New York’s Mass Transit Authority Has Made Progress and Still Has More Progress to Make Than It Has Made
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
The MTA at Mid-Decade: Better Than It Was, Worse Than It Should Be
NEW YORK, NY — The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has spent billions from its capital programme on signal upgrades, accessibility improvements, station renovations, and new rolling stock over the past several years. The results are measurable: the A/C/E line signal modernisation has reduced delays. The new open-gangway subway cars are operationally superior to the rolling stock they are replacing. Station accessibility improvements have added elevators that the Americans with Disabilities Act has required for decades and that the MTA has been slowly installing for decades. The subway is objectively better than it was five years ago on the dimensions where capital investment produces measurable improvement.
The subway is also objectively less good than the transit systems of cities that have invested more consistently over longer periods: Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Hong Kong, London. The comparison is not merely aspirational. It reflects the specific consequences of fifty years of capital deferred investment in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s when the MTA’s infrastructure was allowed to deteriorate to near-failure before the turnaround investment of the late 1990s and 2000s began the recovery that is still ongoing. The capital programme is addressing the consequences of the disinvestment. The disinvestment’s consequences are large.
What Congestion Pricing Funds
Congestion pricing revenue is funding the capital programme improvements that the MTA has been unable to fund through fare revenue and state allocation alone. The revenue is real and is being spent on the capital investments that the system requires. The political pressure to divert or reduce the congestion charge — from drivers who dislike paying it and from politicians representing outer-borough car-dependent constituencies — is also real and ongoing. London’s transit investment history shows what sustained capital commitment produces; managing transit infrastructure investment through the political cycles that threaten to interrupt it is the MTA’s perpetual challenge. The subway is improving. The improvement must continue. The pressure to reduce funding continues. The trains are running.