The MTA has hired a $175,000-a-year manager to oversee the switch from MetroCards to swipeless smart cards for use on subways, buses and commuter lines, The Post has learned.
Amy Linden is a former executive at Parsons Brinckerhoff, an engineering firm that has been awarded MTA contracts to extend the 7 line to Manhattan’s far West Side.
Linden has also worked as an executive for Amtrak and the MTA.
Although her salary raised eyebrows among some MTA watchdogs at a time when the agency is proposing service cuts, advocates said it was good to have one person heading up the overhaul.
MTA execs, meanwhile, have been scrambling to make wholesale changes to its plan for massive service cuts, which they hope will save $129 million of a $400 million budget gap this year.
Officials are revamping a previous plan to eliminate the Z line, and are looking to kill the M line instead and replace it with an extended V line.
The J/Z skip-stop service would remain in place. The V would run from Forest Hills in Queens to lower Manhattan, switching to the M line at Delancey Street. It would end at the M terminal in Middle Village, Queens. The move would give riders coming from neighborhoods that include Middle Village, Ridgewood, Bushwick and Williamsburg direct access to Midtown.
“Every effort is going to be made to impact people as little as possible,” a source said. “The lines that are among the most severe cuts will be getting attention” for revamps.
The Bx14 bus will also be taken off the chopping block in the latest plan.
In December, The Post reported that eliminating that line would strand about 2,000 riders in a pocket of the Country Club section of The Bronx, sparking outrage from residents and elected officials who said the only alternative was a 12- to 15-block walk.
Other proposals include rerouting Brooklyn’s B77 bus to make stops along the B75 route, which is slated for elimination, and changing the B67 route to help riders stranded by the cut B69 weekend service, sources said.
MTA officials are also trying to find ways to reinstate some service along the M10 line, a popular Harlem route that is also up for elimination, and will likely save the Bx34 and B25 from being terminated, sources said.