MTA May Scale Back Emergency Repair Work if City Doesn't Pay Up

Since July, when MTA Chairman Joe Lhota unveiled his multi-pronged, $800 million emergency subway repair plan, the agency has been sprinting to get as much work done as possible. But the city has been reluctant to contribute, despite Lhota's pleas and prodding.

"If we don't have the full amount of money, there may be things that we can't do," Lhota told the MTA board Wednesday. "But it's based on a prioritization of what we think is the most important thing to reduce the amount of delay and incidents that cause delays."

Mayor de Blasio says it's the state's responsibility.

"Try as they might, city riders won't allow the state and the MTA to pull the wool over their eyes," Austin Finan, a spokesman for the mayor, said in a statement. "Implementing half the plan isn't an option. If Chairman Lhota needs the money to fund his plan, he should ask the State to return the nearly half-billion dollars it swiped from the authority he now oversees. It’s really that simple." 

Lhota said he'll update the board in October with his budget. He said one option may be stretching the work out over a longer period of time.

Under the emergency plan so far, the MTA has:

— Installed 2,100 friction pads on train cars

— cleared 6,000 grates

— fixed 1,500 track defects

— sealed 185 leaks

— fixed the doors on 500 different cars

— reduced the number of unavailable train cars by 17%

Lhota said these problems cause 80 percent of train delays.