MTA Lays Out $68 Billion Big-Ticket Wish List for Transit, Despite Congestion Pricing U-Turn

This article was originally published on September 18 11:15 a.m. EDT by THE CITY

Want more reporting from THE CITY? Sign up for Scoop, our free weekday newsletter, to have our latest news delivered right to your inbox.

The MTA on Wednesday unveiled a record $68.4 billion capital improvement program designed to keep the teetering transit system on track — even as funding for nearly half the five-year plan is no sure thing.

Titled “The Future Rides With Us,” the proposed 2025-2029 budget for investment projects lays out the MTA’s most ambitious roadmap ever, with the bulk of spending marked for upkeep of a 120-year-old subway system that officials concede has assets that are “in real danger of failure.”

“If we don’t keep up with investment in state of good repair in a 100-year-old system that serves so many people, you cannot continue to provide safe and reliable service,” Jamie Torres-Springer, president of MTA Construction & Development, told reporters Tuesday.

Officials outlined the new five-year capital plan — which is separate from the MTA’s yearly operating budget — at New York City Transit’s Corona Maintenance Facility in Queens. MTA board members will vote to submit it to the state’s Capital Program Review Board by October 1, as required by state law.

“We can’t write the story for every neighborhood, for every New Yorker who depends on the system, unless we maintain a high level of investment in the MTA,” said Janno Lieber, the agency’s chairperson and CEO.

Even as the capital plan aims high — with the MTA looking to spend $47 billion on projects for New York City Transit, the agency that runs the subways and buses — $33 billion of the funding is not assured, officials said.

That’s on top of the more than $16 billion hole blown in the MTA’s current five-year capital program by Governor Kathy Hochul’s June pause on the start of congestion pricing, the Manhattan vehicle-tolling plan that had been counted on to fund billions in transit improvements. 

“We’re talking about tracks, signals, and trains, but we’re also talking about the yards and the electrical stuff that riders don’t see,” said Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission. “It’s hard to get public support for the unseen infrastructure, but that’s why it’s in such a bad state of repair.”

The Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit watchdog group, this week issued a report urging the MTA to focus on projects that rebuild and improve the regional transportation network rather than glossy expansion projects. 

The MTA plan still calls for $2.75 billion to be directed to design and preliminary engineering work on the Interborough Express, a Hochul-backed expansion project that would link Brooklyn and Queens via a new light rail line that would mostly run along an existing freight route. Building the IBX carries an estimated $5.5 billion price tag, according to the MTA.

“The bottom line is that people love shiny new toys, but they ride the core infrastructure and we can’t let that break down,” Rein said. “We can’t have another ‘Summer of Hell’ that is much worse than that.”

Second Avenue Shuffle

While the proposed new capital plan does not mention extending the 2nd Avenue Subway north from 96th Street into Harlem, Hochul allocated $54 million in July toward discretionary funding that would allow for work to push ahead on the next section of the Q line, whose first phase cost $4.5 billion.

“The governor was able to come up with funding sufficient for us to continue the early work that we’re in the midst of, which is largely relocating utilities on 2nd Avenue,” Torres-Springer said, adding that the Q line extension would be “fully funded” between the MTA’s two most recent capital plans and the potential restoration of congestion pricing.

Hochul is reportedly considering launching congestion pricing but with lower tolls — and not until after the November elections.

The governor’s last-minute pause on the long-planned Central Business District Tolling Program forced the MTA to pare down its current capital program in June. That put on hold efforts to make 23 more subway stations accessible to people with disabilities and buy 250 new electric buses. The delay also deferred work on “less urgent projects,” including signal modernization on multiple subway lines.

Officials at the country’s largest mass-transit agency expressed optimism that Hochul and state lawmakers will come up with funding for the new capital plan.

“I really do believe that all of players in Albany get how important the system is to New Yorkers,” Lieber said.

The spending plan would put nearly $11 billion into buying 1,500 new subway cars and 500 Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North railcars to replace those that have been in service since the 1980s.

“We will review the MTA’s proposal for the upcoming five-year capital plan and fight to secure as much funding as possible,” Hochul said in a statement. “That includes pressuring Washington to deliver additional infrastructure dollars and working with our partners in the legislature and City Hall to determine priorities and capacity during the upcoming budget negotiations.”

The purchase of new train cars tops the planned spending of the next capital program, with improvements to critical infrastructure such as tunnels, bridges, and viaducts marked for $9 billion of work and $7.8 billion of improvements planned for what the MTA described as “structurally unsound” station components at subway and commuter rail stations.

Torres-Springer pointed to how the MTA made a massive push to buy new subway and rail cars as part of its first capital plan in the 1980s. A 2012 report from the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA points out how the agency spent nearly a billion dollars — or almost 40 percent of its initial capital budget — on upgrading an aging fleet that was prone to breakdowns.

“There was a big purchase of rolling stock and that rolling stock is 40 years old now,” Torres-Springer said. “Forty years is when railcars begin to fail.”

The oldest subway cars in the fleet fail, on average, approximately every 43,000 miles, according to the MTA, while newer ones run about 255,000 miles before encountering breakdowns.

But the MTA will once again have to face the question of just how to fund its big-ticket plans.

“We’re not putting our thumb on the scale as far as what the legislature, the governor, the city, and the other funding partners are going to do,” said John McCarthy, the MTA’s chief of policy and external relations. 

Transit advocates have repeatedly criticized Hochul for her abrupt u-turn on congestion pricing and cited how the proposed plan is smaller than the current one, once rising costs are taken into account.

“Adjusting for inflation, the governor’s capital program is $1 billion smaller than the last one,” said Danny Pearlstein, policy director for Riders Alliance. “In contrast, her highway plan is 40 percent bigger than the one before it.”

Transit officials have detailed how large segments of the transit system are deteriorating, citing how 42 percent of all buses are due for replacement, how nearly a quarter of the LIRR’s bridges are in poor or marginal condition, and how more than half of Metro-North’s Hudson Line needs protection from erosion and rising waters, while 53 percent of Metro-North’s Harlem Line is in a state of disrepair.

“There are seven stations where the platforms are being held up by two-by-fours,” Torres-Springer said.

Our nonprofit newsroom relies on readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. DONATE to THE CITY

Related Stories

• G Train Runs Again in Greenpoint as MTA Signal Work Moves to Bed Stuy
• Train Disruptions Caused by Trees on Subway Tracks Shoot Up
• Elevator Installation at Classon Avenue Station Will Kick Off in June

Email tips@brownstoner.com with further comments, questions or tips. Follow Brownstoner on X and Instagram, and like us on Facebook.