Report Aims to Reinvent the MTA; Critics Say it Misses the Mark

As reported by Dana Rubinstein, "an expert commission has produced a still-unreleased 90-page report on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that recommends some operational improvements, but avoids a specific prescription for stabilizing the New York transit system's finances."

"The report, a draft of which was obtained by Capital, is the product of the M.T.A. Transportation Reinvention Commission, which was convened this year at the behest of Governor Andrew Cuomo..."

Former federal aviation administrator Jane Garvey and former U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood head the commission. The commission was asked "to make a series of recommendations on how the M.T.A. might deal with the challenges of climate change and the region’s growing and changing population in the decades to come."

Rubinstein's article includes a complete draft of the report, posted in three parts.

Following Rubinstein's coverage, Alon Levy has written a criticism of the report, summed up here (with a lot more detail to follow in the article): "Despite the florid rhetoric of reinvention, the proposals contained in the report are small-scale, such as reducing waste heat in the tunnels and at the stations on PDF-pp. 43-44 of the first part. At first glance they seem interesting; they are also very far from the reinvention the MTA both needs and claims to be engaging in."