“I Don’t Think There’s a Plan B” (2024)

The MTA: still broke. Photo: Daniel McKnight

Hours after the news struck MTA headquarters, Janno Lieber addressed his troops. Congestion pricing, they had learned that morning, was dead, the execution carried out with little notice by Governor Kathy Hochul. There was confusion, fury, resignation, and, most of all, sadness.

Lieber had found out about the final decision the previous evening, and the man who had led the reconstruction of the World Trade Center complex, become the MTA’s megaprojects chief for a mercurial Governor Andrew Cuomo, and convinced Hochul to hike taxes and rescue the agency’s finances was shaken. He thanked those in the room for their hard work. He told them that, in a way, it had been a privilege because they got to do work that aimed to make the city a better place, work they care about immensely. He added that it makes losses like this one all the more painful. He was emotional. “You could hear it in his voice,” said one staff member.

Five years of work tossed in the bin. The best chance for sustainably funding an expansion and modernization of the Big Apple’s subways since Nelson Rockefeller’s ill-fated 1970s Program for Action was off, or “indefinitely paused,” less than a month before it was supposed to begin.“We got so close. There are signs up,” said one agency veteran. “This is the worst possible way this could have gone down.” Wednesday, this person said, became a day of trying to comfort younger staff who hadn’t before experienced a governor yanking the rug out from under the MTA over politics or personalities.

“It’s a sh*tty f*cking day,” said another insider. “It’s crazy, it’s political amateurism, it’s one of the most astonishing things I’ve ever seen.” Another described it as waking up to “sh*t for breakfast.”

By coincidence, Andy Byford was in the building on Wednesday, a walking, talking reminder of political dramas and gubernatorial meddling in the recent past.“Train Daddy” — along with Sarah Feinberg, Craig Cipriano, and Tom Prendergast, all former presidents of New York City Transit, the MTA division that runs subways and buses — was on hand to attend a luncheon for Rich Davey, the retiring president, and the incoming Demetrius Crichlow. “Devastating. Utterly devastating,” Feinberg said about the cancellation. “There were so many ways to delay, to phase it in over time, to slow-walk it if you absolutely have to — but to walk away altogether is just devastating.”

As of late Wednesday, the governor’s office had still not briefed the MTA board about the cancellation, two members said. That’s a thing that should happen — and soon. Hochul’s decision blows a $15 billion hole in the agency’s budget, aside from another $2.5 billion, tallied by the budget watchdogs at Reinvent Albany, that Hochul and state lawmakers have promised but been sluggish about delivering.

Source after source repeatedly circled back to the same point: There is no backup plan because this was completely unexpected. The governor has floated hiking the city’s payroll tax as a way to fill the gap, a proposal that received a chilly early reception. The legislative session is set to end today, though parliamentary maneuvering could extend it. “This was dropped on our heads yesterday,” said one lawmaker. “This is bonkers policymaking. Now we’re flying by the seat of our pants overnight.”

Another lawmaker said they learned of the governor’s decision to “suspend” the toll from a push alert. A third said Hochul’s staff had called them shortly before the stories broke. Andrew Gounardes, the state senator who won a couple of tough reelection campaigns defending the congestion toll in car-friendly Bay Ridge, called the process a “roller coaster”: “If there’s a plan somewhere to reduce congestion and improve the environment and not blow a hole in the most consequential MTA capital plan in 50 years, I’m open to it. But right now, all the experts, from transit advocates to environmental advocates, the business community, who have all been studying this for 15 years have all come to this conclusion.”

Barring a statehouse funding miracle, sources could only guess what this means for MTA projects on the drawing board. The operative assumption is that most will end up being cut. “Is she canceling the Second Avenue Subway?” asked one MTA board member. (The extension of the Second Avenue line to East Harlem is the single biggest-ticket item on the MTA’s $15 billion congestion-pricing project list, and Hochul has touted the project since becoming governor. The first contract, moving utilities for the 106th Street station, was awarded in January.) “Is she canceling our accessibility program? Does this mean we won’t have a zero-emissions bus fleet anymore? From a fiduciary standpoint, I don’t think there’s a plan B to fund the MTA,” the board member said.

Let alone, say, to replace the Fiorello La Guardia–era stoplight signals on the Fulton Street and Sixth Avenue lines, which are mechanically driven and frequently break. The section of that line from High Street to Euclid Avenue serves some 300,000 people and runs right through the heart of the district represented by Hakeem Jeffries, who, Politico and other outlets have reported, was one force behind the request that drove Hochul’s decision. “This is all about election-year politics and people thinking this is going to be a campaign issue,” said one Albany lobbyist. “But I think this was clearly a call from Washington.”

A person familiar with recent conversations between Jeffries and Hochul said that “the prospect of a temporary pause was raised by the governor during normal conversations” between the pair in the past week. “To the extent immediate implementation of congestion pricing is being reconsidered, Leader Jeffries supports a temporary pause of limited duration to better understand the financial impact on working-class New Yorkers who have confronted a challenging inflationary environment as a result of the pandemic,” said Jeffries’s spokesman, Andy Eichar.

Can the MTA board overrule Hochul? The rules are somewhat contradictory. In practice, the MTA is controlled by the governor, who selects the agency’s chairman and directly appoints the plurality of the board, so it is unlikely to pick a fight with her. But by law, the MTA is technically separate from the state and its board must approve its budget.Further complicating matters, the way the congestion-pricing law was written in 2019 seemingly obligates the MTA to establish the program and charge the tolls. So the board has to do it, but it has been instructed by the state’s top boss not to do it.

“MTA board members have purview over the future of congestion pricing, including any significant delays or pauses,” said Midori Valdivia, a voting member of the MTA. “We voted twice to move forward with this program. So if there is a pause, it’s in the MTA board’s authority to vote on it.” She said she intends to oppose any pause unless the governor and legislature come up with a permanent replacement for the toll funding.

Till then, it’s all on shifting sand. “We won’t know the real implications of these decisions until the end of the decade,” one of those insiders added. “This is the worst day for transit riders since Andy Byford left.”

Tags:

• transit
• transportation
• meta
• metropolitan transit authority
• getting around
• congestion pricing
• janno lieber
• kathy hochul
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