Finally: The MTA Has an Approved Capital Program

The MTA's 2015-2019 capital program has finally gotten a green light.

The program took effect Tuesday, 30 days after the MTA formally submitted it to a state review board. Gov. Andrew Cuomo hailed the milestone in a statement.

“The MTA is the lifeblood of the New York metropolitan area’s transportation network and we must ensure it has the capacity to meet the travel demands of the next generation and fuel one of the largest economies on the globe," he said. "By investing in the most robust transportation plan in state history, we are reimagining the MTA and ensuring a safer, more reliable and more resilient public transportation network for tomorrow.”

But that statement gave no hint of the tortured history of this capital program. Don't worry — we'll catch you up.

(First, a primer: the MTA's capital program provides funding for its marquee projects — the next phase of the Second Avenue Subway, the successor to the MetroCard, new Metro-North stations in the Bronx, and bringing Long Island Rail Road trains into Grand Central — as well as more mundane items like track and signal replacement and subway station upgrades. But until a state board gives the program its blessing, the MTA can't spend any money on it.)

When the MTA first unveiled the 2015-2019 capital program in September of 2014, it had a $15 billion funding gap — which Cuomo characterized as a routine part of the "funding dance." But the dance quickly devolved into a battle between the governor and Mayor Bill de Blasio over who would pay what. Meanwhile, in the absence of funding clarity, the capital program was rejected by a state board. By June, Tom Prendergast, the head of the MTA, was warning of an approaching crisis.

Salvation seemed at hand in October, when Cuomo and de Blasio reached a funding agreement. But when the revamped capital program was presented later that month, a billion dollars had been excised from the next phase of the Second Avenue subway. This led to protest, followed by another round of protracted funding negotiations (not to mention further confusion when the governor unveiled a state budget with a line of zeroes where one might expect MTA funding to be). By March, an exasperated Prendergast said the agency would run out of capital funding in three months.

But a month later, some funding was restored for the Second Avenue subway, and the plan was resubmitted to the capital program review board. This time, the board did not veto it. So by statute, the MTA can begin letting out contracts in the 2015-2019 capital program.