The MTA board on Wednesday accredited a $68.4 billion blueprint for big-ticket upgrades within the transit company’s new five-year capital program — at the same time as billions of {dollars} in funding stay unaccounted for within the present plan and the subsequent one.
The MTA board had till October 1 to submit the 2025-2029 plan for system maintenance and growth to the state’s Capital Program Evaluation Board, which has 30 days to evaluation and approve it.
MTA board members signed off unanimously regardless that Gov. Kathy Hochul’s congestion pricing pause in June left a $16.5 billion hole within the transit company’s capital funds. The vehicle-tolling initiative is legally mandated below a 2019 state regulation that aimed to boost billions for transit upgrades within the 2020-2024 plan.
“It’s the costliest plan yet, with the biggest funding question mark,” stated Lisa Daglian, govt director of the Everlasting Residents Advisory Committee to the MTA.
Hochul’s indefinite delay pressured the MTA to scale the plan again, slowing subway sign substitute initiatives, whereas additionally deferring the acquisition of electrical buses and legally binding accessibility upgrades at 23 stations.
And that’s earlier than the MTA faces a projected $33 billion funding hole within the new plan.
“This is all on Governor Hochul — she made the mess, she has to fix it, yet she has brought no solutions to the table,” Jennifer Van Dyck, a member of the Elevator Motion Group, which advocates for elevated accessibility, stated in the course of the assembly’s public feedback. “And you seem to be relying on Hochhul’s word, which we all can attest to, counts for nothing.”
Hochul pledged in June to provide you with a “comprehensive approach” to funding the MTA’s current and subsequent capital plans and in August stated a congestion pricing different may come by the top of this yr.
“The governor’s transit math simply doesn’t add up without congestion pricing,” Rachael Fauss, senior coverage advisor for Reinvent Albany, testified earlier than the assembly.
MTA chairperson and CEO Janno Lieber has publicly been optimistic that Albany and the governor will discover a option to provide you with the cash.
“We’ve said, again and again, that we do take her at her word,” Lieber stated final week at an unveiling of the brand new plan.
On Wednesday, he stated placing the maintenance and growth plan in entrance of the Capital Program Evaluation Board is “cause for celebration.”
“We understand that the program’s got to go through the Albany process,” Lieber stated. “But this was an important milestone.”
‘A Long Way to Go’
The plan accredited Wednesday — which largely focuses on protecting the transit system in protected and dependable form — faces an much more daunting funding gap.
Forward of the Wednesday vote, board members stated lawmakers should provide you with the lacking cash with a view to preserve the MTA from taking up extra debt, slicing service or elevating fares greater than projected.
“We’ve only identified 50% of the sources, roughly, of this plan — that’s a long way to go,” stated Neal Zuckerman, who represents Putnam County and is chairperson of the MTA board’s finance committee. “And as the public may not really understand, we don’t have that many levers.”
Critics have stated the 2025-2029 plan is much less bold than its $50 billion predecessor due to inflation, even because it comes with the heftiest price ticket in company historical past.
MTA Chairperson Janno Lieber speaks at a capital funds board assembly, Sept. 25, 2024. Credit score: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
“The biggest unknowns, of course, are the sources and amount of money that will fill the gaping financing hole,” stated Andrew Rein, president of the Residents Finances Fee, a nonprofit watchdog group.
Essentially the most sizable parts of the subsequent plan name for practically $11 billion to be spent on 2,000 new subway and commuter rail vehicles to switch these which have been working for the reason that Nineteen Eighties. It additionally initiatives placing $9 billion into sustaining vital buildings that embrace tunnels, viaducts and elevated subway strains.
“This is a plan that is really made up of the nuts and bolts,” stated Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi, an MTA board member. “It’s not the stuff that headlines are made of, it’s the ingredients that actually make our daily commutes reliable, it’s the ingredients that allow New Yorkers to access everything New York has to offer.”
However the regional transportation community that strikes thousands and thousands of New Yorkers day by day should first cope with the newest in an extended line of fiscal challenges, the one created by Hochul’s sudden shift on tolling motorists south of sixtieth Avenue in Manhattan.
“It’s a shame that one key unknown was caused by the former champion of riders, Governor Hochul, who turned her back on us when she paused congestion pricing,” Daglian stated.
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