Despite recent fare and toll hikes and continued high ridership, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) continues to face significant future budget gaps. The picture is complicated by an ill-advised 2002 debt refinancing that left the authority with an overhang of $1 billion in debt service over the next 30 years. To help with the underfunded capital plan, the Legislature is poutting a 42.9 billion transportation bond issue on the statewide ballot this year.
While the authority obviously has a pressing need to economize, city and state officials continue to turn a blind eye to one of the most promising possibilities for saving money — competitive contracting of bus transit services. As explained in this Manhattan Institute study:
- The use of competitive contracting in major transit systems in the U.S. and Europe has produced reductions in operating costs ranging from 20-51%, with savings in excess of 35% being the norm.
- Replicating even the least impressive of those results, a 20% cost reduction, would save New Yorkâ??s bus transit system the $340 millionâ?” enough to nearly eliminate the city and state operating subsidies.
(Note: the idea was recognized in a recent New York magazine article, “How to Fix the Subway.”
The opportunity for competitive contracting is even greater now that the MTA has taken over responsibility for privately franchised bus lines previously overseen by the city Department of Transportation.
About the Author
You may also like
New York’s post-pandemic Medicaid binge
As state budget preparations head into their final weeks, a confrontation is brewing over Medicaid, the state-run health plan for the low-income and disabled.
Governor Hochul has holding the state’s $36 billion share of Medicaid funding essentially Read More
Hochul’s ‘Straight Talk’ on Medicaid Isn’t Straight Enough
Arguably the biggest Medicaid news in Governor Hochul's budget presentation was about the current fiscal year, not the next one: The state-run health plan is running substantially over budget.
Read More
New York’s Medicaid Spending Is Running Billions Over Budget
New York's Medicaid program ran billions of dollars over budget during the first half of the fiscal year, adding to signs of a brewing fiscal crisis in Albany.
According to the fro Read More
Hospital Lobby’s TV Campaign Spreads Misinformation About Medicaid
As New York's health-care industry agitates for more money from the state budget, two of its most influential lobbying groups are airing TV ads that make alarmist and inaccurate claims about Medicaid. Read More
Hochul’s ‘Pay and Resolve’ Push for Hospitals Triggers Déjà Vu
Two years ago last week, I wrote in the Daily News about how then-Governor Andrew Cuomo was pushing a costly change to insurance law on behalf of a hospital group that had supported his campaign through a fund-rai Read More
The Looming Collapse of a Long-Term Care Insurer Raises Questions for DFS
As the Hochul administration presses for the creation of a "guaranty fund" to bail out failed health insurers, the state is quietly moving to seize a small company that could be the fund's first target. Read More
Hochul puts Medicaid spending on a steeper slope
Governor Hochul is releasing the brakes on Medicaid, allowing state spending on the safety-net health plan to increase more than twice as fast as it typically did during the Cuomo administration.
Read More
Why does the MTA bleed money?
Rep. Josh Gottheimer ruffled feathers when he called for Congress to investigate the spending practices of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, operating New York’s mass transit. Read More