It’s the end of the line for millions of straphangers.
The MTA yesterday approved its most devastating slew of service cuts in decades — a desperate cost-savings measure that will affect 110 bus routes and 15 subway lines, touching nearly every corner of the city.
Two subway lines, the V and the W, will vanish, with the M and Q adding stops along their former routes.
Waits will be longer and cars more crammed on all the “letter” lines.
At least 21 local bus routes will be eliminated, along with 12 express lines.
And the map of bus service in lower Manhattan and Park Slope and Bay Ridge in Brooklyn will have to be redrawn.
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“The service cuts that were put in place today will inevitably involve pain for our customers,” MTA chief Jay Walder said after the board’s 11-2 vote implementing the measures. “We did not find a way to do that that does not involve pain.”
Most of the cuts will go into effect in early summer.
Thomas Prendergast, the New York City Transit chief, has called the cuts “on an order of magnitude unlike anything I’ve seen in 35 years.”
One of the most noticeable changes is the redesign of the M. It will begin as usual in Middle Village, Queens, then head into Brooklyn and cross the Williamsburg Bridge. But it will then cover the V’s route through Manhattan and back into Queens, ending at Forest Hills.
Riders are concerned about dropping M service from lower Manhattan and on through to Bay Parkway in Brooklyn.
“I hate it!” said social worker Tanya Perez, 29, at the M’s Fulton Street station yesterday.
“They raise the fare, they cut more lines. Now I have to make a transfer to get to work and wake up earlier. I’m totally at the MTA’s mercy.”
Elderly riders decried the end of so many bus lines, fearing the climb down steep subway station stairs and the crush of millions of passengers.
“I’ve had surgery on my knees — they’re in rough shape,” said Melanie Dillard, who lives on the Lower East Side and frequently uses the B51 bus, the only bus route that goes over the Manhattan Bridge, which has now been eliminated.
“It’s difficult for me to get up and down the stairs,” she said. “I could take the express bus, it’s so expensive!”
The massive service cuts will save the agency $93 million of a $383 million budget gap in 2010.
Laying off more than 1,000 employees, eliminating free student MetroCards — which has yet to be voted on — and scaling back paratransit service will take care of the rest.
And still, the agency has yet another $378 million budget gap that remains, because Gov. Paterson cut direct aid to the MTA and state officials miscalculated how much money the agency would get in payroll tax revenue. Mayor Bloomberg issued a warning about the remaining budget gap yesterday.
“This is just the beginning. The next round, I would think, would be much worse,” Bloomberg said.
“So save your anger for the next round. Just say thank you that it isn’t any worse with this one.”
Walder said he hopes to make up the rest of the debt internally, although he didn’t rule out more service cuts later in the year.
“And I do not think you’ll be seeing service changes of the type that you are here,” he said.
He also said he “intends” to keep the scheduled 2011 fare hike of 7.5 percent, and not raise the fare in 2010.
Other cuts approved yesterday include terminating the G train at Court Square at all times and running the N line local in Manhattan.
In addition, drivers crossing the Cross Bay Bridge in Queens will lose their toll rebate program and LIRR and Metro-North commuters will see reduced service. At a meeting at the MTA’s Madison Avenue headquarters, board members fired back at city and state elected officials. “They wrote us a bad check,” board member Allen Cappelli said of the Legislature.
Other board members attacked “ridiculous” union work rules and raises.
“The burden shouldn’t just be on the riders,” said board member Nancy Shevell, who received jeers from the crowd for taking the union to task.
“You have to wonder why your reputation is so shredded with the public when we go through this process,” said Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign.
Additional reporting by Ikimulisa Livingston, Perry Chiaramonte, David Seifman and Douglas Montero