MTA Chief Weighs in on Next Capital Plan

As the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s five-year capital plan comes to an end this year, the agency is facing tough questions about what to prioritize in its next capital plan—not to mention how it will be funded.

Two key elements that the next capital program will have to address are climate change and the transit system’s 20-year needs assessment, said Thomas Prendergast, the MTA’s chairman and CEO.

“In the current capital program, we never knew Sandy was going to hit us in the middle of the capital program, and yet we’re seeing the most extensive amount of rebuilding due to damage done to the system, on top of the capital program,” Prendergast said at City & State’s “State of New York Infrastructure” conference on Thursday.

Earlier this month Gov. Andrew Cuomo called for the creation of a “Transportation Reinvention Commission” made up of “international transportation experts” who would hold hearings and submit recommendations before the MTA’s capital plan is submitted in September. In a May 7 letter to Prendergast, Cuomo cited the impact of climate change as well as a changing and growing customer base.

“While past capital plans have focused on maintaining and expanding the existing MTA network, New York needs the MTA to develop a reinvention plan to make our subways and our entire transit system ready for the challenges of the next century,” Cuomo said in a statement.

At the conference Thursday Prendergast noted that the MTA had made progress since its first capital plan in the 1980s, when the system was plagued by track fires, old subway cars and frequent breakdowns. The agency spent some $90 billion in the first four capital programs, focusing first on returning to a state of good repair and ensuring safety and reliability and then expanding with projects like the Second Avenue Subway, East Side Access and the No. 7 extension.

But there is still plenty of work to be done, Prendergast acknowledged. Many of the subway system's signals rely on outdated technology, stations are run down and overcrowded and capacity is strained on many lines. Moreover, younger riders who don’t remember the low point in the 1980s have much higher expectations than previous generations.

“The Millennials’ expectations are really things that we thought were luxuries when we first rode the system, but they think are entitlements—and they are our customers,” Prendergast said. “They are a growing customer base. Countdown clocks in stations, more timely information, improved technology is not a want, it’s a need. And the reinvention commission that the governor has asked us to do is to make sure we go beyond a state of good repair, deal with climate change, deal with those new needs.”

Asked about how the MTA could increase its revenues to pay for some of the needed maintenance and expansion work, Prendergast pointed out that federal dollars are increasingly hard to come by. But he walked through the steps other cities have taken to successfully secure more funding for mass transit, whether it is through congestion pricing or other new tolling systems.

“If you talk to people that have gone down that path, they will tell you a couple things: Do an exhaustive look at what the revenue sources are, make sure you fully communicate to people what the impact to them will be in terms of going into their pocket, but what promises you’re going to make in terms of what the output is they’re going to see—because people don’t mind taking money as long as they see a return on the investment,” Prendergast said. “And the other thing they say is be resilient in your charge. You will most likely not get the dialogue right the first time. You will not vote up what you want to have done the first time. You have to be persistent.”