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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 31, 2024

To: MTA Capital Plan Review Board

RE: MTA 2025-29 Capital Plan

Dear Board Members:

The Building Congress comprises 500 constituent organizations representing 250,000 skilled tradespeople and professionals across the industry, all dedicated to the growth and prosperity of our city. We strongly express our support for fully funding the MTA’s 2025-29 Capital Plan, and encourage the Board – and subsequently Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state legislature – to approve the $68.4 billion program.

Last year, there were more than 1.5 billion paid MTA passenger trips: 1.15 billion on the subways; 426 million on NYC buses; 65 million on the Long Island Rail Road; and 60 million on Metro-North trains. In order to encourage people out of their cars, off the roads, and back into mass transit in the numbers we saw pre-COVID, our system must see the investment it needs for frequent, reliable, safe service. The plan aims to not only provide critical state-of-good-repair funding to ensure a functional, modernized system, but also bold visions for the future, including the Interborough Express, connecting transit starved areas in Brooklyn and Queens. It also funds essential improvements to make our system more resilient to extreme weather events.

With the delay in implementation of congestion pricing in Manhattan, full funding of the capital program is now critical to assure riders that their system will not fall back into the disrepair and dysfunction of the Summer of Hell in 2017. And this is not something that just affects New York City or MTA riders. The capital plan also supports thousands of businesses and tens of thousands of jobs statewide – the previous capital plan was responsible for the creation of 57,000 jobs. The economic impact is projected to be even greater than the $62 billion in statewide economic output from the previous plan, along with a projected $7.5 billion in contracts for MWBEs.

From the Building Congress’ perspective, it is crucial that we prioritize job creation as we continue to recover from the worst days of the pandemic. We must also update our infrastructure to be better prepared for our city’s climate future. This capital plan delivers in these two areas and so much more.

We urge you to support this bold vision for the future and support its full funding. It will lead the way to a safer, stronger, more accessible and more sustainable New York.

Thank you for your consideration.

 

Carlo A. Scissura, Esq.

President & CEO

New York Building Congress

Published on

Oct 31, 2024

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