July 2024
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 economic engine of the entire tri-state area. But the MTA’s reach extends far beyond the metropolitan region, with the authority spending nearly $35 billion on payments to companies located throughout New York, New Jersey and Connecticut from 2014-2023.
Our comprehensive analysis of the amount spent by the MTA on vendors throughout New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut emphasizes the damaging effect of canceling congestion pricing which, as reported by the New York Times, puts 100,000 jobs at risk (see our June 2024 analysis). We hope that readers—including policy-makers, urban planners, and transit advocates—will find the district-specific fact sheets helpful in understanding the local implications of Governor Hochul’s decision to “indefinitely pause” congestion pricing.
Previously, Reinvent Albany published details of the MTA spending on companies in New York State (November 2023), New Jersey (June 2023) and across the United States (June 2020).
The MTA’s $51.5 billion Capital Plan for 2020-2024 will revamp the transit authority’s infrastructure. ($51.5 billion represents the NYCT, LIRR, MNR and MTA Buses component of the plan; an additional $3.3 billion is self-financed by Bridges & Tunnels.) Funded in large part by congestion pricing—making up 29% 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 region.
Labor: Reinvent Albany’s recent analysis shows that $3.2 billion – 21% of the total $15 billion raised by congestion pricing – would fund in-house capital work done by MTA workers, largely represented by TWU Local 100. In total, 7,300 workers are reimbursed by the MTA’s capital plans each year, and a portion of these jobs are at risk.
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.
The charts presented below show complete MTA vendor payments for each congressional district in NY, NJ and CT, and each NYS senate and assembly district from 2014-2023. These expenditures not only reflect the MTA’s work to maintain and improve transit infrastructure and service, but also underscore the economic impact of such spending on local and state economies.
Each bar chart is plotted on a logarithmic scale. The vertical axes indicate the amount spent on vendors, measured in millions.
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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 years 2022 and 2023. 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 in NY, 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. For vendors without direct matches in NJ and CT, vendors with the largest number of transactions had addresses similarly manually searched and verified.
Subsequently, these identified addresses underwent precise geocoding via the ArcGIS Geocoding Service. Transactions without detailed addresses were geocoded at the zip code centroid.
District maps are based on those that will take effect after the 2024 elections; current incumbents are listed.
See also our datasheet of the top 105 vendors by NYS, NJ, and CT congressional districts, and NYS Assembly and Senate districts for incumbents currently in office as of June 2024.
