Transit Funding

There's $100 million for Bus Rapid Transit in the Assembly's budget proposal, and advocates are working to ensure the funds emerge intact from closed-door negotiations with Governor Cuomo and the State Senate.

It's easy to get annoyed with the MTA: Your train is slow and crowded, the station is dirty, the bus is late -- and to top it off, you just got hit with another fare hike. You're paying more for deteriorating service, and the only place to direct your anger is a faceless bureaucracy known as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Is there anyone responsible for this mess?

As Albany contemplates paying for the MTA capital program by borrowing as much as $15 billion, it's worth pausing to examine the debt load straphangers are already shouldering. To put it in perspective, the MTA carries more debt than Bolivia, Tanzania, and Luxembourg combined, according to numbers compiled by the Straphangers Campaign. The MTA owes more than at least 30 nations, including several with populations much larger than New York City.

It's state budget season! Governor Andrew Cuomo's executive budget is chock-a-block with raids of dedicated transit funds, questionable transfers, and toll cuts doled out as election-year favors. It's a mess that doesn't answer how the state will close the $15.2 billion gap in the MTA capital program.

At approximately 5 p.m. Monday, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that he had ordered the complete closure of New York City's bus and subway systems in the face of an oncoming snowstorm. If nothing else, it was a stark reminder that the transit system is not a political orphan. The MTA is, in fact, Cuomo's agency.

One of the looming questions as Governor Andrew Cuomo has unveiled his budget agenda over the past few days has been how he'll divvy up the $5.4 billion windfall the state has reaped from bank settlements. At the State of the State address this afternoon, Cuomo revealed that the biggest chunk of that money will go to the Thruway Authority so highway drivers don't have to pay higher tolls.

A day before his big statewide policy address, Governor Andrew Cuomo laid out his transportation and infrastructure agenda today at a Midtown breakfast hosted by the Association for a Better New York, a business group. This was not the speech where the governor finally laid out his plan to prevent runaway MTA debt, fix the traffic that is choking New York City's economy, and revive cities around the state by tearing out decrepit 20th century highways and redeveloping downtowns.

The MTA Reinvention Commission report, the product of months of work from a panel of experts, was unceremoniously dumped to the press by the governor's office at 5:30 p.m. yesterday, shortly before Thanksgiving. While the document [PDF] includes a number of worthwhile suggestions, it fails to seriously grapple with the biggest challenges facing New York's transit system. The MTA's astronomical construction costs and the substantial systemwide benefits of funding transit with road pricing get only cursory mentions. This is disappointing, but not surprising, since the report is a reflection of the man who created and controlled the commission: Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Andrew Cuomo may have won re-election, but New York was no exception to the national Republican wave in yesterday's elections. The GOP regained control of the State Senate, weakening its bond with the Independent Democratic Conference and keeping mainline Democrats in the minority. With last night's results, the landscape for transit and livable streets legislation in Albany has shifted.