Holy crap. So, NYers, did you hear (and you can go see NY1 and so on for details, I don’t have links on hand heard it on the radio – but now links below, wheee) that the MTA has a second “doomsday” budget? They’re soft-threatening that if they don’t get money it will mean not only a second fare hike (behind the one that is already planned to $2.50) but also more cuts in service.

And by “cuts in service” we apparently now mean “possibly shutting down late night service.” Head of the MTA said “nothing is off the table” and also apparently said he has a plan to fix everything but that it was secret.

Commence outrage.

This was, of course, a political move. From the NYT:

” Asked if he would consider shutting down the subway late at night to save money, he said, “One can’t say that anything is off the table.”

He said that he had not discussed an overnight shutdown with the president of New York City Transit, Howard H. Roberts Jr., and that there were strong arguments for maintaining all-night service.

A transportation authority spokesman, Jeremy Soffin, later clarified those remarks, saying, “We are not actively studying a nighttime shutdown of the system.” He said running fewer trains at night was a more likely option.”

And from 2nd Ave Sagas (good blog btw):

“It all comes back to those 468 stations. The system simply wasn’t designed to stop. There’s nowhere to store all of the rolling stock; the cost of securing the system would be immense; and the cost in labor or time in shutting down and starting up the system basically negates — and is generally believed to outweigh — the cost savings of a shut down.

Of course, that’s hardly good news. The MTA can roll back subway service to two trains an hour on nearly every line from 2 a.m. to, say, 5 a.m. It doesn’t even need to add complementary Night Owl bus service. It will make taxis a more alluring alternative and will add significant time to off-hours workers’ commutes. In other words, it’s a second Doomsday.”