Op-ed | Funding MTA’s capital plan is a New Year’s resolution that must be kept

The end of the year is always a time for reflection, and I’d like to take this opportunity to look back on how far the MTA has come, not only in the last 12 months, but since 2021, when I became Chair and CEO.

We finished that year with an average of 2.3 million weekday subway riders. Today, we are regularly hitting 4 million, even on Fridays, and last Thursday, 4.5 million riders took the subway, the most on a single day in almost five years.

It wasn’t long ago that people were telling us the subway was dead, that we should be thinking about shrinking the workforce and cutting service. We said no way – never bet against New York. We want to run even more service.

Gov. Kathy Hochul and the State Legislature responded, stepping up with critical funding for MTA’s operating budget that helped us deliver best-in-a-decade subway service and a billion rides this year, weeks earlier than last year.  

But to sustain that momentum, we need to make the same kind of investments in infrastructure. This is something I’ve been talking about for well over a year, since the release of MTA’s 20-Year Needs Assessment. 

All over the transit system, components and assets dating as far back as the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration need to be brought into the 21st century – like the substation at the center of last week’s major service disruption in Brooklyn. Thousands of customers were stranded for hours after a fire tore through a 90-year-old electrical facility. We can’t let this keep happening. 

That’s why we proposed a 2025-2029 Capital Plan that prioritizes State of Good Repair work, upgrades to behind-the-scenes facilities that are invisible to riders (until they aren’t) but nonetheless critical to our ability to deliver great service.

I’ll admit, it doesn’t make for the sexiest sales pitch, but this the reality of the situation, and I’ve been making the case to lawmakers, even going to Puerto Rico to meet with them at the annual SOMOS conference. 

Nobody wants to live through another Summer of Hell like in 2017, or worse, the level of relentless infrastructure problems and chronic delays we’ve been seeing across the river. We had such a strong comeback post-COVID not because we’re luckier, but because decision-makers here recognized the importance of mass transit.

Now it’s time to step up again, and I won’t stop until the new Capital Plan to improve and protect service reliability is finalized and fully funded. 

Janno Lieber is MTA chair and CEO.