There’s no getting around it – we had a rough few days last week when power outages at West 4 St-Washington Square paralyzed multiple subway lines. Riders had to deal with hours-long suspensions and delays twice in two days. Every commuter’s nightmare, and mine. I take it personally when we fall short of delivering top-tier service.
I went down into the tunnels to support the team while crews worked in blazing heat to restore service. This is difficult, physical work. We had to bring in equipment from across the system, including a new transformer and fuses. It took more than 10 men to move it all, and many more employees from across New York City Transit to manage train service and communicate with customers on the platform, in stations and online – Train Service Supervisors, line managers, teams from Maintenance of Way and Service Delivery, station agents, you name it. They worked around the clock to get New York moving and keep riders informed, and I am grateful as always for their dedication.
But this shouldn’t keep happening. We’ve long known that aging infrastructure and extreme heat are not a winning combination. Climate change will continue to test our system – as we saw again during Thursday’s epic rainfall – and we need to be ready. Our 20 Year Needs Assessment laid out the system’s vulnerabilities in detail, which is why we made State of Good Repair the focus of the MTA’s $68.4 billion 2025-2029 Capital Plan.
We fought in Albany for every last dollar to fund upgrades that will replace 100-year-old power rooms and ancient signals from the FDR era with more resilient modern technology, like what we have on the 7 and L lines. There’s a reason they are the best performing in the entire system. Every line should be so good.
They can be, but first we need to implement this Capital Plan. Then we must keep up the historic level of investment going forward. JP Morgan has suggested that an organization like the MTA, with $1.5 trillion in assets, should spend a range of $16-23 billion every year to maintain our system. More than $100 billion over five years!
The price tag is steep, but riders will be worse off if we do nothing. For as long as I have this job, I promise to be a voice for customers. They deserve our best, and that’s being able to count on getting where they’re going on time, every time.
