In 5 Hours of Budget Hearing, Frustration With MTA

ALBANY, N.Y. — From Hudson Valley trains to Nassau County bus shelters and Coney Island subways, Joseph J. Lhota, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, seemed to have an answer Thursday for every question at a hearing over the authority’s part of the proposed state budget.

More than two dozen senators and Assembly members from districts served by the agency got a chance to ask Lhota about the needs and problems of their particular districts.

The volley of questions highlighted an almost endemic frustration with the agency, which oversees an octopus-like transit network that includes not just city buses and subways but also the Long Island and Metro-North railroads, making clear that its problems go far beyond the city’s crumbling subway system.

To most queries, Lhota indicated that help or a more detailed response was on the way.

The nearly five hours of questioning, during which Lhota was joined by other MTA officials, came as the authority is facing questions about its performance, about several high-profile accidents and about claims of deceptive practices. In addition, the agency has been caught in the middle of a public feud between Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo over how New York City Transit should be funded and improved.

Lawmakers wanted cleaner restrooms on the Long Island Rail Road: “They stink,” said the deputy Assembly speaker, Earlene Hooper, of Long Island.

Lhota said he would look into it.

They wanted answers about delayed construction of a bus station in Jamaica, Queens. “It should have been finished 10 years ago, it hasn’t been started,” s tate Sen. Leroy Comrie said.

Lhota said he would look into it.

State Sen. Todd Kaminsky demanded that the Long Island Rail Road, plagued by a spate of cancellations, improve its performance.

“You have my word,” Lhota responded, “it will get fixed.”

Lawmakers also wanted the governor to stand down on a proposal for special tax districts on developments near the subway as a way to help pay for the system, known as value capture.

“I can’t emphasize enough why I think that this is a terrible idea, and I was hoping you would agree with me,” s tate Sen. Liz Krueger, who represents parts of Manhattan’s East Side, said, staring down from a dais.

Lhota, who was appointed by Cuomo, did not agree.

“I have 6 million customers,” Lhota said, standing inside the marble Legislative Office Building, a few moments after the marathon session. “They have 6 million needs every single day.”

The governor’s budget proposal includes $9.7 billion for the Departments of Transportation and Motor Vehicles, the Thruway Authority and the MTA.

When lawmakers were not talking about disabled riders frustrated by paratransit, drivers irritated by cashless tolls or Metro-North riders concerned about safety, they kept coming back to a central theme in short supply: trust of the agency.

Recent news reports — an article in The New York Times on construction practices that make the city’s subway track the most expensive in the world and another in The Daily News that the authority inflated the number of power issues in the subway to shift blame to the ConEd power utility — have stoked a deep skepticism about the agency among the public and the people who represent them.

“How can we ask people to give up good money to repair the system when it looks like no one is watching the ship?” asked state Sen. Catharine M. Young, who represents western New York, referring to construction practices that have inflated the price for each new mile of subway track to $3.5 billion.

“No one trusts how you’re spending it,” Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon of Brooklyn said.

Several lawmakers, like Sen. Gustavo Rivera, who represents parts of the Bronx, repeatedly questioned Lhota about whether the agency had manipulated the number of power failures. As he has done in the past, Lhota denied any falsification, describing it as an issue of definition. A single power failure that stops hours of train traffic could be counted two ways, he said. It could be one issue or 200 — the number of trains affected.

In a statement Thursday, the Reclaim New York Initiative, a nonprofit constituent advocacy group, criticized the MTA response at the hearing.

“They want more money, but dismiss the mistrust created by their fraudulent power delay stats, and pretend their out-of-control construction costs aren’t that bad,” the statement read. “‘We’re working on it’ is no longer an acceptable answer.”