The MTA Is Big Business for New York

MTA Spent $26 Billion on Vendors Located Throughout NYS

November 2023

Explore the Fact Sheets

New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) serves millions of transit riders every day, ensuring that they can get to work, school, and other hubs of activity, and enabling the NYC metropolitan region to be the state’s economic engine. But the MTA’s reach extends far beyond the metropolitan region, with the authority spending nearly $26 billion on payments to companies located throughout the state from 2014-2022. Previously, Reinvent Albany published details of the MTA spending on companies in New Jersey (June 2023) and across the United States (June 2020).

Our comprehensive analysis of the amount spent by the MTA on vendors statewide emphasizes the future role of congestion pricing as a contributor to the state’s economy beyond New York City. We hope that readers—including policy-makers, urban planners, and transit advocates—will find this information helpful in understanding the far-reaching implications of the MTA’s spending in specific NYS assembly, senate, and congressional districts.

Key Findings

• The MTA spent $26 billion on vendors statewide from 2014-2022.
  
• Every single senate and congressional district within New York State has companies receiving MTA payments; 147 of the 150 state assembly districts (98%) are recipients of MTA spending.
  
• MTA’s $55 Billion 2020-2024 Capital Plan, partly financed by congestion pricing, is a massive investment in the MTA’s buses, subways, and commuter railroads that will benefit companies throughout the state who do business with the MTA.
  
• Congestion pricing will improve air quality, reduce traffic congestion, save time worth billions to people and businesses, fund crucial transit projects, and create thousands of good jobs with MTA vendors throughout the state.
  

Visualizing MTA Spending Across New York Districts

The 2020-2024 Capital Plan

A $55 Billion Investment Fueled by Congestion Pricing

The MTA’s $55 billion Capital Plan for 2020-2024 will revamp the transit authority’s infrastructure. Financed in part by congestion pricing—making up 27% of its funding, the single largest source—this ambitious Capital Plan embodies New York’s commitment to improving the subways, buses, and commuter railroads, as well as the resilience of our infrastructure, and sustained economic growth.

Congestion pricing’s benefits go well beyond traffic reduction; the program also bears broader economic and environmental implications. The revenue generated supports MTA capital projects, which feed back into businesses across the state.

Read The Capital Plan

Read Our 2-Year Update

Benefits of Congestion Pricing

Labor: Reinvent Albany’s recent analysis shows that $3.2 billion – 21% of the total $15 billion raised by congestion pricing – will fund in-house capital work done by MTA workers, largely represented by TWU Local 100.

Community Revitalization: Less traffic has the potential to lead to pedestrian-friendly zones, enhancing local businesses.

Equitable Transit Access: Funds are directly invested into transit projects across the metropolitan region, aiding marginalized communities, and promoting equitable transit access.

Environmental Benefits: Cleaner air and safer streets contribute to New York City’s appeal.

Understanding the influence of MTA spending is indispensable for stakeholders, who range from policymakers and urban planners to seasoned transit advocates. The agency’s capital projects, funded by congestion pricing, will result in hiring of numerous companies throughout New York State. The MTA vendor data in the charts below underscores how the MTA’s fiscal decisions impact communities and industries far beyond New York City’s borders.

Examining MTA Spending in Key Investment Districts

The pie charts presented below show the total value of payments made by the MTA to vendors in the congressional, senate, and assembly districts with the most payments from 2014-2022. In each district, the charts break down the percentage of spending attributed to the top five vendors, with a dedicated segment representing the collective contribution of all other vendors. The charts aim to help stakeholders better understand which companies are the biggest players at the local level.

Methodology

Vendor data obtained from the Open NY Data Portal (see here and here) was cleansed and integrated by deduplicating names and addresses, using alphabetical and zip code sorting while rectifying spelling errors, business aliases, and changes due to mergers or acquisitions. Address information was confined to the year 2022. Post-deduplication, these addresses were integrated into the 2014-2021 records based on matching vendor names and zip codes, under the premise that vendors operate a single location per zip code.

For vendors without direct matches, particularly those with cumulative transactions exceeding $1 million, encompassing 300 vendors and 354 vendor-zip code combinations, a manual search was conducted. This process involved verifying addresses through Google and commercial datasets, such as Dun & Bradstreet and Yellow Pages, successfully pinpointing addresses for 329 pairs.

Subsequently, these identified addresses underwent precise geocoding via the ArcGIS Geocoding Service for 32,172 transactions (85.8%), which represent $25.3 billion (98.4% of the transaction value). Remaining transactions without detailed addresses were geocoded at the zip code centroid, covering 5,312 transactions (14.2%), equivalent to $415 million (1.6% of the transaction value).

See also our datasheet of the top 5 vendors by assembly, senate, and congressional district.