Cuomo to Spend Lion’s Share of NY Bank Settlement Windfall on Highways

One of the looming questions as Governor Andrew Cuomo has unveiled his budget agenda over the past few days has been how he'll divvy up the $5.4 billion windfall the state has reaped from bank settlements. At the State of the State address this afternoon, Cuomo revealed that the biggest chunk of that money will go to the Thruway Authority so highway drivers don't have to pay higher tolls.

Of the nearly $1.7 billion for road and rail projects in Cuomo's plan, more than three-quarters -- $1.285 billion -- would get sucked up by the Thruway Authority and the replacement Tappan Zee Bridge.

The MTA gets two comparatively small slices. The most significant is $250 million to bring Metro-North to Penn Station and build four new stations along the Hell Gate Line in the Bronx. This project was already in the MTA's pipeline, so the allocation should shrink the $15.2 billion gap in the agency's capital program by a small amount.

Cuomo also announced $150 million in settlement cash for parking garages at one Metro-North and two Long Island Rail Road stations -- an idea that, like the Willets Point AirTrain, he sprung on the public yesterday. This is a subsidy for suburban commuters who park and ride at what are supposed to be transit-oriented development hubs.

But that's all small potatoes compared to the chunk of change heading to the Thruway. It's still not clear how much of the $1.285 billion will be for Tappan Zee construction and how much will be to directly bail out the authority's deteriorating finances. Either way, this is money that will basically be used to keep drivers from squawking about tolls that better reflect the true cost of road building and maintenance.

Sorry, straphangers.