The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is facing significant long-term financial challenges, including risks to its capital plan and pressure from escalating debt, while the impacts of climate change demand a sharper focus on preparation for and response to extreme weather events. The passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act offers a boost for the agency’s capital plan, but also heightens the need for appropriate prioritization of capital projects.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the MTA has been in a state of existential crisis. The Comptroller’s annual report on the MTA’s finances details how the combination of higher spending, the winding down of federal aid, the risk of lower ridership levels, increased impact from extreme weather, potential service reductions and other factors put the MTA in danger starting in 2025.

The COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented challenges for the State’s regional transportation authorities by disrupting operations, decreasing ridership, and severely reducing revenues; however, these authorities reported that federal aid helped them weather pandemic deficits. If ridership continues to languish and does not return to pre-pandemic levels, the authorities will need additional revenue from other sources to continue to provide services at current levels—or may be faced with limiting services.

The MTA’s capital program for 2020-2024 totals $54.8 billion, by far the largest program in its history. As of December 31, 2020, only 100 of 517 projects had been completed or begun, and most of the rest of the program had been indefinitely suspended.

Comptroller DiNapoli has launched an interactive online tool of subway ridership that details where straphangers are, and are not, returning to the subway system, alongside neighborhood and local demographics, employment and income.

New York State and its local governments maintain an extensive infrastructure critical to the economy, including roads, bridges, educational facilities, water and sewer systems and medical facilities. Most of this capital investment is financed through the issuance of long term debt. Investment in such infrastructure maintains and improves the vitality and economic well being of our communities. 

The recent closure of the Lake Champlain Bridge in Essex County (also known as the Crown Point Bridge) highlights the importance of New York's bridges to the regional economies in which they are located. Currently, there are 93 bridges in use in New York State with a safety rating at or below that given to the Lake Champlain Bridge prior to its closure.

Bridges in use with a safety rating at or below 3.375 - pdf

Bridges are structures of chronic concern, both because of the degree to which we rely on them and the risks they pose should they fail. This report offers a quick look at New York’s bridges, including those in New York City. In 2016, 11 percent of all New York bridges were structurally deficient, according to federal standards. Bridges owned by New York’s local governments and authorities are more likely than State-owned bridges to be structurally deficient (12.8 percent compared to 9.0 percent).

In January 2018, OSC initiated its series of audits to determine whether the MTA and constituent agencies have appropriate oversight and monitoring controls over homeless outreach services on MTA properties and whether they have met the goal of maintaining a safe, secure transit environment by assisting homeless individuals to appropriate shelters off MTA properties.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) operates the largest and most diverse transportation system in the nation, and keeping it secure entails significant challenges.