Ms. Quinn did not present a plan to expand New York City's subway system.

New York City mayoral front-runner and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn unveiled her mass transit agenda this morning. While she emphasized increased control for the city's next mayor, Ms. Quinn had no new ideas.

Her headline proposal is to take control of the MTA back from the state. But taking over the MTA is a tall order, and to do it, she'll need to prove that she has better ideas about how to run it than the state.

So does she?

Ms. Quinn presented three concrete transit proposals—bringing Metro-North service to Penn Station with new stations in the Bronx, ten new Select Bus Service lines in the outer boroughs and increased ferry service.

The first proposal, to bring Metro-North service to Co-Op City, Parkchester, Morris Park and Hunts Point, with additional stops on Manhattan's West Side, is something that has been planned for the MTA's next capital plan anyway—nothing new here.

As far as we can tell from her plan, she would leave the MTA's regional railroads—Metro-North and the Long Island Railroad—as the the same bloated and inefficient services that they are today. With the same sky-high labor costs—commuter railroads in the Northeast have clung to as many as half-a-dozen employees per train, whereas other countries and cities on the west coast have pared staff down to rapid transit levels—new Metro-North service under Ms. Quinn's plan is likely to be just as infrequent and expensive as it is now, reducing its usefulness for New Yorkers who already have cheaper, albeit slower, options. (Absent as well from her platform was any mention of labor reform on New York City's subways, despite issues like one-person train operation being at the heart of the MTA's negotiations with its union.)

Ramped up Select Bus Service service—otherwise known as "bus rapid transit," which speeds boarding with a fine-enforced honor system and gives buses their own dedicated lanes—is the meatiest part of her proposal, but this idea is hardly original—she merely puts a number (ten new lines) to the Progressive Caucus's plan for "a city-wide network of bus rapid transit lines that connect the boroughs." Her four-year timeline is a welcome improvement from the MTA's current snail's pace roll-out, but given Ms. Quinn's emphasis on public review as council speaker, it's unclear if she could roll this out as quickly as she'd like to.

Ferry rides are scenic, but there's a reason that New York started replacing them with subways in the 19th century.

Furthermore, the reasoning behind improved bus service hints at the elephant in New York City's transit room: astronomical subway construction costs.

"Subways cost roughly $1 billion per mile to construct," she said in her speech. "Bus rapid transit—just $1 million a mile."

For one, Ms. Quinn should check her facts. The Upper East Side segment of the Second Avenue subway clocks in at $2.7 billion a mile, and the 7 train extension is over $2 billion a mile—and that's without the much-needed stop at 41st Street and 10th Avenue, which would cost another half-billion, at least.

But more importantly, using the high cost of subway construction in New York City—much higher than in peer cities like Tokyo, Paris or even London—as an excuse not to build any more lines ("I'm a little bit on the fence about finishing the Second Avenue subway," Ms. Quinn joked, saying that her father has vowed not to die before it's finished) is an admission of defeat.

Select Bus Service on Utica Avenue in Brooklyn, for example, is a good start (and something the MTA is already planning), but these high-ridership corridors are crying out for full-blown subway service—first planned over 80 years ago. Better bus service in the outer boroughs would be nice, but Ms. Quinn said nothing about the higher-capacity Triboro RX rail line that many transit advocates have been pushing.

As for ferries, they are essentially a 19th century mode of transit, with no hope of making a dent in the city's transit needs outside of a few places like Staten Island and the Rockaways. "In just 18 months," Ms. Quinn said of East River ferry service, "it’s already served over 1.6 million riders." As a comparison, the Lexington Avenue subway line carries 1.3 million riders each day.

New York is fundamentally a rail-oriented city, and Christine Quinn apparently has no plan to add to this infrastructure, or even make more efficient use of existing lines, aside from the Metro-North plan the MTA is already working on. Buses and ferries are all well and good, but Ms. Quinn is going to need to do better if she wants to give the city back its subways.

Robert Moses may be dead, but the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority lives on.

Joe Lhota, it seems, wants to finish the job that Governor Nelson Rockefeller started. Speaking to the Staten Island Advance last week, the frontrunner laid out the most ambitious transportation proposal yet of the 2013 mayoral race: give New York City back its bridges and tunnels.

"The former head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority," the editorial board wrote, "said that if he were to be elected mayor, he would seek to get full mayoral control of the bridges and tunnels in the city."

Aside from the untolled East River bridges that belong to the city—the Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg and Queensboro bridges—major river crossings between the five boroughs belong to the state, under the guise of the MTA Bridges and Tunnels.

This division retains the legal name "Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority," a testament to Robert Moses's iron-clad bond covenants and their origins as his primary source of power. He used these tax-free, oversight-free sources of revenue to fund the public works empire he directed from Randall's Island, blanketing the outer boroughs and even the fringes of Manhattan with highways, parkways and transit-free river crossings. Through this slush fund he subsidized automobile travel in a city that had hitherto been almost completely dependent on mass transit.

In 1968, Gov. Rockefeller eventually succeeded where so many others had failed, and wrested control of the Triborough Authority, named after Moses' signature spans, away from New York's master builder. He directed the money instead to the newly created Metropolitan Transportation Authority, under the control of the governor, where it remains today.

If Joe Lhota gets his way, however, this may all change. The Advance framed the policy as toll relief—at least to Staten Islanders. Brooklyn and Queens motorists, though, could see tolls for the first time on their bridges. "Put all the bridges and tunnels under the control of one entity, namely the city," wrote the Advance, "and we have a shot at genuine toll equity"—in other words, we'd be half way to congestion pricing.

But putting New York City's bridges and tunnels under the authority of the city could also do something else, unmentioned by the Staten Island Advance: give the city a say in the MTA.

Currently the MTA is funded almost entirely through the state, through taxes and tolls, and the federal government, which gives out grants for capital projects. If the city regained the money that currently goes straight into MTA coffers—$940 million in 2011 after expenses, according to MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg—it could remit this back to the MTA, but with one crucial difference: the city would have the power of the purse, if not direct control.

Because the city is more dependent on the MTA than the state, it may be better placed to oversee to the agency. Self-professed "car guy" Andrew Cuomo, for example, has dragged his feet on replacing Joe Lhota as head of the MTA, and has made the Tappan Zee, not transit, his signature public works initiative.

That said, there are also reasons to be skeptical that the city would do any better than the state. Michael Bloomberg, for example, spent $1.4 billion in city money on the 7 train extension to the Far West Side, but did not put any pressure on the agency to spend it more wisely than it does on its other, non-city-funded projects. As a result of this inability to control costs—the 7 train extension, like all of the MTA's other capital projects, is shockingly expensive when viewed against comparable projects outside of the United States—the extension lost its station at 10th Avenue and 41st Street, cutting its utility in half.

And the City Council is even worse. Its "oversight" sessions often devolve into parochial gripe fests by city officials with only the most tenuous grasp on how New York City transit works.

Then again, Joe Lhota obviously has more transit acumen than City Council and Mayor Bloomberg.

But aside from political concerns, there's the question of how the city could, legally speaking, retake control over its bridges and tunnels. Moses's skillful manipulation of bond covenants made even the MTA takeover difficult even back in in the '60s. As Robert Caro detailed in The Power Broker, it may not have been possible were it not for the fact that Gov. Nelson Rockefeller's brother David was president of the Chase Manhattan Bank at the time, the largest holder of Triborough bonds.

But if Joe Lhota can get elected and surmount these obstacles—big ifs—then gaining control over the city's bridges and tunnels might give him at least a modicum of control over an even bigger (though familiar) prize: the city's subways.

Though 84 percent of subway riders reported they were satisfied with the overall comfort and convenience of using the subway, the number of satisfied customers only increased six percent since last year. Overall satisfaction with local bus service also slightly increased from 62 percent last year to 70 percent.

Our suburban brethren did not have it so good.Overall customer satisfaction decreased to 78 percent on the Long Island Rail Road from 89 percent last year and Metro-North Railroad satisfaction also decreased, from 93 to 89 percent. However, as the M.T.A. explains in a press release, "Satisfaction in the railroads was adversely impacted by weather-related disruptions and other external factors." Yeah, yeah, blame it on the weather.

The agency actually got a little lucky in that regard, considering the annual survey was conducted in June, well before the disruptions from Tropical Storm Irene or the city's summer construction projects began. There was still that cursed blizzard that caught everyone flat-footed, though.

So when we all complain about the subways, are we just kvetzing out usual frustrations, or is it actually somehow better than we like to complain about?

This is fixable.

The first thing on my platform is that the next M.T.A. chief need not be a train buff. He or she—or me specifically, since I’m hereby throwing my name out there—has to appreciate the economic essentiality of the authority, which moves the equivalent of New Jersey’s population (8.5 million, give or take) every weekday. But this is not a Lionel set; this is dollars and nonsense.

The next chief should know more about transit financing, particularly the warren navigated in simply keeping the four-pronged monster afloat. As it stands now, it’s a ready-made punch line, with the nation’s largest transit system held hostage to a dysfunctional Albany.

The way it works at present, as this newspaper explained in a 2009 profile of then-new, now-outgoing chief Jay Walder, the organization basically runs on debt (sound familiar?). Instead of giving the M.T.A. enough long-term income sources to sustain itself over time—on fares, tolls and taxes—the state has settled upon a system in which funding for repairs and new construction, like the Second Avenue Subway and the No. 7 line extension, runs dry every five years or so (i.e., barring a prostitution scandal, every gubernatorial administration or so). What happens then is that whoever is in charge of the M.T.A. must go to Albany—to whomever is in charge there—and plead for a new tax; or go to the public to eventually borrow from the state’s general fund.

Barring these scenarios, it’s the familiar fare hikes and service cuts—including the epochal ones from the spring of 2010 that wiped out the W and V subway lines, along with 18 bus routes, and upped the commuting times for millions of New Yorkers who pay into the system through both taxes and fares.

Financing-wise, the M.T.A. is a crapshoot, much like relying on the G on the weekend: it’s there; there are signs for it—even schedules, if you look hard enough—but it doesn’t work well because what undergirds it is unreliable. Abandon hope, all ye who swipe here.

Thus the run of grim statistics, showing a system with a $900 million gap in its operating budget; a $9 billion shortfall in its construction plans; and a $2.1 billion-plus budget deficit for good measure (plus, fresh plans to borrow another $7 billion), and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow …

When we all have to take the N or the 1 or the 4, 5, 6, a line that carries more people daily than the subways of Chicago, L.A. and Boston put together, such dollar signs mean little (one bad commute is a tragedy, a million is a statistic). They’re not tangible to the everyday commuter, as the misery of the trips to and fro seem to trump all.

So restructuring the financial funding situation would be the first criterion for any M.T.A. head. And that means taking some of the year-to-year decision making away from Albany and creating a five-year animal for the operating budget. Therefore, less borrowing and fewer drastic measures like fare hikes (three in three years now) and deep service cuts. Nothing really changes otherwise.

With such a financial funding restructuring that divorces the authority from Albany power plays, there should be a focus on fresh revenues that don’t come from commuters. Enough! Especially with the hikes in monthlies. Laudably, Mr. Walder and the Bloomberg administration in recent years pushed congestion pricing—charging drivers to use central business districts like we charge train and bus riders. It didn’t take, amid bizarre opposition where cars were lofted to First Amendment-level rights. But I would resurrect it. Look to London (not right now, but in general, when it comes to transit). We debate bike lanes for BroBos while Western Europe innovates (and China and Japan build the fastest trains on earth).

And if congestion pricing won’t take, I would propose a tourist tax of some sort, a surcharge levied through the Port Authority (master of airports, the bus terminals and most bridges) for stopping by but not paying in.

Finally, financially speaking, the new M.T.A. chief needs an understanding of the vast real estate holdings of the authority, which include train yards, rights of way and buildings (big ones, too—Grand Central Station, anyone?). Work the commercial real estate industry for prospective buyers—Canadian pension funds are pretty ravenous these days—and sell off all nonessential properties.

The next thing on my platform would be ways to humanize the average commute, turning it away from the sort of shaking, silent anger on the typical F or L train platform to something speedier and as close to serene as a New Yorker could hope. There are ways.

One such way was associated with Mr. Walder’s time in London: the oyster card. Virtually everlasting smartcards that riders wave in front of readers (and the readers read the microchip inside, see?), using oyster cards instead of Metro Cards could drastically reduce boarding times, not to mention cut down on those Metro Card hustles.

And as for boarding times, the M.T.A., under my watch, would enforce the proper boarding and exiting of trains and especially of buses. No more discreet announcements at a bus door’s opening about exiting through the rear. Drivers would be empowered to physically enforce such exiting on all able-bodied New Yorkers over the age of reason (7 or so, depending on P.S. district). Same for spreading out on the platform—the city is dense enough—and for not clustering in ingresses and egresses.

Also, it is time for New York to join the nation’s capital in enforcing cleaner subway platforms through fines and a whistleblower program that puts our ballyhooed Silicon Alley to work for good instead of evil (imagine Foursquare loosed: “I’m at Bedford L stop, watching some dude in a Decemberists tour shirt toss copy of Mother Jones into tracks”), much in the same way that the same lampooned, lamented M.T.A. of today helped clean up the actual subway cars in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It is possible, as doable as scrubbing graffiti from the old BMT line.

Once we have the lines up and running, I would move to incentivize use of the nicer areas of the subway and the nicer parts of the trains. Amtrak has its regional and then its Acela. Why not, for a little more, Subway Premium? A quiet car? Something!

And, in closing, why not air-conditioning (remember: we work out the funding structure and increase revenue, we have more money to play with for things that now seem insane); or above-ground Metro Card machines; or having all stations rigged with those clocks that tell you when the trains are coming (or not coming); or a direct rail-link to J.F.K. and La Guardia (the A and the M60 racket just doesn’t work and tosses more cash to the carbon-coughing cabbies)?

If some of this seems implausible, even fantastical, the ramblings of a rider with too many N trips from southern Brooklyn to central Manhattan under his belt of late, know this: Dear reader, he consulted Smart People who know transit in this town, including people on the committee just announced by the governor to advise him in filling the important patronage job of M.T.A. chief (indeed, Mr. Walder was the first transportation professional ever in the role—though, as we discussed at the outset, that’s not necessarily an asset). Every one of these ideas (except maybe Subway Premium) is being or has been discussed by those who might effect real change.

Or we could just abolish it. Trash the whole thing and revert to the Robert Moses days when individual entities like the subway lines and the L.I.R.R. were just that—individual entities, chugging along under different purviews, often at cross-purposes.

Sound radical? A bit meshuganah even? The M.T.A. today is bad, yes; and exhibits so little promise of improving in our grandchildren’s lifetimes. But, believe it or not, here was Governor Cuomo defending abolishment: “It is the simplest notion in the world. All you need is a few lines and a bill to get rid of the authority.”

Mario Cuomo would defend that position repeatedly in his 1982 re-election campaign run by son Andrew (the above came from a New York Times transcript of a Democratic primary debate Mr. Cuomo had against Ed Koch in September of that year). It never happened. The M.T.A. and the Cuomos are still with us. Maybe one can finally fix the other (Mario Cuomo did not respond to a request for comment. Perhaps he’s thought about the M.T.A. enough for one lifetime).

Anyway, I’m standing by, awaiting the call. I live in Brooklyn, five minutes from the N. I might even waive the $350,000 salary.

tacitelli@observer.com :: Follow on Twitter @tacitelli

That finding should prove uncontroversial with anyone who's bought, sold or rented an apartment in the city's outer reaches. But the Journal story is pretty thin on data to back up what some frustrated residents and real estate brokers say. 

Housing stats culled from StreetEasy.com shows a dramatic 60 percent drop in Kensington home sales and an 83 percent drop in Ditmas Park between July 2009 and June. But as the Journal concedes, home sales slumped all over the country after the first-time home buyer tax credit expired. 

In Astoria, where the QM22 bus stopped running June 25, home sales are indeed down. But prices are way up, suggesting, again, it's a bit early to blame the M.T.A. for all the neighborhood's woes. Also complicating the picture, is the fact that some private companies have come in to fill the gap left by the demise of QM22.

As Sofia Song, vice-president of research at StreetEasy, notes, it will take more than a 20-minute walk to the subway to kill demand in most of these areas. "I think the changes would need to be pretty drastic, because demand for housing is so high. If you make it more affordable and less convenient, there's still always going to be demand," she told the Journal.

It may take a few months to get some more solid data. But for now, the last word belongs to Matthew Giordano, of Massey Knakal, who notes that statistics have only a slight role to play in the gut-driven residential market. Said Mr. Giordano, "It's one of the many emotional decisions that people make that can add or detract value from real estate."

lkusisto@observer.com

This is, appropriately, the first line of the Shares of New York listing for the three-bedroom, Upper West Side condo recently purchased by M.T.A. chairman and CEO Jay Walder and wife, Susan Walder-Cummings, for $1.599 million from an unidentitfied buyer shielded by an LLC. According to the Web site Streeteasy, the listing agent is Dan Adsit of the mysterious boutique brokerage Shares of New York, but when reached by telephone he swiftly passed the call on to a nameless female associate who briskly told The Observer, "Well, I'm actually the one who had that listing. Upon further pressing, she snapped,  "You know it's a private transaction and I think Mr. Walder would like to keep it that way."

May I ask your name so the listing agent is accurately attributed?

"You know it's purposeless. We don't want anyone's name mentioned."

But after historic fare-increase proposals Wednesday, it's hard to open a local newspaper without seeing mention of Mr. Walder's name, who as M.T.A. chairman, is in the unfortunate position of implementing fare hikes such as a 16 percent increase for monthly subway and bus passes and a 9 percent increase on suburban trains in an effort to narrow an $800 million budget deficit.

If Mr. Walder secured a mortgage for the purchase of his new residence, we assume that the bank found him to be more credit-worthy than the cash-strapped M.T.A. And, besides, he's got the money: On Wednesday, in fact, he shot down suggestions that his $350,000 salary take a cut; and then circuitously told salary-minded reporters, "The position of the chairman of the M.T.A. has been compensated historically in the manner in which I'm being compensated. I think that's the way it will remain."

Before he took the chairmanship here nine months ago, the 51-year-old Queens native spent close to a decade in London in a top post at the tube. His wife, Susan Cummings-Walder, whose Facebook wall indicates she is currently fighting spiders in France, and the couple's children have since moved back with him and have been living in the Tribeca Towers.

In addition to its proximity to the B/C/1/2 and 3 trains, the handsomely renovated three-bedroom boasts a "tremendous natural light," a master suite with double sinks, and a walk-in California Closet as well as a kitchen with cork flooring, maple base cabinetry and frosted glass upper cabinets. Wood floors throughout the apartment have been stained with a "custom chocolate blend."

cmalle@observer.com

Such is the position of Jay Walder, the M.T.A.'s still-new leader, who has many an innovative, rider-friendly idea (Countdown clocks! Cell-phone service underground! Fast buses throughout the city!), but who has spent much of his nine months on the job cutting costs, scouring for efficiencies, rolling back service and, now, increasing fares.

On Wednesday, July 28, the M.T.A. chairman and CEO is expected to plunge into an inevitable public swamp when he unveils the agency's latest set of hikes, to be implemented in January, including a $10 jump, with new restrictions, for the monthly unlimited card-a 7.5 percent overall increase that Albany legislators initially gave a nod to last year.

"Notwithstanding the shortfall in resources that have come, we have held to the number that had been previously agreed [on]," Mr. Walder said, speaking from behind a worn wood conference table in the M.T.A.'s midtown offices Monday, wearing a white shirt with subway token cuff links. "The speaker of the Assembly, the Senate majority leader, the governor-all stood together and said we expect a seven-and-a-half percent increase on the transit system in January 2011. That's what we're doing."

The question for Mr. Walder, then, is whether he will ever be able to unshackle himself from fiscal issues sufficiently to install more noticeable, meaningful changes-an undertaking that would take time and money-or will he continue to have to put out these fiscal fires, started long before his arrival, with viciously unpopular actions?

A bit of background on M.T.A. finances: Even within the context of a state government barreling toward fiscal ruin, the M.T.A.'s financial situation is especially problematic, as the elected classes treat the agency a bit like a sick patient never given enough nourishment to stand on its own.

Rather than devote to the M.T.A. enough long-term funding sources so that it can sustain itself over time on fares, tolls and specific taxes, New York has settled on a system where funding runs dry for capital projects-repairs and new construction-about every five years. At that point, the M.T.A.'s chief either goes hat-in-hand to Albany, seeking some sort of new M.T.A.-specific tax (this happened last year, to some success), or to the general public, attempting a referendum to allow the agency to essentially borrow from the state's general fund (this happened in 2005).

And when one or both fail (like in 2000), the agency-semi-independent from both the city and the state-simply resorts to borrowing billions, often beyond its means, leaving the next M.T.A. chair to worry about how to pay for it.

Add to that an economic crisis that has drained revenues, expansion projects that are billions over budget and $800 million in unexpected shortfalls that have emerged within the past year, and you get the situation in which Mr. Walder, who left a nice job at consulting giant McKinsey & Company, finds himself.

"When I heard that he was possibly going to do it, I said, 'There's no way this guy is going to want to take a pay cut to take this,'" said an M.T.A board member.

MR. WALDER, 51, is a physically imposing figure at 6-foot-6. He towers over most other speakers at public events, creating an amusing contrast with the foot-shorter Mayor Bloomberg, with whom he enjoys a good relationship. He talks with a subtle Queens accent-he was raised in the Rockaways-and he rocks back and forth as he speaks.

He is a career transit professional, a veteran of the M.T.A., in fact, who worked as its chief financial officer in the 1990s, helping craft, among other efforts, the unlimited MetroCard, which he now wants to tweak. He was wooed away to London in 2000 for a top post at the tube, where perhaps his most visible contribution was the Oyster Card, a tap card that replaced tickets (a time-saving feature seemingly every large city now has except New York). And when the Paterson administration decided on a change at the top of the M.T.A. late last spring, officials reached out to Mr. Walder.

He is the first M.T.A. chairman in two decades who was not a campaign contributor to the sitting governor. Instead, he is simply a pure transit technocrat, one whose well-regarded analytical approach-a "performance indicators" report on the agency's Web site shows month-by-month changes to things like on-time performance-speaks of his time at McKinsey.

Still, his tenure has been mostly devoted to dealing with surprise new budget gaps, installing major cuts that eliminated two subway lines and trying to find new efficiencies-tasks on which he has delivered some notable successes, such as a pledged savings of $40 million from negotiating better rates with contractors.

On the one hand, the fiscal situation and the lack of a reelection campaign for his boss this fall empowers Mr. Walder to slash and cut in ways that predecessors in his seat lacked-a big step for the agency.

On the other, he has to somehow keep the riding public from revolting as service diminishes and nice conveniences like station agents vanish. The carrot he's offered, in a sense, is a big push on relatively low-cost measures that are highly visible, such as installing countdown clocks in stations and piloting an Oyster Card-like initiative that allows people at certain stations to tap a card over a reader rather than swipe a MetroCard.

"He's made all the right moves so far," said Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch, himself a former M.T.A. chairman. "I think his goal is to try to get through the next year, and see what happens to the economy, and what the new governor's disposition is, and what happens to the fiscal situation."

NOW, NEARLY A year in, on the cusp of a fare increase, much of Mr. Walder's legacy is out of his hands, including, chiefly, how he will be received by the next governor. Mr. Walder has a six-year contract with an expensive clause if he is ousted, but governors often like to install their own M.T.A. chairs.

The presumptive governor, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, has been noticeably silent on the M.T.A., at least so far. A lengthy campaign book only mentions the M.T.A. in passing, although future policy papers on specific items are expected. His office declined to comment on Mr. Walder.

Yet it's difficult to understate the value to an M.T.A. chief of a strong governor in his or her corner, given the challenges ahead: The agency runs out of state funding for repairs and maintenance at the end of 2011, and it expects to develop a plan to presumably ask the Legislature to approve some sort of a new funding plan-likely a tough sell.

There is also the 2012 expiration of the transit workers contract; the union, thus far, enjoys a poor relationship with Mr. Walder.

At least in his rhetoric, Mr. Walder seems quixotic about the politics, acknowledging the standard process. "I, however, retain the view that our elected officials are going to recognize what the M.T.A. has done in a very difficult climate," he said. "I think they will recognize what's happened."

ebrown@observer.com

According to the agreement, which is up for full board approval Wednesday and still needs to be signed by Related, the developer does not need to close on the deal until:

-Midtown office space availability rates hit 11 percent, according to brokerage CB Richard Ellis. While the current rate is at 14.8 percent as of March, 11 percent is relatively achievable, as according to CBRE numbers, midtown averaged well below 11 percent between 2005 and 2007.

-Manhattan co-op and condo sales price achieve an average $1,200 a square foot for a sustained period (it's slightly more nuanced than this). The fourth quarter of 2009 saw an average price of $1,051, according to Miller Samuel. The rate has cracked $1,200 a foot in three separate quarters in the last cycle, hitting a peak $1,322 a foot in the second quarter of 2008.

-The architectural billings index must pass 50 for the commercial sector. It's currently at a bit below 45, and was last over 50 in early 2008.

(The triggers were agreed to a couple months back, we reported at the time, and since, the negotiations have been devoted to smaller points.)

Assuming Related signs its contract with the M.T.A., it will not have to close on the deal and thus be on the hook to start paying rent worth about $1 billion until the three triggers are hit. That kicks the can down the road some on the question of whether or not Related will indeed go ahead with the deal, which seems quite risky right now. (The company has put tens of millions of dollars thus far into the effort, before its 99-year lease starts). 

The infrastructure costs are tremendous (up to $1 billion for a platform over each of the two sections of the rail yards), and it's far from a foregone conclusion that big tenants will once again be willing to relocate far from midtown Manhattan. After all, there's now a lot of government-backed new vacant office space set to rise in Lower Manhattan, and Related wants a large office, retail, and hotel tenant committed before it starts on the platform.

Even if the triggers aren't hit, the M.T.A. can also call in the deal whenever it wants, giving Related 90 days to close and start its rent payments. Of course, if Related decided to bail on the project at that point, the M.T.A. would have to start over, opening up bidding for another developer.

Staff Summary 4-26-10 FINAL

ebrown@observer.com

Chairman Jay Walder put out a draft of his revised five-year capital plan, a roadmap for $26.3 billion in maintenance and some expansion projects between 2010 and 2014. The only problem: the agency is $9 billion short.

This is not a new problem—it was well-known last year when state legislators passed a bailout package that the plan would provide far less revenue than the M.T.A. and Governor Paterson requested. And Mr. Walder's plan does call for $1.8 billion in cuts, most seeming to come from fewer station repairs and new train cars.

But the plan is still mostly intact from last year, with the agency fully funding its large plan for the first two years and then leaving the $9 billion gap after 2011. This, of course, punts the giant question of financing the full plan until next year. "Additional State funding will be required for the final three years, but is not being requested with this submission in light of the State's current fiscal situation," the plan says.

The M.T.A. has understandably been reticent to cut any of its capital plan, which includes expansion projects such as a new Long Island Rail Road connection to Grand Central and the Second Avenue Subway, warning that cutting back on maintenance is a slippery slope that would send the agency back to its dark 1970s days.

But spending at full levels in the first two years is a risky proposition. The M.T.A. would clearly depend on Albany for new funding, and the state is facing even larger budget holes next year once federal stimulus funding runs out, suggesting that any new revenue plan—be it bridge tolls or other ideas—will be an extra tough sell. 

ebrown@observer.com