Every day, it seems, there is a new story underscoring some failure of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. First it is a rainstorm that throws the subway into chaos. Then there are the cost overruns and delays at the Fulton Street Transit hub construction site downtown. This week came the regular survey of “dirtiest subway lines,” a kind of reminder of the filth of the government-run transportation system. Also this week was the announcement that the subway service improvements promised at the time of the last fare increase won’t actually be happening as scheduled. It’s no wonder that Mayor Bloomberg’s “congestion pricing” plan, which would tax drivers in an effort, in part, to drive more commuters into the clutches of the MTA’s transit system, is running into a rough reception.

It strikes us that this would be a good moment for the mayor to get into the fight over the MTA in a public way. If he thinks that it’s anything other than a terribly run institution, we’d be surprised. He has plenty of standing to go after its management. In our interview with him for the first issue of the Sun, we asked him about privatizing the subway, and he asked us what we were smoking. The MTA is now in the hands of appointees who, while well intentioned, were the choices of a governor who has since resigned in disgrace. We’re fully willing to defend private management and ownership — it is the system that built most of our great subway lines and splendid stations to begin with. But the issue, for those who would refuse even to experiment with private operation, beginning with a single line, is how they can defend the system that we have today?