MTA: Old infrastructure, climate change menace NYC transit system - New York Daily News

MTA: Old infrastructure, climate change menace NYC transit system

Torrential rains like those that nearly shut down the subway on Friday are a growing menace to New York’s transit system— which is also challenged by aging infrastructure and changing rider habits, a new MTA report says.

“The system is old and it’s getting older,” MTA construction and development head Jamie Torres-Springer said discussing the MTA’s 20-Year Needs Assessment, which was published Wednesday.

Ideas for a dozen new projects are discussed in the report — including the proposed Interborough Express light rail that would link Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to Jackson Heights, Queens; a subway to Red Hook; a revival of the No. 8 train in Brooklyn, and an extension of the Second Ave. subway under 125th St. west to Broadway.

But none have a chance unless money is spent fixing and strengthening New York’s aging transit infrastructure, the report says.

“The big takeaway here is the incredible scale of the need to invest in the system,” Torres-Springer said.

The report — an MTA wish list unconstrained by budget — will form the basis of the authority’s next five-year capital plan, due next year.

“It is an effort to look at the system’s true needs over the next 20 years, without trying to constrain it [by cost] — as, frankly, previous 20-year needs assessments have done,” Torres-Springer said.

“They started with a budget number, and basically fit the needs into that number. We did not do that.”

MTA chair Janno Lieber described the document Wednesday as “the most detailed inventory of the MTA network that’s ever been done.”

The bulk of the needs outlined in the report are aimed at the basic task of keeping the trains and buses moving.

MTA officials wouldn’t put a dollar figure on the necessary work, but painted the picture of a system in need of extensive maintenance.

Beams supporting Park Ave. above the Grand Central Terminal train arrival and storage areas are in dire need of repair, said Torres-Springer.

The Park Avenue Viaduct, which carries Metro-North trains north of E. 110th St. in Manhattan, also needs fixing, the report says. A three-year project to replace completely replace part of the viaduct, between E. 115th St. and E. 123rd St., is already underway.

Also, in 20 years, some 75% of subway electrical substations will be more than a half-century old. If they’re not upgraded, the report said, they could bring “extended power outages across the system” that could shut down multiple subway lines.

According to the report, 39% of subway cars on the numbered subway lines will reach the end of their useful lives during the next capital plan. All nine of the system’s pump cars and all five of its snow removal cars are due for replacement.

On the LIRR, the M3 passenger cars, which are on average 39 years old, are overdue for replacement. And Metro North still employs 15 diesel-electric locomotives that have been beyond their useful life for roughly a decade.

In total, the transit authority estimates it will have to replace 63% of its rolling stock by 2045.

Train yards, repair shops and bus depots are also in need of overhauls.

The century-old Livonia repair shop in East New York, which services the cars of the No. 3 train, currently cannot fit new rolling stock, Torres-Springer said. The No. 3 line’s R62 cars will be functionally obsolete by 2025.

The report says 80% of the employee facilities at NYC Transit’s 15 rail car repair shops are in “poor or marginal” condition, and 73% have structural problems.

The assessment highlights climate change as an existential threat, with the report projecting 2.5 feet of sea level rise by 2050.

Half of the Metro-North Railroad’s 74-mile Hudson Line is currently vulnerable to storm surges, the report reads, and that number is expected to rise dramatically in coming years.

Similarly, 400 miles of subway tracks are underground or below grade, and the MTA plans to increase the size of the drainage sumps across the system and elevate subway grates in an effort to forestall the kind of flooding seen during last week’s torrential rains.

Changing ridership patterns — and the evaporation of true “peak” and “off-peak” hours due to the prevalence of work-from-home policies — are also a threat to the system, MTA officials said, reducing the hours in a day when maintenance can be performed without service disruption.

In addition to laying out the needs of the current system, the document also weighs a bevy of proposed expansion projects, rating them for cost-effectiveness and feasibility.

The most likely is the $5.5 billion Interborough Express light-rail project — touted by Gov. Hochul. It would link 17 subway lines and the LIRR via an existing railroad right-of-way through Brooklyn and Queens, and earned high marks from the assessment team.

So did a $7.5 billion proposal to continue the Second Avenue Subway project westward along 125th St. to Broadway, which would link the future T train to the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 trains, as well as to the A, C, B and D lines.

Several proposals to revive the No. 8 train as part of a plan to run subways along Utica Ave. from East Flatbush to Kings Plaza were well-regarded, while a possible $11.2 billion extension of the W line to Red Hook fared less well, with the assessment team citing high cost and low projected ridership.

But MTA officials emphasized none of it gets done should the system — literally or financially — be underwater in the next 20 years.