MTA says it needs $6 billion for climate-related spending in next five years - New York Daily News

MTA says it needs $6 billion for climate-related spending in next five years

The MTA needs $6 billion in capital funding over the next five years to keep the city’s transit system running in the face of a changing climate, it said in a “ climate resilience roadmap” released Thursday.

“This is something we have got to do now,” MTA Chairman Janno Lieber said at a press conference in the Metro-North Railroad’s Mott Haven Yard in the Bronx. “We have to prepare the system to withstand the effects of climate change.”

“For New Yorkers, transit is like air and water — we need it to survive,” he added. “And it will not survive unless we plan to protect the system from climate change.”

Flooding at the Mott Haven Yard — which sits below grade on the northern edge of the neighborhood — brought Metro-North traffic to a halt last fall when heavy rains from Tropical Storm Ophelia inundated the city.

The rising waters flooded the yard’s Substation No. 5, cutting off electrical power to the third rail. All three Metro-North lines run through the Mott Haven Yard.

“Here at Mott Haven Yard, which carries 98% of Metro-North’s service, it has flooded from heavy rainfall 13 times since 2016,” said Jamie Torres-Springer, head of the MTA’s construction and development department.

“A lot of our trillion-and-a-half dollar system is at risk, now and in the future,” he said.

In the report released Thursday, MTA analysts predict twice the number of torrential rain events by 2050 and an increasingly high tide that will put one-sixth of the Hudson Line under water once a month.

The plan would allocate $1 billion towards flooding mitigation for Metro-North service, including more sophisticated drainage systems at the Mott Haven Yard and the shoring up of retaining walls and sea walls where the Hudson Line hugs the river’s edge. Where necessary, the plan also calls for elevating key pieces of Metro-North infrastructure.

Up to $1 billion would go towards funding similar protections along the Long Island Rail Road, as well as drainage improvements along the Port Washington Branch and in Long Island City.

Another $1 billion to $2 billion would pay for drainage improvements at the city’s bus depots and subway yards.

Some $1.5 billion would be allocated to continuing flood prevention work in the city’s subway system. Pumps already remove roughly 13 million gallons of water that seeps into the system even on a sunny day.

That work is expected to involve improvements to stairs and ventilation systems to keep flooding at bay during torrential storms.

Water that makes it onto the subway tracks is ultimately pumped into the city’s municipal sewer system — an older system that is capable of removing about 1.75 inches of rainfall per hour.

That city system was quickly overwhelmed last year during Tropical Storm Ophelia, which MTA officials said led to flooding along multiple subway tunnels.

Transit officials on Thursday said they hope to be able to improve the subway systems’ own pump network, allowing more water to be stored in the system before it gets shunted into the city sewer.

MTA brass also said they will be looking into choke points in the pump system, like one at the 86th St. station on the No. 1 line, which is prone to flooding.

The plan also calls for about $500 million to address the affects of increased heat on passengers and transit infrastructure — from bridges and rails to computers and communications equipment.

The projects outlined in Thursday’s resiliency report are expected to be funded by the upcoming five-year capital plan. That plan is due out by the end of the year.