The 2008-13 MTA Capital plan, if one looks past the press release and presentation and reads the entire document, is a nightmare that implies the transportation system and New York region have little hope for the future. The MTA hasn’t even tried to hide it, perhaps assuming no one will bother to read the entire document and do a little math. The $20.2 billion “core” plan, supposedly intended to maintain what we already have, contains only $8.6 billion in money collected in the six years it would be spent, and almost all of that will purportedly comes from a federal government that may be in no position to deliver. The other $12 billion would be borrowed, and presumably be paid back over 30 to 50 years, adding to the $1.4 billion per year in debt service the MTA is already paying. Even with that additional debt for the Tier I “core” plan, for the absolute basics, the transit system will be subject to 1970s-like deferred maintenance on an epic scale, in the clear words of the MTA itself. And the major improvements, promised for so long, even as insiders in older generations had the government borrow money and in effect transfer it to themselves, will only proceed if another $10 billion is borrowed. And not all of them, just some of them — the rest are put off to a time when the MTA is certain to be bankrupt.
When people go deeper and deeper into long term debt to pay for ongoing expenses, two things eventually happen: they are no longer to pay those ongoing expenses so their quality of life collapses, and they have no hope of affording major long-term needs, like college, home purchases and retirement. That describes the status of many Americans, perhaps the majority, who lived for a today that is now yesterday. And it describes the MTA, which for 16 years has been pushed deeper and deeper into debt just to pay for the ongoing work needed to keep the transit system going. Work that ought to have classified as an operating cost, and paid for year-by-year. Now more money is proposed to be borrowed, yet that ongoing work is being cut back.
For example, the debt for Tier I the “core” plan includes using all of the congestion pricing money that drivers would have to pay into the far off future in just the next five years, meaning that beginning in 2014 drivers would pay but transit riders would get nothing. The CP revenues, from that time forward, would just be used to pay off bonds. In the meantime, even with congestion pricing major projects underway would stop.
After reading the plan, it is clear that any projection of the future of our region has to have as its foundation the collapse of large parts of the transportation system, even if — when — we pay far more in taxes, fares and tolls. They really have, in the words of a former transit union official, taken all there is to take. And when Governor Spitzer signs on to a retirement for transit workers after just 20 years of work, the way he has just signed for NYC teachers to retire after just 25 years of work, and all that money is diverted from the operation of trains and buses to pensions and retiree health care, that collapse will be complete. But for now, let’s look at what the MTA capital plan says will happen assuming a mere $12 billion more is borrowed, focusing on New York City Transit subway system, the part of the transportation system that I am most familiar with.
The useful life of a subway car, the plan says on page 28, is 40 years. In the past cars have in fact been retired at an average of 40 years old. The system has 6,700 subway cars, if one converts the 75-foot-long cars we in some cases have to a greater number of 60-foot-long cars we are buying to replace them. Replacing those cars on a 40-year cycle would require the purchase of 167 per year, or over 1,000 in a six year plan. At a perhaps more realistic 50-year life 134 would have to be purchased, for a total over 800 in six years. The plan proposes to buy 590, while borrowing a minimum of $12 billion, and thus ensuring less money will be available to buy cars in the future.
“Stations have a targeted reinvestment cycle of 35 years; however many station components actually deteriorate at a much faster rate, and ideally would receive investment every 15-20 years” the plan says on page 30. Well at a 35-year cycle, and given 468 stations, 13.37 stations would have to be renovated per year, for a total of 80 for six years. But as the plan says on page 17 “the program includes the rehabilitation of 44 stations…this is a reduced pace of investment compared to prior capital programs, and many stations will not achieve a state of good repair for some time.” The MTA plans some additional minor improvements to other stations. But it will borrow for 30 years or more to pay for five years of such improvements with 15 to 20-year lives. Not only that, but most of the stations the MTA plans to rehabilitate are elevated, outer-borough stations. They are doing the easier, cheaper ones, and fewer of them, while borrowing $12 billion.
I was happy to hear the MTA was going to start painting stations, instead of waiting 35 years until a capital project. But don’t expect older generations to pay for paint for younger generations to enjoy — that money will still be borrowed. The Line Structures category (page 35) includes $243 million in “capital expenses” for painting. The debt for that painting will presumably have to be paid for over at least 30 years, perhaps at higher interest rates based on the collapse of the municipal bond market. Will the paint last for 30 years? And will the MTA be keeping pace even with all that borrowed money, or will line structures be rusting, and eventually collapsing?
“The importance of track and switches to safe train operation is difficult to understate” the plan says on page 33. “The useful life of track and switches varies considerably — from 25 to 65 years.” The plan lists 659 miles of mainline track and 1,559 switches, but a table I have from when I worked for NYCT, based on its asset database, shows 753 track miles and 1,706 switches. (I'd attach the table, but I obtained it when I workd there and NYCT has a prohibition on publicly reporting data infornation that you only know because you are an employee, and I don't want to be sued).
But let’s use their numbers. The 57 track miles planned to be replaced in the plan works out to replacing track, on average, after 69 years, and the 150 switches replaced works out to a 62-year life. That doesn't look good given the avreage useful life the MTA gives above. Expect the track and switches to deteriorate, even as $12 billion is borrowed.
The signal system is already deteriorating, particularly on the IND (lettered lines up to G). I have noticed the effect personally, with more and more disruption on the F-line in Brooklyn compared with the recent past, but was surprised to read the MTA admitting as much on page 16. “About 30 percent of the signal system dates back to the original construction of the subway and has never been rehabilitated…As a result of, signal failures are a leading cause of subway service delays.”
The IRT was built first, than the BMT, then the IND. Beginning in the mid-1950s, NYCT has been installing second generation signals in the same order. According to NYCT signal engineers, the useful life of a signal system is 50 years, but aside from the 1970s fiscal crisis, when investment stopped, it has been replacing them at a 60-year rate. Some say the older signals could last up to 75 years, though with less reliability. Most of the IND signals, as a result of the 1970s pause, are now older than 75 years.
Another pause has arrived. “NYCT drafted a 15-year plan to bring all mainline signal assets into a state of good repair and to initiate normal replacement work” the plan continues. The whole project will cost $15 billion, but the first six years just $1.6 is allocated in the “core program” while $12 billion is borrowed. And after $12 billion is borrowed, who expects $13.4 billion to be made available in the future, when an aging population causes the cost of health care, nursing home care and Social Security to explode?
The most expensive part of a signal system is the interlockings (the place where trains can change tracks). The subway system has 175 of them, according to my table. At a 60-year life, NYCT would have to replace about 3 per year, or 18 for a 6-year program. It plans to replace six: two on the Dyre Avenue line and four IND interlockings by themselves. Based on the current capital plan’s tabulation of track miles (the one I have is higher), signals need to be replaced for about 11 track miles per year, or 66 for a 12-year program, at a 60-year life. NYCT had been starting about one signal project per year. But only the Dyre Avenue line and its 9.8 track miles are proposed to be modernized over 12 years over the Tier I core plan, and that work was supposed to have been done in the 2005 to 2009 plan. We will be paying for it again while $12 billion is borrowed though some of that money is rolled over from the past plan.
If, and only if, another $10 billion shows up, signals will also be modernized on the Queens Boulevard and Flushing Line, with CBTC technology. But those signals systems are going to collapse, CBTC or now, so how is that not part of the Tier I core program? The Flushing CBTC project, moreover, was already funded as part of the 2005 to 2009 program, although again this capital program is starting up early and thus includes old work (and debt).
Worse, as of 2004, when I left NYCT, there were plans to award projects to replace signals on the Culver Line (F in Brooklyn), 6th Avenue Line, 8th Avenue line, Fulton Street (A/C) and Crosstown (G) line by 2013, in addition to the Queens Boulevard line — a large part of the IND. Now, after $12 billion to $22 billion is borrowed, none of that work will have started by six years from now, at a time when interest would have to be paid on all that has gone before.
Now I actually don’t mind that virtual shutdown of the signal program, for two reasons. First, construction costs are through the roof, and there is no sense in moving forward at those prices, as I will discuss in my next post. Second, CBTC technology, which was supposed to be better and cheaper, has had all kinds of bugs and been vastly more expensive. Rather than install additional obsolete systems, or overpriced existing CBTC systems, it might be better to hold back until the technology is perfected and then move forward rapidly. So I did suggest postponing contract awards in the capital plan until the construction industry could, and would, cut their prices. But my idea was to SAVE UP MONEY until that time. This plan includes so much debt that after 2013 there would be nothing left to replace the rotting older signals, CBTC or not. Instead of overpaying and going into debt now and doing the work, or saving up now money while not doing the work, we’re overpaying going into debt now and NOT doing the work.
The MTA is proposing to replace parts of signal systems that are ready to fall part, such as stop cables, apart from signal replacement projects, a strategy similar to what it is doing on stations. But it is not expecting a “state of good repair” to be achieved for the signal system until 2023, but given its financial situation after 2013, and the broader economic and fiscal situation of the United States, even that is a pipedream. Also, a CBTC test track would be installed on the Culver Line. The original CBTC test track was also on the Culver Line.
Perhaps then, the MTA is cutting back on normal replacement over the next six years to push through the major expansion projects? In your dreams! If only the $20 billion Tier I “core program” is funded, $12 billion would be borrowed and those expansion projects would be abandoned. That’s right, abandoned. For another $10 billion, Long Island would get its connection to Grand Central, but the city will get far less than had been promised. Far less.
You might remember that NYCT at first proposed having the Second Avenue Subway merely run from 63rd to 125th Street, with other improvements to the south. Had it been allowed to go ahead, that line would have been built by now, at a fraction of the projected cost. But Sheldon Silver, seeking to kill the project and divert money to those who matter, held it up by demanding that the entire project be built to Lower Manhattan (the plan always was to build more later). People actually believed Silver was fighting for more transit improvements! He made himself out to be a hero! What a fraud!
A few years and another EIS later, Silver allowed NYCT to borrow money to start the project — up to 96th Street only, because that was all that could be afforded. Long Island’s East Side Access, built in the most expensive configuration possible, was going first. So if the MTA gets everything it asks for, all $30 billion, the Second Avenue Subway would at least be completed to 125th? Wrong! Just to 96th, and you can see in the presentation that accompanied the plan, with some funding made available to pay for less than one-quarter the cost of extending it the rest of the way to 125th some time after 2013. The rest of the money, just to do what the MTA originally proposed, would have to be come up with in the future — after the MTA was another $22 billion in debt. As for sending MetroNorth trains to Penn Station, another project that has been presented as a coming gift from our elected officials for decades, if the MTA gets all the money it wants, it would have one-third the cost of that improvement, with the rest having to be obtained later.
So we aren’t even getting all the major improvements already promised even with $30 billion, or $22 billion in debt, and all three Tiers. And, I might add, those major improvements will be absolutely essential precisely because of the deterioration of the existing system. After the Manhattan Bridge was not maintained for decades, Brooklyn endured 20 years of degraded subway service as two of the tracks at a time were out of action. Subway service was bad but viable because there were enough alternatives. Similar long-term outages are all but guaranteed for large parts of the subway system. How could the city cope at all with, for example, a 5-year shutdown of the Queens Boulevard line without LIRR East Side Access, or a 10-year shutdown of the Lexington Avenue Line without the upper half of the Second Avenue Subway (the only half we will ever get)?
Adding insult to injury, Tier 3 of the plan includes $50 million for capacity planning studies for additional projects. What additional projects? That money would just generation proposals for politicians to issue press releases announcing even more major improvements in the future, even as the existing system deteriorates and long promised-improvements are deferred indefinitely. We’d be borrowing $50 billion to fund more promises even as the old promises are broker.
And expect the political class, presented with this information, to “fight for us” by condemning the “unaccountable MTA” even as it is they who made every one of the decisions that have led to this point, and it is the groups of people who back them who have profited. You didn’t get to be an MTA executive or board member without lying about the consequences of what they were doing. They certainly don’t put people like me on those boards (or their corporate equivalents, BTW). But everyone knew what was happening, and could figure out what the consequences would be. The generations that have been in charge for the past 16 years have given up an MTA Capital plan that must finally admit to the consequences — a diminished future and dashed dreams. And what they have done at the MTA they have also done in every other aspect of public policy. I haven’t looked at them in detail, but might one expect the roads, bridges, and commuter rail lines to be any different.
They really did “take all there was to take,” or close to it, and if we still have a future, they still have time to take it from us. Because it isn’t just the debts and rich pensions run up in the past that have led to the systemic collapse of the transportation system foretold by the MTA Capital Plan. It is the extreme costs the construction industry is charging — indefensible costs that, looking at the big picture again and comparing with the total income earned by everyone in New York City, we could never afford. Since we couldn’t afford then in the past we borrowed, and since we will not be able to afford them in the future we face disaster. More on those costs next post.