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Metropolitan Transportation Authority

Headquarters: 347 Madison Ave.
New York, NY 10017
Employees: 66,631
CEO: Thomas Prendergast
Website: http://www.mta.info

Career Page

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority operates subways, buses and trains in the New York City metro area and is the largest transportation network in North America.

The MTA is made up of seven agencies: New York City Transit; Long Island Rail Road; Long Island Bus; Metro-North Railroad; Bridges and Tunnels; MTA Capital Construction; and MTA Bus Company.

MTA subways, buses, and railroads provide over 2.6 billion trips each year to New Yorkers — the equivalent of about one in every three users of mass transit in the United States and two-thirds of the nation's rail riders. MTA bridges and tunnels carry more than 300 million vehicles a year — more than any bridge and tunnel authority in the nation.

This vast transportation network serves a population of 15.1 million people in the 5,000-square-mile area fanning out from New York City through Long Island, southeastern New York State, and Connecticut.

MetroCard provides automated fare collection on subways and buses. E-ZPass electronic toll collection lets customers automatically pay on bridges, and tunnels.

The use of MetroCard brought free transfers between subways and buses, multiride bonuses, and weekly, monthly, and daily transit passes, reducing the cost of public transportation for the first time. E-ZPass transformed regional travel, decreasing congestion, reducing pollution, and speeding commutation.

The MTA is a public-benefit corporation chartered by the New York State Legislature in 1965. The authority is governed by a 17-member Board. Members are nominated by the Governor, with four recommended by New York City's mayor and one each by the county executives of Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Dutchess, Orange, Rockland, and Putnam counties. (Members representing the latter four cast one collective vote.) The board also has six rotating non-voting seats, three held by representatives of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee (PCAC), which serves as a voice for users of MTA transit and commuter facilities, and three held by representatives of organized labor. All Board members are confirmed by the New York State Senate.

History

The NY City Subway first opened in 1904. Bus service on the streets of Manhattan began in 1905. Today, NYC Transit's buses run in all five boroughs, on more than 200 local and 30 express routes. They account for 80 percent of the city's surface mass transportation.

The Long Island Rail Road is both the largest commuter railroad and the oldest railroad in America operating under its original name. Chartered in 1834, it extends from three major New York City terminals -- Penn Station, Flatbush Avenue, and Hunterspoint Avenue -- through a major transfer hub at Jamaica to the easternmost tip of Long Island.

Long Island Bus -- formed in 1973 by the combination of 10 private bus companies into a unified transportation system -- operates throughout Nassau County and in western Suffolk and eastern Queens. Its lines link 96 communities, 47 Long Island Rail Road stations, five New York City Transit subway stations, numerous industrial parks, colleges, hospitals, corporate headquarters, and major shopping malls.

Created in 1933 by builder Robert Moses, MTA Bridges and Tunnels serves more than a million vehicles each weekday -- more than 300 million vehicles each year -- and carries more traffic than any other bridge and tunnel authority in the nation. Surplus revenues from the authority's tolls help support MTA transit services.

MTA Bridges and Tunnels bridges are the Triborough, Throgs Neck, Verrazano-Narrows, Bronx-Whitestone, Henry Hudson, Marine Parkway-Gil Hodges Memorial, and Cross Bay Veterans Memorial; its tunnels are the Brooklyn-Battery and Queens Midtown.

All are within New York City, and all accept payment by E-ZPass, an electronic toll collection system that is moving traffic through MTA Bridges and Tunnels toll plazas faster and more efficiently. Seventy-two percent of the vehicles that use MTA Bridges and Tunnels crossings on weekdays now use E-ZPass.

MTA Bridges and Tunnels is a cofounder of the E-ZPass Interagency Group, which is implementing seamless toll collection in 12 states, including New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia, wiithout having to reach for cash or tokens; tolls are charged electronically to a single E-ZPass account.

In October 2012, Superstorm Sandy hit NYC and inflicted heavy damage on MTA subway and train lines.

Career Information

Most jobs are filled by an examination process. Applicants must apply, take, and pass an examination.

The NYC Transit Exam hotline listing the exams open for filing is (718) 566-JOBS or at the MTA website or NYC website.