Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Transit Funding

Fed Up With the Latest Fare Hike? Be Sure to Say #ThanksCuomo

By Stephen Miller | Mar 23, 2015 | 7 Comments

It’s easy to get annoyed with the MTA: Your train is slow and crowded, the station is dirty, the bus is late — and to top it off, you just got hit with another fare hike. You’re paying more for deteriorating service, and the only place to direct your anger is a faceless bureaucracy known as the […]

Albany Has Already Saddled the MTA With More Debt Than 30 Nations

By Stephen Miller | Feb 12, 2015 | 5 Comments

As Albany contemplates paying for the MTA capital program by borrowing as much as $15 billion, it’s worth pausing to examine the debt load straphangers are already shouldering. To put it in perspective, the MTA carries more debt than Bolivia, Tanzania, and Luxembourg combined, according to numbers compiled by the Straphangers Campaign. The MTA owes more than at […]

Cuomo’s Transit Budget Is a Confusing Jumble of Raids and Transfers

By Stephen Miller | Feb 5, 2015 | 8 Comments

It’s state budget season! Governor Andrew Cuomo’s executive budget is chock-a-block with raids of dedicated transit funds, questionable transfers, and toll cuts doled out as election-year favors. It’s a mess that doesn’t answer how the state will close the $15.2 billion gap in the MTA capital program. Cuomo’s attempts to satisfy MTA haters in the […]

Just a Reminder: Cuomo Can Take Charge of the MTA Whenever He Wants

By Stephen Miller | Jan 29, 2015 | 11 Comments

At approximately 5 p.m. Monday, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that he had ordered the complete closure of New York City’s bus and subway systems in the face of an oncoming snowstorm. If nothing else, it was a stark reminder that the transit system is not a political orphan. The MTA is, in fact, Cuomo’s agency. […]

Cuomo to Spend Lion’s Share of NY Bank Settlement Windfall on Highways

By Stephen Miller | Jan 21, 2015 | 7 Comments

Here’s where Cuomo plans to spend settlement $$. Why not subways/buses? @grussian pic.twitter.com/n27LdWorWT — Josh Robin (@joshrobin) January 21, 2015 One of the looming questions as Governor Andrew Cuomo has unveiled his budget agenda over the past few days has been how he’ll divvy up the $5.4 billion windfall the state has reaped […]

Cuomo’s Transpo Vision: Huge Garages, Cheap Roads, Lots More MTA Debt

By Stephen Miller | Jan 20, 2015 | 14 Comments

A day before his big statewide policy address, Governor Andrew Cuomo laid out his transportation and infrastructure agenda today at a Midtown breakfast hosted by the Association for a Better New York, a business group. This was not the speech where the governor finally laid out his plan to prevent runaway MTA debt, fix the traffic […]

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