New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority expects to reveal the price tag for its so-called Fast Forward modernization initiative "within a couple of weeks," according to its architect.
The timing is essential with MTA, state and city budget cycles and the authority's 2020 to 2024 capital program request coming up, said Andy Byford, president of the MTA's New York City Transit unit.
Speaking to the MTA board's transit and bus committee on Monday, Byford said he spent the summer lobbying for better funding for the state-run authority, which operates the city's subways and buses, Long Island and Metro-North commuter railroads, and several bridges and tunnels.
"Having the plan is one thing. Getting the money is quite the other," Byford said.
The MTA is one of the largest municipal issuers with roughly $40 billion in debt. The authority's quest for reliable funding sources has long intermingled with city-state political bickering and the glare of the capital markets.
S&P Global Ratings in August downgraded the MTA for the second time in five months, lowering both the authority's issuer credit rating and transportation revenue bond rating to A from A-plus. The outlook is negative.
The MTA’s outstanding debt is 2.5 times its total projected revenue for 2018, according to S&P, which said it could further downgrade the MTA within two years if it still lacks a sustainable funding source for capital needs.
Meanwhile, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio are feuding over how much the city should contribute to the state-run MTA. Actress Cynthia Nixon campaigned heavily on the transit mess while challenging Cuomo in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, but Cuomo still won by 30 percentage points.
Last week, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson said the city should consider reclaiming the MTA, which the state assumed in 1968. He also suggested the city could enact its own Manhattan congestion-pricing plan, an initiative that could generate billions for mass transit and which has stalled in the state legislature.
Johnson's remarks at New York Law School triggered a sarcastic reply from Cuomo.
"He wants to be a train conductor now, Corey Johnson?" the governor said. "I thought he just became speaker."
Richard Ravitch, who chaired the MTA in the early 1980s and crafted the authority's initial five-year capital plan, called de Blasio and Cuomo immature.
"The whole fight between de Blasio and Cuomo is childish, in my judgment," Ravitch said. "And the city has caved too much. I don't think the city's responsible to finance it.
Ravitch called congestion pricing "a terrible way of financing the MTA. If the city wants to have congestion pricing it should do so, and the revenue should be used to support the city's infrastructure.
"The city's infrastructure ain't in good shape, either," he said.
Separately, the city's Department of Transportation is weighing options for overhauling a 1.5-mile stretch of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, using design-build project delivery. DOT has scheduled a 6:30 p.m. hearing Thursday at the National Grid auditorium in downtown Brooklyn for the project, which could take six years and cost roughly $3.5 billion.
Byford told board members that his Fast Forward plan has made some initial headway, but he still needs time.
"Work is happening all across the system," said Byford, who on Tuesday announced the hiring of 30 group station managers. "[But] You just can't click your finger and undo decades of underinvestment," he told board members. "It's still the same, old equipment. I saw a signal tower in Brooklyn the other day that belongs in a museum."
