The Comptroller press release says: “Even though the proposed capital program would be the MTA’s largest ever, it would fund only 67 percent of the MTA’s capital needs for maintenance and modernization, and does not include any funding for the next phase of the Second Avenue Subway.”

Ben paraphrases this as: “According to the comptroller, only 67 percent of the plan has funding, and this figure does not include any money for the Second Ave. Subway.”

My question was pretty simple: what are the numerator and denominator that resulted in that number, 67%, and what do they represent?

The answer actually has nothing to do with the “$9.9 Billion Funding Gap” in the press release headline. A statement like “only 67 percent of the plan has funding” might lead one to think that the remaining 33% represents that roughly $10 billion funding gap, but that is apparently not what the Comptroller report meant when referring to the funded portion of the MTA’s capital “needs” (as distinct from the funded portion of the capital “plan”).

The numerator, which is a number that is never mentioned in the press release, is given in the OSC report itself: “The $21.3 billion core program funds only 67 percent of the MTA’s capital needs for the next five years, which could result in higher maintenance costs” (4th bullet point). (The core program excludes the building of new capacity like the SAS and a couple of other categories.)

The denominator comes from the MTA’s 20-year Needs Assessment, which breaks out capital investment needs into four 5-year periods, the first of which corresponds to the period of the proposed capital program. If you look at Table 1 on page 9, you can see that the “continuing needs” for NYCT, LIRR, MNR, MTA Bus, and B&T total up to $31.511 billion in 2010-14.

If you divide $21.291 by $31.511, you get 0.6757, which I guess is close enough to 67% for government work.

What this means is that the MTA by its own estimates thinks that it ought to budget $31.5B for its core capital program over the next five years, just for getting the existing system up to par and keeping it there, never mind system expansions. But it’s still only planning for $21.3B, even though that “could result in higher maintenance costs”. And it doesn’t even know how it’s going to pay for that inadequate amount of work without issuing ever more bonds, which leads to the “gap” or “shortfall” that seems to be getting most of the attention. The comptroller also points out that under the current proposal NYCT and MTA Bus would get less, relative to their needs, than commuter rail and bridges and tunnels.

This is probably a minor point in the grand scheme of things… but what exactly is that 67% figure referring to? If it’s a $28 billion plan with a $9.9 billion gap, the MTA thinks it has funding for $18.1 billion worth, which is about 65%. Close, but not quite.

To my understanding of the report, the MTA actually needs to spend about $41.8 billion on capital maintenance and improvements (not including SAS phase 2) over the next 5 years, so its proposal for a $28 billion program only covers 67% of its needs. (Later in the press release there’s more detail by agency: the plan covers 62.5% of NYCT needs, 80% of LIRR needs, and 87% of MNRR needs, with even wider variation when further broken out by asset categories.)

Is that a complete misreading of the report? If it’s not, that means that not only is the MTA’s proposed capital program listing out just 67% of the work that it needs ($28/$42), but the estimated amount of funding available and identified is only about 43% of what’s needed ($18/$42). Yikes!

He was a member of the state legislature, and like they all do, voted yes every time.