MTA Politics

Thoughts on the politics and possibilities behind the MTA’s Doomsday budget proposal

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on September 9, 2020

After the MTA’s Doomesday budget proposal in late August, more than a few New Yorkers reached out to me worried about the future of travel in and around New York City and worried about their own subway lines. These weren’t the usual gang of anti-car crusaders, the bike advocates or the busway champions expressing the daily clamor for a better, more transit-focused and equitable transportation network. Instead, these were the workers who power New York City and need the subway to get around. They’re afraid the MTA’s pandemic-related budgetary woes will cut off their transit lifelines.

“Will the MTA actually have to get rid of the D train?” one concerned straphanger asked me, clearly focusing on the Riders Alliance’ Doomsday map. What would it mean, another wondered, if headways on local buses were increased even more? Is a bus that runs once an hour during the day even worth operating? Clearly, threats of massive service cuts — more so than looming fare hikes — hit close to home.

A July Riders Alliance report painted a bleak picture of the MTA’s future.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking more and more about MTA CFO Bob Foran’s presentation and what we should take from it. Needless to say, it paints an ugly future. After all, Foran’s service cuts threatened a 40% reduction of service on subways and buses, increasing subway headways to eight minutes, cutting bus frequency by 15 minutes and axing entire LIRR and Metro-North lines, crippling to the usefulness of any transit system. To make matters worse, while the MTA stares down a deficit of $10-$12 billion, these massive service cuts save just a fraction of the billions the MTA needs. Cuts to New York City Transit would generate just $880 million annually once the MTA factors in revenue loss from riders who abandon an infrequent system, and the commuter rail cuts generate just $160 million in annually. Even running a bare bones system puts the MTA in the red each year by a few billion dollars.

What then should New York make of the MTA’s proposal? And what is the future of a robust transit system in New York City? After all, we were all celebrating the successes of Andy Byford’s Fast Forward plan, the Subway Action Plan and the massive capital investments this calendar year. Is there any hope for the future? Or are we doomed to a death spiral that leaves the subway tunnels quiet, the city paralyzed and the MTA broke?

This is the question I’ve been mulling for weeks, and it’s one with no real clear answer right now. It’s important to understand the MTA’s Doomsday budget presentation as a political document first and a budget proposal second. It was very much designed by MTA executives who think they can get the attention of the federal government and, in particular, the Senate GOP and Trump White House, by warning of the dangers to New York’s economy should the MTA fail. “The pandemic-caused losses are beyond the capacity of any agency” to absorb, MTA CEO and Chair Pat Foye said following August’s meetings. “We’re agnostic as to the source of revenue. We’re realistic to the city’s financial conditions. We’re realistic to the state’s financial conditions….We’re going to do everything we can to reduce the size of the deficit for the federal government, but without federal funding, we will not be able to get out of this box.”

The MTA’s out-year budget include billions of dollars in projected revenue losses due to the long-term impacts of the pandemic on transit usage.

One “tell” regarding the political intent of the document is the request for an additional $1 billion in 2021 to offset revenue the MTA had expected from congestion pricing. Because the Trump Administration has completely slow-walked US DOT’s congestion pricing assessment, the MTA does not know if an EIS is required or if a less onerous Environmental Assessment would be sufficient. Thus, the MTA does not have federal approvals to start congestion pricing in January, and thus, the MTA’s anticipated revenues are short $1 billion. By requesting that $1 billion now, the MTA is both sending a political message and over-asking. It’s a shot across the bow in what should be rational negotiations regarding an MTA bailout, as the feds gave following the catastrophic damaged caused by the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The second “tell” came in the form of an op-ed in The New York Times co-written by Foye and TWU President John Samuelsen, one of transit’s oddest odd couples. Enemies at the negotiating table, the two transit titans wrote about the “five-alarm fire” facing the MTA. Citing the Grand Depression as a comparison, the two noted that even during the depths of the 1930s, transit ridership fell only by 10-12% and not 80-90%. It’s an inapt metaphor though as the Great Depression was an economic crisis and COVID-19 is a public health crisis first and an economic crisis due to the public health crisis.

Still, Samuelsen and Foye tried to get Washington’s attention. “Punishing the M.T.A. and transit systems across the country over an ideological political agenda is not only wrong; it is bad economics,” they wrote. “The downstate New York region — New York City and the surrounding area — accounts for about 8 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. New York City cannot recover without a robust M.T.A., and the country cannot rebound economically without a healthy New York.”

But the MTA’s biggest mistake is assuming rationality. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, certain factions in Washington, DC — notably, the Senate GOP Majority Leader and the Trump White House — do not operate rationally. A rational response to the pandemic would involve bolstering state and municipal finances, including the nation’s transit agencies, to stave off job losses and economic collapse brought on by faltering transit systems. After all, the MTA is not asking for the feds to step in and cover its inefficient spending; it is asking to be reimbursed for pandemic-related revenue losses. Still, for now at least, the feds do not seem interested in staving off this economic catastrophe because, for now, it’s not their problem.

It’s not their problem because of the election in November, and that’s the big wild card. The equation in DC right now involves ignoring the local government funding crisis and punting it to the next team. If Joe Biden wins and the Democrats capture the Senate, Republicans will be powerless to oppose a funding package but can disingenuously claim to be concerned about the deficit, as they do any time they’re in the Senate majority. If Biden wins and the GOP hold the Senate, a traditional DC negotiation can ensue. If Trump wins, any rescue package will depend upon the party in control of the Senate, but a Trump win with a Republican Senate represents an outcome for the MTA more akin to the August presentation than we wish to consider. Still, the MTA’s ask is about politics right now; the pain for the riding public comes later.

The MTA has more than a few options in its pocket. I’ve written in the past about the operations savings the MTA could realize by shifting to a proof-of-payment model on commuter rail and reducing the number of employees required to punch tickets. Back in July, I asked Pat Foye is the MTA would consider a quick pivot to one-person train operations. He hedged at the time but was clearly ready for the question, stating the following:

Everything is on the table. There are collective bargaining agreements with our various unions that may have to be part of the discussions, but everything is on the table. We have not made that specific proposal to any union and what we’re focusing on is getting federal funding, one; two, reducing expenses, overtime, consulting contracts, non-personnel, non-labor expenses. We’re going to continue to do that. If the federal funding doesn’t through this year in 2020 or for 2021, the size of the deficit is going to require that everything be on the table. Things that are covered by a collective bargaining we may have to respect, and they may be the subject of negotiation which may be successful or not. The unions, on behalf of their members, are going to have very strong positions on many of these issues.

I’ll let you interpret that comment, but it’s clear the MTA has put some thought into what it would take to implement OPTO, just as they have put thought into the message they wanted to send to the federal government. I am ultimately left thinking about one of Foye’s statements. “The MTA,” he said, “is not going to shut down.” That’s all well and good, but it’s no comfort to millions of New Yorkers worried about the future of their buses, their subways and their D trains. The MTA isn’t about to cut full subway lines, but the subways could be a heck of a lot less useful if that funding doesn’t come through and soon.

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MTA Economics

Doomsday Budget: MTA threatens 40% service cuts to buses, subways if federal aid fails to arrive

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on August 26, 2020

As the U.S. Senate Republican majority has refused to bail out states, cities and public transit agencies, the MTA has unveiled its own proposal for addressing a budget deficit expected to reach $12 billion by the end of 2021. In a presentation to the MTA Board today, agency CFO Bob Foran warned of a 40 percent cut to subway and bus service, a crippling decrease in commuter rail service, the loss of nearly 10,000 jobs across the entire transit agency and a halt to much or all of the MTA’s capital work.

The following images show the top-line budget reductions that could be on the table if the federal government does not step in to fund transit. As MTA Board members called upon the feds to act and some urged the MTA and state to prepare alternative solutions, it’s worth examining if this presentation is a promise of bad things to come, a political salvo in the funding fight or a mix of the two. I’ll have more analysis on that front later, but at a top line, implementing cuts of the nature contemplated by the MTA today would spell the short-term collapse of public transit in the New York City region and a bleak prospect for the area’s and the nation’s economic recovery out of the pandemic.

“The future of the MTA and the future of the New York region,” MTA Chair Pat Foye said today, “rests squarely in the hands of the U.S. Senate.”

Cuts to New York City Transit would drastically increase wait times and crowding

Commuter rail cuts would make some lines nearly useless while others may shut down entirely

The MTA could shelve most or all of the ambitious 2020-2024 Capital Plan, delaying expansion, modernization and accessibility initiatives throughout the region

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MTA Politics

Overnight subway service remains in political limbo as local bus fares return next week

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on August 26, 2020

MTA officials gathered last week to announc front-door boarding and fare collection on all local and SBS buses will resume Monday, August 31. (Photo: Jessie Mislavsky / MTA NYC Transit)

My friend Marcia Herold tends bar at the Greenwich Street Tavern in Tribeca, and as with so many of New York City’s service workers, 2020 has been a tough year. Her bar was closed for much of the spring, and it has reopened only as much as any of the city’s thousands of restaurants and bars have — with outdoor service only and hours scaled back to 11 p.m. For a place that used to serve food and drinks late into the night, the Greenwich Street Tavern is just trying to survive through the pandemic.

For years, Marcia, who lives in Boerum Hill, never had to think twice about getting home. Even on nights when the bar would close late, Marcia could easily jump onto the subway and be home quickly, but these days the trip is more complicated. By the time Marcia wraps up service and she and her co-workers finish cleaning, catching that last train back to Brooklyn is no sure thing. Sometimes she’s make it; more often, she doesn’t.

A few weeks ago, she waited on the platform for a train that wasn’t going to show up, and the MTA worker keeping an eye on things never told her the train wasn’t coming. More recently, she and a co-worker split a cab back to Brooklyn after missing the last train, but her co-worker, who couldn’t right now afford the cab fare all the way back home, had to get all the way to East New York. It’s usually just a 20-minute ride on the 3 or 4 train but can take 45 minutes or longer via a bus or two.

This is the current reality for around 15,000 New Yorkers who need late-night train service to get to and from their jobs but have found passenger service shutting down as early as 12:30. And yet, as New York City struggles to return to any semblance of normalcy, there is no end in sight to the MTA’s overnight passenger shutdown. Imposed in early May under the guise of “disinfecting,” by all accounts from multiple MTA and New York State sources, the shutdown was the brainchild of Gov. Andrew Cuomo in response to multiple news stories concerning homeless New Yorkers inundating an empty subway system. Instead of attempting to address the root causes of homelessness in New York, Cuomo ordered the state agency in charge of operating the city’s subways to shut down service, foisting the problem onto the city’s streets, and promoted the idea that the subways have to shut down for cleaning.

The MTA has added a few Night Bus-like buses on some key subway routes and had been paying for a handful of taxi rides every night. But their response to decreased overnight demand has been to tell essential workers trying to get home to just take local buses. For some, that’s a three-bus, multi-hour trip. For others, the trip home is a long walk or a nightly taxi ride few can afford. Meanwhile, the trains aren’t actually stopped. They run all night, on the same sparse schedule as before, but without passengers. The MTA’s disinfecting efforts — largely sanitation theater based on what we know about transmission paths for COVID-19 — continue with or without train service, and no one at the MTA has answered the two questions I have continued to post regarding the overnight shutdown:

  1. Which elements of the overnight disinfecting would be impossible to accomplish if passengers were permitted on the trains that are still running?
  2. And how would that impact the overall risk of COVID-19 transmission on subways?

Each time I think the issue could be coming to a head, the Governor puts a stop to any speculation. State Senator Brad Hoylman has proposed legislation requiring the MTA to provide 24/7 subway service but only “after a declared end to the COVID-19 pandemic,” as he said in his statement. With no end in sight to the pandemic, that bill is largely meaningless right now. We’re in a state of emergency, and the governor can do whatever he wants.

When pressed on the issue earlier this week, the governor punted. The MTA has recently announced that due to low usage and a high cost amidst an existential budget crisis, the Essential Connector cab service would be suspended. The agency had reported only around 1500 riders per night and a cost of $49 a ride on average. The last night of for-hire vehicle rides will be August 30, and on August 31st, the MTA will reinstitute fare collection on local buses. Since the early days of the pandemic, local buses had been free to protect bus drivers, but the MTA cannot afford to give away rides right now. The agency has built barriers to protect drivers and is upgrading filtration systems on all of its buses to go along with the fares the agency says it must collect.

But what about that overnight subway service? The MTA can’t afford anything right now, but it can continue to afford running empty trains all night. When asked about these recent moves, the governor this week said of 24/7 service, “You’ll have to ask the MTA.” The MTA bounced it back to another state agency. When pressed by reporters, Pat Foye, increasingly annoyed with the question, said, “As we’ve said, while the pandemic continues, the 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. closure will continue. The state commissioner of health will determine the continuation of the pandemic. We’re not in the public health business. The commissioner of health will opine on the continuation of the pandemic.” While Foye tried to claim the overnight shutdown allows the MTA to be more productive, when asked, Foye could not name a single project outside of the L train work on an accelerated schedule thanks to the pandemic shutdown. It all just rings hollow as it impacts the lives of thousands.

This is, of course, a classic case of political hot potato. The MTA, under orders from the governor, shut down the overnight service but won’t say when it will restart, and the governor, who controls the MTA, wants nothing to do with the question. So we’re stuck. We’re stuck with buses that cost the same as the subway but cannot provide the same long-distance service and relatively fast travel times the subway can generally guarantee. We’re stuck watching workers like Marcia struggle to get home after their jobs each night, and we’re stuck in limbo with businesses trying to hang on while the state and city stack the decks against them. Few local politicians are speaking out, and few are fighting for the transportation needs of a New York City just trying to hang on for a few more weeks and months. The pandemic continues, and that’s all the cover the MTA and Andrew Cuomo need right now.

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MTA Economics

A few thoughts on flattening ridership and the MTA’s economic abyss

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on August 18, 2020

The mezzanine above the Lexington Ave. line at Grand Central sits empty on a recent Thursday morning. When will ridership start to grow again? (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

The following post is an updated version of a post I published a few weeks ago on my Patreon. As a reminder, Second Ave. Sagas is entirely reader-funded, and I depend upon you to keep the site running. Now that my wrist is finally on the mend, I expect a more regular posting schedule, and I promise not every post will be about how the MTA is completely out of money.

Has transit ridership plateaued? I first asked this question when New York City entered Phase 4 of the governor’s reopening plan in late July, and the answer nearly three weeks later still appears to be guardedly yes.

It’s been a disjointed reopening in the city so far. While the open restaurants program has enlivened NYC streets and shown us that public space isn’t just for cars, city residents are the only New Yorkers not permitted to dine indoors (rightly so, in my view). Meanwhile, gyms and museums have only just been cleared for opening within the next few weeks while most white collar office workers are still telecommuting and the state of schooling is very hazy. With few places to go, transit ridership has plateaued.

In the week before and the week after Phase 4 began, subway ridership had leveled out at around 1.22 million per weekday, approximately 23% of an average 2019 weekday, and bus ridership settled at an average of 1.18 million. For Phase 4, daily subway ridership now sits at 1.25 million, still not even 24% of an average weekday, and bus ridership has creeped upward to 1.21 million. A system that used to serve nearly 7.5 million per day is now seeing just 2.46 million, many of whom are still riding local buses for free, and ridership that had been increasing by 100,000 per week is going up by just a few tens of thousands instead.

Despite a one-day dip for Tropical Storm Isaias last week, the plateau is visible if we look at subway ridership throughout the pandemic, beginning with the start of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s NY PAUSE order on March 23.

You can see the big jumps in ridership each week once New York City entered Phase 1 on June 8 and smaller increases in recent weeks. Despite lower ridership on Wednesday and Thursday last week compared to the week before, a strong Friday pulled total weekday subway ridership to 6.5 million, a pandemic high. Had Tuesday, August 4th been storm-free, the total ridership figures for the past two weeks would have been nearly identical.

Bus ridership has shown a similar trend.

While the trajectory is an upward one of slight growth, barring some unexpected spikes over the next few weeks before school starts, transit ridership in New York City is no longer adding more than a few thousand new riders each week. After all, without indoor dining, entertainment or culture and with offices still largely vacant, New Yorkers simply have few places to go that requires transit trips.

There are, however, reasons to think this plateau may last only until early September before we see our next big bump in ridership. First, the upcoming museum openings — even at reduced capacity — will give people more places to go. Second, local bus fare collection is expected to resume soon, and that could lead some travelers to return to the subway (while driving up revenue generated from buses). Third, while tourism powers NYC over the summer, July and August are generally low ridership months as school is out of session and many families decamp from the city for the summer. This year, many New Yorkers with family or second homes out of the city have left and are planning to return to the city when schools start up again in September. Fourth, while many white collar employees will be working from home for the foreseeable future, some offices are expecting to reopen after Labor Day especially as kids return to school. Thus, September and October, traditionally the MTA’s busiest months, could see an uptick in transit ridership.

How much of an uptick the MTA can expect is an open question. In April, when consulting firm McKinsey modeled ridership and fare revenue based on the severity of the pandemic, they presented a “moderate” trend line and a “severe” trend line. Right now, the MTA is tracking at or below the “severe” trend line with fare revenue around the 30% range in August, jumping to 40% in September before a second wave in October sends ridership and revenue plunging back into the teens. With local bus trips still free, it’s tough to get a handle on the MTA’s current fare revenue figures (as opposed to ridership numbers), but the MTA is near the 30% fare revenue threshold.

Reaching 40% – or 2.2 million per weekday – is a questionable bet right now, and the rosier projections of 50-60% seem like relics of another era. The restoration of bus fares is in limbo over labor disputes regarding adequate driver protection, and the wild card remains schools. If schools open for in-person learning and stay open while avoiding an uptick in infections, ridership will increase on the backs of school passes but how much will be on the revenue side is an open question. As more companies keep workers at home for longer than expected, the revenue might still fall short of expectations. (On the ridership side, as a side bet, Gotham Gazette’s Ben Max and I set the over/under for subway ridership on Thursday, September 10 at 1.6 million.)

So what does this all mean for the MTA’s revenue and tattered economic outlook? Nothing good.

It’s hard to overstate the dire impact the pandemic has had on the MTA’s finances. With paid subway ridership holding steady at under one quarter of 2019’s figures, the agency is on the precipice of a nearly unimaginable fiscal cliff. I wrote about the agency’s multi-billion-dollar budget gap in a lengthy post last month, and nothing good has happened since then. The Senate GOP and Trump Administration failed to endorse the House Democrats’ plan to fund cities, states and transit, and my point from July stands: While the MTA should look to streamline operations and cut expenses and while the state could explore a gas tax increase to help the MTA close its budget gap, fare hikes and service cuts would decimate transit in NYC without moving the needle more than a few percentage points. It’s federal bailout or bust.

But that comes with a caveat. A few weeks ago, my MTA sources felt confident that the feds wouldn’t hang the MTA out to dry, and they still might not. But it seems increasingly unlikely that a bailout will materialize before Election Day unless the country’s municipal funding crisis begins to torpedo the stock market. If Trump loses, it’s likely that federal transit funding will be available come January, but that’s a long five months. Even if New York, scarred from its tragic spring, avoids a second wave, the MTA won’t see transit ridership rushing back to pre-pandemic levels before a cure or vaccine arrive. So what is the MTA to do?

I’ve started to think the MTA should just keep borrowing. It’s a dangerous and risky strategy that could lead to an eruptive disruption in the municipal bond market, but so long as someone is willing to lend the MTA against the promise of eventual federal bailout, the agency should just keep tapping that line of credit to keep service running while avoiding calamitous fare hikes and service cuts that would dig the MTA out of this current hole by only a few percentage points. The MTA, transparent and consistent in its spending, has been maintaining its operations per usual at the cost of around $200 million a week and has consistently stated it will need $10-$12 billion to get through the end of 2021. The agency should look to streamline operations and reduce its costs, but it should also hold the line on service.

Borrow until the money runs out, the federal funding comes through, and ridership rebounds. The city’s future depends upon it, and the lenders realize this. It’s certainly not a sound fiscal strategy for the long term or a sustainable one should the federal government fail to come through. But none of this is normal. The subways and buses will power New York’s eventual recovery, and keeping the lights on and trains moving is going to require a bit more fiscal and operational creativity than usual.

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New York City TransitParatransit

The MTA and accessibility: a few thoughts as the ADA turns 30

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on August 11, 2020

Interim MTA New York City Transit President Sarah Feinberg, MTA Construction & Development President Janno Lieber, MTA New York City Transit Senior Advisor for Systemwide Accessibility Alex Elegudin, and Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities Commissioner Victor Calise commemorate the 30th anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) at the Astoria Blvd station on the N/W lines on Mon., July 27, 2020. Four elevators have been placed in service at the station, making it fully accessible. (Photo: Marc A. Hermann / MTA New York City Transit)

In normal times, the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act would have been cause for a grand celebration. But these are not normal times, and the three-decade anniversary of the landmark legislation passed a bit quieter than it otherwise would have. Still, the MTA marked the occasion by celebrating the opening of ten new elevators at four subway stations across the city, and while the coronavirus financial crisis has thrown the future of the MTA’s elevator-heavy capital plan into serious doubt, the agency is trying to forge a better path on accessibility.

“Make no mistake: Adding four new, accessible stations with elevators will make a big difference in the lives of our customers with disabilities,” Janno Lieber, the President of MTA Construction & Development, said to mark the moment. “But the critically important work of making 70 more stations fully ADA compliant as part of the … Capital Plan cannot be achieved if the plan’s funding is cut as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. Accessibility must and will always remain a core priority of any Capital Plan, but our ambitious 70 station plan only works if we have a fully funded MTA.”

It’s a brutal twist of the knife really. After years of incredibly hard and often-frustrating work by disabilities advocates, the MTA had finally adopted a capital plan with a real commitment to accessibility. Spurred on in part by legal obligations and in part by Andy Byford’s commitment to accessibility as well as Sarah Feinberg’s long-term recognition across various positions that the ADA is law and not a suggestion, the MTA’s capital plan represented a true commitment to ADA accessibility, but with the U.S. Senate GOP unwilling to pass a COVID relief bill that includes transit funding, this capital plan is on hold until and unless a relief bill materializes or the Democrats somehow take the White House and Senate in November.

So the ADA work is in limbo, and I wanted to mark the 30th anniversary — a few weeks late thanks to my wrist injury — with a few thoughts on where things stand. The intertwined health and economic crises have thrown a hard wrench into the MTA’s plans, and the prognosis for a recovery is murky. Still, work will, at some point, soldier on.

The ADA is not just a moral imperative; it’s the law

For years, the MTA had a tendency of treating the ADA as a moral suggestion, but it carries more weight than that. Yes, we should strive to make our transit system as accessible to everyone as possible and as step-free as possible, but the ADA isn’t just a recommendation. The Americans with Disabilities Act is a federal legal mandate, and while critics can claim the unfunded nature of the mandate unduly burdens local municipalities and state or city transit agencies, it’s still a law.

Feinberg, the current interim NYC Transit President, made this point to me while she was on my podcast last year: Following the law isn’t optional. The recent cultural shift within the MTA deserves some praise, but ultimately, the agency’s hands were tied by legal obligations. The current leader cannot answer for the sins of long-gone predecessors, but watching the MTA celebrate 30 years of the ADA after spending so many of them resisting the mandates certainly raised my eyebrows. As transit dollar dry up, advocates and MTA watchdogs will have to make sure the MTA adheres to its legal obligations to make the system more accessible.

Everyone benefits from ADA compliance

A wider fare gate would make the subway more accessible and more customer-friendly for everyone.

As part of the MTA’s renewed commitment to the federal mandate, Byford brought in Alex Elegudin in mid-2018 as the agency’s first Senior Advisor for Systemwide Accessibility, and Elegudin has introduced a variety of new elements to various subway stations. The most prominent of those has been the Accessibility Law features at Jay St./Metrotech, including better platform wayfinding and wider fare gates. We’re a far cry from Japan’s pervasive system of tactile paving, but these new elements show how ADA compliance can benefit everyone.

For instance, elevators aren’t just for those who physically unable to climb stairs. Rather, elevators are a boon for people with large packages or big strollers or those who find too many stairs too arduous. Wider turnstiles allow people with luggage and strollers easy access to the subways. These enhancements and improvements should have been introduced system-wide years ago, and they make the subway a more welcoming place for everyone.

The MTA’s ADA past is one of resistance

While current leadership has recognized the need to fulfill ADA obligations, the MTA’s past is littered with examples of resistance and failed legal challenge. Most recently, the MTA faced a lawsuit joined by federal prosecutors in 2018 alleging ADA violations, and the agency lost that suit in 2019. As of last year, the MTA must install elevators during any station renovation unless technically infeasible. As I wrote last year, I believed this to be the right decision, and it’s just one of many legal losses the MTA has suffered as it has flouted ADA requirements over the past few decades. The key stations — a list of 100 stations to be made accessible by 2020 — was never intended to excuse other obligations under the law.

Notably, the Subway Action Plan was one of those initiatives the MTA used to hide ADA obligations. Started by the governor, the Subway Action Plan combined cosmetic station improvements with operational efficiencies, but the MTA at the time claimed it did not have to make any of the enhanced stations fully accessible. This was a claim unsupported by law and remains a sore point a few years after the fact.

Sunk cost and high price tags loom large

Finally, even as the MTA has embraced accessibility and ADA compliance, cost control and lost dollar remain the two elephants in the room. The agency has routinely spent upwards of half a billion dollars on Access-a-Ride each year because the subway isn’t sufficiently accessible. Had some of this money been invested in elevators across the city, the MTA could have reduced its spending on paratransit long ago. Instead, the agency has suffered through the worst of all worlds — too many inaccessible stations and prolonged spending on the inefficient Access-a-Ride program.

To make matters worse, the MTA’s ADA work suffers from the same cost problems as the rest of the capital plan. The MTA had planned to spend $5.2 billion on elevators for 70 stations – or approximately $74 million per station. Even if the most complex stations — such as Union Square — require multiple elevators across a number of platforms at varying depths, this average dollar figure represents runaway cost problems. The system isn’t accessible because the MTA can’t spend efficiently and has spent years hiding behind these cost control issues rather than seeking out real reform efforts.

Ultimately, the MTA has charted a future that involves a more accessible subway, and that’s a good way to begin the ADA’s second 30 years. Of course, it shouldn’t have taken so long and it shouldn’t suffer at the hands of COVID-19. But if the first three decades are any indication, a more accessible subway will be a fight and one worth waging.

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MTA Economics

The MTA faces a $10 billion deficit. What does this mean and how can the agency close this gap?

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on July 13, 2020

The MTA has taken a $10 billion hit due to the ongoing pandemic.

Ten years ago, during the depths of the Great Recession, the MTA faced a budget deficit we then considered massive. At the time, the agency was staring down a hole of $900 million, and to close the gap, the MTA implemented a series of staffing reductions, contract renegotiations and service cuts. Amidst the current coronavirus crisis, as the MTA is facing a $10 billion deficit over the next 18 months, I’ve been thinking more and more about the 2010 service cuts, how costly they were for commuters and how little money they ultimately saved the MTA.

The history of the 2010 cuts is a tortured one, and I’ll spare you the back-and-forth. In broad strokes, the MTA passed a budget at the end of 2009 that required the agency to implement cuts in 2010, and the cuts ran deep. As I detailed at the time, Transit eliminated two subway lines — the V and W trains — rerouted the M, pared back the G, and instituted new load guidelines so that trains wouldn’t be considered crowded enough to warrant more service until even more riders were crammed aboard. The cuts to the city’s bus network were even worse with over 40 routes partially or fully eliminated outright and service on others reduced to bare bones. Bus ridership, which was around 2.3 million per weekday prior to these cuts, has been in a downward spiral since then, bottoming out at 1.77 million per weekday last year.

For all of the inconvenience, added crowded, slower travel and worsened bus service, the MTA saved barely any money. The subway service cuts generated $16.6 million in annual savings and the bus reductions $51.2 million. The service cuts also lead to less revenue as the most inconvenienced riders will find other way to travel. Ultimately, then, cutting — at least on the service side — yields pennies while sacrificing frequency and travel times, key drivers of the utility of transit.

A $10 billion budget hole

The MTA’s current crisis makes 2010’s budget deficit look like a walk in the park. Since March, the MTA has lost most of its riders, most of its toll-payers, much of its advertising revenue and a lot of the transit-supporting tax revenue. As the agency officials detailed in a presentation to Board members last month, the MTA faces a $3.75 billion deficit this year even after a $4 billion infusion of CARES Act cash and approximately $6.6 billion next year. Senior leadership has engaged in a media blitz, lobbying constantly for federal funding (though most of the TV appearances have been local to New York where the Congressional delegation already supports a federal transit bailout rather than national). At this point, though, one “Fox & Friends” appearance by Pat Foye would be more likely to move the right needle than ten more NY1 hits.

This week, the MTA Chair took his message to The Wall Street Journal, as Paul Berger, the paper’s transit beat writer, took a deep dive into the financial state of the MTA:

The nation’s largest transit system teeters on the edge of an unprecedented financial crisis as it emerges from the new coronavirus pandemic, leaving it with few options other than imposing major spending cuts and borrowing billions of dollars, officials say. Patrick Foye, chairman of New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said in a July 8 interview that the only way to stave off bleak measures is for the agency to secure $3.9 billion in federal coronavirus bailout funds in the coming weeks. Without the money, subway, bus and rail commuters could be consigned to diminishing services for years. “None of the choices are good, which is why the federal funding is essential,” he said.

The state-controlled authority, which runs New York City’s subway and bus systems as well as two commuter railroads, has almost exhausted $4 billion it received as part of the first federal coronavirus bailout in May. The Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives included a further $3.9 billion for the MTA in a new $3.5 trillion relief package passed the same month. Mr. Foye said he remains cautiously optimistic about receiving the money soon, even though the bill has languished in the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate.

Senate Republicans, who return from recess July 20, have rejected the bill and remain divided on how much to spend and what to spend it on. Standard & Poor’s on Tuesday downgraded the MTA’s credit rating to BBB+ from A-. It said the first round of bailout funds will be exhausted by August and described the authority’s hopes of receiving a next round of federal funding as fading. Even if the authority receives the money, it would last only through the end of this year.

So what comes next?

The MTA cannot cut its way out of this hole…

A Riders Alliance study paints a bleak picture of the MTA’s doomsday scenario.

If the Senate fails to act in the coming weeks, the future is bleak for the MTA and for transit in New York City. The Riders Alliance determined that without federal funding, the MTA would have to generate cuts 20 times more impactful than the 2010 service reductions, and the advocacy group painted a picture of a Doomsday scenario in which half of all subway service is eliminated. Needless to say, New York City as we know cannot exist or rebound with half of its normal subway service, and the report is written to help riders conceptualize the depths of the MTA’s budget crisis. It’s not in any way, shape or form predictive of the future. Yet.

In the past, as Betsy Plum, executive director of the Riders Alliance, told The Journal, the MTA’s financial woes have worked themselves out, but this time, the deficit is simply too large for it to work itself out. “We may truly be in a moment where it cannot work itself out without dramatic injury to the people who most rely on transit,” Plum said to Berger.

Dramatic injury isn’t an outcome anyone wants. MTA leaders hope to avoid pandemic-related service cuts, and fare hikes — other than those already scheduled for 2021 — are off the table. After all, as with service cuts, a 500% fare hike would make the system unaffordable for millions of people who rode pre-pandemic and would exacerbate the city’s financial and affordability crisis. The hole is simply too deep for the MTA to use its usual set of tools to balance its budget, and we should view the MTA as a public good, required during a pandemic and vital to the city’s success all other times. It should always be funded that way.

…Which is not to say they shouldn’t try

Yet, as we well know, the MTA is not a paragon of efficiency, and the current crisis should cause the agency to do some soul-searching on its runaway cost problems. After all, if the MTA cannot reform its spending practices now, amidst the worst budget crisis in 50, if not 91, years, when can they expect to do so?

Most commentators do not seem to grasp the depths of the dollars ands have urged modest business-as-usual approaches. The Citizens Budget Commission issued a new report this week, and while they acknowledged the depths pf the crisis, their five recommendations sounded like every other CBC recommendations on transit spending we’ve heard over the last few decades. “Achieve greater efficiencies”? “Prioritize planned capital projects”? “Optimize service levels”? Borrow money? Those seem like fine suggestions for closing a $100 million budget gap but seem woefully inadequate for some 10 times that size, let alone 100 times, as the MTA currently faces.

Other ideas have more legs. While the MTA may not be able to cut $6 billion and still operate any trains or buses, the savings are there for the taking as The LIRR Today discussed last month:

There’s not $10 billion worth of things to cut, but there’s plenty of room for cost savings, and you don’t even have to look all that hard. Instituting proof of payment on the railroads and eliminating conductors will on its own save about $411 million per year. If LIRR and Metro-North were both forced to cut down their vehicle maintenance costs to the nationwide average without impacting reliability, that would save $347 million per year. Just making LIRR operate as efficiently as Metro-North (not a high standard, by any means) would save $121 million per year. Going to One Person Train Operation (OTPO) on all subway lines, a practice ubiquitous elsewhere in the world, would save about $300 million yearly. There are certainly no shortage of ways to further reign in overtime spending. And that’s just scratching the surface…

Internally, the MTA has options too. Sarah Feinberg, the interim president of NYC Transit, wants to cut spending on pricey consultants as she reorganizes the massive workforce powering subways and buses, and the MTA has outlined what it could do if the federal funding doesn’t come through. To that end, the MTA could use congestion pricing revenue (if the program is approved by the feds) to bond out operating expenses; reduce the workforce; freeze wages; borrow more; or, as a last-gasp measure, cut service and raise fares. It shouldn’t come to that end though as the city can least afford it.

In the end, the MTA will not and cannot go bankrupt. The state will backstop the debt if push ever comes to shove. But as capital and cash dry up, the feds should come to transit’s, and to cities’, rescue, and the MTA should try to explore real and substantive cost control while pushing hard for that bailout. New Yorkers can’t afford an NYC without transit and neither can the country, whether the Senate wants to admit it or not.

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MTA EconomicsPublic Transit Policy

Numbers Update: City budget shows misplaced transportation priorities; MTA sits on the brink of fiscal collapse

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on July 7, 2020

I’m a few days late with this post, and you’ll have to forgive me for the delay. I suffered a bad wrist fracture 2.5 weeks ago in a bike crash in Bay Ridge and had surgery 12 days ago. I haven’t been able to type too well since then. So right now I’m dictating this post and making corrections as I go (and there may be typos ahead). Anyway, we have a lot of news to catch up on, and none of it is very good.

Amidst a budget crisis brought on by the pandemic, it’s easy for me to say that my pet causes should always be funded. After all, we each have a tendency to think that what we know and what we believe in is what’s best for New York. But everyone has their own ideas on how to improve the city, and when money isn’t plentiful, these ideas will compete with each other for the few dollars that are available.

That said, during lean times, the goal of any budget and the goal of the mayor and the goal of the City Council should be to create a more livable city, one that is welcoming to everyone and accommodates its residents first and foremost as we all attempt to do the work to bring back the vibrant city we know and love. That effort should involve investing in ways to get around that accommodate more people and faster travel. That means supporting bus lanes, investing in safer infrastructure for people, and not sinking money into low-capacity, high-subsidy modes of travel. Unfortunately, that’s not what New York City’s new budget does by any means.

When the dust settled on the NYC budget negotiations last month, most of the good programs were cut or slimmed down considerably while the mayor continued to pour tens of millions of dollars into his ferry system. It is a budget whose burden falls heavily on those who can least afford it and one that betrays Bill de Blasio’s original campaign slogan of “A Tale of Two Cities.” Instead of bridging the gap between the two cities that embody New York, this budget widens it.

Fair Fares funding slashed by $65 million

The most notable cut was to the popular Fair Fares program — a half-fare transit subsidy for low-income New Yorkers. The budget eliminated $65 million in city funding for the program, reducing the program by about one-third. While politicians called this a right-sizing due to decreased transit usage during the ongoing pandemic, advocacy groups were dismayed. They had fought long and hard for the subsidy and felt betrayed by the administration.

“It was an effective, important program,” de Blasio, defending the cut, said last week at a press conference. “I think the whole underlying concept of the program got just disrupted profoundly by the coronavirus and we’re not going to see that turnaround in the short term.”

The Riders Alliance and the Community Service Society, two advocacy groups instrumental in pushing for this program in the first place, issued a strongly worded statement condemning the cuts:

“Community Service Society and the Riders Alliance are deeply outraged that funding for Fair Fares was slashed by $65 million in the FY21 budget agreement announced by Mayor Bill de Blasio today. This happened without so much as a word of warning or debate.

At a time of unprecedented, widespread unemployment, especially among black and brown New Yorkers and younger people trying to enter the workforce, Fair Fares provides a transit lifeline to job search, medical care and other necessities of life. Especially now, as the economy starts to reopen, half-price subway and bus fares will be even more important to both essential and returning workers.

Fair Fares was just being fully rolled out to all New Yorkers at or below poverty with the launch of a robust ad campaign in late January before the pandemic hit. Yet, Fair Fares is already helping 192,801 city residents who have enrolled. With so many of our fellow New Yorkers newly experiencing severe hardships, struggling to pay the rent, feed their families and find work, we expect the need for Fair Fares to grow, not shrink in the months ahead. We will need public transit ridership to return for our city to function, and New Yorkers who have lost jobs and depleted any savings will need to be able to afford the fare.

The mayor has appointed advisory groups to offer suggestions on forging a more equitable recovery. Here’s one: on behalf of our coalition of more than 70 organizations, we urge you to ensure adequate funding for the continued expansion of Fair Fares.”

For what it’s worth, the advisory groups mentioned in the statement were supposed to issue recommendations pre-reopening for the city to implement as it moves through the reopening phases, but as we are now firmly ensconced in Phase 3 and have seen no reports from any of these groups, it’s safe to assume the administration is keeping any recommendations to themselves. But I digress.

The MTA took the rare step of issuing a statement as well, echoing the advocates’ concerns. “The Mayor’s decision to slash the Fair Fares program will make it more difficult for tens of thousands of customers who rely on mass transit to afford to get to jobs, school and work as New York continues to reopen,” NYC Transit Interim President Sarah Feinberg said. “At a time when the MTA is hemorrhaging money at record levels due to the COVID-19 crisis, this cut sets us back and will further hurt our ability to provide critical services to New Yorkers.”

But the cuts to Fair Fares weren’t the only transit-related budget reductions. The de Blasio Administration went forward with its plan to cut around $6 million from its Better Buses program, and we learned this week that Corey Johnson’s Streets Master Plan, an aggressive proposal to rethink New York City streets, may also be delayed. Yet, as Johnson noted to The New York Post, cutting or slow-walking these plans at this moment during the pandemic shows a lack of clear thinking and a lack of proper response from the administration, a topic I explored in a post last month.

“The benchmarks laid out by the streets master plan were passed into law for a reason and they should not be delayed, especially now,” the City Council Speaker said. “We can’t let a painful budget slow down our city’s reimagining of what public space and mass transit look like.”

And so what wasn’t cut, at least not to the same degree? Well, the ferries, of course. Despite plummeting ridership, a subsidy that has long gone toward those who can most afford to pay a higher fare, and a general lack of vision on true city-wide transportation, de Blasio cut only $10 million from the ferry subsidy, and the administration still plans to spend over $63 million on the boats at a time when other investments would deliver far more transit bang for the buck. So over the last few weeks and months, the mayor has resisted a real open streets plan, failed to expand the bike network at a time of skyrocketing demand, allowed for only 20 miles of bus lanes when the MTA had requested 60, and cut Fair Fares by a third for maintaining his own ferry program. These are misplaced transportation priorities if ever we’ve seen them, and they do not show a mayor willing to make New York easier to travel around, better for the people who are here, or more attractive to people who may want to come here.

The MTA’s dire fiscal picture

Let’s shift gears and look at the MTA’s own fiscal crisis. I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss the MTA’s looming economic disaster. Following an initial infusion of cash from the feds to the tune of nearly $4 billion, the MTA is yet again facing a fiscal cliff, and there is no indication the Senate is willing to act. Ridership is only been about 20% of normal, and the agency expects to need between $7.5-$10 billion over the next 18 months to stay afloat. The feds have shown no signs that another bail out is coming, and the US government is slow walking approvals for congestion pricing as well, so the MTA and the state cannot yet generate its own money through a traffic fee.

During its June board meetings, MTA officials said they have no choice but to request federal funding. They cannot cut their ways out of a hole this large. Even with cost savings and cost reforms, the loss of so much revenue has created a deficit that’s simply too deep to close without government funding. The agency has said pandemic-related fare hikes are not on the table, but budget cuts are and service cuts may be. The giant $51 billion capital plan, including all of the accessibility upgrades that advocates and Andy Byford had fought so hard to secure, are on hold, and the MTA could use some of that money, if it materializes, to close the operating budget gap. Agency leaders have repeatedly gone on TV to request more federal aid, and Nicole Gelinas recently penned a piece in The Times sounding the alarm warning that absent federal funding, cities could be mired in fiscal and transportation crises for years. She makes the case for significant operating assistance from the federal government, and I strongly urge you to read her piece.

So where does that leave us right now? We have a mayor who doesn’t understand the urgency of a mobility crisis he could address, let alone the way to address it, and we have an MTA bleeding money as it continues to run full service despite low ridership. We have a federal government that’s unwilling to step in and do it it must to save its cities, its economy, and its citizens. We are, in effect, playing the worst game of chicken as the money is set to run out at the end of this month, and no one at the federal level wants to take the reins and lead.

I wish I had better news, and I wish we were talking instead about the ongoing capital work that was supposed to kick off this year. Instead, we are waiting with bated breath for the dam to break. Will the city, under Bill de Blasio’s poor transportation leadership, find itself in mired in a mobility crisis? Will the MTA have to start paring back service to nothing because its budget is in tatters? The outlook is bleak, bleaker than it’s been for the MTA and New York City in quite some time. We can’t make it through on New York Exceptionalism alone this time around.

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Public Transit Policy

A lack of urgency underscores de Blasio’s paltry coronavirus response

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on June 24, 2020

Idle boats serve as the perfect metaphor and great backdrop for any Bill de Blasio press conference. (Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

The coronavirus isn’t over. The pandemic rages on. And it does so in uniquely specific ways. While the threat of severe respiratory illness and risk of death looms over us all, we remain in all-encompassing public health crisis that manifests itself in the form of space. To reduce transmission risks and keep populations healthy, we need space. There is an urgency to get more people more space, and while that’s a lesson quickly learned by people paying close attention to the virus over the past few months, it is one Mayor Bill de Blasio and most of New York City’s political leadership still treat as an inconvenience rather than with the urgency it deserves.

The space we need is easy to identify. It’s much safer to be outside, masked, and generally a few feet away from other people. Though I am skeptical that transit in and of itself isn’t safe, it’s much safer for everyone to be spread out, for commutes to be staggered, for crush-load subway conditions to be avoided. This means buses should be prioritized above all other traffic and a spike in biking accommodated through the creation of a safe and wide-reaching network of pop-up protected lanes. Giving people more space and encouraging diversity in mode share allows for a functional and socially-distant city, and cities the world over have implemented these measures.

But not New York. Though we seem to have slowed the virus and our numbers are strong, the pandemic continues until a vaccine or cure can be found, but the city isn’t acting as though the problem is pressing. There is no urgent in the middle of a situation that demands it.

This lack of urgency manifests itself in the way space hasn’t been reallocated for more productive uses this spring. New York has an abundance of outdoor space — 6000 miles of roadway and multiple lanes across many of those miles — but most of it is taken up by inert cars parked for free on public land. The mayor at first didn’t want to do anything about this unequal allocation, even as people were stuck inside their tiny New York apartments, starved for fresh air and space. It wasn’t until the City Council forced the issue that the Mayor agreed to a paltry 40 miles of open streets in May and just a handful of additional miles this week after a needless four-week pause, and his implementation leaves much to be desired. A half a mile here, three-tenths of a mile there, and it all adds up quickly to 60 miles while open streets don’t connect in any discernible network, and neighborhoods that are home to hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers have gotten little-to-no extra space. If you had to design the worst possible open streets network far too slowly, the Mayor’s plan would qualify.

For a brief few minutes in early June, it seemed that some space would be allocated properly. For weeks, transit advocates and the MTA had begged the mayor for bus lanes. Bus ridership had remained relatively strong throughout the darkest days of the pandemic, and buses — with open windows creating natural ventilation — felt safer to many riders. As New York City finally sat on the verge of Phase 1 of the state’s careful and deliberate reopening process, I wondered why Bill de Blasio ha developed a transportation plan ready for Day One. After all, advocates, envious of cities around the world that had reimagined their streetscapes, and the MTA wanted 60 miles (or just 1% of city streets) dedicated to new bus lanes.

A few hours later, Bill de Blasio granted the city just one-third of what the MTA requested. As I wrote, I found the plan unsatisfactory and lacking, a symbol of the mayor’s commitment to refuse to work with the MTA while doing the bare minimum to make New York City a better place. It’s been over two weeks since the Mayor unveiled his plan, and nothing has happened. He called for 20 miles of busways and bus lanes by October, including a handful this month, but New York City has seen none of the promised lanes materialize or work progress. The NYC Department of Transportation has unveiled no details regarding design or a firm timeline for implementation. Simply put, there is no urgency from anyone involved when all of these lanes should have been implemented weeks ago or at least hours after the Mayor’s announcement.

Meanwhile, even projects that appear urgent end up slow-walked by a mayor afraid of his own shadow. Last week, Brooklyn Paper reported that the administration was considering converting a significant portion of the Brooklyn Bridge into a bike lane, but three days later, DOT walked back this report, claiming only the staffer had “misspoke“. Streetsblog later reported that DOT will study converting road space on the bridge for the umpteenth time in recent years.

The Queens Ribbon is a poorly designed concept that masquerades as a solution for an urgent problem that requires nimble and fast resposnes instead.

It’s a disappointing outcome, but an expected one, at a time and demand for biking and safer bike infrastructure is off the charts in New York City. But Bill de Blasio seems intent to ignore this demand, acting again without any of the urgency of the situation demands. Instead, we get rendering porn masquerading as a real serious idea (like the so-called Queens Ribbon) to placate the advocates. Even if we take this idea, which was profiled in The Times yesterday, seriously, it doesn’t fit the situation. The design itself is insufficient with lanes that are far too narrow and suffer from the same design problems as the Brooklyn Bridge bike and pedestrian path. And it’s a plan that will take years to realize when we don’t have years. The urgent response would re-allocate lanes on bridges across the East River for bike and pedestrian use, and it would do it tomorrow. We’ve already burned far too many weeks fighting for scraps, and the current administration has given no indication of giving anything more.

The lack of urgency doesn’t stem only from de Blasio. It is an all-encompassing ethos that infuses his administration. While speaking on a panel hosted by City & State last week, DOT Commissioner Polly Trottenberg kept finding excuses to avoid implementing well-designed bike lanes or rapid-deployment bus lanes. New York, she said, isn’t Paris, a city where Anne Hidalgo has led an effort to implement a network of hundreds of miles of bike lanes in response to concerns over travel in the age coronavirus. Of course, New York and the Paris metropolitan area are of nearly equal size and density, but Trottenberg’s words are just excuses. She loves to find reasons to avoid doing anything rather than coming up with plans to act. We’re not Paris because Trottenberg and de Blasio don’t think it’s important for NYC to emulate the best of Paris, and we’re not even Lisbon.

The missing urgency isn’t focused only around surface transportation either. As Nolan Hicks and David Meyer detailed in The Post last week, de Blasio has no plan for any part of the city’s gradual reopening or imminent entry into Phase 2. He had no plans for outdoor dining; he had no plans to save the city’s struggling restaurants and bars, the heartbeats of so many neighborhoods; he had no plans until yesterday to open beaches as temperatures creep into the mid-80s; he had no plans until a few days ago to safely open playgrounds so kids could get outside; and he clearly has no plans for school in the fall. Even when he does implement plans, as he did for restaurants just a few hours before Phase 2 began, the plans were the bare minimum and provided little city support for a key economic activity. A few weeks ago, de Blasio told New Yorkers to “improvise” on getting to work and traveling around. Apparently, that’s the guidance for managing a city of 8 million through a public health and economic crisis infused with urgency.

The mayor, though, isn’t the only one slow-walking urgent transportation needs. The City Council has yet to act on legislation legalizing e-scooters in NYC and may not take up the measure until after the city budget is passed. Bronx Rep. Fernando Cabrera penned an op-ed in Crains New York last week calling for urgent action in the face of the pandemic, but during the that City & State panel, Council Speaker Corey Johnson said the Council wouldn’t take up e-scooter legislation for a few more weeks. The Council has since approved thee-scooter legislation, but the measure won’t take affect until March, nine months from now and well beyond the time when scooters could be used to lessen the pandemic related commute concerns. Amidst an emergency of immediacy, the city government continues to treat travel and transportation as business-as-usual, subject to the whims of a slow process designed to frustrate improvements. E-scooters should be legalized immediately to accommodate the urgent need for people to move safely and quickly around the city.

Ultimately, this lack of urgency isn’t new to New York City. The mayor never treated transportation, including his supposedly signature Vision Zero initiative, with urgency, and he didn’t treat the coronavirus with any urgency before the lockdown began in March. Despite having the entirety of NYC’s municipal payroll at his beck and call, he has set up panels of experts to come up with suggestions or recommendations for reopening, and some panel members have told me the mayor isn’t even obligating himself to follow them. It’s all a charade to slow-walk a response to a virus that demands urgency. We need more bus lanes; we need a bike lane network; we need a plan for travel and a plan for city businesses to survive the summer. We need to treat rescuing the city and responding to the virus in real-time with the urgency of a crisis, and right now, our leaders are simply failing us.

I originally wrote a version of this post last week and published it for the supporters of my Patreon. As a periodic reminder, 2nd Ave. Sagas is fully reader funded, and I can continue to bring these post to you with your support. Please consider joining as a supporter.

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MTA Economics

MTA Budget Woes Headed Off the Rails as Subways and Buses Gear up for Phase 2

by Jose Martinez, THE CITY
written by Jose Martinez, THE CITY on June 23, 2020

This story was originally published on June 21, 2020 by THE CITY. Sign up here to get the latest stories from THE CITY delivered to you each morning. Jose Martinez and THE CITY have since published a follow-up after MTA officials warned of “financial calamity” as federal bailout money is set to dry up in July and ridership remains just 20% of normal.

The MTA’s financial troubles run far deeper than the dramatic coronavirus-driven drop in revenue from fares and tolls, new documents show.

The transit agency has fallen short by hundreds of millions of dollars in projected income from the dedicated taxes and subsidies that account for almost half of its nearly $17 billion annual operating budget, according to MTA records reviewed by THE CITY. But even as up to 300,000 people return to work Monday for the second phase of the city’s “reopening” — likely pushing daily ridership past the one-million mark for the first time since March 20 —  MTA officials this week are expected to declare the agency is nearing financial ruin and in need of a bailout.

“The MTA has gone broke literally saving New York and it needs federal funds,” said Lisa Daglian, executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA. “The economy can only come back when transit comes back.”

The funding through May 2020 has come up short from a variety of sources, records show. Those include:

  • $94.4 million less than projected because of weaker-than-expected real estate activity in the city from the so-called “urban taxes” on property transfers and mortgage recording taxes
  • $37.5 million less than expected from MTA Aid, which includes fees for licenses, motor vehicle registration and auto rentals
  • $30.3 million less than anticipated from the for-hire vehicle surcharge applied on taxi and ride-hailing app for trips south of 96th Street in Manhattan
  •  $19.4 million less than projected from the Petroleum Business Tax on petroleum businesses operating in New York State. 

Ridership, Toll Revenues Down

Those grim figures are on top of farebox revenue that, according to preliminary figures, last month generated just $53 million — or 86% less than the $343 million that had been projected at the beginning of the year by the MTA, which pinned the shortfall on state travel restrictions put in place to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

On June 17, the last day for which MTA ridership figures are available, there were nearly 945,000 passengers in the subways and close to 975,000 on the buses. Prior to the pandemic, there were typically more than 7 million riders on weekdays.

Riders walk past a “how to wear a mask” MTA sign at the Times Square station on June 10, 2020. (Hiram Alejandro Durán/THE CITY)

Bridge and tunnel revenues at the nine crossings controlled by the agency have also taken a hit, with the revenue for April coming in at $73.5 million dollars — $104 million less than what had been forecast by the MTA. “It’s a serious cash-flow problem — everybody knows they’re not getting the money from the ridership,” said Rachael Fauss, a research analyst with Reinvent Albany, a watchdog group.

The numbers became public as MTA officials prepared to issue a bleak financial forecast at the agency’s Wednesday board meeting, where they will again make the case for another $3.9 billion in emergency federal funding. In March, as the pandemic began to clobber its finances, the MTA secured a $3.9 billion dollar commitment in emergency federal funding. That money arrived last month, but advocates say it will only go so far.

Huge Fare Hike Floated

The Regional Plan Association has raised the possibility of a $9 base subway and bus fare to fill an enormous budget gap. MTA board members warned that the return of riders to the transit system could be short-circuited if more drastic measures are needed to stem the financial losses. “If the MTA starts to talk about service cuts, they will lose the trust of New Yorkers forever,” said John Samuelsen, an MTA board member and international president of the Transport Workers Union.

The transit agency must also contend with how to pay for cleaning costs that have surged during the pandemic and the indefinite nightly shutdown of the subway from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. “I would rather see additional funding such as a gasoline tax of two, three cents, instead of service cuts,”  said Andrew Albert, an MTA board member who represents the New York City Transit Riders Council. “It wouldn’t even be felt, but it would bring in much-needed money into the coffers.”

THE CITY is an independent, nonprofit news outlet dedicated to hard-hitting reporting that serves the people of New York.


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Buses

Thoughts as the Mayor unveils just 20 miles of new busways and bus lanes as NYC’s pandemic response

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on June 9, 2020

With his NYC Ferries as a backdrop, the mayor announced only 20 miles of new bus lanes to keep the city moving as NYC starts to reopen. (Photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

Did Bill de Blasio prove me wrong? Of course not; that’s a rhetorical question with an obvious answer. But just a few hours after I wrote about his lack of plan to accommodate transportation amidst New York’s reopening, the Mayor unveiled 20 miles of new busways and bus lanes that will be added to city streets by October. In doing so, Bill de Blasio managed to fail to meet the MTA’s request by two-thirds and the city’s borough presidents’ by 50 percent. He missed a prime opportunity to drastically reshape miles of city streets amidst an ongoing pandemic where giving people more space is of utmost importance, and while better than nothing, de Blasio’s plan is the bare minimum any mayor could have done. And, oh, the mayor announced, as an aside meriting one sentence of his time, that the 14th St. Busway is now permanent.

First, the details, in handy chart form.

As you can see, the city is getting 3.5 total new miles of busway treatments and 16.5 miles of new bus lanes. The ridership numbers are a bit fudged as, for instance, the end-to-end daily ridership of the M14 was 28,000 before the pandemic, and the 0.8 mile segment from 1st Ave. to Ave. C accounts only for a portion of that. Still, during his comments, the mayor spoke about improving bus service for 750,000. Each rider will benefit from better service, but bus prioritization along only parts of some routes mean most riders will never experience the difference.

As to timing, these lanes will roll out month-by-month through October. The Flushing busway and bus lanes along 14th St. and 149th St. will arrive in June, followed by the Jamaica Ave. and 5th Ave. busways and Hylan Boulevard bus lanes in July. August will see a busway enter service on Jay St. and bus lanes on Merrick Boulevard while the 181st St. busway isn’t due until October. The mayor said the busways will be “similar” to 14th Street, and his press release talks about offset bus lanes in other places. But if similar to 14th St., the busways will still allow cars for a block at a time and the successes will rely heavily on enforcement, whether in person or automated. That’s the plan; let’s get to the thoughts.

The Mayor is still talking past the MTA

Last week, the MTA asked for 60 miles of bus lanes throughout the city. They have to ask because the city controls its own street space, and their request came a few weeks after the city’s cadre of borough presidents requested 40 miles of lanes. The mayor responded with 20, and his lanes and the MTA’s own requests hardly seem to align.

Many of the bus treatments the mayor announced yesterday weren’t even among those requested by the MTA, and even more confounding is how thoughtful the MTA’s request was. DOT, for instance, has bus lane designs for E.L. Grant and University Ave. on ice, just waiting for the go-ahead to proceed. The MTA seemed to be considerate of DOT in making its own request, but the mayor hasn’t responded in turn. When asked by Streetblog NYC’s Gersh Kuntzman about the differences between the MTA’s request and the city’s plan, the mayor responded by not answering the question:

I’m someone who likes to see progress and celebrate progress and then keep making more progress. So my attitude is this is a major step. The fact that we have proven in a way that – you know, the history probably better than me. I don’t think a busway like 14th Street was successfully achieved previously in city history. Maybe I don’t know my facts, but I think I’m right. The fact that today we’re saying 14th Street is now permanent, five more coming in. It is the beginning of something really positive, obviously between the busways, the Select Bus Service, all of these approaches have been working and that opens the door to a very positive future for New York City. And this is a great time to do it because we got to give people confidence to come back to mass transit. So we’re going to do everything we can do, but we’re always going to tell you what we think we can do right now. And then as we see the next opportunity to do more, we’ll of course do more.

It’s a fine answer for a run-of-the-mill Monday three years ago but one that falls apart under scrutiny in the midst of a pandemic.

A Day Late and A Few Months Slow

To that end, why did the mayor wait until Monday morning, hours after the city entered Phase 1 of the restart, to announce new bus treatments? The timing of this announcement shows a lack of urgency on the part of the mayor and the frustration the city has felt with his lack of plans. The time to announce post-PAUSE busways and bus lanes was April, when city streets were empty, and New Yorkers knew they needed more space on transit. Buses, after all, have remained popular throughout the past few months. The city then could have used April and May to implement these lanes so that they were serving essential workers during lockdown and in place as restrictions lifted. That’s what every other city has done, but instead, we’ll get a few lanes this month and a few more by the end of the summer. If we’re in the middle of a public health crisis, you would never know it from the mayor’s slow and deliberate approach.

‘New York City can have a little busway, as a treat’

While route miles are not always strong indicators of quality, the mayor’s plan is diminishingly small. With approximately 6000 miles of city streets at his disposal, the mayor has opted to put busways on 3.5 of them and buslanes on another 16.5, for a grand total of 0.33% of city streets. Under this perspective, even the MTA’s more expansive ask represents only 1% of city streets, and we should be thinking even bigger right now. Simply put, there is no vision to reimagine street space; these are just scraps under the table of the private automobile which has long dominated the way we allocate public space in New York City.

That said, these lanes are good starts. We have long needed bus lanes across 181st Street, and untangling even just 0.3 miles of Flushing would do wonders for a heavily-congested area. As Transit Center noted, “Short busways can make a big impact if they carve a path through intense traffic congestion.” Still, these short treatments that well-run city would have implemented four years ago seem far too meager for the moment. Brooklyn, after all, a borough that is a city unto itself with 2.3 million people, is getting all of 0.6 miles of a busway as close to Manhattan as possible. This does very little to facilitate travel across greater distances.

Feeder Routes Amidst a Pandemic

Along with the distances is the problem of design. Generally speaking, we want to design transit in this COVID-19 moment to encourage dispersed usage. We want more people on buses so that subways are emptier and social distancing easier. By and large though, these new bus lanes bolster the feeder-route nature of the city’s bus network. The Flushing treatment, for instance, makes getting to and from the 7 train easier, as does the 181st St. route, but outside of destinations in Flushing or for NY-Presbyterian-bound commuters, these new lanes do little to get people from where they live to where they work without relying on the subway. What we need is a massive temporary re-think of the bus network that enables interborough connections in ways the current bus network doesn’t. That’s not a de Blasio per se, but the current crisis exposes and exacerbates the limits of NYC’s bus network.

Getting the mayor to commit to transit is always a fight

The mayor makes improving transit in New York City an exhausting fight. For months, advocates, politicians and even the MTA called for more and more busways and faster. The mayor finally relented, and when he did, it was to grant everyone a fraction of their initial requests. So the politicians and advocates have to line up to issue their praise and then continue fighting for even more miles of busways. This is how the mayor, who ran on an agenda of equality, treated Fair Fares: He refused to embrace it and then did the bare minimum when forced to. It’s exhausting for everyone involved in the advocacy and planning, and it’s no way to run or improve a city.

The mayor had an opportunity to think big, help New Yorkers get around faster and more efficiently during a pandemic, and he did the bare minimum weeks too late. If that’s not Bill de Blasio’s transportation approach in a nutshell, I don’t know what is.

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