The clock's ticking on the legislative session in Albany, but the Metropolitan Transportation Authority still doesn't know where it's going to get the money it needs to fund repairs and improvements to the transit system. That's alarming to the architect of the first Capital Plan that launched the system's turnaround. NY1's Jose Martinez filed this report.
Remember the bad old days of the city's subway system? Richard Ravitch sure does.
"Every other day there were stories on television of delays, of crashes, of fires, of breakdowns, etc," Ravitch says.
The former Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman helped to rescue the system from the brink of collapse in the early 1980s.
He crafted the first five-year plan that spent billions of dollars on trains, equipment and maintenance, reversing decades of neglect.
There's still no answer, however, for how the MTA will plug a $14 billion dollar hole in its latest five-year plan to maintain a system straining under record ridership.
Ravitch says Albany is failing riders.
"I don't know what's wrong with politics today, but the initiative has to come from the governor and for whatever reason, he's chosen not to do it," Ravitch says.
Governor Andrew Cuomo's office says it's working on a funding solution, but it's unlikely to be resolved before this year's legislative session ends next week.
Though there have been some high-profile proposals on how to fill the MTA's funding gap, none seem to have much generated much excitement among lawmakers in Albany.
Among the ideas: slapping tolls on East River Bridges, increasing the gas tax and hiking the income tax on high earners.
"Politicians don't like to generate taxes. They don't like to appropriate money. People are always looking for a cost-free way of dealing with a problem that requires the expenditure of money," Ravitch says.
A report Tuesday by the city's Independent Budget Office warns that funding the MTA's Capital Plan has historically been a drawn-out process.
"No plan has been approved later than July, however. So once you get past July or further into 2015, it may impact the way MTA can enter into contracts," says Elizabeth Brown, a supervising analyst at the Independent Budget Office.
That could mean fewer new trains and not extending the Second Avenue Subway beyond the small line now being built.
"There is some wiggle room and we're getting to the end of that wiggle room now," Brown says.
Wiggle room which riders will have even less of as trains become more crowded.