A $900 billion COVID-19 aid package was welcome news for New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and mass-transit systems nationwide.
The relief bill includes $4 billion for the MTA, which operates New York City’s subways, buses, commuter rail and interborough bridges.
“This crucial funding will allow us to get through 2021 without devastating service cuts and layoffs of over 9,000 colleagues,” said its chairman, Patrick Foye.
Still, the authority is staring at alarming deficits. Its November financial plan, before announcement of the latest relief package, had projected a $16 billion hole over four years, an amount that could worsen depending on pandemic recovery variables.
So while further help from Washington is welcomed, the authority itself, the state that runs it and the city it serves should take good, hard looks from within. It’s time for action beyond the stopgap, beyond nibbling at the margins, and to step outside their clunky bureaucracies and bickering over turf.
While the MTA’s leaders have identified some efficiencies, the strategy largely has been to wait for an aid package or an emergency borrowing program from Washington, or a transit-friendly Democratic supermajority in the New York State Senate.
“The transit advocates say 'go to Washington', but when you're talking to the Senate, the guy from Montana says, 'Show us what you're doing,’ ” said Jonathan Peters, a finance professor at the College of Staten Island and a member of the doctoral faculty at City University of New York Graduate School.
"They look at us and say, 'Why should we give you all those federal dollars?' "
Clearly, the MTA should accelerate its push for efficiencies, such as eliminating redundant departments across multiple agencies. Bring labor to the table and deal with the prickly matter of work rules, and work with officials at all levels to break the congestion-pricing logjam.
MTA officials need to lure back customers through effective safety technology and widely publicizing it, said Jonathan Ballan, public and project finance co-chair at Cozen O’Connor and an MTA board member from 2011 to 2016. And while the capital plan may need some adjusting, "the state of good repair and other safety expenditures must accelerate.”
“The system must be patrolled and enforcement of mask requirements and quality-of-life offenses needs to be tough,” Ballan said. “Revenue should be enhanced through creative means, such as the initiation of value capture and creative approaches to fares."
Meanwhile, here are a few revenue-generating ideas to consider. Some are mainstream, others way out there. All generate discussion. Not all I endorse. For some, they merely pose the upside and downside.
What I do endorse is all parties coming together.
Lower the fares: Radical and maybe anathema to MTA officials, but why not? It’s worth a shot, at least short-term. I’ll flip the cliché on its head and call it penny foolish and pound wise. Build a public-relations campaign around it. That four-year deficit may bump another billion or so, but the move could bring back riders, generate immeasurable buzz and goodwill, and maybe pay off long term.
At least consider it off-peak. During my college years in Boston (early 1970s, mind you), the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority dropped off-peak fares to 10 cents from 25 cents and labeled it “Dime Time.” Badly needed PR for the MBTA.
This move could also help better gauge off-peak ridership trends for the long term.
Transit congestion pricing: This flies in the face of lower fares and transit advocates might rail at it, but it’s another consideration to bring in some bucks and maybe offset some rush-hour congestion.
“What about the 4, 5 and 6 lines? Why not charge something extra as part of a time-of-day pricing?,” Peters said. “At 42nd Street-Grand Central, people at rush hour could pay $3.25 or $4. It would be a way to raise extra revenue. Users could pay a bit more to help pay for these projects.”
Millionaires taxes and gas taxes: More of the same-old, same-old. “Tax the rich, tax the drivers” is a good way to blow off steam, but how useful are these measures? Wealthy people, and the tax revenues they provide, are already leaving the region in droves and the gas tax can be unreliable thanks to fuel-efficient cars.
Box tax: State Assemblyman Robert Carroll, D-Brooklyn, has filed a bill calling for a $3 surcharge on online deliveries. A pot of money, for sure, but bad timing with many people confined. This would also hurt elderly and immobile residents.
“His heart is in the right place but he’s not an online shopper,” said Mitchell Moss, director of New York University’s Rudin Center for Transportation Policy & Management.
Transit advocate Andy Quito was more blunt. “That’s one of the most idiotic things I’ve ever heard just to save the MTA,” he said at last week’s board meeting.
Consider taxing the trucks, not the boxes, even though companies would pass on costs. Delivery trucks and other large vehicles clog streets in all five boroughs.
For openers, said Moss, cut down on the limousines. “Every county commissioner and every deputy mayor has a car and a driver. They should take the subway.”
Marijuana and online gambling taxes: “Wherever we have a crisis of finance, we tap into the sins of people,” Moss said, referencing the uses by many states of lottery receipts for education.
Citing Amsterdam, Moss once said people would fly to New York just to buy cannabis. Peters even coined the phrase “smoke a J and ride the subway.”
Both are worth considering, but we need more data given the wider social implications.
Proximity tax: “If you live a half-mile walking distance, you pay a higher property tax,” Peters said. “You pay more tax if you live near the station.”
Intriguing, but it could effectively punish poorer people.
Naming rights: Start with those four new Metro-North railroad stations in the Bronx, where former borough president and former acting MTA chairman Fernando Ferrer has predicted largescale growth. Call it “Morris Park-[Sponsor Name].” The funding might help move along some stalled capital projects.
We do have some stations named after destination facilities — Lincoln Center, Museum of Natural History, Yankee Stadium and Citi Field quickly come to mind. Get Pfizer, for instance, to build on its vaccine publicity and throw its name on a Midtown Manhattan stop.
Bundle naming rights with a transit-improvement package as part of any discussion for a business looking to relocate here. As when Amazon was staking out Long Island City in Queens, transit advocates were calling on the Fortune 500 company to backstop some infrastructure improvements.
Yes, “I’m getting off at Pfizer” sounds weird, but you want the money to keep the trains and tracks working, don’t you?
Subway platform doors: Periodically suggested as a safety measure, they serve as barriers protecting passengers from the subway pits. They could also feature all sorts of advertising as they do throughout Europe.
Logistical problems here: The MTA has 472 stations, many dating to the horse-and-buggy era and each seemingly with an identity of its own. Despite the promise of ad revenue, retrofits could be costly. And, with vestiges of the pandemic bound to linger, it could be unwise to bunch up passengers and funnel them onto a train.
The interrelation of MTA, state and city woes has produced a cascading effect.
“We have both strongly advocated for the city, state and the MTA to do what they can on their own, to take care of their own fiscal house, but also simultaneously said that we do need some help from the federal government, because if those don’t come together, MTA’s problems become the state’s problems and become the city’s problems,” said Andrew Rein, president of the watchdog Citizens Budget Commission.
“Either we turn the tide of the three of those, or they turn together on the worse.”
While the federal government needs to further step up, unquestionably the state, city and MTA must do so, too.
