What more do these people want?
The start of a new legislative session this week in Albany kicks off the annual budget negotiations, but this year's battle includes not only the fate of the next five-year MTA repair plan, but also a return to the fight over the last one — and top pols in the state capital need only look in the mirror to see who's responsible for the MTA's continuing need for investment.
The silly season began in earnest late last year when state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie nuked 2025-29 MTA capital plan, citing the unanswered question of how the legislature would find $33 billion in budget shifting, new taxes, fees or some combination of all three that had still not been identified.
That fight dovetails with "Pandermonium 2025" — i.e. a push by a dozen-plus lawmakers to create exemptions to, or outright repeals of, congestion pricing (which is how the legislature closed the funding shortfall in the last capital plan.
Politics, of course, is an accountability avoidance machine, but before legislative leaders try to deflect responsibility for what's going on here, it's important to remember that MTA leadership has done everything Albany pols have demanded in the last few years.
How did we get here?
The $68-billion 2025-29 capital plan is, at first glance, large. But anyone suffering from sticker shock needs some important context: After the 2020-24 capital plan was approved in 2019, advocates pointed out that it was put together without a proper "needs assessment," which is a standard process by which large organizations figure out exactly what needs to be done to maintain a state of good repair.
So the legislature required the MTA to perform a 20-Year Needs Assessment before the next capital plan would be considered. And the MTA did what was asked of it; the resulting document had its critics, but the assessment was greeted as a serious document that laid out exactly what the agency needed to repair.
In addition to the needs assessment, the MTA also had a "Fast Forward" plan, created by former legend Andy Byford after the Summer of Hell. Byford may have been a Brit, but he rallied New York City's civic and political class behind actually dragging the subway system into the 21st century. The cost of Fast Forward, which was not an MTA capital plan, was about $40 billion over 10 years, or spread across two capital programs.
The promise of Fast Forward, which focused on modern subway signals, thousands of new subway cars, sped-up elevator installation and rebuilt subway stations, was explicitly linked with congestion pricing and was enough for Heastie and Stewart-Cousins to get their conferences on board with the traffic toll in 2019.
And despite the change in leadership atop the MTA and New York City Transit, the big ticket items for the last two capital plans have reflected Byford's priorities; the suddenly blocked 2025-29 capital plan had $10.9 billion for new trains, $7.1 billion for new elevators, plus remaining billions to complete Byford's vision for upgraded signals that were begun, but not completed in the ongoing 2020-24 capital plan.
Last year, Gov. Hochul's decision to pause congestion pricing threatened to completely halt the progress the MTA had made on its modernization efforts, and this year Albany's top legislators are threatening to do the same thing. And as the legislative and executive branches insist its the other side that has to come up with an idea to plug the capital plan funding hole, remember that all three leaders are to blame: Hochul for failing not only to fund the new capital plan, but causing a mad scramble to fund the current capital plan after she paused congestion pricing, and Stewart-Cousins and Heastie for never giving a single indication they were worried about "a significant funding deficit" in the new capital plan until they wrote to MTA Chairman Janno Lieber on, literally, the day before Christmas.
A lack of support
No doubt, you'll be hearing a lot in the next few months about the MTA's alleged "inefficiency." But it's also important to remember that Albany has failed to provide any meaningful support for the agency to lower costs and hasn't followed up on efficiency critiques offered by independent experts.
In 2022, the MTA released its first state-mandated report that reviewed the agency's operating budget and compared it to transit systems around the country and around the world. Later that year, independent researchers with the NYU Marron Institute of Urban Management came out with a deep dive on what drives up the agency's capital construction costs.
The reports noted specifically where the MTA's high costs come from, yet state leaders have not followed up on these with legislation to fix it because by and large, it would involve a messy fight with transit labor. That's a policy choice legislators, not MTA officials, make on behalf of their staunch supporters in the transit unions.
"If legislators want the MTA to be efficient and spend their money wisely, they should be on the MTA management's side and say, 'We need labor at the table,'" said Citizens Budget Commission President Andrew Rein, whose organization has spent years identifying what it says are more efficient ways to run a railroad. "Could the MTA come [to Albany] with an efficiency plan? Yes, they could, but they need the legislature support to do it."
It's not as if the MTA is immune from pressure outside of the agency, from either the government itself or advocates. The agency has done plenty of things that was asked of it:
- It undertook a reorganization effort after a legislatively mandated review by consulting firm AlixPartners.
- It committed to a robust open data program (especially compared to regional peers).
- It came up with a well-reviewed bike and pedestrian action plan as required by law.
- It did the 20-Year Needs Assessment on time.
- It shaved $300 million off the price of the Second Avenue subway extension after prodding from the Post and outside experts.
- It even took a street-running portion off the upcoming Interborough Express after outside researchers suggested it could derail the entire train line.
Most of these changes came about after legislators and governors in charge of the MTA demanded these things.
"The MTA has made some structural changes like the capital construction unit, instituted design-build for projects, and found some efficiencies here and there, and had some real wins," said Regional Plan Association Director of Research Strategy Rachel Weinberger. "There's more to do than the MTA should be looking for ways to improve their performance, but the support of Albany is absolutely critical."
So where are we going?
But at the moment, it's hard to see where support and leadership will come from. The budget process is one that's dominated by the governor, but unlike the 2023 budget that started with Hochul offering a plan to plug the MTA's operating budget hole, she has not taken an active role in determining what will happen with the capital plan, instead recently telling reporters "This is in [legislators'] court."
Hochul, Stewart-Cousins and Heastie can't create a vacuum where the MTA is turned into a speedbag by legislators doing faux-populist crank stuff, because it risks actually sending the region's transit system into a tailspin.
"It would be legitimate to require a succinct report on things being on time and on budget every year in terms of capital investment, a benchmarking study on the capital cost of the MTA versus other systems in the world. That's a real discussion," said Rein. "The answer that says, 'We don't trust the MTA, so we're not going to give them money' is a recipe for disaster and an abdication of responsibility. Starving the MTA will not actually improve service and will not actually improve safety, will not actually improve reliability. Giving them the right amount of money for the right projects, and holding them accountable is what has to happen."
It all starts this week in Albany.
