See, this is why we love the Times. (And why we love our readers, who called the Times piece to our attention.) Yesterday, while bestowing due huzzahs upon the delightful news that the MTA will not raise fares in 2007, we were tripped up by an unexplained statement in the Daily News. "The agency gets revenues from real estate transactions," New York's hometown paper baldly asserted, going on to claim that the mammoth Stuy Town sale will result in a windfall for the Transit Authority. How, we wondered, does this happen? In today's Times, William Neuman, bless his metro-y heart, explains:

Mr. Kalikow spoke yesterday at a meeting of the authority's board, at which officials announced that a tax windfall from the sale of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village would help pay for new paint jobs in 200 subway stations.

The $52 million needed to paint the stations will come from a total of $81.6 million that the transportation authority will receive in mortgage and transfer taxes from the sale, which totaled nearly $5.4 billion. The authority receives a percentage of the transfer and mortgage taxes collected on real estate sales in New York City, and the taxes have become an important part of the agency's financing.

And now you know.

Walkway Between Subways Is Promised for Transit Hub [NYT]
Earlier: MTA Won't Raise Fares, Thanks, Somehow, to Stuy Town