John Petro
Mayor Bloomberg Shortchanging Mass Transit
In August, Mayor Bloomberg released his crowd-pleasing plan to "reform mass transit" as part of his third-term election push. The plan is full of good ideas that just about every New Yorker can support. Things like express train service to Coney Island, free cross-town buses, and countdown clocks in the subway would improve the commutes of millions of daily transit riders.
The only problem? The Mayor doesn't control any of that.
What the Mayor does control is the city's capital budget. The capital budget is huge--$60 billion dollars over ten years. It includes a wide range of different city capital needs, like school construction and rehabilitation, expansion and repair of the sewer and water systems, and housing preservation and development. It also includes money for mass transit, but not nearly enough.
The Mayor's capital budget allocates a measly $60 million a year toward mass transit. This equals about one percent of the MTA's capital budget, which is much less than the city has allocated to the MTA in the past. Historically, the city's contributions equaled about ten percent of the MTA's capital budget.
The MTA has said that it needs about $100 million every year from the city to support the transit system's program of rehabilitation and expansion. Why is the Mayor shortchanging the city's mass transit system? If the Mayor is keen to improve mass transit in New York City, he should begin by making a larger commitment from the city's huge capital budget.
From 2005-2009, the city was contributed much more to the MTA. But that money went towards the #7 line extension, a project that will be a huge boon for real estate developer Related Companies. The #7 line will be extended to the Hudson Yards on Manhattan's far west side, where Related Companies has plans to build office and condo towers. (This is the same Related Companies that refuses to pay living wages at the Kingsbridge Armory redevelopment in the Bronx). Meanwhile, communities in the outer boroughs continue to deal with rapid population increases and inadequate levels of service.
I've argued before that Albany and the federal government need to step up to the plate to fund long-term investments in the city's mass transit system. For New York City to meet its full potential, we need to expand and improve our current levels of mass transit service. The federal government has prioritized highway and road projects over transit projects, and the Mayor, as well as the state's Congressional delegation, need to lobby Congress for a more significant contribution to New York City's mass transit system. After all, New York is the center of the largest metropolitan economy in the country and mass transit is the backbone of that economy. With the city's economy so vital to the financial health of the state, Albany should be doing more to support the MTA. But the Mayor also needs to get his priorities in order. The city will be devoting $8.9 billion to roads and bridges over the next ten years, but less than one-tenth that amount to transit. In a city where most people don't drive, these priorities seem out of whack.
We need a larger commitment from all levels of government for mass transit in New York City. There is only so much Mayor Bloomberg can do about Albany and DC. The city's capital budget, however, is under his direct control.
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Posted at 3:01 PM, Sep 02, 2009 in Transporation | Urban Affairs
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Comments
Bloomberg not only shortchanges the MTA when he refuses to fund it, but also when he refuses to cooperate with Albany politicians in funding it. His style of negotiation is offensive and arrogant, and can only go anywhere when he bribes the other side. When he can't, his position becomes toxic: thus, congestion pricing had 15 votes in the State Assembly when he proposed it, compared with a majority when the Ravitch report proposed it.
Posted by: Alon Levy | September 2, 2009 06:22 PM
But that is part of the Mayors plan, to give more power to the city council when it comes to decision making in regard to the MTA. Bloomberg believes that the city should have the majority vote on the MTA council board. The Mayor is hoping that if re-elected he can garner more power to the office over the transit system, and in so doing cut a lot of what he feels is wasteful spending and then pump that money back into the system, that is where the mayor expects to get the extra $40 million dollars. The problem is not the Mayor, it is the MTA itself. As NYC residents we are the majority of the stats mass transit users, but we are only represented by a 23% vote when it comes to decision making regarding our mass transit. The Mayor wishes to give us a stronger voice when it comes to mass transit in our city.
Posted by: Jeremy Rishe | September 2, 2009 10:30 PM
Jeremy, you're not really addressing the issue, which is that Bloomberg is underfunding real transit priorities in order to pay for vanity projects and vote buying. You said it best with the sentence fragment, "The Mayor is hoping that if re-elected he can garner more power." There's no need to continue that sentence further - this is exactly right: what Bloomberg wants is more power for Bloomberg. He's New York City's own Chávez or Uribe.
Posted by: Alon Levy | September 3, 2009 02:20 AM
If the city contributed 10 percent of the MTA's capital budget, that would be $500 million a year. What project(s) would you like to see prioritized with that kind of money?
Posted by: John Petro | September 3, 2009 11:09 AM
I can't say precisely because I'm not sure what the item cost of each project is. But I'd put a shortlist consisting of Second Avenue Subway, CBTC on all lines, and speeding up station repairs and full ADA accessibility (say, with a target completion year of 2025; the current schedule only calls for 100 accessible stations by 2020). I'd give $0 to the 7 extension. I'd add the Triboro Rx project and some complementary light rail lines running down important crosstown corridors such as 125th and Fordham, but only if they can be done cheaply.
Where someone with Bloomberg or Ravitch's skill set could come in handy is investigating why MTA projects are so costly. Construction projects run over budget around the world, but when in Tokyo it was considered an outrage that the latest subway line cost $400 million per route-km, while in New york SAS is budgeted at $1.3 billion per route-km, something is wrong. It could be unavoidable, for example due to geology. But it could also be administrative waste, much like with US health care.
Posted by: Alon Levy | September 3, 2009 02:05 PM
The Mayor is not shortchanging the MTA at all. He's pretty much saying that the MTA needs to show their improvements if they want the city to fund their programs. First and foremost, they don't need to expand anymore. They need to do a much better job at maintaining the current system. The constant fare hikes in return for lack of service is unacceptable to the everyday commuters who take the subway to work every day to work, school, etc..
Its f#@%ing rediculous that they can't get their finance in order. It seems like every year they want to raise the fares because they're in the hole. Putting a bridge toll does make it more favorable to take the subway into Manhattan than driving at the expense of people who do not use the MTA. In business sense, that's a poor solution.
Here's a better solution, they should tighten their purses and wallets by canceling projects that are out budget, or are no longer feasible. They need to lower wages for new employees. At the current time, they pay more for their drunk conductors than we do for any other civil servant, your teachers, policeman, firefighters, etc... Change up their business model to include advertising dollars. Put advertisements on every MTA card that they sell. They need to try to sell advertisements more advertisements on subway, buses, and in the stations (although those are always prone to vandalism). Put advertisements on those booths if they have to.
The root of the problem is obviously their balance sheet, they need to put it check first and foremost.
Posted by: P. Nguyen | October 9, 2009 01:20 PM
Bloomberg is spending $2 billion of the city's money on the 7 extension. Clearly, he doesn't believe the MTA doesn't need more expansion - he just doesn't believe in expansion into areas he can't sell to friends of his for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Everything else you say would be a lot more convincing if you could name a single agency, anywhere in the world, which was improved by defunding it.
Posted by: Alon Levy | October 9, 2009 02:43 PM