Albany’s Power Brokers Are Trying to Break Your

In 2022, the MTA released its first state-mandated report that reviewed the agency’s operating budget and compared it to transit systems around the country and around the world. Later that year, independent researchers with the NYU Marron Institute of Urban Management came out with a deep dive on what drives up the agency’s capital construction costs. The reports noted specifically where the MTA’s high costs come from, yet state leaders have not followed up on these with legislation to fix it because by and large, it would involve a messy fight with transit labor. That’s a policy choice legislators, not MTA officials, make on behalf of their staunch supporters in the transit unions.