T: Is for Transportation

Who owns the MTA? The state? The city? Who? I do know that the MTA owns some 14,000 buildings worth more than $1 billion. The 13-story Board of Transportation Building at 370 Jay St., on top of Brooklyn's Jay St.-Borough Hall subway station. Owned by the city but operated under a long-term lease to the MTA, 370 Jay St. has been nearly vacant for several years, even as respectable groups like the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership have sought to lease it. They lease at $1.6 billion 2 Broadway in lower Manhattan. There main headquarters are on Madison Ave. in midtown. Meanwhile, 370 Jay languished - a sorry tale of waste and profligacy. (The MTA now insists that it will eventually spend $150 million on renovations, reoccupying the building by 2016.)
The Downtown Brooklyn Partnership argues that if the MTA were to net-lease just eight of 370 Jay St.'s 13 floors to a private developer, it would save $100 million while helping revitalize the neighborhood. The MTA also squanders prime land in Manhattan. The lovely little former substation at 126 W. 53rd St., built to serve the E train that passes underneath, looks virtually empty, though an MTA spokesman says that it is fully used. One former official calls this a "classic case of legacy real estate. The agency owns it and has no incentive to sell it." Or what about the vacant lot west of the new rail control center on Ninth Ave. between 53rd and 54th Sts.? I know they use to own the Twin Towers and made a mint on 9/11 thanks to insurance. Just why are MTA headquarters located in the world's most expensive neighborhoods? Taxpayers are entitled to an accounting before they are asked to bear yet another set of fare and tax increases.

But more importantly is why our transportation a monopoly? Why not allow private jitney and bus operators to enter the transportation market to compete with the MTA. The MTA, is heavily subsidized by taxpayers, so why shouldn't we have a choice. Freedom of choice. Freedom from tyranny and that should be a F.A.C.T.