Back in November, during the MTA’s public engagement workshop in anticipation of the fare hike, Linda Kleinbaum, the MTA deputy executive director for administration, and Ernest Tollerson, the MTA director of policy and media relations, spoke at length about the MTA’s capital future. Today, the MTA will publicly unveil a final version of the plan Tollerson and Kleinbaum detailed to us a few months ago. The price tag is, in a word, shocking.
The five-year plan, covering 2009-2014 and incorporating routine upkeep and maintenance as well as big ticket items, could cost as much as $28 billion, according to a report by the Daily News’ Pete Donohue. This new total represents an increase of around $6 billion since the MTA issued its preliminary capital plan at the workshop in November. I’m sure the cost will rise again.
The plan encompasses a wide range of projects covering various MTA agencies. Included in it in November were financing plans for the completion of Phase 1 of the Second Ave. Subway and the start of Phase 2; a third track on the main LIRR line; Metro-North tracks on the Tappan Zee Bridge; Penn Station access for Metro-North; a Stewart Airport rail connection and the long-delayed computer-based train management system. My thoughts on this suburban-centric plan remain as I expressed them in November; I would rather see more of an investment in City-based transit expansion.
But what’s done is done, and now the MTA faces an uphill battle to cobble up $28 billion over five years. Donohue has more on this ambitious effort:
Details of the five-year construction and maintenance plan were still shifting, but the sources said the final price tag would fall in the $28 billion range.
Some transportation officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, expressed serious skepticism the Metropolitan Transportation Authority could secure enough city, state and federal funding for such an ambitious program.
But two groups launched a major media campaign Monday to persuade state and city legislators to approve congestion pricing, which supporters say would quickly result in a federal grant of $354 million and generate $500 million annually.
The timing of this announcement probably couldn’t be worse. The MTA, set to raise fares in less than five days, is forging ahead with an expensive plan that needs funding about is badly as it needs implementation, which is to say very badly. But over the last month, we’ve heard rumblings that the MTA may pare down and delay some projects while others are facing a host of financial issues.
Meanwhile, as a few commenters have noted on Second Ave. Sagas, a lot of the budget projections for the Second Ave. Subway haven’t been updated in three or four years. Final price tags are bound to be higher than reported simply because construction costs have skyrocketed while our nation’s economy has tanked.
In this atmosphere, the MTA is unveiling a capital campaign that will require massive investments by the state, city and federal government as well as the anticipated congestion pricing revenues, as Donohue explains. The region needs this capital plan; the MTA needs a lot of money. Where this will all lead is anyone’s guess.
8 comments
The third LIRR track would – could – obviate the need for a Stewart Airport connection. The LIRR already goes to MacArthur Airport, or, that is, goes 99.9% of the way there, in slightly under an hour as presently scheduled. For an infinitesimal fraction of construction the Stewart connection, dedicated LIRR service to MacArthur – immediately adjacent to the LIRR Ronkonkoma Station – could be provided with express trains and perhaps even airline ticketing & check-in at Penn Station. During much of the day, getting to Penn Station & directly to MacArthur would probably be faster and certainly cheaper than a cab to JFK.
There’s a presentation on the MTA website that says that the SAS now has an expected completion date of June 2015 with an estimated cost of approximately $4.35 billion, up about $300 million from the previous estimate.
Kevin: Can you point me toward that presentation? I can’t find it.
It doesn’t matter what they put on their website. They have told nothing but lies all along. The 3.8B goes back to 2002. Now, in 2008, you believe their claim that the price tag is 4.35B. If the Javits Center expansion went from 1.6 to 3.2 B in a couple of years, the SAS must be around 5.5B at least. Probably 6B. They only have around 2.7 billion in funding lined up. When is the other 3B going to come from? The MTA doesn’t even have enough money to protect us in the subway lines we have. No wonder Bloomberg didn’t show up for the groundbreaking for the SAS in April. He knew it was never going to happen.
The amount of the cost increase over a six-year period is about right. The original estimate wasn’t a lie. It was as accurate as could be done at that time.
Yeah no one back then could have predicted what’s happening to the economy and inflation now.
[…] designed to cover maintenance, upkeep and system-wide expansions from 2009-2014. The plan, as I noted yesterday, is substantially similar to the broad the MTA presented to the public in November and would allow […]
The federal government was running large deficits in times of growth, and the Fed had low interest rates in order to sustain the mortgage boom. The last time this happened was in the 1960s, and by 1969 there was already stagflation.
The official definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.