New York’s reform bill comes due today: if Washington won’t help build the IBX, the MTA may try to build it anyway.
This is The New York Daily Fix. Today, we’re following the money behind New York’s next reform round — transit, taxes, labor, signal upgrades, and youth safety funds.
Friday ledger time.
Exactly. Let’s start with the IBX.
From Dave Colon at Streetsblog New York City:
The MTA is exploring alternatives to federal funding for the $5.5 billion proposed Interborough Express light rail line between Brooklyn and Queens to circumvent President Trump’s propensity for meddling in New York’s ambitious infrastructure goals.
That is a big shift. A new outer-borough rail line that would normally have Washington at the table is now being planned with Washington treated as a risk. The IBX is supposed to connect Brooklyn and Queens without dragging riders through Manhattan — and yeah, the politics may be just as hard as the engineering.
Next, from the New York City Comptroller’s Office:
Based on the parameters chosen for the analysis, tax revenues are critically dependent on the share of targeted properties that are rented and on the behavioral responses to the tax. We find that, before adjusting for these factors, our choice of tax rates and brackets could raise almost exactly $500 million from a little over 11,200 properties.
Translation: the pied-à-terre tax could bring in real money for New York City — about 500 million dollars in this analysis — but only if wealthy second-home owners don’t dodge it, rent out units, or change behavior before the bill lands.
Now, from WLIW:
The Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) workers are demanding large wage increases, potentially leading to service cuts, job reductions, or fare hikes. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and five labor organizations representing roughly half of all LIRR union workers are locked in a contract dispute, which could result in the first railroad work stoppage in over 30 years beginning on May 16.
That’s the MTA putting a price tag on the union ask before riders feel the pain. But once “fare hikes” and “strike contingency” are in the conversation, commuters know exactly who becomes the leverage.
From Joey Stoate:
The 390 million USD project, which will be carried out in collaboration with L.K. Comstock (LKC), will see the modernisation of 23 stations along 65 track kilometres with Siemens’ CBTC System, Trainguard MT, in full compliance with New York Subway Interoperability Interface Specifications (I2S).
This is the boring upgrade that riders actually feel: tighter train spacing, fewer waits, more capacity. New York subway riders don’t need a moonshot here — they need signals that belong to this century.
And from Rosa Goldensohn and Reuven Blau at THE CITY:
While overall shootings have decreased in recent years, these shootings involving young people have remained elevated since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Approximately 127 minors have been shot each year over the past five years, and 111 minors identified each year as shooters.
That’s the maddening part. The money exists, the need is obvious, and the bottleneck is political will and execution. If Albany set aside funds to keep kids out of violence and incarceration, city leaders are basically saying: spend it where the crisis actually is.
If you want to dig deeper into anything we covered today, the links to every story are in the show notes. Give them a look when you have a moment — especially the pieces that caught your ear.
That’s The New York Daily Fix for Friday, May 1st. This is a Lantern Podcast.