Latest news with #masstransit
Bloomberg
10-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
US Public Transit Systems See Ratings Hit as Fiscal Woes Mount
US mass-transit agencies are already grappling with weak ridership numbers and evaporating pandemic aid. Now, their credit ratings are under pressure. The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District was the latest to take a hit when it lost its Aaa rating from Moody's Ratings last week. The system's operations depend heavily on fares, and the dip in daily usage — which has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels — has ballooned its projected budget deficit to as much as $400 million in the upcoming fiscal years.
CBS News
05-06-2025
- Business
- CBS News
With mass transit funding deal still up in the air in Springfield, CTA, Metra and Pace begin planning for possible cuts
CTA, Metra, and Pace officials are preparing "doomsday budgets" after Illinois state lawmakers didn't address the Chicago area mass transit system's massive budget shortfall during the spring legislative session. With federal COVID-19 funding expiring at the end of the year, the transit agencies are facing a $770 million dollar shortfall in 2026. Without new funding from the state, the agencies have warned of service cuts of up to 40%. The Illinois Senate passed legislation that would impose a $1.50 tax on deliveries like Amazon, Grubhub, and Uber Eats, a 10% tax on rideshare trips, and add a new tax to charge electric vehicles to fund mass transit, but the Illinois House didn't take it up before adjourning their spring session. Illinois state Rep. Kam Buckner (D-Chicago) said that's due to how late in the last day of session the Senate passed the bill, but he said there's time to get a deal done this year. "CTA, Metra, Pace – they approve their budgets at the end of the year in December. They have not a July fiscal date like we do here in the state, but they have a January fiscal date. We've spent the last year or so talking about structural changes and governance reforms, and we've got that part right. And so, now, we can spend the next couple of weeks and months figuring out how we deal with the revenue piece. So when we come back to Springfield, whenever that may be, we'll be ready to go," Buckner said. While lawmakers could return to Springfield this summer or during their fall veto session to address mass transit funding, any laws passed after the end of May will need a three-fifths majority in both chambers to take effect before June 2026, making it more of a challenge to get the necessary votes to approve any potential deal.
CBS News
01-06-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Clock ticking for Illinois lawmakers to pass state budget, transit funding before spring session ends
With just hours until a crucial deadline, Illinois state lawmakers were working to pass a $55 billion state budget plan for the next fiscal year. The budget plan unveiled Friday night by Democratic leadership would include new taxes on gambling as well as tobacco and vape products. Another source of new revenue in the budget proposal is a delinquent tax payment incentive program. The program is designed to help the state recover overdue tax payments. The program was proposed by Gov. JB Pritzker and is estimated to generate about $198 million in revenue. A health care program that provides benefits to undocumented immigrants in Illinois between ages 42 and 64 also appears to be eliminated. Pritzker proposed eliminating the program to save the state $330 million. The proposed budget also provides $307 million in additional funding for K-12 schools, but does not include $43 million in property tax relief funds called for under the state's evidence-based school funding model. Chicagoans also have been keeping an eye on additional state funding for the area's mass transit system. Transit officials have said the system is facing a $770 million budget deficit in 2026, and if state lawmakers don't come up with that funding by the end of the spring legislative session Saturday night, CTA, Metra, and Pace must start laying out plans for service cuts of up to 40% for next year. "I think right now, there's wide understanding that we can't have these draconian 40% cuts. I mean, it just would be very painful, disruptive for the city. The economy would really suffer at the same time," DePaul University professor and transportation expert Joe Schwieterman said. Lawmakers spent hours Thursday debating another bill that would overhaul the state's mass transit system, but that bill did not include provisions to address the looming RTA fiscal cliff. That bill, instead, focuses on reforming the structure and governance of the Chicago area's mass transit system, and would replace the RTA with a new organization called the Northern Illinois Transit Authority. Technically, the money doesn't run out until the end of the year, and there will likely be a veto session that could provide another shot at an 11th-hour rescue. But transportation officials say they'll have to start laying out the specific cuts next week if the funding doesn't come through by then. With no end yet in sight as of Saturday afternoon, Illinois Senate Republicans expressed their frustrations with the Democratic-led budget process. "In less than nine hours, the Democrats are going to file over $1 billion in tax increases. The public are not going to see it until it is filed. They are going to pass it through the House and pass it through the Senate," Illinois Senate Republican Leader John Curran said. The state's new fiscal year begins on July 1. If the House and Senate don't pass a balanced budget by midnight Saturday night, they will need a three-fifths majority to approve a budget plan, rather than a simple majority. Ben Szalinski and Jerry Nowicki of Capitol News Illinois contributed to this report
Washington Post
28-05-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
Judge blocks Trump officials' bid to end NYC congestion pricing
A federal judge said Tuesday that New York City can keep charging drivers entering parts of Manhattan up to $9 until at least June 9 through its congestion pricing program, which aims to reduce traffic and raise funds to revamp the city's decaying mass transit network. Judge Lewis J. Liman of the Southern District of New York federal court issued a temporary restraining order Tuesday against Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy and other officials, blocking them from withholding federal cash or approvals from the state in a bid to kill congestion pricing. New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority sued the Trump administration in February for trying to terminate the program.
New York Times
13-05-2025
- Business
- New York Times
How New Yorkers Are Adjusting to Congestion Pricing
Good morning. It's Tuesday. Today we'll take a look at congestion pricing, now that it has passed the four-month mark. We'll also look at a lawsuit that challenges short-term rentals at a hotel that offered rooms on sites like Airbnb. And, later today, this week's edition of our limited-run newsletter about the race for mayor will come your way from members of our politics team. They will look at the 30-second television commercial that cost former Gov. Andrew Cuomo's campaign $622,000, and they will demystify ranked-choice voting. It's hard to change habits, but congestion pricing has done it. My colleagues at The Upshot looked at every way of measuring the difference congestion pricing has made that they could think of. They concluded that charging drivers $9 to enter Manhattan has achieved the program's two main objectives: to bring down congestion and to bring in revenue for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. There are fewer cars. There are fewer car crashes and fewer injuries. There are more passengers on mass transit, in taxis and on Citi Bikes. There was $45 million in net revenue in March, putting the program on pace to generate roughly $500 million in its first year. There is still some grumbling, but congestion pricing has become a part of life in New York, even as the Trump administration continues its efforts to kill it. Traffic is moving faster in Manhattan, and so are buses. Commutes from New Jersey are also faster. And there are other pluses: Traffic has not surged in the South Bronx, where community groups had fretted that toll-averse drivers would crowd the roads. Traffic on the Cross Bronx Expressway was down slightly from January through April, compared with last year, according to the New York State Department of Transportation. Speeds were up about 2 to 3 percent during working hours on weekdays. But enough of the macro perspective. What about the micro perspective? Three of my colleagues decided to find out by hitting the streets — specifically one street. They picked Bleecker Street because it is in the heart of the congestion pricing zone, which starts at 60th Street and runs to the Battery, the southernmost point in Manhattan. 'Also, Bleecker seemed like a good place to ask because it's a really busy corridor where people walk, bike and drive — and it's close to subway lines,' Winnie Hu, one of the three reporters, told me. 'It's also a destination for locals and visitors. People come to Bleecker Street because they know John's Pizzeria, they know Murray's Cheese, they know Pasticceria Rocco.' But there is more to Bleecker Street than pizza places and markets. Filling out the picture are a charter school, a church, a small park and expensive boutiques that help make it the backbone of a neighborhood. Their informal survey found complaints about higher delivery costs, but most businesses said they were making do. Of the 40 businesses the reporters contacted, 25 said that congestion pricing had not made a significant impact. Ten said they had been hurt by congestion pricing. Four said it had helped. One would not say. 'I was surprised there weren't more arguments about congestion pricing,' Winnie told me. 'People still don't like it, but they've come to accept it because they have no choice. And there are so many things to worry about right now — tariffs, inflation, food prices. Congestion pricing is just one more thing.' Or, as Kevin Jackson, the manager of John's Pizzeria, put it, the conversation has moved on. He said that congestion pricing remained 'a bitter pill,' and that he was still against it. He said it had increased delivery costs, but less than he had expected and not enough to raise prices. One example: A beer distributor added a congestion fee of $5 per keg. That adds up to an extra $65 a week. Little more than 100 feet down the block, an owner of O. Ottomanelli & Sons, a meat market, said that congestion pricing was behind a 20 percent drop in customers this year. He said that his customer base now included fewer drivers from New Jersey. They used to call ahead and pick up their orders. But congestion pricing has boosted a store that sells folding bicycles that can be carried on trains and stowed under desks, allowing cyclists to avoid the problem of finding places to lock conventionally sized bikes during the workday. The bikes sold by the store, Brompton Junction, are not cheap: They sell for more than $1,100. Crystal Aguilar, a sales technician there, said more people had been coming in to check out the inventory. Expect cloudy skies and showers with a high around 70 degrees. In the evening, rain will continue with a low around 60. In effect until May 26 (Memorial Day). The latest Metro news City targets short-term rentals in a new lawsuit A Greenwich Village hotel with several safety violations that offered rooms on sites like Airbnb has become the first test of a new law cracking down on short-term rentals. City officials said in a lawsuit filed on Monday that the hotel, Incentra Village House, was actually an illegally converted apartment building that was not approved to be a hotel. The city said that Incentra did not have the right alarms and sprinklers, among other fire safety violations. My colleague Mihir Zaveri writes that the lawsuit was the first to be filed by the city since a statute known as Local Law 18 essentially banned short-term rentals of less than 30 days unless the host is present. Companies like Airbnb vigorously fought the law. The number of listings posted on such platforms plunged after it took effect in 2023. Incentra is a boutique hotel with rooms that were listed on its website for as high as $617 on Monday, not including city and state sales taxes and the city's hotel room occupancy tax. It has been fighting the city to stay open for the past few years, according to the lawsuit. One room, named the Stonewall Room in a nod to the Stonewall Inn, was an 'illegally created unsafe cellar room,' the lawsuit said. The Stonewall Room was accessible only by a rickety staircase, and one guest said it had 'no means of escape, should anything happen.' The city aims to shut down the hotel and force the owner to fix the violations. The hotel did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Before the law went into effect, the city estimated there were roughly 10,800 Airbnb listings that were illegal short-term rentals. City officials said on Monday that since the law took effect, the city had approved more than 3,000 registrations for legal short-term rentals. But some homeowners complain that the city is being too heavy-handed by prohibiting them from doing what they want with their homes. Tiramisu Dear Diary: He slid the oval dish toward us, a perfectly clean column of cream waiting at the edge of the plate, an arrow made of ladyfingers and mascarpone pointed directly at our hearts. Befuddled, we looked at him, then at the bartender's face, which evolved from confusion to adoration. 'Here,' said the stranger I had been shoulder to shoulder with as we ate an Italian supper on a Saturday night in Carroll Gardens. He gestured toward his plate of tiramisu (well, our plate of tiramisu). 'You try it.' Just a few minutes before, I had gestured toward the plate with my eyes while craving it under my breath to my friend. The two of us had shared a regretful, longing glance: We should have gotten dessert. Now, we were being offered the last bite of someone else's. I was almost afraid to ask the bartender for a spoon. Was this kind of sharing allowed? Before I could think too hard, shiny silver spoons were resting on the counter, then caressed in our hands, then sinking into the custard with an Olympic diver's grace, and then, satisfyingly, into our open mouths. It turned out the owner's father came into the place every morning and made the tiramisu by hand. — Jordana Hope Bornstein Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here's today's Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Natasha Cornelissen and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@ Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
