N.Y. MTA Chief: Shorting Capital Plan Would Hurt Expansion

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A reduced capital plan for 2015 to 2019 could affect expansion projects such as the Second Avenue subway line, the chairman of New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority told lawmakers in Albany on Monday.

Thomas Prendergast urged members of the state Senate joint committees on transportation, and infrastructure and investment to fully fund the proposed $32.1 billion program, which has a $15.2 billion shortfall. The state Capital Program Review Board rejected the plan without prejudice last fall.

The plan calls for $7 billion in bonding, said chief financial officer Robert Foran, who appeared with Prendergast along with other agency chiefs.

“We have to protect the core of state of good repair, which is $22 billion,” said Prendergast. The MTA is one of the largest municipal issuers with $34.1 billion of debt. State of good repair essentially is jargon for basic maintenance.

Prendergast said the first expansion plan to feel the pinch would be Phase II of Second Avenue, construction of which is intended to ease congestion.

According to Prendergast, aside from the $22 billion needed to keep the existing system running, about $3 billion of the plan is for bridges and tunnels, which is self-funded through toll collections. The remainder, roughly $4 billion each, is split between enhancements, such as countdown clocks and a positive train control safety system, and expansion.

Halting the East Side access project would force the MTA to refund money already spent, said Prendergast. East Side access will enable Long Island Rail Road trains to enter Grand Central Terminal.

Foran said the state is providing about $1 billion in new state funding toward the capital plan and the MTA’s operating budget.

Sen. Brad Hoylman, D-Manhattan, suggested that the MTA could tap still-unallocated money from New York State’s $5 billion settlement from major financial firms. “We’re not exploring all the revenue options that we could be in order to lower that gap,” he said.

Suburban and upstate lawmakers urged the MTA to budget for safety.

“People are scared to a certain extent,” state Rep. Carl Marcellino, R-Syosset.

Last month, six passengers were killed when a Metro-North Railroad train collided with a sport utility vehicle at a grade crossing in Valhalla, N.Y., north of New York City. Additionally, four people died on Dec. 1, 2013, when a speeding Metro-North train derailed near the Spuyten Duyvil station near the Bronx.

Prendergast, noting the “overspeeding consideration” and a sleep-apnea condition on the part of the Spuyten Duyvil operator, said Metro-North and other MTA units have begun screening employees for such conditions.

Previously, MTA has sometimes received capital funding in two-year increments from Albany. This time, “it could be that model, could be another model,” Prendergast told reporters last week.

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Transportation industry New York
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