The Staten Island Railway should be stripped of promised new trains over the borough’s vocal opposition to the now-paused congestion-pricing program, an MTA board member suggested.
Plans call for testing to start in August on the state-of-the-art train cars, known as R211Ss, with manufacturer Kawasaki set to deliver 75, agency officials told the MTA capital committee last week.
During the discussion, Norman Brown, a nonvoting board member, suggested the MTA install the cars on the city’s subways instead of the forgotten borough — in retaliation over the bitter fight Staten Island pols put up against the $15 congestion toll to enter Manhattan. Gov. Hochul put the plan on an indefinite pause earlier this month.
“Since the representatives from Staten Island on the state, local and federal level do not support the capital plan, since they don’t really care, could we run them on the A line?” asked Brown, a Metro-North labor rep.
MTA officials explained the cars would need some modifications before they could operate on the other four boroughs’ subway lines — the Staten Island Railway is entirely above ground — and MTA Construction and Development president Jamie Torres-Springer quickly shot down any railway revenge dreams.
“The R44s on Staten Island are really very old,” Torres-Springer said, referring to the railway’s current rolling stock, which dates back to the Nixon administration. “The SIR is an important part of the mass transit system in the region and we’re working to protect safe and reliable service across the entire MTA system.”
Brown’s proposal to force SIR riders to continue relying on ancient, failure-prone train cars incensed Staten Islanders.
“Rather than asking questions about how we can improve the commute for people on Staten Island . . . their mindset is, ‘How are we gonna punish them and make it worse?’” Borough President Vito Fossella, who filed a lawsuit to hit the brakes on the $15 tolling program, told The Post.
Albert, 34, one of nearly 7,000 daily weekday SIR riders, slammed Brown for the “cheap shot,” noting how Democratic lawmakers in the board member’s own borough of Brooklyn, as well as Queens, opposed the tolling program.
“Should the subway lines that run through those [lawmakers’] neighborhoods … not get new cars, too?” said the irate lawyer, who uses the Staten Island Railway to get from the St. George ferry terminal to his home on the South Shore.
Last week, MTA board members voted 10-1 to approve Hochul’s delay for the first-in-the-nation tolling program, effectively gutting the agency’s capital budget. The decision will force the MTA to put off several major projects, including the Second Avenue Subway extension and signal upgrades, officials said.
Brown insisted to The Post he wasn’t looking to punish Staten Islanders, but was simply suggesting the MTA put new cars on its more populated subways lines. “When it comes down to efficiency, giving [Staten Island] the brand new cars doesn’t make sense to me,” he said.
