The MTA’s operating budget deficit is large, and is only slated to get larger. In the red: The MTA’s costs for just serving its mammoth debt grow every year. So while the 2020-2024 capital plan will have the kind of dedicated funding necessary to do things like resignal huge parts of the system, install accessibility upgrades and finish another incredibly expensive leg of the Second Avenue Subway, there’s less and less money available to actually run transit service. The MTA has a shiny new funding toy in congestion pricing and other new taxes, but the $25 billion that will be raised will only help pay for work on the agency’s capital spending side.

And that deficit is going to have to be realized by perhaps sacrifices going forward.” How did we get here? To borrow all of that money, we have to pay attention to the deficit it’s going to cause in the operating budget. “That gap is important for us to reckon with because in order to borrow money, you have to pay the cost of that borrowing, and that’s in the annual operating fund. “There’s still going to be a gap,” Paulin said about the funding formula for the upcoming $51-billion capital plan. Paulin noted that the MTA was expected to borrow money for both the 2015-2019 capital plan and the upcoming 2020-2024 capital plan, and that borrowing costs eat into the MTA’s operating budget.

Speaking to a crowd at a TransitCenter event last Tuesday night, Assembly Member Amy Paulin laid out a dark scenario for bus and subway riders. Just as subway and bus service is finally improving, and the MTA is preparing to make massive, long-term repairs paid for with congestion pricing, the regional transit agency is facing a cash crunch so severe that service cuts now seem inevitable - and they’d come exactly at the worst possible time, advocates and elected officials are warning. “Cash-strapped” is not just a cute adjective that always precedes the noun “MTA.” It’s a harsh reality.

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