“So it’s not only an issue of local concern-it’s of national importance.” “The MTA system is essential for the functioning of New York’s economy, and where New York’s economy goes, so goes the country,” says Sarah Kaufman, director of New York University’s Rudin Center for Transportation. MTA officials anticipate overall ridership will reach only 80% of pre-pandemic levels by 2027, but the system still serves roughly 6 million weekday riders on subways, commuter rail and buses. But the MTA is a complex transit system with a debt structure that’s about to get even more complex. A new toll on drivers entering Manhattan’s central business district will help raise some money. So the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the city’s subways, buses and two commuter railroads, has to simultaneously service its existing financial debt while spending billions of dollars more on infrastructure. “Now if it’s raining, we don’t even bother to use this station, because it’s not safe,” says McClean, who’s seen her work commute almost double to an hour and a half when the subway is experiencing delays. She relies on for-hire vehicles when the city gets hit with precipitation. Brenda McClean, a home-care nurse who needs to travel to her patients, avoids her neighborhood subway station at 157th Street in Manhattan during heavy rain after multiple incidents of flooding, including one downpour in 2021 that had riders wading through waist-deep water. New York City’s transit infrastructure can make getting to work, school, medical appointments and nightlife venues challenging for residents and visitors. New York’s transit infrastructure, she says, isn’t just having a midlife crisis: “It’s in an old-age crisis.” “The older something gets, the more it gets used, the more it gets worn out, and that creates more of an issue to keep it in a state of good repair,” says Maria Lehman, director of US infrastructure at GHD, a global engineering company, and a former president of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Just like with a financial debt, this obligation to riders only gets more expensive when investing in infrastructure is put off. The city’s rail network is more than 100 years old and needs to be modernized to attract more riders and keep revenue flowing into the system. The second has nothing to do with accounting but can be measured in aging subway cars, creaky old train sheds, outdated signal systems and stations vulnerable to flooding as climate change delivers more hazardous weather.

The first is the traditional kind of financial liability that shows up on a balance sheet-some $47 billion, or more than what most U.S. New York City’s public transit system carries two formidable debts.

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