Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
Q&A
Rationale behind MTA's capital plan with large unfunded gap
0:48:41
ยท
167 sec
Council Member Brooks-Powers questions the MTA's decision to submit a capital plan with a $33.4 billion unfunded gap. MTA representatives explain that the plan is based on the system's needs and follows legal requirements to present a comprehensive 20-year need assessment.
- 90% of the capital plan focuses on state of good repair for essential system components
- The plan follows legislation requiring a needs assessment rather than a budget-constrained plan
- Third-party validators, including JPMorgan Chase, were consulted to determine appropriate spending levels
- Funding discussions with Albany are ongoing to address the gap
Selvena N. Brooks-Powers
0:48:41
And when the MTA initially proposed and submitted the capital plan to the CPRB, What was the thought behind submitting a budget with such a huge unfunded gap and what was your expectation on funding the $33,400,000,000 gap?
Demetrius Crichlow
0:48:58
So I think that two separate issues.
0:49:02
Right?
0:49:02
The transit system needs work in order to continue running.
0:49:06
Right?
0:49:07
So the capital plan
Selvena N. Brooks-Powers
0:49:08
But that's what congestion pricing is working.
0:49:10
Well,
Demetrius Crichlow
0:49:11
that congestion pricing was twenty twenty to 2024.
Selvena N. Brooks-Powers
0:49:14
Four.
0:49:15
Right.
Demetrius Crichlow
0:49:15
The capital plan took into consideration the state of the current assets with the system and said over the next five years, twenty twenty five to 2029, what do we need in order to make sure that the state the system doesn't fall apart?
0:49:28
It takes into consideration 90% of the capital plan is just made on state state of good repair.
0:49:35
Substations, signals, tracks, power, cars.
0:49:40
It is literally the stuff that you need to to run our system.
0:49:45
That's it.
0:49:46
So if if the first portion is like what is the need?
0:49:49
What do you need to do in order to keep this system running safely?
0:49:52
The second portion is like what is it cost to do that?
0:49:55
And I think what John has already said is you know that portion of of the funding we we we ourselves are asking for that to be delivered.
John McCarthy
0:50:08
Yeah.
0:50:09
I'll just add, what Demetrius just went through was like, was a process that the most when you figure out sending sort of the bill, it's like the first thing is we were strictly we were told, and this is legislation that said do a 20 need.
0:50:24
It didn't say what can you pay for?
0:50:27
Where is the money?
0:50:27
It said tell us what is needed.
0:50:30
So we're following the law.
0:50:31
We did that.
0:50:33
And then what we did was we went out to third party validators.
0:50:36
JPMorgan Chase did a study on what should someone, an entity of this size, be spending to keep that investment up and running.
0:50:45
And then we said, what can we do?
0:50:48
A lot of times, you can't have outages throughout the city where you're not running on certain lines because you wanna do all the work.
0:50:53
So you can't do all the work at the same time.
0:50:55
Or what's available in the construction industry?
0:50:58
How much work can they do?
0:50:59
So we factored that in and then came up with this.
0:51:02
And and this is the cost associated with it.
0:51:05
But we followed the process and now the process takes us to Albany in conversations about how it's funded.
0:51:10
But when you have a $1,500,000,000,000 asset, it's gonna cost money to keep that up and running.
0:51:16
And we're being serious about the cost.
0:51:18
We're being realistic.
0:51:20
And, but but now is the time where we have to figure out with Albany how to fund that.
0:51:25
And and that's gonna happen over the next couple weeks.