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The MTA is under pressure to spend big on New York’s infrastructure

A report suggests the bill could be around $115 billion

9/16/24 10:47AM

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is under a lot of pressure at the moment, and not just from disgruntled New Yorkers who’ve suffered another hellish commute. The authority will declare its capital budget for the 2025-2029 period by October 1, and two separate reports have called on the agency to cough up as much as $115 billion over 5 years to get NY’s public transport back on track.

The $115 billion estimate comes from the Citizens Budget Commission (CBC), an independent fiscal watchdog. Meanwhile, a report from the state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli last week suggested that the MTA needs anywhere between $57.8 billion and $92.2 billion to cover the costs of replacing old units, expanding the network, and improving accessibility — or (as the president of the CBC put it) “the basics”. Both analyses suggested that the MTA could struggle to meet those financial thresholds, even with potential revenue from New York’s paused congestion pricing plan taken into account.

Travel money

For the 2020-2024 Capital Program, which was approved shortly before Covid struck the US in earnest, the MTA pledged to invest nearly $55 billion into the region’s subways, buses, railroads, and bridges/tunnels.

According to the authority’s capital commitment figures in the years since, however, it will have fallen short of that target by the time it publishes plans for the coming period next month.

Despite committing a record $11.4 billion in 2022 to revamp some of the busiest transit systems in the Western world, the MTA’s spending has slumped in the years since, dropping to $8 billion in 2023, and just $2.9 billion planned for this year. Interestingly, the agency reportedly claimed that the 2024 goal would have been $12 billion, were it not for pending litigation around the now-halted congestion pricing.

Meeting budget might be even harder in the post-pandemic world too. Indeed, passenger usage of New York City’s public transport remains subdued relative to pre-2020: subway daily ridership was just over the 3 million mark last week, nowhere near the 5+ million in 2019.

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According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, President Trump was ready to put Blackwell chips on the negotiating table for his meeting with Chinese President Xi to seek relief from China’s decision to block crucial rare earth exports to the US.

But according to the report, Trump advisers presented a unified front and were able to dissuade him from giving up the most powerful chips to China at the last minute. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer were among those opposed to the chip deal. After the meeting, Trump said he did not talk with Xi about Nvidia’s “super duper” chips.

Reportedly those opposed to the deal cited national security concerns, as well as wanting to keep a competitive edge as China seeks to challenge the US’s current dominance of the AI industry.

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OK, so when was the longest shutdown in US history?

The US government officially shut down at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday after senators failed to agree on a last-minute funding bill. Though initially shrugging off the threat of a shutdown during yesterday’s session, stocks were mildly in the red on Wednesday as investors reacted to what is now the 11th shutdown in the government’s history.

Until this latest shutdown, there had been 20 government funding gaps experienced since 1976 — though not all ended in a full shutdown, with full closure averted in half of those cases.

Indeed, prior to the 1980s, funding gaps didn’t typically have major effects on government operations, with agencies continuing to operate on the basis that the funding would come eventually. However, a more stringent interpretation of the rules led to a stricter appropriations process from the early 1980s onward, with many subsequent funding gaps resulting in a shutdown of affected agencies (unless the gaps were quickly fixed or occurred over a weekend).

Obviously, the duration of the latest shutdown is still unclear, but it will continue until Congress passes a funding bill — most likely via a “continuing resolution,” which has ended every shutdown since 1990. Data analyzed by USAFacts suggest that it might not be a one- or two-day affair, as funding gaps have lengthened in recent years.

Government shutdown patterns — Sherwood News

Indeed, the last shutdown, which began in December 2018, ended up becoming the longest in history, at a whopping 34 days. By the time the government reopened in January 2019, about $3 billion (in 2019 dollars) had been wiped from the GDP in Q4, per data from the Congressional Budget Office, with approximately $18 billion in “federal discretionary spending” delayed over the roughly five-week stretch.

The MTA is under pressure to spend big on New York’s infrastructure

Travel money

More Power

Trump’s deal offering top Nvidia chips to China was nixed at last minute, the WSJ reports

Exclusive | Trump Officials Torpedoed Nvidia’s Push to Export AI Chips to China

OK, so when was the longest shutdown in US history?

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