...but we could not fight to keep what we were not told that we would lose."

NJ Transit executive director Ronnie Hakim said eliminating those late night trains made sense, because "there were very few people on those trains, and so our ridership did not support the service."

So those late-night trains will not be restored, asked a reporter?

"Correct," said Hakim.

So what will this mean to you, transit rider?

Probably not that much.

"Customers won’t notice the vast majority of the capital program," said MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz, "because it’s work that happens behind the scenes inside tunnels and other locations not accessible to the public." And most of the biggest projects take longer than just — just?! — five years to design, build and complete.

Here's what's in the plan, visible or not:

1. Track and signal upgrades and new switches. You probably won't see them. But they can make your commute faster and more reliable.

2. Positive Train Control. The MTA will complete installation of this federally-mandated safety system on all Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North trains by 2018. (Yes, the deadline is this year. Most railroads are going to miss it. Stay tuned on how that will play out.) Invisible to the rider most of the time, but it may help save your life. It's meant to prevent derailments like the fatal 2013 Metro-North crash.

3. New subway cars and buses. The agency will buy nearly 1,000 new subway cars, as well as 1,500 buses and 1,000 paratransit vehicles. But you won't see them for some time. And if you DO see new subway cars, say, on C train tracks in 2018, it's because they were paid for in the 2010-2014 capital plan.

4. Help Points. The MTA will finish installing these "highly visible" blue intercoms in all 469 subway stations this capital plan cycle.

5. Some, but not all, of the next phase of the Second Avenue Subway. Phase 1, which runs from 96th to 63rd Streets, is slated to open in 14 months —but it was funded in previous capital plans. Phase 2, which will run north to 125th Street, is being funded in the new capital plan. But it won't open during this time period, because the MTA must spend the next four years planning. The tunneling contract won't be awarded until 2019. (You think the Second Avenue Subway is taking a long time? Consider the No. 7 extension, which opened last month and consists of only one station. Work began in 2007.)

6. Penn Access. The MTA will start working on building four new Metro-North stations in the east Bronx that will connect to Penn Station. But this won't come to fruition for years, because it's tied to another MTA megaproject: East Side Access, which brings LIRR trains to Grand Central. Both projects are scheduled to open in 2022.

7. A new contactless fare payment system. The replacement for the MetroCard was initially supposed to be done in the 2015-19 capital plan, but it's behind schedule. That means work continues, and there's $250 million for it in the new capital plan.

A caveat. MTA officials have not yet signed off on the 2015-19 capital plan. It will be submitted to the MTA board for approval at the end of this month; it then must be approved by a state review board. Another $3 billion of improvements to MTA bridges and tunnels — which officially brings the total capital plan value up to $29 billion — does not need the state board's approval. 

As first reported in the Daily News, two people hurt in last month's G train derailment have filed paperwork stating they intend to sue New York City and the MTA. According to attorney Sanford Rubenstein, "a feud between the MTA and City Hall over funding for maintenance of our subway system should not be happening when the result may very well be the risk of future problems and serious injuries being suffered by those who ride our subways.”

Yes, this cycle's capital program really has gotten that contentious.

Some background: every five years, the MTA pulls together a list of its big-ticket investments — things like new equipment, a new fare payment system (goodbye, MetroCard), the next phase of the Second Avenue Subway. This list has to be approved by the Capital Program Review Board before the MTA can move forward on any of the items. There's always some back-and-forth, but usually the capital plan is approved sometime in the second quarter. But here we are, in October, and the 2015-2019 plan is not yet final. That's the longest the MTA has ever gone without an approved capital plan.

It may be because the plan has become a proxy for the tension between Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio. The two can't get on the same page about how much the city should contribute to the capital plan. Speaking last Friday on NY1, Cuomo said because the bulk of the MTA operates within the five boroughs, the city needs to pay more. "I’m proud to fund the $8 billion," he said, "but 80 percent of it is in New York City and that’s where these benefits are going to go."

But on Monday, de Blasio reiterated his position that the city has already offered to contribute more to an MTA capital plan than ever before. Besides, he said, "obviously, the MTA is the state's responsibility. The governor names the head of the MTA, the governor has a majority of the appointments on the MTA board. The state's responsibility is to ensure that the resources are there."

This has left the MTA in the position of, as one insider put it, fishing for spare change in the sofa cushions. The agency has said it needs to have an approved plan as soon as possible, and it wants to put something on the table in October. Meanwhile, talks between the city and state are ongoing.

"Every day is hit or miss," says commuter Cherise Canton, who has been taking a bus from Teaneck to her job in lower Manhattan for 15 years. She says it usually takes her at least an hour to go the 12 miles. "It's very seldom less than that. And it shouldn't be that long."

In the second of five stories in its series "Running Late," WNYC finds that a key piece of the region's transportation network is falling apart due to its age, neglect and second-class status. Double-decker or articulated buses could help bring in more passengers per hour, but those vehicles are prohibited because they are taller and heavier than the light 1950s-era buses the terminal was designed for. There is also no westbound exclusive bus lane that would prevent Jersey-bound buses from getting stuck in Lincoln Tunnel traffic during the afternoon rush. Even worse: officials say the building's concrete support slabs have 15 to 25 years of life left in them.

The Port Authority's Board of Commissioners has been studying solutions since 2013, but hasn't agreed over what — or where — the new terminal should go. (Cost estimates for a new building hover around $10 billion.) At a meeting last month, the board considered a proposal to expand the terminal one block west. Then one commissioner floated the idea of building it in New Jersey, where land is cheaper, though it would require commuters to transfer to the PATH or NJ Transit train to reach Manhattan. Another commissioner said the agency should bring in more consultants to study options. In the end, the board tabled the discussion until the next meeting.

By contrast, a new trans-Hudson rail tunnel, has gotten much more attention from the media and from dignitaries, including the U.S. Secretary of Transportation.

"They should not be competing," said Veronica Vanterpool of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, of the two projects. "We need both."

 We want to see what your commute looks like. Post your pictures and videos on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #RunningLate and tag @WNYC. We'll display them on our Picture Your Commute page and may use them in a video.

Out of the nine subway tunnels that flooded during Sandy, two have been overhauled and made more resilient. The MTA has also installed submarine cable so that if the tunnel floods, it will be more resilient to salt water. And the MTA has five pump trains instead of the three it had during Sandy.

NJ Transit also has new preparations for future storms. During Sandy, the agency stored trains in the Meadowlands, which flooded. Now, if the agency needs to move trains, it will send them to yards in Linden and Garwood, which theoretically shouldn't flood.

In this interview, WNYC's Jami Floyd talks with WNYC's Kate Hinds about how the area's transit network is better off than it was three years ago.

Subway service: The MTA is expecting to operate service normally, although some station entrances along the pope's route might be affected, and it's likely that routine trips will take longer than normal on Thursday and Friday. "The subway system is a lot more resilient than people expect," said MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg. "We routinely can handle up above 6 million customers on an average weekday, and we routinely clear out Yankees Stadium and Madison Square Garden after a game."

MTA Buses: In Manhattan, portions of 25 routes will be rerouted to accommodate the delays and street closures. Express bus service will also be affected. Visit the MTA's website for specific route information.

Streets: WNYC has a map showing the many, many street closures in effect during the papal visit and the U.N. General Assembly. See current conditions in map above.

Long Island Rail Road: The LIRR is operating eight additional inbound trains midday on Friday for people attending the Central Park motorcade and Papal Mass at Madison Square Garden that evening. It will also have extra trains waiting at Penn Station for the return trip following the conclusion of the Mass.

Metro-North Rail Road: On Friday, Metro-North will operate three additional trains into Grand Central midday Friday, and it's tweaking some morning service as well.

NJ Transit: NJ Transit is offering additional off-peak service on trains and buses into Manhattan on Friday. 

PATH: PATH is operating extra service from Jersey City and Hoboken into 33rd Street on Friday. The World Trade Center PATH station will remain open despite the pope's visit to the National Sept. 11th Memorial and Museum Friday.

Citi Bike: Nine bike share stations have been deactivated due to the traffic restrictions.

Ferry Service: New York Waterway says the arrival of the Pope may cause delays or temporary closures on Pier 11/Wall Street.

Papal Visit Schedule: See the Archdiocese of New York website.

The five-year, $26.8 billion program funds signal improvements, track upgrades and big capital construction projects like the Second Avenue Subway and East Side Access. But the 2015-2019 plan has yet to be approved by the state legislature, making this the longest time in recent memory that the agency has gone without an approved capital program. 

Gov. Cuomo recently agreed to increase the state's contribution to the plan to $8.3 billion, and has asked the city to increase its funding as well, to a total of about $3 billion.

On Monday, MTA Chairman Tom Prendergast, a Cuomo appointee, stepped up the feud by suggesting the MTA would reduce capital improvements located within the city limits. He said the agency, which operates mass transit across a 12-county region, would not have enough money to do everything. 

"We need to move on with the capital program," Prendergast said during a meeting of an MTA board committee. "So I've directed the staff in finance and capital programs to incorporate all the revisions that were part of the discussions with stakeholders, as well as to align with the current commitment of the city at $657 million."

That last sentence fragment caught the attention of Polly Trottenberg, an MTA board meeting who is also New York City's transportation commissioner. After a bit more back-and-forth, Prendergast said, "We're looking at the urban portion, New York City Transit," for possible cuts.

Trottenberg called that approach "punitive and pretty divisive" and urged him to look at "different scenarios, if you don't get all the funding you'd hope for, that would not be focused on one jurisdiction."

Other board members agreed, and Prendergast later said he'd ask his staff to look at alternatives.

Amy Spitalnick, a spokeswoman for de Blasio, said the state needs to identify where the additional money it has promised the agency would come from, and to return $270 million that has been steered in recent years to the state's general fund from tax revenues earmarked for the MTA.

The city also wants a greater say in MTA governance.

"Any talk of cutting funds from the capital program before these key issues are addressed would be premature, divisive, and irresponsible political game-playing," she said. 

Cuomo's office did not immediately return a request for comment.   

Watch Monday's committee video below.

"That shows how enthusiastically New Yorkers are embracing the program, especially as it expands and the weather gets a little nicer, " said John Frost, who directs the bike share program at the New York City Department of Transportation. He predicts Wednesday's record won't stand for long. "I wouldn't be surprised at all," he said, "if we break that a couple more times on some really nice-weather weekdays."

Members of the band Cover Story, playing at the opening of the #7 train station at 34th Street-Hudson Yards
(Kate Hinds )

It's taken years of work and $2.4 billion to extend the #7 train a mile and a half. The glass-canopied station is the centerpiece of the new Hudson Yards development, which Mayor Bill de Blasio called "a whole new city being created within our city." But while the station is new, the tension over how to fund the MTA's Capital Program, which is short a few billion dollars, is not. To help pay for its next five years of repairs and expansion, the MTA wants the city to contribute a little over $3 billion. De Blasio has resisted, and he reiterated why in his official remarks at the opening.

"We are doing our share," he said, pointing out that city residents contribute to much of the MTA's expenses via taxes and toll revenue. "We want to see the federal government step up, we want to see the state government step up, for the good of all."

Mayor Bill de Blasio speaking at the opening of the #7 station at 34th Street-Hudson Yards
(Kate Hinds )

Once the speeches were over, positivity returned in the form of the ceremonial ribbon cutting (complete with ridiculously oversized scissors), followed by the inaugural first ride to Times Square and back.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, flanked by state and local officials, following the first ride on the #7 train out of Hudson Yards
(Kate Hinds )

But after ascending from the subway, Tom Prendergast, the Cuomo-appointed MTA chief, didn't bother to sugar-coat his conviction that the city needs to contribute more.

"You can't run a system without money, you can't run a system without having a state of good repair program, you can't run a system if you want to maintain your status in the global economy as one of the number one cities in the world without expanding the system," he told reporters. "So that's my level of frustration."

But for hundreds of members of the public, who had been waiting outside police barricades for the 1 p.m. opening, the mood was much lighter. You'd be hard pressed to find a group of people more excited about riding the subway.

Crowds lining up for the opening of the new #7 train station
(Kate Hinds )

There won't be much more cheering, though, if the bruising battle over funding the MTA continues much longer.

(Scroll down for more photos from Sunday's opening.)

The interior of the 34th Street-Hudson Yards #7 train on opening day
(Kate Hinds )

The #7 station at 34th Street-Hudson Yards has the highest and longest escalators of any subway station
(Kate Hinds )

The signs on the #7 train have been updated to reflect the new station
(Kate Hinds )

The interior of the 34th Street-Hudson Yards #7 train on opening day
(Kate Hinds )

MTA chair Tom Prendergast, Sen. Charles Schumer, and Mayor Bill de Blasio
(Kate Hinds )

Funktional Vibrations, artwork designed by Xenobia Bailey and installed in the #7 34th Street-Hudson Yards subway station
(Image courtesy of NY MTA)

Funktional Vibrations, artwork designed by Xenobia Bailey and installed in the #7 34th Street-Hudson Yards subway station
(Kate Hinds )

Artist Xenobia Bailey, who created Funktional Vibrations, and MTA chair Tom Prendergast
(Kate Hinds )

The station was originally part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to build a stadium on a parcel of land near the Javits Center. The stadium, he said, would lure both the Jets and the 2012 Olympics to New York City.

Those projects failed — two of Albany's so-called "three men in a room" killed the stadium, which in turn helped doom the Olympic bid. But the subway survived, and plans to rezone the neighborhood were passed in 2005. 

The neighborhood is still very much a work in progress. Earlier this week, the newly-built public plazas outside the subway entrance were empty, save for a construction worker.

A parklet grows in the space around the new No. 7 train extension at Hudson Yards
(Kate Hinds )

Even though cranes dot the sky, the pace of construction has lagged, in part due to the 2008 recession. That's had serious financial repercussions because of the unusual way in which the city is paying for the line. Typically, a new subway station would come out of the MTA's budget. Instead, the city took financial responsibility, and the Bloomberg administration did something different, a version of what's called 'value capture.' The city borrowed money to pay for the new subway. Then, it began taking the property tax revenue from all the new construction from a specific area on the far West Side and used it to pay the interest (and eventually the principle) back on the bonds.

The city's original projections anticipated collecting $563 million from property taxes and air rights by now. But only about half of that has come in. So the city has paid $358.8 million toward interest on the bonds. It always expected to kick in money for the project, but not for as long or as much. 

Work on the No. 7 extension also got off schedule. Following a 'soft' opening in 2013, an event manufactured so that that Michael Bloomberg could ride the new line while while in office, it took the MTA extra time to resolve some problems. Meanwhile, critics have questioned the tax breaks that were part of the deal. To entice development, the city said developers only had to pay 60 percent of their property tax revenue for the first four years, with a sliding scale upwards for 20 years. That means that at the same time the city is counting on tax revenue to fund the subway extension, it's reducing the taxes collected from the project. James Parrott, chief economist at the Fiscal Policy Institute, says that shifts the burden to other taxpayers throughout the city and sets a bad precedent. "They've compromised the city's property tax base for decades to come," he said.

But even with the money coming in more slowly than anticipated, the Bloomberg Administration had — and the de Blasio Administration still has — high hopes for the area. The mayor's office says the project will bring in $37 billion in tax revenue through 2050, thanks to the new station. "This is really the anchor of the biggest construction project in New York City," deputy mayor Alicia Glen said in a statement. "Smart growth, living wage jobs, development that keeps us competitive on the world stage — we're thrilled to see this project in full swing and getting better every day."

The new subway station will open to the public this Sunday.

Hudson Yards
(Kate Hinds )

Signs in the subway have been updated to reflect the No. 7 extension
(Kate Hinds )

The MTA says welding issues with the replacement cars have caused the delivery date of the new fleet to slip from 2017 until 2018. But even when the new trains come in, the agency is planning on keeping the R32s in service until at least 2022.

That's a change from earlier this year, when the MTA told WNYC it was going to retire the R32s — the oldest subway car model in the system, and a model that breaks down more often — when the replacement R179 models came in. (To be fair, the cars received a complete rebuild in the 1980s.)

But the R32s need to keep running because of "needs across the system," according to MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg. It will cost the agency $50.2 million to keep the 51-year-old cars going, according to agency documents (see page 387.) 

Lisberg said that by 2018, there should be 300 new R179s rolling on the C-J-Z lines.

It was not immediately clear whether the R32s would continue running on the C line or be deployed elsewhere.

The story was first reported in the Daily News.

Amtrak President Joe Boardman took reporters on a tour of this substation Friday to show them first-hand why trans-Hudson commuters have spent the week in rail misery. On two mornings this week, something went wrong with the nearly four-mile-long cables that power the tunnel. The cables originate in Hackensack, New Jersey, go through the so-called North River tunnels, and wind up in Penn Station. And when they fail, it's not always easy for electricians track down where along those four miles the problems are. On Friday evening, in fact, they were still trying to chase down the source from that morning's malfunction.

At 80 years old, the cables were already senior citizens when Sandy struck. During that storm, when the 100-plus year-old tunnels flooded, the cables — along with everything else — were submerged. And that's just the start. "It's the track, it's the ballast, it's the signal system, it's the catenary," said Boardman. "It's all the things that need to be done."

The other two days this week, the problem was with an electrical substation on the Jersey side of the river.

Friday's delays were the last straw for NJ Transit. Officials there sent a formal "letter of dissatisfaction" to Amtrak, requesting a meeting and an action plan. Governor Chris Christie also piled on, saying he blamed Amtrak's "indifference to New Jersey commuters."

(Earlier Friday, Christie said if he were elected president, he'd build new trans-Hudson tunnels — despite killing a similar project back in 2010.)

Boardman disputed that Amtrak didn't care about New Jersey commuters.

"I'm very frustrated as well, and that's why I 'm here today," Boardman said. "I'm fed up with this, we want to get it fixed. This community deserves a reliable transportation system, a reliable railroad. And we're going to get it for them."

But that reliability comes at a price, and Boardman says the "problem is finding the funding to fix the problem."