Final week, the state-controlled Metropolitan Transportation Authority unveiled its subsequent five-year capital-infrastructure plan: $68.4 billion.
It feels just like the Nineteen Seventies — loads of concepts, and no approach to pay.
The MTA’s newest plan consists of $47.8 billion for subways and buses, together with changing railcars and persevering with to digitize indicators.
It could spend one other $6 billion every on the area’s two commuter-rail methods, and $3 billion to take care of bridges and tunnels.
Lastly: $1.7 billion to rebuild the nuts and bolts of Grand Central Terminal, and $2.8 billion to construct the “interborough” light-rail line between Brooklyn and Queens.
These are sound ideas. We ought to proceed to improve indicators, one thing different international cities did many years in the past. We shouldn’t let Grand Central fall down, and outer-borough mild rail might alleviate site visitors.
Nevertheless it’s all fiction — except and till Gov. Hochul turns into a firmer chief.
The MTA often identifies a mixture of revenues for its capital plans, some speculative, however most lifelike. This time, it hasn’t.
Sure, the bridges-and-tunnels portion takes care of itself, as tolls totally fund it.
The MTA expects at the least $13 billion in federal funds, based mostly on previous plans, and expects to borrow $10 billion.
However this leaves extra gap than plan: $45 billion-ish in . . . we’ll determine it out later.
Worse, it’s not clear that the MTA can borrow $10 billion. It already owes $47.8 billion, and beginning midway via the subsequent capital plan, it would face half-a-billion-dollar annual deficits, making it tougher to pay curiosity on these loans.
Plus: it’s not simply the subsequent capital plan that’s unfunded. With three months left on the present capital plan, the MTA remains to be lacking billions of {dollars} for it.
The MTA was presupposed to get $3.1 billion instantly from New York state’s price range for the present plan — however has solely acquired $500 million of that allocation.
All informed, of the present five-year, $55.4 billion capital plan, solely $21.8 billion in budgeted funding has been “secured.”
Transit advocates cry, “Congestion pricing now!” However congestion pricing would do nothing to fund the subsequent capital plan.
The MTA was presupposed to borrow in opposition to congestion pricing’s $1 billion-plus annual revenues to fund $15 billion within the present plan — and nonetheless would have fallen far brief.
This feels just like the Nineteen Seventies MTA.
In 1968, then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, a liberal Republican, created the MTA as a result of he wished to run for president in an period of rising consciousness about air pollution and concern of city decay.
However he by no means funded it.
He promised a full Second Avenue Subway (all the best way downtown) and the East Aspect Entry terminal for the Lengthy Island Rail Highway (opened . . . 55 years later, in 2023). In the meantime, trains continued to disintegrate.
That modified within the Eighties, when Gov. Hugh Carey, a Democrat who needed to clear up Rockefeller’s mess, appointed Dick Ravitch as MTA chair.
Ravitch, a real-estate developer empowered by Carey to behave independently, put collectively a plan of what the MTA might obtain in 5 years — $7.2 billion for issues like shopping for new rail automobiles and fixing tracks and indicators.
Then he satisfied lawmakers to enact taxes, about $800 million a yr, in order that the MTA might borrow funds and use the tax revenues to repay the loans.
Certainly, the scenario in the present day is worse than the ’70s, as a result of we nonetheless have all these taxes, after which some. At the moment, the MTA’s annual tax earnings totals $8.6 billion a yr, 43% of its price range.
Should you assume the MTA’s drawback is that the Legislature hasn’t elevated taxes, contemplate: In 2019, the MTA began gathering a surcharge on Uber and taxi journeys in core Manhattan, taking in $300 million yearly.
A yr later, it began gathering a “mansion tax” surcharge and two new taxes on web gross sales, now bringing in $700 million.
And final yr, to fund post-COVID deficits, the governor elevated the MTA’s tax on metropolis payrolls, bringing in $1.1 billion.
Now, Hochul should work out: What number of tasks can the MTA realistically construct within the subsequent 5 years? Making an attempt to do an excessive amount of directly solely pushes up building prices.
After which, work out: How can labor unions, each building and working, contribute to reducing prices?
It’s additionally price questioning, if transit is so necessary, whether or not the state can’t minimize one thing out of its $237 billion price range to make a better contribution, with out taxes or borrowing.
Absent fiscal path, the MTA didn’t challenge a capital plan a lot as a confused cry for assist.
Nicole Gelinas’ e-book on New York Metropolis transportation historical past, “Motion,” is out Nov. 5.
