The Daily News‘s Monday-morning MTA columnist Pete Donohue ably sums up the Jay Walder tenure:

Mayor Bloomberg, Gov. Cuomo and others are right to commend Walder for keeping the MTA afloat during a fiscal crisis and pushing forward on reforms and upgrades that were at least seeded by predecessors – like consolidating back-office functions with a Business Service Center and installing next-train countdown clocks in subway stations.

But the MTA is about to start serious negotiations with its biggest union, TWU Local 100, which waged a strike not too long ago. By mid-January, all 59 unions representing MTA workers will have expired contracts that need to be renewed.

The MTA’s capital plan has a $9 billion gap. The MTA this week will outline a plan to close it – but it’s just a plan.

Walder is leaving with four years remaining on his contract to take another job. God bless him. It’s his right. That doesn’t mean we have to praise him and thank him as he walks off the mound in the third inning of a nine-inning game.

When he was supposed to be playing for the home team, no less.

In the Post, freshman State Sen. Lee Zeldin outlines what he wants from a new MTA chief. On the list is “new contracts with the MTA’s unions that reflect the realities of the agency’s poor and unstable finances” — although Zeldin still won’t say whether he favors a wage freeze.