The MTA’s doomsday budget will wipe out the W line, zap the Z line and ax more than 1,500 NYC Transit jobs, the Daily News has learned.
The list of bus and subway cuts the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will unveil at its monthly board meeting Thursday is extensive and potentially bruising, sources said.
Riders can expect longer waits, more-crowded rides and having to make additional transfers to get to their destinations if the draconian moves are put into effect.
“Oh, this is not good,” said Gladeys Loaiza, a housekeeper from Queens who rides the W train. “When I get on in the morning, I can’t sit now. What’s it going to be like when the W train is gone?”
[i] Riders can expect . . . more-crowded rides [/i]
How exactly would you make the New York subways [i] more [/i] crowded?
Pittsburgh Port Authority is also facing a crisis. At this point, we are fearing either a strike or a total shut-down in December.
When I leave my Midtown workplace every afternoon, I know that I can expect about a 20 minute wait before I can squeeze into a subway car if I’m headed home. Commuters slowly gravitate closer to the edge of the platform in order to get a chance to board a train, and you wait for your chance to push themselves in. (If I am heading off to a church thing, I just walk the mile because it’s quicker to walk than deal with buses or the subway.) With the proposed budget cuts, I might as well just change my hours and work later to avoid the maddening rush hour crunch of smelly bodies piled into the #2 Bronx-bound train. Yes, it’s that bad. My commute takes about 90 minutes each way on a good day, and I expect my commuting time to increase to a two hours each way with the proposed cuts in service. On the other hand, I have noticed that there are noticeably fewer tourists crowding the streets and trains, but that also means that we’re missing the revenue that tourists pour into our budget at this time of year.