Transit Funding

Though the House Republicans are stealing the show these days with their endeavor to tie infrastructure funding to oil drilling, let’s not forget there’s a serious, bipartisan transportation reauthorization bill out there that actually has a chance of passage: the Senate’s MAP-21. On its path toward a full Senate vote, that two-year bill is paused at its latest checkpoint: the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. The committee is now busy tackling the transit title of the “MAP-21” legislation, following unanimous approval of the "highway" portion two weeks ago by the EPW Committee. (Quick reminder: the funding in the highway title can be spent on many things that are not highways, like transit systems and bike lanes.)

Times have changed since Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer hosted a conference on transportation reform in 2006. Five years ago, New York City appeared to be on the verge of shaking off the traffic-first approach to street engineering that had dominated city transportation policy for decades. Whispers were in the air about a push to tame city traffic and fund the transit system by putting a price on congestion-plagued streets. Since then, plenty of innovation has come to NYC streets, while traffic congestion and transit funding remain core challenges.

Dozens of transit workers, transportation advocates and elected officials rallied on the steps of City Hall this morning to urge Governor Cuomo to sign the transit lockbox bill, which passed both houses of the legislature unanimously in June. "New York communities are not standing alone," said TWU Local 100 President John Samuelsen. "Transit workers are not standing alone. We're standing together."

Yesterday, we reported on the MTA's ever-mounting debt load. By 2014, a new analysis from the Regional Plan Association found, debt service could be taking up a full 23 percent of the agency's operating budget.

In 2003, labor costs dominated the MTA's budget sheets. Just under 73 percent of the transit agency's operating budget, which pays for day-to-day spending but not system expansions or major repairs, went to workers, according to a new analysis by the Regional Plan Association and the Empire State Transportation Alliance. By 2014, however, labor's share of operating expenses will have fallen to only 53 percent.

How bad have the past two years been for transit agencies in the United States? In a word: bad. In two words: very bad.

The idea of increasing state funding for the MTA is popular in New York City, according to a new Quinnipiac poll released yesterday. Looking at the MTA service region -- NYC plus its suburbs -- more people want to see additional funding going to transit. Statewide, support for increased MTA funding is slightly lower than opposition, but that may not matter much: In recent legislative battles over transit funding, upstate representatives have deferred to representatives from the NYC region.

Last week, the city's Independent Budget Office released a report on the MTA's revenue structure [PDF] which has been getting a bit of play. At Second Avenue Sagas, Ben Kabak focused on the report's main thesis: that the volatility of dedicated taxes and fees threatens the financial stability of the transit agency. Steven Higashide of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign picked out a graph showing that the recently enacted payroll mobility tax already makes up 30 percent of all dedicated revenues, or around one-eighth of all operating revenue.

The MTA capital budget is risky enough as advertised: It requires putting $7 billion of repairs and system expansions on transit riders' credit card. But the total tab may end up being much bigger, because in addition to billions in borrowing, the funding plan relies on a series of highly optimistic assumptions. Just one week after the budget was released, those assumptions look increasingly shaky.