Kick Them When They’re Down

A bad week for the MTA means a good time to pull this one out of your back pocket:

A city lawmaker yesterday blasted the MTA for rerouting two bus lines to serve a Queens shopping mall developed by the agency chairman’s son.

Councilman John Liu said the MTA should formulate a new procedure for public input to determine bus routes, citing the controversial effort to extend lines to The Shops at Atlas Park.

“In the case of expanding bus service to Atlas Park, people have every reason to suspect favoritism and nepotism,” Liu said after a City Council hearing.

The Shops at Atlas Park is owned by Damon Hemmerdinger, son of MTA Chairman Dale Hemmerdinger.

But the younger Hemmerdinger and MTA officials countered that they began working on one of the proposed routes years before the father was appointed board chairman in 2007.

“Discussions about rerouting the bus began about five years ago,” Damon Hemmerdinger said.

Atlas Park was served by the Q29, but officials moved the Q54 from a lightly used terminus to the mall.