MTA, Albany to Dig In Over Capital Plan

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With its latest fare and toll hike approved, leaders of New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority return their attention to the pressing need for a funded capital plan.

The massive transportation agency has proposed a $32 billion capital plan for 2015 through 2019, but is $15.2 billion short on identified funding with no visible progress toward closing that gap.

MTA Chairman Thomas Prendergast, pressed by reporters, keeps returning to the word "dialogue." The agency needs plan approval from officials and lawmakers in Albany. The state's Capital Program Review Board rejected the initial plan in October without prejudice.

The task of agreeing on and funding the MTA's capital plan is never easy.

Complicating matters even more this time is leadership chaos in Albany, following Thursday's arrest of state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver on federal corruption charges. Silver, a Democrat from Manhattan's Lower East Side and speaker since 1994, has been a major Albany power broker, part of the "three men in the room" leadership triumvirate that includes Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Senate President Dean Skelos, R-Rockville Centre.

Silver was the elephant in the room at MTA headquarters on Thursday, where the main event was the MTA board's approval of fare and toll hikes of 4%, spread over two years.

"I'm not going to comment on the speaker issue," said Prendergast, grimacing when asked about Assembly speaker's arrest.

Prendergast expressed confidence in getting the necessary support for the capital plan from Cuomo, who earlier in the week said the MTA, a state agency that operates the New York City subway system, commuter rail lines and inter-borough bridges, would receive $750 million in the plan to purchase 900 new subway cars and 1800 next-generation buses.

"He understands very well the link between infrastructure investment and the economy of New York," Prendergast said of Cuomo.

The MTA is one of the largest municipal issuers with about $34.1 billion of debt.

 "We have to keep an eye on how much we're debt-leveraged, no doubt about it," Prendergast told reporters. "It's something watched very carefully by people with financial acumen far better than I."

Dialogue with Albany will include a Feb. 2 joint meeting of the state Senate committees on transportation, and infrastructure and capital investment. The topic — "to examine the changes necessary to prevent annual operating deficits and stop the continuing cycle of increased fares and decreased services" — suggests a spirited go-round with lawmakers.

Even one of the Assembly's most ardent transit advocates within New York City's five boroughs, Democrat Phillip Goldfeder of Queens, suggested recently that state lawmakers are skeptical about handing the MTA "a blank check."

The MTA and transit backers, meanwhile, say the capital plan's expense is a drop in the bucket compared with its benefit to the region's economy. They also called for a regional solution.

"Like all priorities, you keep it in context. You have a $32 billion plan over five years. That's about $6 billion a year, compared with a $70 billion city budget and a $100 billion state budget," said Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. "The capital plan includes $1.5 billion for expansion. This is close to what we pay for pre-K students. Nobody says we have to stop funding schools because we're not getting good results."

Calls are more widespread for New York City, the biggest beneficiary of the subway system, to pony up more.

The city's contribution to the MTA's first five-year capital plan, from 1982-1986, averaged $136 million a year but has stagnated at around $100 million per year since 2000, according to a study the Independent Budget Office watchdog organization released Thursday.

Had the city's contribution been kept at the 1982-1986 level in real, inflation-adjusted terms, the contribution would have reached $363 million in 2014 and provided more than $1.8 billion for the proposed capital plan, the IBO report said.

Gene Russianoff, an attorney and chief spokesman with the Straphangers Campaign subway ridership lobbying group, asked IBO to undertake the study.

"The city should do better," Russianoff told the MTA board on Thursday. Addressing board member and city transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg, he added: "Go back and tell the mayor that transit is just as important as affordable housing or building a 'more likeable city.' "

Elliot "Lee" Sander, who chaired the MTA from 2007 to 2009, expects Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration to be receptive.

"There's recognition among the mayor's senior staff that the city should contribute more," he said recently.

The MTA may also have to fight for funding priority with enormous transportation infrastructure projects that are outside or not exclusively in the MTA's domain, including Cuomo's proposed $450 million LaGuardia Airport AirTrain that would connect from the No. 7 subway line at Willets Point in Queens, running along Grand Central Parkway.

"It's been a high-profile issue for more than 20 years," admitted Prendergast. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey would run the service in conjunction with the MTA.

Goldfeder, while praising the AirTrain concept for his borough, repeated his call for restoring the Rockaway Beach line between Forest Hills and Ozone Park, to create a north-south transit option in Queens. "We must take advantage of the infrastructure already in place," he said.

Major MTA capital projects now under way include the extension of the No. 7 line to the West Side, East Side access for Long Island Rail Road trains into Grand Central Terminal, and the Second Avenue subway line. The authority in 2014 completed the $1.4 billion redesign and renovation of the Fulton Center transit hub in Lower Manhattan.

"The new danger is that the expansion projects are no longer on autopilot," said Gelinas. "I would be concerned about cost-cutting on the next phase of the Second Avenue subway." She sees the Second Avenue subway as filling a major transit need on the East Side of Manhattan, alleviating congestion on the Lexington Avenue corridor.

East Side access for the Long Island Railroad to a cavern deep under Grand Central Terminal, far less compelling or useful to residents within the five boroughs of New York, had a major political champion in former U.S. Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, a Long Islander.

"East Side access sucks up way too much money," said Gelinas.

In addition, she said, other project champions are no longer around, including former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who linked the No. 7 extension with his failed proposal for the city to host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.

Silver was among the leading advocates for Second Avenue subway. His leadership, not to mention his freedom, is now in question.

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