Good morning, I’m Lisa Daglian, Executive Director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, PCAC.
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of joining MTA leadership and Queens BP Richards at the announcement for the next steps in the development of the IBX. This transformational project will help hundreds of thousands of riders travel between Brooklyn and Queens without going through Manhattan.
But like Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin, we continue to wait for a Great Plan for funding it in the FY25-29 capital plan.
We have a pretty good idea of where about half of the funding for that plan will come from. But what about the other half? Critical state-of-good repair and resiliency projects – whose importance was highlighted by yesterday’s Sandy Anniversary – depend on that money. You wouldn’t give a kid a candy bar with a bite taken out, and you can’t take a bite out of State-of-Good-Repair work to fund expansion projects.
The $33 billion missing from the Plan is compounded when you consider the $16.5 billion hole the Governor caused in the current program when she paused congestion pricing. Instead of a plan to get New York moving toward less traffic, better air quality and funding for our vital transit network, we get thought bubbles with ideas like exempting municipal workers from paying the toll. That’s a great sound bite but would result in a scary reality.
The new report we released today with RPA finds that exempting municipal workers would either cost other drivers about $2.50 more or result in an annual loss of $140 million. It would equal almost 49,000 vehicular trips that could have been avoided, along with the emissions those vehicles produce. And who are we kidding – exempt one group and more will follow. Where does it stop? At what point would another environmental review need to be undertaken? And of course, three-quarters of municipal workers take transit to work, so they’d be the ones with no treat.
We already have a great idea for how to move the region forward: it’s called congestion pricing. Governor Hochul, make us believe in the Great Pumpkin and in Great Plans. Unpause the Pause and let’s have fewer tricks and more treats.