Good morning, my name is Noah Budnick. Transportation Alternatives is here today to urge the MTA Board and Chairman Kalikow not to cut elevator operators or car cleaners. Such cuts would hurt service and the safety and convenience of the subway system.

After last March’s 50-cent fare increase , Chairman Peter Kalikow said: “Our customers do not want to see any service cuts and there are none."

Yet, the 2004 New York City Transit Preliminary budget reduces subway car, station, track bed and bus cleaning. It cuts subway elevator operators, subway car inspections, signal and infrastructure maintenance and inspections and bus overhauls.

This is very worrisome. It took a long time for the subway system to recover from its decrepitude. Many people in this room clearly remember those bad old days. Yet, the MTA is flirting with dark times again.

In the early 1990’s cuts in cleaning led immediately to a noticeably dirtier, smellier subway system. They will again.

Additionally, we join with the Straphangers Campaign in strongly objecting to the proposal to cut 22 elevator operators at five Washington Heights subway stations.
Anyone who has been in those cramped, crowded elevators knows how important the operators are. The Transit Police call the 168th Street IRT station “The Hole.” The station is very popular with the homeless. Who would want to be stuck “in The Hole, hundreds of feet below ground, in the middle of the night without an elevator operator?

Please, we urge Chairman Kalikow and the MTA not to cut elevator operators or car cleaners.

Thank you.