MTA chairman Janno Lieber stated he will not quit in the wake of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s surprise decision to halt congestion pricing, which has left the transportation agency with a $15 billion funding shortfall for modernization efforts.
“I am the patron saint of challenging projects and challenging causes. It’s not in my nature to walk or to quit,” Lieber said in his first remarks to the public following the Democratic governor’s U-turn. “People did a lot of hard work in hard times and I couldn’t justify walking out”.
The MTA had plenty of significant building projects scheduled to update New York City’s transport system using funds from congestion pricing prior to the governor’s reversal, which Lieber said he only knew about a day in advance. For instance, it intended to spend in building wheelchair-accessible subway elevators, electrifying its bus fleet, updating train signals from the Great Depression, and extending the Second Avenue Subway to 125th Street.
According to Lieber, in order to prevent the aging system from collapsing (as it already did during the “summer of hell” of 2017), the MTA will now need to “reprioritize and shrink” its capital plan and concentrate instead on essential “state-of-good-repair” maintenance.
As a result, Lieber has given Tim Mulligan, the deputy chief development officer of the MTA, the task of creating a progress report on the agency’s ability to implement the reduction of its capital program, which he will provide at the upcoming MTA Board meeting on June 26.
Currently, fewer than 30% of subway stations are accessible; however, the MTA intended to make 39 subway stations and 9 LIRR stations accessible with money from congestion pricing.
Hochul’s action also hampers the MTA’s future plans to update its system, since it effectively increases the cost of capital investment. Bonds are used to finance large building projects, and the $1 billion in yearly revenue from congestion pricing was intended to support a $15 billion bond issuance to finance the government’s top development goals. According to S&P, the move may cause the MTA’s bond rating to decline, which would force it to borrow money at higher interest rates and ultimately spend more to finish major projects.
