Decaying steel and concrete structures that carry subway trains over 61 miles of outdoor tracks across the city are taking on elevated importance in the MTA’s newest five-year blueprint for big-ticket transit upgrades.
The proposed $68.4 billion capital program unveiled last week calls for $9 billion to be spent on urgent fixes to critical line structures across the regional transportation system. That includes $1.75 billion to strengthen 20 miles of above-ground New York City Transit structures in The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens through waterproofing and longer-lasting paint jobs.
The MTA estimates that approximately 50% of its elevated structures in the city are in “poor or marginal condition,” with anti-corrosive paint having outlived a projected shelf life of 15 years.
“Half of it is beyond its useful life,” Jamie Torres-Springer, president of MTA Construction & Development, told THE CITY. “Every homeowner knows you paint steel and other parts of your house to keep it from corroding.”
The projected work on critical structures in the new plan is of higher priority than in the previous 2020-2024 capital plan, which set aside $650 million for such work.
Torres-Springer said the structures are safe and inspected regularly, but added that the elements have taken a toll.
“This is about doing the preventative work that avoids us having to shut down a line because it’s unsafe,” he said.
Janno Lieber, the MTA’s chairperson and CEO, said during last week’s reveal of the new capital plan that some critical structures “have basically been left untouched” for years.
“If the MTA system is going to survive, let alone grow and prosper, we’re going to need to deal with that stuff,” he said.
Stretches of elevated structures on each of the numbered lines are set to rehabilitated, MTA documents show, along with portions of the A line and the Rockaway Shuttle in Queens and the section of the B and Q that runs between the Sheepshead Bay and the West 8th Street-New York Aquarium station in Brooklyn.
“I’ve seen it, I’ve seen the repairs, the disrepair and the hazards,” said Kevin Brooks, 64, a retired subway conductor who rode the No. 2 train Friday to the Burke Avenue station in The Bronx. “They’re trying, but they’re really deep in the hole.”
Uncertain Funding
The plans to keep the above-ground lines in safe, working order make up some of the most sizable chunks in the 2025-to-2029 capital program, which almost entirely targets maintenance of the 120-year-old subway system.
The five-year roadmap also projects $2.75 billion in spending for design and preliminary engineering work on the Interborough Express. The projected cost of the proposed 14-mile Brooklyn-Queens connector — which would be the MTA’s first light-rail line — could hit $5.5 billion, according to the transit agency’s estimates.
But funding for about half of the more than $68 billion upkeep and expansion program remains an open question. That’s in addition to the MTA already facing a $16 billion hole in its current five-year capital plan after Gov. Kathy Hochul’s abrupt June U-turn on congestion pricing, the Manhattan vehicle-tolling initiative that was supposed to help pay for priority transit improvements while also reducing traffic in the most congested parts of the city.
The pause on the Central Business District Tolling Program forced the MTA to reshuffle priorities in the current capital plan and to defer upgrades to its subway, bus and commuter railroad fleets and to subway signal upgrades.
MTA board members will hold committee meetings Monday and then vote Wednesday to submit the proposed 2025-2029 plan to the state’s Capital Program Review Board by Oct. 1, as required by public authorities law.
Raising Alarms
In announcing the plan last Wednesday at the Corona, Queens facility where trains on the No. 7 line are maintained, Lieber used words like “crumbling” and “falling apart” to describe portions of the transit system while drilling home the point that underinvestment in a system that moves millions of New Yorkers could come at a high cost.
“It should be alarmist, it’s the reason the capital program was invented in the first place in the 1980s,” said Lisa Daglian, executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA. “There were situations that were dangerous because of the lack of investment and we never want that to happen again.”
Torres-Springer pointed to three incidents from 2019 when debris fell from the No. 7 line’s tracks in Queens, including one in which a plunging piece of wood pierced a parked vehicle’s windshield on Roosevelt Avenue. The spills led to the MTA installing protective netting beneath some elevated structures.
“That’s the worst-case scenario,” he said. “The next-worst-case scenario is we have to shut down service, unfortunately, because we’re concerned about the structural integrity.”
Keeping the elevated portions of the subway system safe is also a key concern for those riding along and walking beneath the towering structures.
“You got to stay on top of the work so if you see something broken, you fix it,” said Mark Howell, 49, who was waiting for a train at the Burke Avenue stop. “Sometimes trains pass and it’s shaking and you just want to know everything is safe.”
