Citizens Budget Commission (CBC) President Andrew S. Rein released this statement on behalf of the CBC:

“The MTA's Twenty-Year Needs Assessment for 2025-2044 (TYNA) importantly lays bare the transit system’s precarious state of repair. The MTA makes a very compelling case that rebuilding and improving the system’s current infrastructure and bringing it to a state of good repair is critical to preserving its ability to serve New Yorkers and the region.

Unfortunately, the TYNA glaringly omits how much these investments will cost, a significant flaw that denies the public and policymakers the information needed to start a robust discussion about which investments to prioritize and the tradeoffs that ultimately will be made among projects to rebuild, improve, and expand the transit system. 

Simply put, despite the substantial report and detailed appendices, New Yorkers still do not know if it will cost $20 billion, $70 billion, or some other amount over the next five years to start to bring the system to a state of good repair so that deterioration does not cause major service problems and siphon operating funds for increased maintenance.

We urge the MTA to develop and publish a TYNA addendum that includes robust cost and benefit estimates for rebuilding and renewing the transit system. Providing this information before publishing the next capital plan will enhance all stakeholders’ input and allow the MTA to make the best-informed choices with the resources available.

In important ways, this TYNA is an improvement over past TYNAs, the failings of which CBC documented in Needs and Wants: What to Look for in the MTA’s Twenty-Year Needs Assessment. This TYNA demonstrates the MTA’s commitment to better assess the current condition of its assets, especially with improved centralization and standardization of asset data and greater disaggregation of asset conditions. Also, its consistent and systematic analysis of the costs and benefits of potential expansion projects is a critical improvement, an approach that should be taken for all investments. Finally, the TYNA does not prematurely winnow down the system’s needs, a major failing of prior needs assessments. 

Still, omission of the costs and timelines needed to rebuild and improve the system makes it impossible to fully understand the magnitude of the MTA’s infrastructure challenges, the resources required to address them, and what has to be done when. The TYNA also does not include standardized measures of the benefits of these investments, their impact on service, and the service and cost impacts associated with partial investment.   

The TYNA will be the foundation of the MTA’s 2025-2029 Capital Plan. In the coming year, the MTA will develop a financing plan and prioritize among the needs identified in the TYNA. Incomplete data hampers the ability of all stakeholders to provide meaningful, well-informed input, and may even limit the MTA’s ability to appropriately prioritize its future investments.

We recommend a TYNA addendum include cost and benefit estimates that are sufficiently disaggregated, identify what should be invested in the next 5 and 20 years to bring the system to a state of good repair and normal replacement cycle, and identify the impacts on services and long-run costs if those investments are only partially made. 

CBC will continue to analyze the TYNA and provide more insights and recommendations in the weeks to come."