Sixty Days Into MTA's 'State of Emergency,' Critics Wonder What Happened to Review Plans

By Dana Rubenstein 

Sixty days ago Monday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo took to the stage of the Hammerstein Ballroom in Manhattan and announced a top-to-bottom review of the calcified organization that runs the subway system.

Within 30 days, MTA chairman Joe Lhota, a Cuomo appointee, would create a “reorganization plan for the MTA,” and nothing would be sacrosanct, the governor said, declaring a "state of emergency." As if redesigning a bureaucracy that employs 70,000 people within 30 days weren’t enough, Cuomo said Lhota would also undertake a capital review within 60 days, examining the beleaguered authority's physical infrastructure from subway cars to signals.

That was June 29th, two days after a subway derailment in Harlem injured 34 people. Sixty days later, the MTA says it has delivered on both those promises. Observers aren’t so sure.

“Where are they?” asked Nick Sifuentes, deputy director of the Riders Alliance, referring to the two reviews that the MTA contends are already complete.

Shams Tarek, a spokesman for the MTA, said the two plans exist and can be found right here, in the singular subway stabilization plan released by Lhota in July.

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Source: Politico (via The Empire Report)