Joe’s bill bonanza for MTA rails, buses
The bipartisan infrastructure package cobbled together in the U.S. Senate would deliver at least $10 billion to the MTA, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Friday.
The roughly $1 trillion plan, which snagged support from 17 GOP senators and every Democrat in the chamber this week, still faces a convoluted path to passage.
But Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he is “very optimistic” the bill — a centerpiece of President Biden’s first-term agenda — will make it out of the Senate and into the House next week.
The MTA, which runs the city’s subways, buses and rail lines, has never seen such a large influx in federal funding, Schumer said.
“There is more money for New York’s infrastructure in this bill than we have probably seen since the days of Peter Stuyvesant,” he said in a call with reporters, referencing the Dutch merchant who governed part of Manhattan in the 17th century, when it was called New Amsterdam.
He said the funding would help New York City compete in the face of the challenge to public transportation posed by climate change.
Earlier this month, relentless rains turned the W. 157th St. subway station in upper Manhattan into a waist-deep underground river. The MTA, which has been battered by COVID, has already received billions of dollars in
federal relief during the pandemic.
Schumer said funding from the package would also go toward the Gateway project to build
train tunnels beneath the Hudson River.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) bashed the potential MTA funding in a sarcastic tweet on Tuesday. “I asked if Chuck is going to goldplate every rail in the NYC subway system,” Cotton wrote.
Schumer was still eager to tout his push to benefit the beleaguered subway system, saying that “New York does quite well” in the package. “This is a really great day for New York,” he said.
But he acknowledged that the MTA, which is in the process of a slow-moving leadership shakeup, will face scrutiny to spend any federal funding efficiently.
“We will have to keep an eye and make sure that the money is spent well and spent wisely and not wasted,” Schumer said, noting the Biden administration will watch over the process.
“That’s part of the job of oversight.”