Ben Fried

We'll have more on the details of the MTA funding deal as they emerge. For now I'd like to focus on its most salient feature: The failure to impose new fees on car commuters, whose daily trips would slow to a standstill without a functional transit system.

It's pretty much a done deal, with an official announcement from the three men in a room expected shortly. What's the plan? The sordid details are still emerging, but Politicker's Jimmy Vielkind has some numbers:

Now that Governor Paterson has backtracked on his pledge to secure a long-term solution to New York's transit funding crisis, the push is on to spin the slapdash result as a responsible outcome, not a capitulation to Albany's lowest common denominator.

We're getting dangerously close to transit Armageddon.

Heading into the weekend, Governor Paterson is still keeping a tight lid on exactly how he plans to handle the MTA's huge funding shortfall. Lately, Paterson has taken to joking about this crisis by saying that "light bends around Albany" -- a not-so-veiled reference to Senate Democrats and their closed-door machinations. I first heard the line a few weeks ago at the RPA Regional Assembly, where we all laughed and ate up the governor's act.

Let's recap the last week of the MTA funding saga. On Monday, Malcolm Smith and the Senate Democrats introduced a "conversation starter" bill that had already been lambasted as insufficient and backwards. On Tuesday, the MTA finance committee announced that revenues from taxes and fares have plummeted deeper than expected, turning the $1.2 billion doomsday budget gap into a $1.8 billion chasm. On Wednesday, Governor Paterson claimed that he had "some new ideas" to break the legislative impasse. Yesterday, some Paterson staffers started to let slip what the governor had in mind, and today we woke up to the big news.

Yesterday's rally in Union Square drew hundreds of transit riders calling on the State Senate and Albany leaders to enact a long-term solution for the MTA's enormous funding shortfall. Judging by the cheering sections in the audience, most of the crowd was mobilized by the Facebook group "1,000,000 People Against the NYC MTA Fare Hike" and Transportation Alternatives. The Working Families Party, the event sponsor with the most political muscle, sent one representative but no speaker or even a display table for gathering signatures.

Here's another wake-up call for state legislators dithering over a transit funding package: The sinking economy continues to choke off revenues for New York City's subways and buses. The MTA finance committee announced this afternoon that the agency's budget gap is $621 million bigger than previously forecast. That's on top of the $1.2 billion hole that brought about the imminent doomsday fare hike and service cuts. The culprit? Plummeting revenue from dedicated taxes, fares, and tolls.

The Municipal Art Society came out with a report yesterday urging New York State to start analyzing greenhouse gas emissions in its environmental review process (SEQRA). MAS argues that the policy could be adopted without changing existing laws, which raises an interesting question to ponder on this Earth Day afternoon: Would the State Senate's latest MTA funding plan pass muster if it were subject to an EIS that factors in climate change?

How's this for windshield perspective? One of the loudest foes of a sensible MTA funding solution, Fare Hike Four member Pedro Espada, doesn't even reside in the Bronx district that he represents. Rather than make his home in the transit dependent 33rd District, Espada lives in leafy Mamaroneck, reports Marcia Kramer of CBS2: