Gov. Kathy Hochul asked the U.S. government for more federal funding for the MTA on Monday as the battle between the feds and state continues over the future of congestion pricing and the country’s largest public transportation system.
Hochul, along with state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, penned a letter to President Donald Trump, U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and other legislators describing the importance of the MTA and to help fund the unapproved 2025-2029 capital plan.
The seemingly civil letter follows an exchange of hostilities between Trump, Hochul and Duffy regarding the ongoing congestion pricing lawsuit in federal court. Hochul and the MTA immediately sued the Trump Administration following its attempt to end the controversial tolling program in Manhattan on Feb. 19. Duffy, meanwhile, has denounced the city’s subway system as a “shithole” and has publicly pressured Hochul to end congestion pricing.
In the letter, Hochul asked the federal government to support the transportation agency’s $68.4 billion capital plan.
“Today, we are asking for your commitment during the next five-year reauthorization of surface transportation programs to align New York’s federal formula funding for the MTA with our share of ridership—leveraging its transportation assets to support New York’s critical industries that rely on its facilities and services,” the letter stated. “Together, we can deliver the quality of life and economic opportunity that New Yorkers deserve.”
The letter goes on to say that the MTA carries 43% of the nation’s mass transit riders even as its share of the federal transit formula funding is only 17%.
“We believe this represents a fundamental misalignment,” the letter’s authors wrote. “Mass transit must be federally funded at a level commensurate to its importance to our nation and New York must receive its fair share of that funding to keep up with the needs of New Yorkers who rely on it to get to work, school, and medical appointments.”
However, MTA advocates are also asking city and state governments for funding—even as Stewart-Cousins and Heastie suddenly rejected the capital plan on Dec. 24 due to a $35 billion funding shortfall that has yet to be determined.
As for the federal government, Hochul appears to be asking Trump to consider increasing its contribution from the previous 2020-2024 capital plan, according to an article on ABC 7. The article also states that the federal government gave about $13 billion for the MTA’s last capital plan, which ran from 2020 to 2024, and is now being asked to give $14 billion.
“Before Governor Hochul took office, decades of state and federal disinvestment had pushed New York’s public transit system to its breaking point,” Avi Small, a spokesperson for the governor, said. “But under Governor Hochul’s leadership, the MTA has turned the corner: ridership is going up, crime rates are plummeting and the ‘fiscal cliff’ has been averted. New York is doing our part to improve public transit — now it’s time for federal officials to step up to the plate, do their part and give New York our fair share of federal dollars.”
The MTA has said that if the agency does not get a fully funded capital plan, many transit infrastructure projects, such as power and substation upgrades, modern signaling, and station accessibility, will be at stake.
“What’s perplexing is why the USDOT Secretary is attacking the NYPD — which has law enforcement jurisdiction in the subway, and which has achieved a 30% reduction in subway crime just in the last year,” MTA chair and CEO Janno Lieber said. “We understand that there is more work to do, and high-profile incidents dramatically impact public perception. But it’s incomprehensible that this allegedly pro-cop, pro-safety administration is so intent on attacking the NYPD, who works throughout the transit system every day to protect the MTA’s 6 million riders.”
In the meantime, the MTA announced on Monday that it has collected $100.5 million in the first two months of congestion pricing, which went into effect on Jan. 5.
