Expenses Budget gaps The budget deficit of the MTA is a growing crisis for the organization as well as for New York City and State residents and governments. The MTA held $31 billion in debt in 2010 and it also suffered from a $900 million gap in its operating budget for 2011. The capital budget, which covers repairs, technological upgrades, new trains, and expansions, is currently $15 billion short of what the MTA states it needs. If this is not funded, the MTA will fund the repairs with debt and raise fares to cover repayments. The MTA has consistently run on a deficit, but increased spending in 2000–04 coupled with the economic downturn led to a severe increase in the financial burden that the MTA bore. The budget problems stem from multiple sources. The MTA cannot be supported solely by rider fares and road tolls. In the preliminary 2011 budget, MTA forecasted operating revenue totaled at $6.5 billion, amount to only 50% of the $13 billion operating expenses. Therefore, the MTA must rely on other sources of funding to remain operational. Revenue collected from
real estate taxes for transportation purposes helped to contain the deficit. However, due to the weak economy and unstable
real estate market, money from these taxes severely decreased; in 2010, tax revenue fell at least 20% short of the projected value. Beyond this, steadily reducing support from city and state governments led to borrowing money by issuing bonds, which contributed heavily to the debt. This budget deficit has resulted in various problems, mainly concentrated in
New York City.
New York City Subway fares have been increased five times since 2008, with the most recent changes occurring January 4th, 2026, raising single-ride fares from $2.90 to $3.00, and express service from $7.00 to $7.25. Each fare raise was met with increasing resistance by MTA customers, and many are beginning to find the fare increases prohibitive. 2010 also saw heavy service cuts for many MTA subsidiaries. Fewer trains spaced farther between resulted in heavy overcrowding beyond normal rush hours, leading to frustration for many subway and bus riders. In 2013, the subway had the highest ridership since 1947. MTA employees also suffered due to the budget issues. By mid-July 2010, MTA layoffs had reached over 1,000, and many of those affected were low-level employees who made less than $55,000 annually. , the MTA was running a $15 billion deficit in its $32 billion 2015–2019 Capital Plan. In October 2015, the MTA passed the $29 billion 2015–2019 Capital Plan, the largest capital plan in MTA's history; it will be funded by federal, state and city government as well as riders' fares and tolls. Three months later, New York governor
Andrew Cuomo and MTA chairman Thomas Prendergast unveiled their plan to spend $26 billion to modernize the subway network, which includes adding Wi-Fi and cellphone services throughout all 278 underground stations by the end of 2016. Other plans call for
making extensive renovations to 30 subway stations, allowing mobile ticketing by cellphone or bank cards, and adding security cameras on buses, charging stations for electronics, and more countdown clocks. Roughly $3 billion will be spent to improve bridges and tunnels. During the
COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, following a 50% to 90% drop in ridership on all of the MTA's systems, the agency requested $4 billion in federal funds, since the decreased fare revenue left the already-struggling agency in a financially tenuous position. After the subway was temporarily shuttered at night starting in May 2020, trains and stations were cleaned more than usual. Over 132 employees died of COVID-19 . On February 1, 2023, as part of her Executive Budget proposal to the
New York State Legislature, Governor
Kathy Hochul proposed raising the MTA payroll tax, a move projected to increase revenue by $800 million, and also giving the MTA some of the money from casinos expected at present to be licensed soon for business in Manhattan.
Reasons for high costs On November 18, 2017,
The New York Times published an investigation into the problems underlying the MTA. It found that politicians from both the
Democratic and
Republican parties, at the mayoral and gubernatorial levels, had gradually removed $1.5 billion of MTA funding. Other actions by city and state politicians, according to the
Times, included overspending; overpaying unions and interest groups; advertising superficial improvement projects while ignoring more important infrastructure; and agreeing to high-interest loans that would have been unnecessary without their other interventions. The
Times stressed that no single event directly caused the crisis; rather, it was an accumulation of small cutbacks and maintenance deferments. The MTA funds were described as a "piggy bank" for the state, with the issuance of MTA bonds benefiting the state at the MTA's expense. In March 2018, the federal
Government Accountability Office ordered an audit of the United States' transit costs, which were generally higher than in any other developed country in the world. The GAO planned to devote special attention to the MTA's transit costs. The MTA has long struggled to control costs due to contracting fraud and corruption. In 2012, MTA executive Mario Guerra attempted to secure a job with train manufacturer Bombardier while evaluating their bid for a $600 million project. Paresh Patel, an MTA manager responsible for the oversight of repair contracts in the aftermath of
Hurricane Sandy, created and awarded contracts to his own engineering firm staffed with friends with few formal qualifications in engineering. After deleting thousands of company emails, Patel pleaded guilty to obstructing federal bid rigging and fraud investigations in March 2020. In 2022, construction manager Ramnarace Mahabir was found to have provided jobs for family members through the routing of $18 million in bus depot contracts. At one 2018 board meeting, an MTA executive explicitly noted the sentiment that the authority is willing to assign jobs to contractors with prior histories of corruption.
Advertisement bans The MTA collected $707 million from advertising on its trains and buses in 2018. In June 1992, the MTA banned tobacco advertising on subways, buses and commuter rail, costing the agency $4.5 million in annual advertising revenue. The tobacco advertisements were removed once the advertising contracts expired. They were removed from subways, buses, and bus shelters by the start of 1993, from the commuter rail lines by the start of 1994, and from Long Island Bus vehicles by the start of 1997. The MTA refused to display an ad in the New York City Subway system in 2012, which read: "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat
Jihad." The authority's decision was overturned in July 2012 when Judge
Paul A. Engelmayer of the
United States District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that the ad of the
American Freedom Defense Initiative is
protected speech under the
First Amendment, and that the MTA's actions were
unconstitutional. The judge held in a 35-page opinion that the rejected ad was "not only protected speech — it is core political speech ... [which as such] is afforded the highest level of protection under the First Amendment." The MTA had received $116.4 million in revenue in 2011 from advertising sold throughout its subway, commuter rail, and bus systems. The ad, paid for by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, showed a man with a scarf covering his face, with the caption "Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to
Allah", which was attributed to "
Hamas MTV," and then stated: "That's His
Jihad. What's yours?" A week afterward, the MTA's board in a 9–2 vote banned all political, religious, and opinion advertisements on subways and buses, limiting any ads to commercial ones. Specifically, it banned advertisements that "prominently or predominately advocate or express a political message" about "disputed economic, political, moral, religious or social issues," and any ad that "promotes or opposes" a political party, ballot referendum, and "the election of any candidate". The board estimated that the ads that the board was banning made up less than $1 million of the MTA's advertising revenue of $138 million in 2014.
2017–2021 transit crisis In June 2017, New York governor
Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency for the MTA due to ongoing reliability and crowding problems. This order applied particularly to the New York City Subway, which was the most severely affected by dilapidated infrastructure, causing overcrowding and delays. With many parts of the system approaching or exceeding 100 years of age, general deterioration could be seen in many subway stations. By 2017, only 65% of weekday trains reached their destinations on time, the lowest rate since a transit crisis in the 1970s. A corresponding bus crisis was not covered as heavily in the media, but in November 2017, New York City Comptroller
Scott Stringer identified several causes for the bus system's unreliability. The average speeds of New York City buses were found to be , the slowest of any major bus system nationwide. == Campaigns ==