Another real estate bubble is underway, thanks to low interest rates, and the MTA’s real estate-related taxes are temporarily up as well. And as has been the case for 20 years, everyone related to state and local government wants to grab money from the MTA’s future – a future that includes an almost completely unfunded capital plan, starting next year, that would consist mostly of ongoing normal replacement.
Even so, the Transit Workers Union wants raises for past years, over and above the 8 percent increase they got in the recession. The Long Island Railroad unions are threatening to strike. The contractors and their unions are turning East Side Access into a perpetual bonanza. Staten Island wants more special deals to pay lower tolls, and the suburbs want more special deals to pay less in dedicated MTA payroll taxes. The Governor has taken some of those dedicated taxes, only collected in Downstate New York, for the state’s general fund, to be spent in Upstate New York. The MTA recently announced lower fare increases. And everyone thinks its fine because the MTA could always just borrow more and more and more. While Generation Greed continues to do what it does, I have compiled some facts about the financial transit situation based on the Federal Transit Administration’s National Transit Database. Those facts are discussed in the next two posts, on “Saying the Unsaid in New York,” where spreadsheets can be attached and charts inserted.