Testimony: Gov Hochul’s Cancellation of Congestion Pricing Sabotages MTA’s 2025-29 Capital Plan Before It Even Starts
Re: Gov. Hochul’s Cancellation of Congestion Pricing
Sabotages MTA’s 2025-2029 Capital Plan Before It Even Starts
Will Show Need for Starting Congestion Pricing ASAP
Good morning. I am Rachael Fauss, Senior Policy Advisor for Reinvent Albany. We advocate for more transparent and accountable New York government.
We believe the MTA’s proposed 2025-29 capital plan, though very large, realistically reflects the huge backlog of projects needed to keep trains and buses rolling. The $68 billion price tag matches the mid-range cost estimate from the NYS Comptroller, yet still comes nowhere near the $106 billion in state of good repair needs identified by the Citizens Budget Commission.
Unfortunately, Governor Hochul’s derailment of congestion pricing severely sabotages both the current MTA capital plan and the massive 2025-2029 plan being voted on today – harming transit riders who depend on the system’s trains, buses, modern signals, and elevators to get around. The Governor still owes the MTA $19 billion for the 2020-24 plan – $2.5 billion in NYS capital funds, $15 billion from congestion pricing, and its associated $1.5 billion from federal matching funds – while the MTA is asking Albany for $33 billion in new tax revenues. The Governor’s transit math simply doesn’t add up without congestion pricing.
We thank the MTA for releasing information about how much closer to a state of good repair the 2025-29 plan gets the system. The new capital plan matches up proposed spending with the 20-year needs assessment through new, graphic representations of what will be left to repair when this plan is complete. We hope that the MTA soon publishes open data sets of the assessment data included in the capital plan, which we believe will help reinforce the urgent need for fully funding the MTA’s capital plans, including starting up congestion pricing.
Additionally, we look forward to hearing more today about the MTA’s plans to update its capital dashboard. The dashboard was first created in 2009 – 15 years ago – and just like the MTA’s other aging assets, it really needs an upgrade. We emphasize that an improved dashboard must be accompanied by better underlying open data to let the public see for themselves when projects will be completed, how they are funded, who will do the work – whether outside vendors or in-house MTA employees – and where they fall on the map of the MTA service area.
Thank you for your consideration.