Elliot Sander has begun to add a bit of flair to his public remarks.

Earlier this month, the normally staid, modest CEO of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority told an Assembly hearing that the agency’s finances are “going over the cliff,” warning that another fare hike could come in 2009. On Monday, speaking to reporters gathered at the agency’s Madison Avenue headquarters, he added that the agency was “facing a crisis,” that “riders should be concerned” and that “we are really approaching a time of reckoning.”

The turn to apocalyptic verbiage comes at a time when the straits are growing increasingly dire for transit infrastructure in New York, particularly for the M.  read more »

At an Assembly hearing this morning on the far West Side, Lee Sander, executive director of the M.T.A., indicated that as the far West Side grows, the agency is considering bringing rapid bus service or a light rail to the district, supplementing the planned 1.5-mile extension of the No. 7 subway line.

“Between light rail and bus rapid transit, we are going to want to do everything we can to improve connectivity to the far West Side and the rest of Manhattan, but I think it needs to be a supplement to the No. 7 line,” Mr. Sander said. “We are working closely with [city Department of Transportation] Commissioner [Janette] Sadik-Khan in advancing bus rapid transit, and we ultimately would like to see an extensive network of bus rapid transit, which would be relevant in terms of certainly the 34th Street corridor, and as well as potentially the 42nd Street corridor.”  read more »

Metropolitan Transportation Authority executive director Lee Sander seems a bit uncertain about the $100 million that developer Forest City Ratner owes the agency for Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards project. He had this to say earlier this month in a capital program “webinar” (no, we don’t quite know what that word is either), responding to a question about the MTA’s current capital plan:

There is $100 million associated with the sale of Atlantic Yards, and many of you have read in the newspapers some of the difficulty Forest City is having with that development, so hopefully that will proceed, but we want to make sure that that happens—but we’re concerned about that.

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The Metropolitan Transport Authority may have lost the battle for congestion pricing, but it's still determined to do its bit to fight climate change, as Elliot Sander, its executive director, explained to a conference earlier today.

At the conference, "Oil and Water: Adapting to Scarcity," organized by the Regional Plan Association and attended by various transportation policy experts and politicians, Sander announced that the M.T.A. "will move immediately to begin phasing out bottled water from our facilities." Except, he added, “at facilities where we have no choice."  read more »

Maybe it’s best to keep the champagne on ice just for a few more days.

There’s a bit more work to be done on the deal between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Tishman Speyer over the West Side rail yards, as the MTA did not give, as it once planned to, a “conditional letter of designation” to Tishman today for the deal. With some final details yet to be ironed out, that designation comes in the next 14 days, to be followed by a contract within 120 days after that.  read more »

The directors of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey were not part of the mass of resignations requested by the Paterson administration.

The Times Union reported today that Governor Paterson’s staff has asked all directors and commissioners to put in their letters of resignation so as to give the new governor more flexibility in shaping his administration.  read more »

In his State of the MTA address today, Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chief Executive Elliot (Lee) Sander imagined aloud the Second Avenue Subway running from the Bronx into Brooklyn and on to Queens.  read more »

The public hearings on the MTA’s proposed fare hike have been a great exercise in civic catharsis, letting people tell the transit agency just how much they dislike the idea of paying more for their daily commutes.  read more »

The Chief Executive of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority spoke warmly of Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan this morning, calling it “an extremely valuable contributor to the M.T.A. capital program,” though he stopped short of endorsing it.

“It is viable and can be made to work,” Elliot (Lee) Sander said at a breakfast sponsored by Crain’s New York Business newspaper.

He warned, though, that the M.T.A. would have to beef up the transit system in order to accommodate the increase in mass transit ridership.

“It could not happen overnight,” he said.

David Weprin, a Queens City Council Member and opponent of congestion pricing who was in the audience at the New York Hilton, took that comment as a bad sign.

“It sounds like they are not ready and that is a real problem,” he said.  read more »

Today is the day Governor Spitzer has been waiting for: Peter Kalikow plans to announce that he is resigning as chairman of the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, according to a state official.

It was back in June that Mr. Spitzer, at the time simply the presumptive governor, vowed to replace Mr. Kalikow, a real-estate developer and former owner of the New York Post, even though he really would not have the power to do so. Mr. Kalikow, just reappointed to a six-year term, promised to stay on—at first he said for one or two years or more, then he said until projects he wanted had gotten off the ground, and then he said sometime in the spring.  read more »