Every five years, the roadmap for the future of North America’s largest public transit authority is laid out in what’s known as the MTA Capital Program.
Originally a product of the early 1980s, and also referred to as the capital plan, it reflects the mammoth amount of money needed to keep things from “falling apart,” as MTA officials themselves have said. It’s the MTA’s long-term maintenance plan, paying for new trains, station upkeep, facilities maintenance and a lot more. (The budget for day-to-day operations is separate.)
“There are elements of this system that are so far gone that you are risking peoples’ ability to get around if you do not fix them,” MTA Chairperson and CEO Janno Lieber said Wednesday in response to a question from THE CITY. “I’m going to be straight up with everybody about that.”
An MTA track worker walks between the elevated platforms at the Allerton Avenue station in The Bronx, Jan. 14, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
But the work to secure the future safety and reliability of the region’s transportation network does not come cheaply. And right now, its future is up on the air with no official approval yet.
The proposed 2025-2029 capital program, which MTA officials unveiled in September —and a state review board vetoed on Christmas Eve — carries a projected $68.4 billion price tag, with funding for nearly half the plan not yet in place.
More than $47 billion of the hoped-for work would be allocated to New York City Transit, the MTA agency in charge of the subways, buses, Staten Island Railway and paratransit.
It’s a plan that is almost entirely focused on keeping the sprawling system in good working condition, with little room for what transit types sometimes call “sexy” projects, such as subway line extensions or gleaming new train terminals (think Second Avenue Subway and Grand Central Madison).
Instead, it’s mostly about nuts and bolts. Power systems, structures, maintenance shops and train yards take priority. (But there is also the promise of work on a new line between Brooklyn and Queens.)
The proposed plan is 23% larger than the 2020-2024 plan, which checked in at more than $55 billion — and is significantly pricier than the first capital program, for 1982 to 1986, which was approved at $7.2 billion. After the MTA board signed off on the latest plan in September, it still needs the go-ahead from the review panel.
Lieber will be in Albany next week in an attempt to help make the sale before state lawmakers.
“They have a lot of different balls in the air,” he said Wednesday. “My pitch is always going to be, let’s be straight up with the public, this needs to be funded and I know you can do it.”
So what’s this mean for the millions of New Yorkers who rely daily on the region’s subways, commuter trains and buses? To get up to speed, here’s a guide to where things stand:
Why was the proposed plan rejected and what happens next?
Albany legislative leaders — State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Westchester) and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-The Bronx) — cited a $33 billion deficit as the reason the review board did not approve the next five-year capital plan, at least not yet.
It’s not the first time a proposed capital plan has been vetoed.
In October 2014, the Capital Program Review Board rejected the $32 billion 2015-2019 proposal and full funding didn’t come through until October 2015.
Lieber said he plans to bluntly make the case for funding the transit system, pointing to the infamous 2017 “Summer of Hell” — which included an A train derailment in Harlem and several track fires — as fallout from the drawn-out funding fight led the transit system to slide backwards into a state of emergency.
“If you don’t make the investments, you’re leading them back to the ‘Summer of Hell,’ full stop,” he said.
While the review board’s disapproval did not take issue with the details of the MTA’s proposal, Gov. Kathy Hochul last week said she and the legislature “will determine the best way to fund it” once the transit agency resubmits its plan.
Transit advocates described the veto as “alarming.”
Commuters ride a new open gangway C train in Brooklyn, Feb. 10. 2024. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
“This leaves riders hanging in limbo, while Albany puts its collective head together to come up with a solution for fully funding the plan,” Brian Fritsch, associate director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee (PCAC) to the MTA, said Wednesday at the transit agency’s monthly board meeting.
Fritsch said the advisory committee, which advocates for subway, bus and commuter rail riders, will soon publish a report detailing “nearly two dozen” funding options for state lawmakers, noting how a funding solution is a must because, “nothing is cheaper the longer you wait.”
What does this big-ticket budget pay for, really?
The capital plan covers a dizzying scope of stuff — and powers a small economy all by itself.
The budget provides a roadmap for maintaining and expanding a regional transit network whose physical assets have an estimated value of $1.5 trillion. It helps drive New York’s $2 trillion economy through projects designed to keep service in safe, working order and providing access to everything New York has to offer — jobs, schools, healthcare, entertainment, cultural institutions and neighborhoods.
Out of the darkest days: The capital plan backstory
The capital plan for the MTA comes from the transit system’s toughest times.
The first one dates back to 1981, when, under then-Chairperson Richard Ravitch (one of the early boosters of THE CITY), the MTA released a report outlining the needs of a decrepit system and listing recommended priorities through 1985.
At the time, the system was running on financial fumes — and service was a wreck. For example, in 1982 trains failed every 7,186 miles on average, according to a 2012 PCAC history of the capital plan. Nowadays, it’s more like 122,000 miles.
Within months, the state legislature passed a funding measure that gave the MTA the power to issue bonds for needed spending and it created the aforementioned Capital Program Review Board. The subway system was put on track to a long-term trip out of its lowest point.
Each capital program offers a varying blueprint for keeping the transit system in good working condition.
The plans can also expand the network through projects such as the Second Avenue Subway, whose development was mapped out through an allocation of just over $1 billion all the way back in the 2000-2004 capital plan.
The most recent capital plan, for 2020-2024, checked in at more than $55 billion. The proposed 2025-2029 plan, at more than $68 billion, is 23% larger.
(Reminder, as mentioned above, the five-year capital plan is separate from the MTA’s annual operating budget of nearly $20 billion.)
Who decides what’s in the capital program?
In the aging transit system whose oldest stretches of the subway date back to 1904, constant investment in upkeep is a must. Without it, service reliability and safety are jeopardized.
To build a capital program, the MTA identifies its priorities and evaluates the shape of the nearly six million assets across the system.
Strictly for New York City Transit — the MTA agency that operates the subway, bus, Staten Island Railway and paratransit systems — those assets include:
493 stations
6,780 subway cars
794 miles of signal equipment
250-plus miles of line structures
326 elevators
231 escalators
5,840 buses
38 bus depots
75 maintenance shops and train yards
233 substations
and much more.
Those needs are then shaped into capital plans, which have traditionally been funded by a balanced mix of federal, state, regional, city and MTA money. Those parts are informed by the 20-Year Needs Assessment, mandated by state law.
But the proposed capital plan must be signed off on by the MTA board, the review board and Albany lawmakers — and then there’s the not-insignificant matter of finding the money for all that work.
If it’s approved, what changes could riders see?
The biggest chunk, close to $11 billion, is projected to pay for 1,500 new subway cars and 500 new railroad cars to replace ones that have been running since the 1980s.
The plan also calls for investing $5.4 billion on so-called Communication-Based Train Control (CBTC) signal upgrades that allow trains to run faster and closer together — systems now fully in place only on the L and 7 lines and along stretches of the E, F, M and R.
The proposed plan would modernize signals on the 48-mile Broadway line (N, Q, R, W) that spans from Ditmars Boulevard in Queens to Dekalb Avenue in Brooklyn.
It would do the same for 80-year-old signals on the Liberty Avenue and Rockaway Lines (A, Rockaway Shuttle) and the stretch of the J and Z lines between Essex and Broad streets in Manhattan.
Other big-ticket projects include upgrading electrical substations and maintenance facilities; making at least 60 additional subway stations and six commuter rail stops fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act; buying 500 new electric buses; installing modern fare gates at more than 150 stations; strengthening elevated structures and protecting stations from flooding.
It’s not big on megaprojects that were highlights of previous capital plans, such as Grand Central Madison, the Long Island Rail Road terminal that was carved out deep beneath Grand Central Terminal.
The plan does call for $2.75 billion for the start of design work and getting shovels in the ground on the Interborough Express, the $5.5 billion proposed Brooklyn-Queens link that would be the MTA’s first light-rail line. But even with those billions, it would be years before that line is operational.
How does congestion pricing fit into all of this?
The revenue from Manhattan vehicle tolls that launched Jan. 5 is earmarked only for the current 2020-2024 capital plan, which itself faces a $16.5 billion funding deficit.
Congestion pricing was legislatively created by state lawmakers in 2019 to help fund the current crop of capital projects, but is not yet linked to future big-ticket MTA plans.
Future MTA capital programs, starting with the 2025-2029 plan, will require new and recurring revenue streams until the state comes up with a dedicated way to fund capital improvements.
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