Good morning. It’s Monday. We’ll take a look at two assessments of how much money the Metropolitan Transportation Authority might need for major projects in the next few years. We’ll also find out about the latest departure of a high-ranking official at City Hall.
There are few surprises in two new reports about how much money the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will need in the next few years. The bottom line is huge, as it always is with the transit agency.
What is startling is that one of the reports, from the fiscally conservative Citizens Budget Commission, said that the transit system needed more repairs than the agency could possibly handle between 2025 and 2029.
The other analysis, from the state comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli, reached essentially the same conclusion.
Another set of figures is coming soon from the M.T.A. itself. The agency is facing an Oct. 1 deadline for listing the big-ticket capital projects it intends to tackle between 2025 and 2029 under its next five-year capital program. Complicating the decision-making is the work that was left unfinished in the current five-year cycle. It assumed that $15 billion would come from the congestion pricing plan that Gov. Kathy Hochul abruptly put on hold in June.
The two reports agree that the $15 billion is still needed. Hochul is looking to replace the revenue that congestion pricing would have brought in, but transit watchers say the uncertainty has made planning ahead harder.
DiNapoli’s report said the transit agency’s capital needs would be $57.8 billion to $92.2 billion. Andrew Rein, the president of the private, independent Citizens Budget Commission, said the price tag would be $106.6 billion to $115 billion “just to get the system into a state of good repair and do basic overdue modernization — signals, accessibility, resiliency.” “These are all basics,” he said.
The scope of the work “is so large it exceeds the speed with which the M.T.A. and its vendors can do the projects,” Rein said. That largely echoed DiNapoli’s assessment. Rein said the most the M.T.A. should try for is $90 billion — spread out over six years, not five.
“DiNapoli’s high end is near the range we think is the minimum,” Rein told me. “These differences are not the issue. They all exceed what the M.T.A. could ambitiously do over the next six years.” He explained that if the M.T.A. tried to do $15 billion worth of capital projects annually from 2025 to 2029, that would be $3.6 billion more than it has ever undertaken in any one year.
Rein’s solution is to put some beneficial projects on hold. He suggested shelving the extension of the Second Avenue subway and the proposed 14-mile light-rail line in Brooklyn and Queens known as the Interborough Express.
Transit projects take time: Rein calculated that the M.T.A. had $27 billion worth of already-approved projects that it had not yet put out to bid. Some were delayed by the pandemic and supply chain issues. Some were put on hold last year because they would have been paid for with money from congestion pricing — and with court challenges, the agency put some projects on the back burner.
Rein applauded DiNapoli for fleshing out other important budget items, including replacing some 1,100 subway cars that were new when Ed Koch was mayor.
Those cars will reach the end of their 40-year useful service lives between 2024 and 2027. Another 625 will reach the retirement milestone between 2027 and 2030. DiNapoli said that the cost of replacing them, along with the cost of buying new railroad cars for the M.T.A.’s two commuter lines, would range from $8.4 billion to $16.5 billion in the capital plan.
And John McCarthy, the M.T.A.’s chief of policy and external relations, said that the rolling stock was why the agency had the capacity to do $15 billion worth of projects a year. Building new rail cars would not disrupt operations the way some projects would.
DiNapoli’s report dryly noted that “the M.T.A. has significantly more control over what it can spend funds on than it does over the sources of funding.”
Imposing new taxes and setting aside additional revenue from existing taxes are options; DiNapoli said that a “hypothetical” increase of 10 percent in taxes that go to mass transit — such as the payroll mobility tax on businesses in the city, sales taxes or the so-called mansion tax — would generate enough revenue for the agency to issue $13.8 billion in bonds.
But Rein said the M.T.A.’s debt load was already so high that it should not issue more than $2 billion in new bonds. He also estimated that the agency could find $2 billion by reducing fare evasion and pinpointing “efficiencies” to help stretch the budget.
Rein’s report is being issued today. As for DiNapoli’s report, which was released last week, McCarthy said that “we appreciate this serious analysis from the comptroller.” McCarthy added that the agency would lay out a detailed capital plan later this month.
The M.T.A. has promised to hold fare increases to 4 percent every two years, which would put the current $2.90 fare (with an OMNY pass or a MetroCard) at $3.01 sometime next year if the agency sticks to that timetable. Whether it rounds down to the nearest penny — or decides to charge more — remains to be seen.
Weather
Expect sunny skies, with a high near 77. It will be mostly cloudy in the evening, with temperatures in the mid-60s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Oct. 3 (Rosh Hashana).
The latest New York news
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An exclusive club: Everybody dies. But not everybody is embalmed at Frank E. Campbell, a discreet mortuary on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
Another high-level departure from City Hall
The turbulence around City Hall continued over the weekend with the stunning departure of Lisa Zornberg, the chief counsel and legal adviser to Mayor Eric Adams.
Zornberg is a former federal prosecutor who used to work in the office that is conducting three separate corruption investigations into the mayor and some of his senior aides. She had been a fierce defender of the mayor, urging New Yorkers not to make snap judgments after the first investigation came to light that year. That inquiry involved Adams’s campaign fund-raising.
Zornberg’s letter of resignation was brief and offered no details about why she was leaving.
Her departure capped a devastating week for the mayor and came two days after Edward Caban announced his resignation as police commissioner. Federal agents had taken his phone in one of the criminal investigations.
What does a crisis at City Hall mean for the city? My colleagues Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Jeffery C. Mays write that the fallout from the investigations includes questions about Adams’s fitness to lead the city, his ability to negotiate with the City Council and with state and federal leaders, and his capacity to hire and retain talented people in city government. The crisis could also cloud his campaign for re-election next year. On Friday, State Senator Jessica Ramos became the fourth Democrat to join a crowded field of challengers.
The mayor, who has not been accused of wrongdoing, said that New Yorkers were telling him, “New York is a tough place — hang in there, you fight for New York.”
METROPOLITAN diary
Fighting Mood
Dear Diary:
Feeling particularly cranky because of the unbearable heat and humidity, I was ready to pick a fight with anybody I encountered on my walk to a drugstore on the Upper West Side.
So I was ready to put my mental fighting gloves on as I approached a building superintendent who was blasting the sidewalk ahead of me with a hose.
Angry thoughts whirled through my head: Why do they have to do this in the middle of the day rather than early in the morning when there is less foot traffic? If I had an expensive pair of shoes on, they would get ruined. (I didn’t, but still. …)
Just as I was thinking the super hadn’t noticed me and wasn’t going to bother turning off the hose so I could pass, he abruptly shut the water off and, with a broad smile, bowed deeply.
“See,” he said with his arms outstretched, “I made the sidewalk beautiful just for you!”
— Cathy Bernard
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Hannah Fidelman and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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The post Could the Tab for M.T.A. Projects Be as High as $115 Billion? appeared first on New York Times.
