As many officials from New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority spent last week averting a Long Island Rail Road strike, others at the agency's Madison Avenue headquarters were thinking long-term.
The 28-member Transportation Reinvention Commission, which Gov. Andrew Cuomo formed and is separate from the MTA's board of directors, discussed over three days everything from the authority's pending capital plan to more visionary concepts.
Talking points included changing outer-borough demographics, innovative technology, public-private partnerships and a possible tri-state regional tax to offset escalating debt.
The MTA, a state agency that is one of the biggest municipal bond issuers with $34 billion of debt, operates New York City's subway system, LIRR and Metro-North Railroad, seven bridges and two tunnels. It must submit its 2015-2019 capital plan to Cuomo and Albany legislative leaders by Oct. 1. The plan funds infrastructure, from routine repair of trains to megaprojects such as the Second Avenue subway and East Side access for LIRR trains.
The Reinvention Commission expects to complete its report by mid-September. The next meeting of the regular MTA committees and board is July 28.
Future capital plans may also involve a push-pull between maintaining state-of-good-repair needs for a traditional hub-and-spoke system that funnels riders into midtown and lower Manhattan, and new transportation modes that reflect job growth in outer boroughs.
"We may have a dramatically different city a few decades out," said Richard Anderson, New York Building Congress president and a commission member.
Advocates spoke about changing commuter trends such as Staten Islanders to Brooklyn and New Jersey, notably Newark-Liberty International Airport; Bronx residents to Westchester and LaGuardia Airport in Queens; the emergence of technology hubs in Long Island City in Queens, downtown Brooklyn, and that borough's Williamsburg neighborhood; and the ridership spike on subway lines such as the once-nondescript L, which runs from Manhattan's Chelsea to Brooklyn's Canarsie.
"The East Flatbush section of Brooklyn is primarily residential and has three hospitals that employ about 25,000 people. The subway is a half-mile away," said David Giles, research director for the Center for an Urban Future, a think tank that in March called for $47 billion in capital spending to shore up the region's overall crumbling infrastructure. "People get around there in a completely haphazard, chaotic kind of way."
Others advocated north-south rail in Queens, the resumption of north shore rail service on Staten Island, expanded use of ferries and even an integrated commuter rail-subway line system, akin to the RER (Réseau Express Régional) in Paris, using Penn Station as a pass-through. Visionaries tout a No. 7 train that someday could reach Lautenberg Station in Secaucus, N.J.
New York State Transportation Commissioner Joan McDonald urged scrutiny beyond the headline grabbers.
"Attention needs to focus on the rest of the capital plan. How are we to scale these projects?," she said. "Is the seven-year tie replacement cycle still the right cycle? Are we pushing manufacturers for a longer useful life? How are we planning for technology that's so rapidly changing?
"When we look at P3s, we look at the megaprojects, not the small stations and what the communities around them are doing," McDonald said. "Things like tax credits need to be part of the process."
Less dependence on state and federal funding was a major commission talking point during the week. First Deputy Mayor Anthony Shorris and Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg spoke on behalf of New York City, touting better integration of transit projects with Mayor Bill de Blasio's affordable housing initiative and economic development initiatives.
The city partnered with the MTA to fund the extension of the No. 7 subway line to 34th Street and 11th Avenue at the Hudson Yards complex. Two months ago, de Blasio announced a strategy to provide for more high-rise office space around Grand Central Terminal while requiring developers to help fund transit bottleneck remediation.
Policy wonks call it "value capture," snaring some of the value that transit confers to adjacent properties to fund transit infrastructure improvements around stations.
The city's actual contributions to the MTA capital program, though, have remained stagnant for nearly 20 years after a sharp cut in the early 1990s and amount to about 2% of MTA capital spending.
Joshua Schank, president and chief executive for the think tank Eno Center for Transportation, suggested the city would be better off with a stronger role in MTA operations.
"With MTA, there's an outsized state role," said Schank, who thinks an Oregon-style regional commuter tax based on vehicle miles traveled and dedicated to transit could lessen dependence on political whims, although he admitted getting New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to concur on such a tax could be more difficult.
Cuomo and his predecessor, David Paterson, have raided so-called MTA lockbox accounts to balance the state's general fund.
Early in the spring, former city transportation commissioner "Gridlock Sam" Schwartz proposed a toll swap that he said could bring in $1.5 billion annually for infrastructure. East River bridge crossings, now free, would be tolled and drivers entering the central business district south of 60th Street in Manhattan would be tolled at the levels matching those on the Brooklyn-Battery and Queens-Midtown tunnels.
Tolls on all other MTA bridges, such as Verrazano-Narrows and Throgs Neck, would drop by as much as 50%, thus giving outer-borough drivers more of a break.
"Revenue based on how many times a driver goes over a bridge is antiquated," said Schank.
"Antiquated" came up before the commission in several contexts, relating to the authority's governance, fare-collection and communication systems and employee training.
"Kenya has a more modern fare-collection system," said Schank.
Robert Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association, cited worldwide systems that are out front regarding storm protection. "London, Tokyo and Singapore are moving ahead with very strong coastal protection systems," he said.
