Motionless in a City Built on Motion
A Review of the Capital Budget
I’m a proud supporter of the New York City subway — and it would be unfair to ignore the real improvements made over time. But, in true New York fashion, the daily experience still manages to keep us all humbled.
We wait on crumbling platforms. We climb endless flights of stairs because installing a basic escalator or elevator seems like an impossible feat. Stations flood after a light rain.
As for building new subway lines? Barely a dream — we haven't meaningfully expanded the subway network in decades. Entire megacities around the world have built entirely new systems in the time it takes New York to renovate a single station.
The MTA’s capital budget is supposed to be a promise of progress — a light at the end of the tunnel, if you will. But for most of us, it feels more like a black hole: money goes in, but the improvements never seem to come out. New Yorkers know the feeling — announcements of massive investments followed by years of construction walls, service disruptions, and yet no real change.
Ironically, the concept of the capital budget was born out of a desperate need for real change. In the early 1980s, Richard Ravitch fundamentally transformed how the MTA approached investment. Ravitch’s leadership helped secure dedicated funding and ushered in structured planning for the first time. His warnings about systemic collapse pushed the creation of the inaugural 1982–1986 capital program, which allocated $7.66 billion (later bumped to $8.7 billion) to rescue the subway from total decay.1
This new structure brought hope: oversight through the Capital Program Review Board2, five-year cycles for prioritization3, and a more sustainable financial foundation. It was supposed to be the beginning of a new era for the system.
And yet, here we are.
Since 1982, the capital budget has grown by 183% — a staggering increase when adjusted for inflation — but the number of subway stations has barely budged. The significant boost in the latest 2025–2029 plan, a proposed $68.4 billion, is fueled by some understandable (and alarming) realities: chronic underinvestment, aging infrastructure, skyrocketing construction costs, and a desperate need for climate resilience and accessibility.4
The MTA even conducted its most detailed system-wide evaluation to date — the Twenty-Year Needs Assessment — and the findings weren’t exactly comforting. J.P. Morgan’s analysis suggests that even $68.4 billion isn't enough; to truly address the backlog and bring the system up to par with private sector standards, the MTA would need closer to $115 billion over the same period.4
So yes, the money is bigger. The needs are bigger. The promises are bigger. But for the rider, the lived experience remains stubbornly small.
In a city defined by motion, it’s maddening that we can send rockets into orbit faster than we can build an escalator without blowing through timelines, budgets, and every last ounce of public patience.