On Tuesday, the M.T.A. released a $32 billion capital plan with a $15.2 billion funding hole.
The plan offers no new ideas for filling that hole, aside from asserting that, "new and increased sources of funding will be needed to progress the full five years of proposed investments."
The M.T.A.'s "reinvention commission," which was supposed to consider new ways to stabilize the M.T.A.'s finances, and whose deliberations were supposed to inform the capital plan, has yet to release its report.
M.T.A. spokesman Adam Lisberg said that there was still time between tomorrow, when the M.T.A. board will vote on the capital plan, and October 1, when the M.T.A. must submit the plan to the state Legislature, for the commission to fufill the role that Governor Andrew Cuomo set out for it, particularly since the Legislature tends to deliberate on the capital plan for months.
The M.T.A.'s $32 billion capital program includes $15.5 billion for New York City subways, including money to buy 940 new subway cars, replace more than 80 miles of subway tracks, install 13 elevators to make 13 more subway stations wheelchair accessible, and expand communications-based train control, a signaling system already in place on the L train that increases capacity by enabling trains to run closer together.
The $15.5 billion also includes $250 million to replace the M.T.A.'s already obsolete MetroCard fare payment system.
The capital plan also puts $2 billion toward New York City's buses, which carry more than 2.5 million riders a day. The money would be used to buy more than 1,800 hybrid-electric buses and also expand the city's lackluster bus rapid transit system.
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