ALBANY — MTA boss Janno Lieber went earlier than state lawmakers Thursday, defending the transit company’s $68 billion capital funds in an look at a joint legislative committee monetary listening to.
The MTA has billed the plan as targeted on “state of good repair” work — a mixture of upkeep work and upgrades to maintain the area’s subway system, bus community and twin commuter rail programs working.
Roughly $3 billion would go towards the MTA’s Bridges and Tunnels division, which might be funded by bridge and tunnel tolls.
The funds anticipates federal funding and grants to cowl about $14 billion of the plan. The MTA’s personal bonds are anticipated to lift one other $13 billion.
State and native contributions had been anticipated to complete as much as a further $8 billion in funding, however Gov. Hochul’s govt funds earlier this yr bumped that right down to $6 billion
What stays is $35 billion but to be accounted for.
Prime MTA officers confronted questioning from state legislators Thursday over the company’s proposed $68 billion, five-year capital funds. (Evan Simko-Bednarski/NYDN)
“The governor didn’t propose any solution to that funding gap?” requested Assemblyman Edward Braunstein (D-Queens).
“Respectfully, I don’t agree with the paradigm that the MTA has a gap,” Lieber replied.
“It is a little bit of a mystery to me that every time the MTA capital program comes up we treat it like, ‘Oh, my God, they need a bailout,’” Lieber stated. “This is no different than Medicaid, education and everything else that’s done in the state — [yet] it happens to be treated like an off-budget item.
“This could be addressed by existing state budget, it could be addressed — as we have proposed in some cases — by some financing approaches that could reduce the size of the challenge, and it could also be addressed by new revenues,” Lieber informed the lawmakers. “We leave that to you — our job is to frame the scale of the need.”
The plan’s single largest funding is in rolling inventory — $11 billion for 1,500 new prepare vehicles meant to switch previous fashions on the Lengthy Island Rail Highway and town’s subway system.
A lot of that cash is anticipated to buy further R211 subway prepare vehicles for the lettered traces, and to fund the acquisition of a equally high-tech prepare automobile for the subway’s numbered traces.
Most critically, the MTA plans to retire the functionally out of date M3 vehicles from the LIRR fleet and substitute them with new M9A vehicles — a contract for which is anticipated within the coming months.
The funds additionally consists of $5.4 billion towards signaling upgrades on three subway traces — the jap finish of the A prepare and the Rockaway Shuttle, the Broadway line of the N, Q, R and W trains, and the Nassau St. line of the J and Z.
MTA Chairman Janno Lieber, seen on a chamber monitor in Albany, held up entrance pages from New York’s tabloid every day newspapers from the 2017 subway “Summer of Hell.” Lieber stated he retains them as a reminder of the results of failing to repair the transit system. (Evan Simko-Bednarski/NYDN)
The plan additionally places $4 billion towards energy infrastructure upgrades, $3 billion of which is earmarked for the subway system, which noticed a 90-year-old transformer blow up in December, stranding hundreds of passengers underground in downtown Brooklyn.
“It cannot get smaller,” Lieber stated of the proposed capital funds. “We’re not going to let the system continue to lose ground with this 100-year-old infrastructure that’s just getting older and older.”
“I keep this in my office,” Lieber stated.
“We’ve tried not funding the MTA capital plan — that’s where it brought us,” he added, earlier than Assemblyman Gary Pretlow (D-Yonkers) admonished him that props weren’t allowed.
Whereas Lieber expressed confidence Thursday within the state’s capacity to fund the MTA, main adjustments in Washington, D.C., together with Elon Musk’s obvious capacity to affect funds by the U.S. Treasury, might solid a cloud over anticipated federal {dollars}.
“We’re in a tumultuous period of change in Washington,” the transit chief stated when requested if the feds had dedicated to funding extra of the capital funds.
“I don’t know what to make of that,” Lieber stated. “I do know what to call it though — it’s conception pricing.”
Initially Printed: February 6, 2025 at 7:21 PM EST
