One of less glamorous parts of the MTA Chair’s job involves begging. Every five years, the MTA begins anew planning for the next five-year capital plan, and the head of the agency must go, cap in hand, to various interest groups and politicians asking either for vocal support or money. The ask — nearly $30 billion — is high, but so are the stakes. It requires a cohesive and coherent argument for transit investment as well as a plan for all that money.
On Monday, at the annual Crain’s New York Business Breakfast, Tom Prendergast began his two-year tour in support of the next MTA capital plan. Although the 2015-2019 program has no clear outline yet and the big ticket investments remain a work in progress, Prendergast is already fighting for those dollars. Addressing a crowd of city business leaders, Prendergast defended the MTA’s recent progress and asked for help convincing Albany and the feds to invest in transit.
“We need all of you to become advocates for public transportation and there’s a very specific way you can help,” Prendergast said. “About this time next year, we’ll be bringing our next Capital Program — covering capital projects from 2015 to 2019 — to our Board. We expect it to be roughly the same size as our current Capital Program before the Sandy projects were added, and we’ll be working with our elected officials to identify funding sources for it. But we need your help, too. And when people ask me, ‘How can the business community be supportive?’, the answer is simple: Capital Program, Capital Program, Capital Program. I need your support to figure out how to make these critical investments in our region.”
Prendergast didn’t stop there, though, and his next request was nearly as important as his initial ask. “Our Capital Programs have come to rely more and more on borrowing, and we simply don’t want to keep adding to our debt load,” he said. “That’s why I need you to tell your Congressional and State representatives that the Program needs an infusion of new money this time.”
New money can take many forms, but direct grants are the most obvious. The MTA cannot afford to borrow or bond out more money unless the bonding is explicitly for and pegged to revenue-generating projects such as new subway lines. Borrowing to attain a state of good repair will simply add to to the unsustainable debt burden.
So what will the MTA get for its money? The agency is expected to request $29 billion for the next five years, and it won’t always be, as Prendergast repeatedly said, “sexy.” That isn’t, by the way, his phase. During his brief atop the MTA, Joe Lhota said nearly the same thing, and Prendergast has picked up that message. The MTA needs to rebuild parts of the system that are over 100 years old, including extensive parts of Contracts 1 and 2 of the IRT. Beyond that, the MTA wants to add countdown clocks and, more importantly, train tracking technology to the B Division, and the Metrocard replacement comes due in 2019, just sneaking into the next five-year plan.
As to the megaprojects, Prendergast hedged. He spoke about the need to wrap up East Side Access and Phase 1 of the Second Ave. Subway, and he mentioned that he hopes to see all of the Second Ave. line become a reality before the 100th anniversary of the first bond issue. That’s not, however, until 2036. When pressed by reporters after his talk, he admitted that Phase 2 will be examined for possible funding. I’m holding out hope it will be included. It’s hard, after all, to spend $29 billion on new signal systems, and Metro-North’s Penn Station Access plan won’t be that expensive.
And so it begin is definitely one way to sum up Prendergast’s talk. It didn’t break new ground or reveal anything exciting or special. It simply repeated what needs to be said over and over again: The MTA is asking for a lot of money, it needs the money, and it needs business support to realize its plans. For the next 12 months, that’s going to be the party line.
85 comments
“Second Ave. line become a reality”
“2036”
Hmm I’m not so sure about that…
You’d think they’d at least be targeting doing it in 100 years from the time it was recognized as being essential to the city. Don’t the plans go back to 1929? Even a 100 years is embarrassing.
Let’s start a mantra. “Finish the SAS in 99 Years!”
Actually, 8 or 9 years is rather embarrassing.
Isn’t that more than the debt of the bankrupt city of Detroit? Just to put things in perspective.
Certain projects, like countdown clocks on the B Division, aren’t really capital projects – they can be done on the cheap using mostly existing hardware, not counting the displays and new signals (which are slowly being upgraded anyway). The problem is in certain parts of the MTA corporate structure which has the explicit aim of fighting progress, especially when it comes to technology projects. It would be better for everyone if countdown clocks are funded as an operating expense rather than a capital project and done using competent employees.
While countdown clocks are certainly helpful, isn’t the approximate arrival data already known? Since most people have smart phones, or iPads, or iPods or other WiFi devices already, perhaps simply installing WiFi in stations system wide would be enough to provide 90%+ of the public with a countdown clock in their hands.
The way the technology is advancing, by the time the countdown clocks are installed in every station, there could be people with implants telling them the anticipated arrival of any train they choose – and at much less expense. If all the data is broad-banded, countdown clocks become obsolete before they’re every installed.
Only for the A division and the L line. And that’s because of ATS in the A division and CBTC on the L line.
The B division really has no components in it’s signaling system for accommodating countdown clock unless the components are added like ATS. However ATS took a long time to role out in the A division and it came with a lot of hiccups and still those hiccups find themselves bubbling up to this very day. Not as often as when ATS rolled out but often enough to be burdensome. Those same flaws will not be tolerated in the B division especially at the costs. It’s much to large of a division to have problems like the ones experienced in the A.
The real goal will likely end up being an attempt to roll out more CBTC signals even if the trains aren’t operating in ATO for quite some time the provision would be there to at least provide countdown data.
Thanks for the technical insights.
But couldn’t something as simple as GPS location data, broadcast on an internet app, be used to give people a rough projections of arrival times?
No GPS underground.
And yet somehow, at stations that do not have countdown clocks, announcements are still made for the distance of oncoming trains, and their arrival track. All that data is already available – and all I’m saying is that there can be more convenient and cheaper ways to disseminate that data than waiting for countdown clocks to be installed – and in much less time.
If I’m in the A/B/C/D station at 145th Street, the public address system tells me how many stations away the next uptown local, or downtown express train is. The MTA knows where they are … every single one of them. It’s not a mystery. It also knows about how long it’ll take to get from one station to the next. Those projections can be made and broadcast on an internet app.
I’m saying that information can be put on the internet in less time, and at less expense, than waiting for costly and obsolete countdown clocks to be hardwired from station to station.
It also means that people outside the stations will have access to the same data, so they don’t have to stand in hot underground stations in the summer, or climb onto cold elevated platforms in the winter, until they know their train is minutes away.
And there are many miles of train tracks that are elevated – where GPS does work … so …
$29 billion for signal upgrades and 2-3 (?) miles of subway. Just slightly more than what Paris wants to build 100+ miles of their suburban automated subway network. Yeah, Villejuif ain’t 2nd Ave., but it’s denser than Utica or Nostrand.
No. That’s not at all what I said. The MTA plans to ask for $29 billion for the capital plan, and the projects I listed here are some of what may be in the plan. The next five-year plan hasn’t been developed or presented yet. It will include considerably more than signal upgrades a few miles of subway.
Plus Sandy and some el renovations? More elevators? Small projects (to anyone else)?
Buses for bus “rapid transit” probably.
Any chance of more cars? R32s are definitely nearing EoL.
They already ordered the replacements for the R32s. The r179 cars will be made by Bombardier.
The next group of trains to be retired are the r46s and the r211s will replace them. They are likely included in the capital budget.
More wheelchair access would be an appropriate thing to include in the plan. The MTA has been woeful to the point of illegality when it comes to wheelchair access. As long as the MTA has to rebuild stations anyway, it should add wheelchair access to the ones which it is rebuilding.
If the ADA is a federal mandate – and I believe it is – then funding for it should come from D.C.
Human rights are not something you beg other people to fund for you.
No government can function if it makes a habit of creating unfunded mandates.
And saying “take the bus, not the subway” to 0.1% of the population is hardly a violation of human rights.
The first unfunded mandate was “thou shalt not steal.”
But have you been on a New York City bus? It’s degrading. And the absurd expectation that all passengers wait to load a wheelchair-bound person is unreasonable. That almost seems deliberately designed to degrade the disabled.
Still, the ADA is the wrong way to handle the human right in question: mobility. People in wheelchairs should just have their taxi rides subsidized. The price they pay can be pegged to the price of an equivalent transit trip.
That would be more affordable than the current Access-a-Ride program, which is one of the MTA’s current budget busters.
True.
Access A Ride may not nessessarily take you door to door or directly to ones destination. Regulations be came more restrictive in transport & who qualifies for it. That’s why you are seeing more & more wheelchair users on the bus. One noted exception is if an elevator is non functional at a subway station, then AAR will transport the full trip.
And if NYC taxis were accessible, they could be used to provide Access-A-Ride.
All London taxis are accessible. Why aren’t NY taxis? Ask Bloomberg.
Bolwerk: your idea is stupid right now, and ten seconds of research will tell you why it’s stupid…
New York City taxis are not wheelchair accessible.
By way of contrast, London made all its taxis wheelchair accessible in the early 1990s.
New York City is just embarassingly awful when it comes to wheelchair access. I haven’t done enough research to say that it’s the worst city in the world when it comes to wheelchair access — but it is the worst in the US, and it is worse than anywhere in Western Europe, worse than anywhere in Canada, worse than anywhere in Japan, and worse than most of South America.
The problem is simply a bad attitude in the government — both the MTA and the city government. They could comply with the letter and the spirit of the ADA very easily. They choose not to. We see this with garbage like Bloomberg’s “Taxi of Yesterday”, which is neither wheelchair-accessible nor electric.
Taxis have a useful life of a few years. A single mandate to require they be accessible would be nearly free.
Meanwhile, normal replacement of the subway will never result in full accessibility, and making these incremental accommodations costs billions of dollars. And then the accommodations are still sub-par because
subwaysareany kind of grade separated transit is the wrong way to transport people in wheelchairs.Really, which is more stupid? I agree the city has a bad attitude, but the solution here is a mix of better surface transit (light rail, needed yesterday, hello?), access to key subway stations, and subsidized taxiing.
The T is almost fully accessible, at least on paper. All stations have elevators, but I do not know how reliable those elevators are.
Unfunded mandates are everywhere. Every government agency, big or small, deals with them. The difference is, usually the agency that’s mandated to do it is halfway competent. The MTA is not, so basic things like elevator shafts seem like huge impositions and we start saying ridiculous things like, “Maybe we should just pay for all of their taxi rides.”
I reject that characterization. If Senators and Congressmen from other states can impose that burden on our subway system, I don’t see anything inappropriate in asking them to help fund it.
Having the largest mass-transit system in the country isn’t something we should be punished for. Quite the contrary, it should be encouraged on a national level.
Read what I wrote again, Nyland:
“As long as the MTA has to rebuild stations anyway,”
The embarassing and illegal behavior is the MTA’s complete reconstruction of stations along the elevated lines, for upwards of $20 million per station, without putting in elevators.
If the MTA is rebuilding the stations anyway, they should damn well do them right. At $20 million per station, they can well afford to put some elevators in.
As I said a few weeks ago, it’s hilarious to me how confident and how wrong you are. The MTA has an ADA waiver far more comprehensive than you seem to understand.
No it doesn’t. You’re making shit up.
And yes, I’ve done the research. This ficticious “waiver” you speak of — I suggest you link to the text of it. It does not exist.
Is your argument to me actually “Because I haven’t seen it on the Internet means it doesn’t exist”?
If you are so confident, sue the MTA for violating civil rights over two decades of violating the ADA if the case is so clear cut. I’ll see what I can dig up in public records but the ADA waiver is real (and it’s spectacular).
The ADA waiver is fictional and nonexistent.
I don’t live in New York City, so it would be a procedural pain for me to file the lawsuit. Maybe I’ll donate to United Spinal so that they can file the lawsuit, though.
Some important points to remember:
(1) “Voluntary Compliance Agreements” have no meaning under the ADA — they are simply agreements by the federal government that it won’t file suit. Individuals retain their private right of action.
(2) The requirement to make stations accessible *when they are being rebuilt anyway* is completely independent from the requirement to make “key stations” accessible. The latter requirement has a long list of exceptions. The former requirement has NO POSSIBILITY of waivers; the law is black-and-white.
(3) When you file an ADA lawsuit in NY, *you don’t generally get your lawyer’s costs*. So it costs a lot of money for the person who’s been discriminated against, *even if he wins*. This is why agencies can get away with a lot of illegal stuff.
I didn’t realize that about point (3). Interesting.
I still don’t think the MTA’s violations of the ADA as as blatant and numerous as you think. Ben’s mentioned before that he’s working on a post concerning that issue so hopefully we’ll get some answers soon.
The train-platform gaps routinely violate the ADA standards, including the standards for old stations. As a matter of practicality, trains of a variety of ages run in Vancouver while (as far as I can tell) meeting US train-platform gap standards for new trains at old stations.
By the way, nearly every time the MTA is actually sued over failure to make a station accessible, the MTA has lost. The thing is that advocates really don’t have the time and money to sue over every single ADA violation.
Again, contrast Philadelphia (nearly as old), Boston (older), London (much older) — they are all doing better. The problem is one of *bad attitude* in NYC.
A class action lawsuit isn’t unaffordable and the plaintiffs could easily collect legal fees if the MTA is so blatantly in violation of their obligations.
It’s a technicality but an important one: The MTA usually settles those suits. They don’t lose.
OK, I’ll accept that technicality: the MTA settles because the MTA knows that it hasn’t got a leg to stand on.
If they didn’t have a leg to stand on, they would show more R E S P E C T to the disabled community.
Only about a quarter of stations on the London Underground are accessible (step free from street level up/down to platform level).
More are being made accessible but it’s a funding issue (when is it ever not?) as well as one of practicality.
At my local station it is simply not possible to install a lift from the ticket office level to platform level as the only possible place for it would be in the middle of the road! (The ticket office and gate lines and escalator shaft to the platforms etc are under a road junction – and it is the same for a number of stations on my section of the line)
Even just installing a list from street level to ticket office level would be very difficult but whats the point of that if someone in a wheelchair can’t get down to the platform.
At the rail station they installed a lift to get from ground level to the above ground platform level a couple of years ago. It took ages to build as the shaft had to be hand dug (only about 20 feet !) and it cost £1, (approx $1.5m). I see more able bodied people including those with bikes, than the disabled using it !
Aren’t waivers granted on a per-project basis?
I read exactly what you wrote – and I still stand by my comment. And demanding that the MTA, at every rebuilt station, no matter what the engineering limitations of that unique location, and no matter what the costs associated with compliance are, should “damn well do it right” amounts to nothing more than being deliberately obtuse.
It has very little to do with how old the system is, and everything to do with specific site limitations.
I wonder if, and if so, how much the MTA might be high-balling the $29 billion number, based on the idea if you need at least X-minus-Y for the next five years, it’s better to ask for X as your starting point and hope after the cuts are made the funding for the absolutely vital part of the five-year plan remains in place, and that only Y gets cut by Albany and Washington. (That doesn’t necessarily mean the items to be funded by Y aren’t needed, but most governmental departments go into budget plans with a ‘wish list’ of everything they’d like to have, and a fallback list of things they and their department can’t do without.)
If the request was a “wish list of everything they’d like to have”, they could easily start the number on the other side of $100 Billion. The city has been aching for subway expansion for generations. Most of the people who read this board regularly could easily come up with very good capital projects that would, in aggregate, exceed $100 Billion. I know I could.
Anyone who can come up with $100 billion in projects for the MTA has no business being anywhere near transit.
It wouldn’t take very much imagination to come up with $100B in projects for the MTA. It’s about four capital plans, each filled with lots of normal replacement.
“Anyone who can come up with $100 billion in projects for the MTA has no business being anywhere near transit.”
Anyone who CAN’T come up with $100 billion in projects for the MTA has no business being anywhere near transit.
There. I corrected your typo.
You’re welcome.
While it might be very easy to come up with $100B of subway stations at the costs the MTA currently builds at, most other cities could build very respectable extensions for $29B. Just because it’s possible doesn’t mean we should, and we should really work on building our subways in a more spartan fashion (as opposed to giant caverns, which are the bulk of the costs for every transit project in the metro area).
Crossrail and the Underground get away with platforms along tubes, connecting passageways, and one or two access shafts per station. Why can’t we build like that instead of having giant open caverns (or, if talking about 34th-Hudson Yards, TWO giant caverns)?
It isn’t that hard to come up with $100 billion at normal-world costs, either.
Indeed, I suspect if we did nothing more than tunnel along all the subway plans that have been projected generations ago, and provide a subway under every elevated train that was torn down over the past 80 years, and make a reasonable beltway that connects Richmond to the Bronx by way of an arc through Queens and Kings, we could already spend $100 Billion.
And that’s not even counting obvious non-subway projects like giving MetroNorth access to NYPenn.
100,000,000,000 is a lot of zeros – but in the 21st century, it’s not a lot of money – not when it comes to catching up on much needed major infrastructure projects.
That is exactly what they are doing. In Real Estate, Developers ask for the Moon from Municipalities and the Local Community while they know they usually will not get it, at the same time, they already have a broad outline about what they can actually get. Government and Local Communities can be even worse. They will ask the Fed and others for funding, using terms like “Critical.” They also know that quite often people want “Vanity Projects” and “Bells & Whistles” and “Add-Ons” which of course, cost more. The New Yankee Stadium and the Fulton St Transit Center are examples of this (on a smaller Scale the Local Community asking for (and getting)MILLION $$$$ Fishing Piers at East River Park (Lower Manhattan)). In addition, there is also the “Carrot & The Stick” approach. The MTA threating to cut service and (or) raise fares), unless the $$$$$ come through. Basically it is a game (although to be honest, a very serious one).
Prediction on the 2nd Ave line: All phases on 2nd ave line will not be completed. After phase 3 ends, they find that they can not come up for proper funds for phase 4 and have to run the line towards Bklyn via either Williamsburg or Manhattan bridge.
“Borrowing to attain a state of good repair will simply add to to the unsustainable debt burden.”
Just remember, they didn’t borrow to attain State of Good Repair. They borrowed to pay for replacements at (or below) the rate that would be required to maintain State of Good Repair.
We have just lived with a state of bad repair until enough time had passed before everything could be replaced at the normal rate. That’s still the case for signals, yards, and stations.
One more point. The MTA throws around these numbers without understanding what they mean. What share of the income of New York City residents, and residents of the rest of the MTA region, is the MTA proposing to spend? How does this compare with spending on new automobiles in places without extensive mass transit?
$3,500 for every man, woman and child in the five boroughs. The majority of whom probably don’t use transit (children, elderly, walkers, bikers, motorists).
There are a lot of elderly and children who use transit in the boroughs. Walking and transit are also not mutually exclusive (unless your bus stop is inside your house.)
The problem with current mode share counts is that the majority of counts do not account for non-commuter or intra-borough commuting, which is a fairly sizeable portion of bus travel these days (if not subway travel.)
Any stats on how the majority of people don’t use transit?
they need to finish the new signaling system so they can run more trains before they dig any new tunnels
I would say, give us OPTO and other REAL operational cost savings, and we will push to get you the $.
Because government workers have become much richer relative to the people they serve, in pension benefits which they don’t appreciate and not cash which they might, we can afford fewer of them.
The same is true, however, of capital program contractors.
I once calculated that at then-current prices ongoing signal replacement on the subway (and not any other part of the transit system) was costing one percent of all the income earned by everyone in New York City — every year. If you borrow the money instead, it is that plus interest, and eventually you pay double.
Something really stinks about signal replacement prices.
Still, borrowing isn’t all bad. If you borrow from a wealthier future, it’s okay. The problem with our borrowing is it makes the future poorer.
You are partially correct. There are many factors that determine if borrowing if good. 1: what are you borrowing for? 2: The Interest Rate and Term? 2a: What will be the Future Interest Rate? ( if the Rate is higher you will have been better locking in now). 3: How much of your budget goes to Debt Service? 4: What will be the: a: Rate of Inflation? b:Value of the $? c: Commodity Prices? 5: What do you project your Revenue Streams will be? I suspect that a good portion of this will be related to SAS, LIRR stuff ( track expansion, ESA, and the Reopening of Republic Train Station ( a necessity if they think Republicans will go along)), and Metro-North Expansion.
Uh, yeah, I know how to do a project appraisal, k thx. I was making an ad hoc comment about a necessary project: signal replacement. We can’t refuse to replace a decaying signal system because borrowing costs are high or commodity prices go up.
For all intents and purposes, it’s necessary at any cost. However, given the factors you mention (#3 is completely irrelevant), the real price might be lower if borrowed vs. paid for upfront.
Something stinks about all prices for construction in NYC.
Only transportation infrastructure. Buildings cost exactly the same as in peer megacities.
Just curious – if you broke down costs between stations and tunneling, would New York still come out awfully on the tunneling measure? Do budget breakdowns like this even exist?
You would say this as who? If “we” is the state legislature, it could pass a bill to mandate OPTO and all kinds of other operational cost savings. The MTA is a smokescreen, but stop spreading the myth that state pols have to horsetrade with it.
I was saying it as Prendergast’s audience, as was the subject of the column.
Prendergast has little say in the matter, so why ask him?
“Brother, can you spare $29 billion?”
I don’t envy his position
His position is that he will get paid a lot of money to oversee the demise of the transit system, if that is what Generation Greed has finally done. One reason I left the transit system as an employee is I wanted no part of that.
But other than seeing it up close, we are all in his position, aside from those who expect to die or move away before the consequences are felt.
Why not try a Kickstarter, I mean if two guys can get $30,000 to got to Africa to find living dinosaurs and giant spiders, why not see if you can crowdsource the Queens Super-Express line…?
Because you need to get money from stupid people, and stupid people don’t usually like trains very much if they aren’t exploding.
So, sure, a kickstart for a super-express might raise $30k or so.
You could probably raise money for a study. An actual line, not so much.
I’m surprised we don’t have sales tax referendums like the other cities do, earmarked solely for expansion. Is that even allowed here?
I don’t see why not. We’ve had referendums on bond issues. Then, our sales taxes are already through the roof compared to other states.
What’s another penny on top of it? AFAIK, most of the transit sales taxes are penny or half-penny taxes, and with New York being the nation’s fashion hub, I’m sure that all the tourists wouldn’t notice.
Heck, you could probably exempt food and necessities and still raise a lot – after all, Los Angeles is currently funding 30 years’ worth of projects with a half-penny tax.
Not saying I’d rule that out, but it still makes more sense to start with the obvious stuff like tolls and CP.
Even a half a cent or a cent of sales tax raised on food and medicine sales in NYC could raise quite a bit. If the public wants to expand transit and approves it, why not?
The thing with tolls is that they are already a revenue source for transit, sales tax isn’t being exploited.
A lot of states don’t have sales tax exemptions on food and medicine. Even a 2 percent sale tax on those, if funds were dedicated to transit revenue bonds could pay quite a bit.
Lately the sales tax on food and medicine has slowly been instituted. They now charge sales tax on candy and artificial drinks.
I don’t have a problem if they want to tax stuff with virtually negative nutrition value, but dumping a tax on food in general just seems like a bit much when you consider our local tax burden is already on the high side.
“The MTA cannot afford to borrow or bond out more money unless the bonding is explicitly for and pegged to revenue-generating projects such as new subway lines.”
Prendergast said this?
No. Ben said (wrote) it.
If Prendergast had said it it would have been in quotes.
I think Ben said it, but is there reason to disagree? You gotta admit there is something a bit wrong with how they borrow, and I’m saying that as one of the people who is probably less dogmatic about borrowing here.
The TA revenue gets from fares, but these are rarely even cover operational much less capital costs. The return in excess of the capital and operational costs goes to the city and state in the form of higher tax proceeds, or to the private sector in the form of profits, and transit doesn’t get the credit.
Will there be any love shown for Triboro RX?