MTA’s $68.4B capital program is pure fiction —unless Hochul steps up

Last week, the state-controlled Metropolitan Transportation Authority unveiled its next five-year capital-infrastructure plan: $68.4 billion.

It feels like the 1970s — a lot of ideas, and no way to pay.

The MTA’s latest plan includes $47.8 billion for subways and buses, including replacing railcars and continuing to digitize signals.

It would spend another $6 billion each on the region’s two commuter-rail systems, and $3 billion to maintain bridges and tunnels.

Finally: $1.7 billion to rebuild the nuts and bolts of Grand Central Terminal, and $2.8 billion to build the “interborough” light-rail line between Brooklyn and Queens.

These are sound concepts. We should continue to upgrade signals, something other global cities did decades ago. We shouldn’t let Grand Central fall down, and outer-borough light rail could alleviate traffic.

But it’s all fiction — unless and until Gov. Hochul becomes a firmer leader.

The MTA usually identifies a mix of revenues for its capital plans, some speculative, but most realistic. This time, it hasn’t.

Yes, the bridges-and-tunnels portion takes care of itself, as tolls fully fund it.

The MTA expects at least $13 billion in federal funds, based on past plans, and expects to borrow $10 billion.

But this leaves more hole than plan: $45 billion-ish in . . . we’ll figure it out later.

Worse, it’s not clear that the MTA can borrow $10 billion. It already owes $47.8 billion, and starting halfway through the next capital plan, it will face half-a-billion-dollar annual deficits, making it harder to pay interest on those loans.

Plus: it’s not just the next capital plan that’s unfunded. With three months left on the current capital plan, the MTA is still missing billions of dollars for it.

The MTA was supposed to get $3.1 billion directly from New York state’s budget for the current plan — but has only received $500 million of that allocation.

All told, of the current five-year, $55.4 billion capital plan, only $21.8 billion in budgeted funding has been “secured.”

Transit advocates cry, “Congestion pricing now!” But congestion pricing would do nothing to fund the next capital plan.

The MTA was supposed to borrow against congestion pricing’s $1 billion-plus annual revenues to fund $15 billion in the current plan — and still would have fallen far short.

This feels like the 1970s MTA.

In 1968, then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, a liberal Republican, created the MTA because he wanted to run for president in an era of growing awareness about pollution and fear of urban decay.

But he never funded it.

He promised a full Second Avenue Subway (all the way downtown) and the East Side Access terminal for the Long Island Rail Road (opened . . . 55 years later, in 2023). Meanwhile, trains continued to fall apart.

That changed in the 1980s, when Gov. Hugh Carey, a Democrat who had to clean up Rockefeller’s mess, appointed Dick Ravitch as MTA chair.

Ravitch, a real-estate developer empowered by Carey to act independently, put together a plan of what the MTA could achieve in five years — $7.2 billion for things like buying new rail cars and fixing tracks and signals.

Then he convinced lawmakers to enact taxes, about $800 million a year, so that the MTA could borrow funds and use the tax revenues to repay the loans.

Indeed, the situation today is worse than the ’70s, because we still have all those taxes, and then some. Today, the MTA’s annual tax income totals $8.6 billion a year, 43% of its budget.

If you think the MTA’s problem is that the Legislature hasn’t increased taxes, consider: In 2019, the MTA started collecting a surcharge on Uber and taxi trips in core Manhattan, taking in $300 million annually.

A year later, it started collecting a “mansion tax” surcharge and two new taxes on internet sales, now bringing in $700 million.

And last year, to fund post-COVID deficits, the governor increased the MTA’s tax on city payrolls, bringing in $1.1 billion.

Now, Hochul must figure out: How many projects can the MTA realistically build in the next five years? Trying to do too much at once only pushes up construction costs.

And then, figure out: How can labor unions, both construction and operating, contribute to cutting costs?

It’s also worth wondering, if transit is so important, whether the state can’t cut something out of its $237 billion budget to make a higher contribution, without taxes or borrowing.

Absent fiscal direction, the MTA didn’t issue a capital plan so much as a confused cry for help.

Nicole Gelinas’ book on New York City transportation history, “Movement,” is out Nov. 5.