The New York-New Jersey-Connecticut metropolitan region, which bore the brunt of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and suffered one the steepest economic declines, generates 10% of U.S. GDP and 13% of federal income tax revenues.
Its recovery is essential to restoring the nation’s economy. It also has unique assets and challenges that must be taken into account. These include greater reliance on public transit than any other region, the largest concentration of federally-supported public housing, some of the most pronounced income inequality and racial segregation in the U.S., and 3,700 miles of vulnerable coastline.
To meet the six objectives stated above, a federal infrastructure program should incorporate the following components:
Even before new infrastructure legislation is enacted, there is much that a new Biden administration can do to expedite essential projects. New York’s groundbreaking congestion pricing program, which would generate enough revenue to fund as much as $15 billion in capital expenditures, has been stalled because the U.S. Department of Transportation has not provided clarity on the federal environmental approval process. Amtrak’s Gateway program, the most important infrastructure project in the nation, has been held up even longer waiting nearly three years for a record of decision on its environmental impact statement.
Emergency operating aid is necessary for any plan to spur capital investment. Without it, thousands of additional jobs will be lost, agency finances will be decimated and unable to support debt service for capital investments. In addition, deferred maintenance will lead to the deterioration of physical assets, increasing the cost of maintaining these assets in a state of good repair.
The tri-state region’s transit agencies have been hit particularly hard. Ridership and fare revenues plunged due to stay-at-home orders and business closures. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which runs downstate New York’s subways, city buses, and commuter rails (including the New Haven line vital to Connecticut’s economy), has increased costs in order to keep trains and buses safe and maintain service for essential workers who have no alternative to transit.
After receiving $4 billion in federal aid in December, 2020, the MTA narrowly avoided planned cuts that would have laid off 9,367 people, and cost the region as many as 450,000 jobs and $50 billion in lost earnings. The agency is still in dire need of additional federal support, projecting a deficit of $12 billion by the end of 2024.
Similar situations could be in play for other agencies in 2021.
The quickest way to meet multiple objectives of infrastructure legislation is to start with the existing capital plans of state agencies, city agencies, and regional transportation authorities. In the tri-state region, the MTA, New Jersey Transit (NJT), the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey (PANYNJ), the City of New York and the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) have all issued ambitious capital plans.
If fully funded and implemented, these capital investment programs would generate an estimated 263,000 jobs per year from construction, purchases of materials and services, and increased purchasing power of those employed.
A review of the capital plans by the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University (NYU) shows how they would advance the following priorities for infrastructure legislation.
Ready to go
These plans are the product of extensive planning, public scrutiny, and both legislative and regulatory review and approvals. The lion’s share of planned expenditures are for projects either already under construction, approved for implementation or for ongoing maintenance and systems upgrades. Projects identified as “shovel ready” include subway signal modernization, new rail cars and buses, station accessibility improvements, and basic plumbing, heating and elevator repairs in public housing.
Approximately $37 billion in the MTA’s 2020-2024 capital plan and $16 billion in NJ Transit’s five-year capital plan are for these types of “ready-to-go” projects.
Subway Signal Modernization
No investment is more critical to safe, reliable subway service than modernizing the subway’s outdated signal system. It is the centerpiece of the campaign to restore and transform the system launched by the MTA and the Governor in 2018, building on years of planning. Line-by-line reconstruction of the signal system has been underway for years. It may not continue without a fully funded capital program. The 2020-2024 plan would invest $7.1 billion to modernize segments of six subway lines, doubling the number of track miles with new signals, which would serve more than 50% of passengers.
MTA New York City Transit
Sustained economic growth
In addition to immediate job creation, modernization of the region’s infrastructure is critical to improving productivity, remaining competitive in the global economy and creating the capacity for future economic growth. Projects such as the next phase of the Second Avenue Subway and the Penn Access project connecting Metro-North services to Penn Station would greatly expand growth capacity and improve access to jobs. An economic impact study of NJT’s capital plan by Rutgers University describes how proposed investments would improve the locational advantages and worker productivity for businesses, property values for homeowners, and the state’s long-term growth trajectory. Other studies have demonstrated the economic value of capital investments in transit, housing, parks, and public spaces.
Westbound Waterfront Connector
Just East of Harrison, New Jersey, NJ Transit trains traveling West from Hoboken or the Meadowlands Maintenance Complex to Newark Penn Station are forced to make a series of movements including crossing two extremely busy tracks of the Northeast Corridor, which causes serious service disruptions and delays. By building the Westbound Waterfront Connector, estimated to cost $474 million and included in NJ Transit’s recently released five-year capital plan, those trains will instead cross above the Northeast Corridor via a new bridge to make their connection into Newark Penn Station. Improving the speed, reliability, and safety of this connection would decrease travel times on three lines, provide a better customer experience, take cars off the road, and improve air quality across NJ Transit’s considerable network in the area.
Davidng913
Healthier living environments
NYCHA Lead Removal
The condition of NYCHA developments, New York City’s largest and most affordable housing stock, has degraded significantly in recent years. As described in RPA’s analysis of NYCHA’s crisis, Time to Act, the cost of not addressing these deplorable conditions would exceed even the current $45 billion estimate of NYCHA’s physical needs. NYCHA’s agreement with the Federal monitor contains several concrete rehabilitation obligations, including an abatement of all lead-based paint throughout its 175,000-unit portfolio over the next 20 years. In addition to these obligations, there are countless other repairs needed in almost every development, with NYCHA’s latest five-year capital needs assessment being $31.8 billion. Despite this, NYCHA’s 2019 - 2023 capital program is only $6.4 billion. While buildings can be repaired, health impacts from lead paint, mold, and other hazards often have lasting damage, and it is imperative that we return the portfolio to a state of good repair as quickly as possible.
Opportunity and equality
The capital plans would restore the structural integrity, reliability, and safety of the public transit, housing, parks, and other systems low- and moderate-income residents rely on for affordable housing, access to jobs, and neighborhood amenities. Several projects within them would also expand access to opportunities by expanding bus and rail service to neighborhoods poorly served by transit or suburban job centers, making subway stations and other public services more accessible to people with physical or mental impairments, or creating incentives for transit-accessible jobs or housing.
Station Accessibility Enhancements
The MTA capital plan would make 70 subway stations ADA-accessible, a $5.1 billion investment that would result in accessible stations that would serve more than 60% of subway passengers with new elevators, ramps, and other improvements. Customers who depend on the subway to access the city’s jobs and services would be no more than two stations away from an accessible station. The enhancements would benefit more than passengers with physical impairments - they would create healthier, safer station environments with improved circulation that would benefit all users and make the entire system more customer-friendly.
MTA New York City Transit
Greenhouse gas reduction
The greater New York metropolitan area is the most energy-efficient region in the United States, a product of its density, robust transit network, and low rates of automobile use. Yet it still has a long way to go to meet required state and city greenhouse gas emission reduction limits. Capital investments in the region’s transit system will ensure a more modern system with increased ridership, while spurring opportunities to develop new and retrofitted energy-efficient buildings in communities around the improved transit system. These investments will help to cut greenhouse gas emissions by further reducing automobile use, electrifying buses and trains, modernizing inefficient equipment, and upgrading buildings to greater levels of efficiency.
Electric Buses
Both the MTA and NJT have undertaken ambitious programs to electrify their bus fleets. These efforts are critical to the incoming Biden administration’s goal of zero emissions from public transportation for large cities but are likely to be significantly scaled back without substantial federal funding. While the MTA now operates just 25 electric buses, the MTA five-year capital plan has budgeted $1.1 billion for 500 additional electric buses and modernizing eight bus depots to better serve electric buses and reach its goal of electrifying its entire fleet by 2040. NJT’s ten-year capital plan includes over $4 billion to electrify its entire fleet, including new buses and modernized bus garages. Fleet electrification is particularly critical to cleaning the air and improving health in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color where bus depots are often located and rates of asthma and other respiratory diseases are high.
MTA New York City Transit
Resilience
HATS/Coney Island Creek
In early 2020, funding was suddenly and unexpectedly pulled from the consequential U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Harbor and Tributaries Study (HATS), the only comprehensive, region-wide study focused on resilience. Funding HATS again would resume the study and could result in future federal funds for numerous projects, such as the Coney Island Creek Tidegate. This nearly $1 billion project would strengthen the edges of the Coney Island neighborhood, and use wetland construction and a tidal barrier or dam across the Creek to control storm surge and mitigate flooding. This would also improve access to open space and water quality. Critical infrastructure in the area includes the Coney Island Hospital, NYCHA developments, MTA Rail Yards, and NY Aquarium.
Jim Henderson
A national infrastructure program is an opportunity to advance projects and concepts that would fundamentally transform transportation, energy, communications, and the public realm. We can take a page from the New Deal. During the 1930s, a combination of shovel-ready projects and federal funding were combined to help lift the region out of the Great Depression and shape much of the infrastructure we still see today. We consolidated our subway from three systems into one, constructed our first public housing developments, and built iconic structures and places from the Triboro Bridge and the Palisades Interstate Parkway to schools, libraries, parks, and pools that made neighborhoods healthier and more livable for generations to come.
The federal government can be a partner to states and cities in many ways including providing funding, expediting necessary approvals and studies, and providing support and guidelines for inclusive planning processes to generate new community-based visions and investments. This partnership will be necessary to transform interlocking infrastructure systems to meet the challenges of creating an equitable and climate-resilient economy, including the following:
- Providing reliable, affordable internet service to all households
- Upgrading the energy grid to provide the clean power needed for cars, trains, buses, and buildings to be powered by electricity
- Building the renewable energy and electric vehicle charging infrastructure needed to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets
- Reinventing streets and other public spaces to promote better health, quality of life, and civic engagement
In the short term, existing transformational projects could be advanced by removing federal roadblocks that have been holding these efforts back. Three of these -- the Gateway/Penn Station program, congestion pricing and offshore wind--are described below. Other projects, such as the much needed replacement of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, do not fit well into existing federal transit funding formulas. Consideration should be given to creating new regional or multi-state federal funding opportunities to broaden the number of projects with clear regional and national benefits that could receive federal funding outside of traditional formula funding. Federal guidelines and funding should also support local partnerships to identify both small and large scale projects as part of an equitable public works program.
Gateway and Penn Station
Gateway Explained
This video was created by RPA in 2018.
Now nearly three years past the U.S. Department of Transportation’s own internal deadline, the Gateway Development Corporation (GDC) is still waiting for the U.S. DOT to issue the Record of Decision (ROD) on the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Hudson Tunnel project.
The Record of Decision would enable final planning and important pre-construction work to begin on a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River to allow for the full rehabilitation of the 110-year-old existing tunnel. The Final Administrative Draft of the EIS was originally produced in only 22 months—less than half of the usual time for a project of this size. GDC and partners have been waiting 34 months for a ROD on their work. In addition to enabling final pre-construction work, a ROD would unlock over a billion dollars already allocated to Amtrak from Congress for Northeast Corridor improvements. This could be used for the Hudson Tunnel Project and would improve the chances the project would meet requirements for the Capital Investments Grants (CIG) program.
Other phases of the Gateway program include an expansion and major renovation of Penn Station, an essential investment to handle the increased passengers that Gateway and Penn Access would bring to the already over-crowded station. Along with the recently opened Moynihan Station and emerging plans for redesigning and expanding the entire transit hub, now called the Empire Station Complex, this would make these combined investments the most transformative transportation projects in the nation.
Congestion Pricing
Originally scheduled to start on the first of this year, the program has been stalled as the MTA waits for responses from U.S. DOT on their environmental review requirements.
The MTA has been trying to determine if they would need an EIS or a shorter Environmental Assessment to move the project forward. The delay by U.S. DOT over environmental procedures is especially frustrating since congestion pricing has numerous positive environmental impacts including reducing emissions through funding public transit improvements and reducing traffic. The MTA has previously stated they have met with U.S. DOT officials at least 20 times to resolve the matter, without success. Its delay threatens the $15 billion in capital expenditures that congestion pricing was to support.
Offshore Wind
The federal permitting process for current offshore wind development projects in all three states should be completed swiftly.
The U.S. government should also open up the next federal leasing areas offshore to insure a reliable “pipeline” of projects into the future. Government investment in infrastructure that supports offshore wind development -- including in ports and associated facilities -- will boost our regional economy, laying the groundwork for a thriving domestic industry.
Andy Dingley
An Equitable Public Works Program
Inclusive Growth
One example is the New York City Inclusive Growth Initiative, a collaboration of the New York City Employment and Training Coalition, the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, and Regional Plan Association. The initiative works to ensure recovery policies geared toward economic development, workforce training, and affordable housing benefit those who need it most and contribute to an equitable recovery. The agenda will be developed by a steering committee of emerging leaders who represent the diversity of the city.
Time to Act
If designed properly, a national infrastructure program encompassing transportation, housing, and resilience to climate change can address three glaring needs at once.
It can begin to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, address long standing inequities in the built environment, and stimulate the economy. Infrastructure affects virtually every aspect of our lives including health, safety, and access to jobs and opportunity. Few programs would have such a widespread positive impact on the nation. The key components of a successful infrastructure program -- the capital plans of cities, states, and state agencies -- are already in place and need only be fully funded.
Today’s national infrastructure program should emulate the New Deal by spending an ample amount of federal funding and starting with existing plans. It also needs to leave room for new ideas that will shape the future. As the infrastructure projects of the 1930s structured how our region looks and operates today, the projects we carry out today will structure how our region looks and operates for future generations.
Acknowledgements
Authored by
Special Thanks
- RPA thanks Benjamin Heller, Ingrid Gould Ellen and Sherry Glied of the New York University Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service for their analysis of region’s capital plans, which was essential to the findings and conclusions of this report.
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