When transit workers walked off the job last month, it was Mayor Bloomberg who rallied New Yorkers to lace up their sneakers and dust off their bikes.

Governor Pataki was largely in the shadows even though he wields control of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the entity that oversees the city’s buses and subways.

Yesterday, Rep. Anthony Weiner, a Democrat of Queens and Brooklyn, called on Mr. Pataki to cede his next appointment to the MTA board to Mr. Bloomberg to give the city more control over its transportation system.

Mr. Weiner, one of four Democrats who ran for mayor last year, said it is unjust for the mayor to have the power to appoint only four of the board’s 14 votes when more than 90% of the MTA’s riders and 81% of the authority’s revenue comes from the five boroughs.

“Does one seat change it overnight?” Mr. Weiner said. “No. But I think that the governor can at least acknowledge that the mayor should have a greater say, and we should start going in that direction.”

Mr. Pataki declined to comment when asked yesterday whether he would consider giving up one of his six appointed seats. One of his appointees recently resigned, creating a vacancy that must be filled.

City Council Member John Liu, chairman of the council’s Transportation Committee, said the city gets shortchanged on state funding.

“The subway and bus system in the five boroughs is often the stepchild to the commuter rail and bus operations of the surrounding communities,” he said. “Part of the systematic problem is that the city does not have enough of a voice in the way the MTA is operated.”

The senior attorney for the Straphangers Campaign, Gene Russianoff, said that while the city contributes only a small fraction to the operating system for the city’s subways and buses, it generates most of the MTA’s revenue and doesn’t get enough back.

He said New York City riders have the highest “farebox recovery” rate in the nation. That means that a higher percentage of the $2 New Yorkers pay when they swipe a MetroCard is used to pay for the mass transit system than the percentages of fares in other cities.

Mr. Russianoff also said figures released by the MTA in November show that riders in the city paid more from the farebox in 2005 than riders in the rest of the region. Riders in the city paid 59.2% of operating costs from the farebox, compared with 45.5% for the Long Island Rail Road, 56.4% for Metro-North Railroad, and 35.7% for the Long Island Bus.

Perhaps more striking is that much of the surplus collected at bridges and tunnels in the five boroughs is funneled to the LIRR and Metro-North.

A state formula that’s been on the books for several decades allows the city system to keep only 50% of its surpluses, about $24 million, while the rest goes to suburban commuter rails.

Studies in the past have found that about 75% of toll money collected at the city’s bridges and tunnels is paid by city residents and the rest goes to subsidize suburban commuter rails.

When the law was passed, $24 million was a sizable amount, but with surpluses now far greater, much of the city’s revenue is shifted to subsidize infrastructure outside the city. In 2001, Mr. Bloomberg said the city should seize control of the MTA, but he has since changed his position, saying it would be too much of a burden on city taxpayers.

When asked whether the mayor supports Mr. Weiner’s new proposal, a spokesman for the mayor said only that Mr. Bloomberg is pushing to get the city’s police commissioner a voting slot on the board.