Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials said more than $16 billion worth of work to upgrade and maintain New York City’s transit system will be stopped because of the governor paused congestion pricing, according to the Gothamist.
The announcement came during the transit authority's board meeting held on Wednesday. Details of the new plan — which board members described as “a financial disaster” and “dire” – includes deferring projects worth a total of $16.5 billion, the news outlet said.
That includes the purchase of $1.5 billion worth of new subway cars and 250 new electric buses, as well as pausing work on 23 train stations to make them accessible to riders with disabilities.
Work on the Second Avenue subway extension to East Harlem also won’t move forward.
The board meeting began with a line snaking around the MTA's headquarters, where 140 people signed up to speak, a majority of them who opposed Hochul’s pause on congestion pricing, the news outlet wrote.
Congestion pricing was designed to finance $15 billion worth of upgrades, about 30% of the MTA's five-year plan's total cost. Now MTA officials are expecting projects will cost even more because it will need to defer federal grants that depend on local funding, Gothamist said.
The good government group Reinvent Albany estimated that Hochul's move also affected 100,000 jobs in the state that are tied to MTA projects.
