Bumpy ride: Pedestrians exit a subway station in Manhattan, New York. The city’s transportation authority plans to modernise a more than 100-year-old transit network to improve service, and replace equipment and train cars that are beyond their useful life. — AFP
NEW YORK: New York City’s ageing transit system needs 2,000 new subway and commuter rail cars, 60 miles of new subway track and upgraded power stations.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) previewed the laundry list of improvements on Monday as part of its 2025 to 2029 capital programme, which funds infrastructure work across the agency’s network of subways, buses and commuter railroads.
While the MTA must submit a multi-year capital budget to state legislators in October, lawmakers most likely won’t resolve how that spending plan will be funded until next year during the state’s own budget process.
MTA officials have said the upcoming plan will exceed its current US$51.5bil programme due to inflation, but did not specify the costs.
“What we’re trying to do is to get the major stakeholders – and you know who they are – to start to think directly about what size of the capital programme they’re prepared to support,” Janno Lieber, the MTA’s chief executive officer, said on Monday during a capital programme committee meeting with board members.
The MTA needs to modernise a more than 100-year-old transit network to improve service, replace equipment and train cars that are beyond their useful life and strengthen an ageing system that gets pummelled with heavy rain and rising sea levels.
Thomas DiNapoli, the state’s comptroller, estimates the MTA needs to spend US$43bil in the next five years just to keep its assets in working condition.
The upcoming capital plan needs to fund more than US$4bil in power substation upgrades, provide about US$7.4bil to fix structural defects on elevated structures and tunnels and bridges, and overhaul Grand Central Terminal’s 110-year-old train shed, the MTA said.
“When we look at structures, tunnels, train sheds, elevated structures, we see a condition of historic under-investment and the risk that assets are going to start falling apart,” Jamie Torres-Springer, head of the MTA’s construction and development, told board members during the committee meeting.
Improving the system will help increase ridership and boost farebox collections.
DiNapoli estimated a US$25bil shortfall in the transportation authority’s new five-year capital spending plan until Albany lawmakers craft a funding solution.
Uncertainty with the MTA’s current plan may affect what infrastructure projects the transit provider can budget for in its next programme.
Governor Kathy Hochul paused a congestion pricing initiative that was set to start on June 30 and forced the MTA to shelve US$16.5bil worth of infrastructure improvements, including signal upgrades, accessibility projects and extending the Second Avenue subway to Harlem.
But MTA officials anticipate state lawmakers will address that shortfall and allow those projects to move forward.
“We are assuming that there is a source other than the MTA having to do new and unexpected borrowing for the US$15bil that congestion pricing was meant to fund,” Lieber said.
The MTA’s infrastructure spending falls short of similar investments made in the private sector, according to a JPMorgan Chase & Co report.
The transit provider needs to direct US$23bil a year to capital projects, far short of the roughly US$6bil it allocates now annually, to bring infrastructure investment in line with what’s spent among similar entities, the report said.
The MTA needs to boost its capital investments to match the amount of such spending among freight rail, electric utilities, shipping companies and the airline and automobile industries, according to the report.
It needs to spend US$16bil annually to support its infrastructure in addition to US$7bil a year to update depreciated assets.
The transit provider had US$47.4bil of outstanding debt as of July 24, according to MTA data.
It pays nearly US$3bil a year in principal and interest costs, taking up about 15% of its operating budget, Kevin Willens, the MTA’s chief financial officer, said during a finance committee meeting on Monday.
But those debt-service costs will account for a larger chunk of the MTA’s operating budget if it is forced to sell additional debt for the new five-year capital programme, Willens said.
The MTA would need to increase fares and tolls by 8% to repay US$10bil of additional debt without a new funding source, he added.
“It’s important for our funding partners – federal, state and city – to really help fund the next capital plan,” Willens said.
“It can’t be done from fares alone.” — Bloomberg
