Transit Funding
Streetsblog Basics
Jay Walder Came to the MTA With a Plan to Improve Transit. Will Joe Lhota?
Any moment now, Governor Andrew Cuomo is expected to announce that Joe Lhota, the former budget director and deputy mayor for Rudy Giuliani, will be the next chairman of the MTA. There will be a press conference and press releases -- a singular opportunity for Cuomo and Lhota to put forward their vision for the transit agency.
October 20, 2011
Labor, Elected Officials and Community Groups Rally For Transit Lockbox
Dozens of transit workers, transportation advocates and elected officials rallied on the steps of City Hall this morning to urge Governor Cuomo to sign the transit lockbox bill, which passed both houses of the legislature unanimously in June. "New York communities are not standing alone," said TWU Local 100 President John Samuelsen. "Transit workers are not standing alone. We're standing together."
September 20, 2011
Fitch Downgrades MTA Debt — Interest Payments May Eat More of Your Fare
Yesterday, we reported on the MTA's ever-mounting debt load. By 2014, a new analysis from the Regional Plan Association found, debt service could be taking up a full 23 percent of the agency's operating budget.
September 8, 2011
Where Does Your Fare Go? Increasingly, To Pay Off MTA Debt
In 2003, labor costs dominated the MTA's budget sheets. Just under 73 percent of the transit agency's operating budget, which pays for day-to-day spending but not system expansions or major repairs, went to workers, according to a new analysis by the Regional Plan Association and the Empire State Transportation Alliance. By 2014, however, labor's share of operating expenses will have fallen to only 53 percent.
September 7, 2011
Recession Forcing Cutbacks at Nearly 80 Percent of U.S. Transit Agencies
How bad have the past two years been for transit agencies in the United States? In a word: bad. In two words: very bad.
August 17, 2011
Broad Coalition Urges Cuomo to Enact Transit Lockbox
If not for Albany's theft of $260 million in dedicated transit tax revenues over the past two years, the sweeping service cuts enacted by the MTA in 2010 might have been avoided. Transit riders can't afford a repeat. With the MTA on track to take on even more debt, squeezing its operating budget for years to come, the transit system needs to retain all the funding that's supposed to go toward transit.
August 15, 2011
Q-Poll: NYC Residents Want More Funds For MTA By Nearly 2-1 Margin
The idea of increasing state funding for the MTA is popular in New York City, according to a new Quinnipiac poll released yesterday. Looking at the MTA service region -- NYC plus its suburbs -- more people want to see additional funding going to transit. Statewide, support for increased MTA funding is slightly lower than opposition, but that may not matter much: In recent legislative battles over transit funding, upstate representatives have deferred to representatives from the NYC region.
August 12, 2011
Cutting “Waste and Inefficiency” Won’t Eliminate the MTA’s Budget Problems
Last week, the city's Independent Budget Office released a report on the MTA's revenue structure [PDF] which has been getting a bit of play. At Second Avenue Sagas, Ben Kabak focused on the report's main thesis: that the volatility of dedicated taxes and fees threatens the financial stability of the transit agency. Steven Higashide of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign picked out a graph showing that the recently enacted payroll mobility tax already makes up 30 percent of all dedicated revenues, or around one-eighth of all operating revenue.
August 10, 2011
Remembering Hugh Carey, the Man Who Saved New York’s Transit System
Hugh Carey, governor of New York from 1975 to 1982, died yesterday at the age of 92. Even in an office held by the likes of Al Smith, Franklin Roosevelt, Nelson Rockefeller and Mario Cuomo, Carey was a giant; Mayor Ed Koch, who served at the same time as Carey, called him the greatest governor of the modern era.
August 8, 2011
Funding Assumptions in MTA Capital Program Already Look Like Fantasies
The MTA capital budget is risky enough as advertised: It requires putting $7 billion of repairs and system expansions on transit riders' credit card. But the total tab may end up being much bigger, because in addition to billions in borrowing, the funding plan relies on a series of highly optimistic assumptions. Just one week after the budget was released, those assumptions look increasingly shaky.
August 4, 2011