ALBANY — MTA boss Janno Lieber went earlier than state lawmakers Thursday, defending the transit company’s $68 billion capital price range 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 mix of upkeep work and upgrades to maintain the area’s subway system, bus community and twin commuter rail techniques working.
Roughly $3 billion would go towards the MTA’s Bridges and Tunnels division, which might be funded by bridge and tunnel tolls.
The price range anticipates federal funding and grants to cowl about $14 billion of the plan. The MTA’s personal bonds are anticipated to boost one other $13 billion.
State and native contributions have been anticipated to whole as much as a further $8 billion in funding, however Gov. Hochul’s govt price range earlier this 12 months bumped that right down to $6 billion
What stays is $35 billion but to be accounted for.
High MTA officers confronted questioning from state legislators Thursday over the company’s proposed $68 billion, five-year capital price range. (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 instructed 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plan’s single largest funding is in rolling inventory — $11 billion for 1,500 new prepare vehicles meant to exchange outdated fashions on the Lengthy Island Rail Street and the town’s subway system.
A lot of that cash is anticipated to buy further R211 subway prepare vehicles for the lettered strains, and to fund the acquisition of a equally high-tech prepare automotive for the subway’s numbered strains.
Most critically, the MTA plans to retire the functionally out of date M3 vehicles from the LIRR fleet and substitute them with new M9A vehicles — a contract for which is anticipated within the coming months.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 price range additionally contains $5.4 billion towards signaling upgrades on three subway strains — 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 each 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 price range. “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 skill to fund the MTA, main modifications in Washington, D.C., together with Elon Musk’s obvious skill to affect funds by the U.S. Treasury, may 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 price range.
“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
