LIRR Wins Over MNR - Cutting The Budget Pie

[Gilbert B Norman]

I only learned of this development because I was in the New York area earlier this week and the hotel had New York edition Journals available.

It appears LIRR will get more of the NYMTA $55B pie than will MNR - and the folks in the "outlying" counties such as Putnam and Orange are less than thrilled:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/lirr-gets- ... lewebshare

Fair Use:

.Metropolitan Transportation Authority board members raised concerns Monday about a funding imbalance between two of the nation’s busiest commuter railroads in the agency’s proposed $55 billion five-year spending plan.

The plan, which the MTA released late last week, allocated $5.7 billion to the Long Island Rail Road, 21% more than the $4.7 billion allocated to Metro-North Railroad.

During a meeting on Monday at the MTA’s headquarters in lower Manhattan, Susan Metzger, chairwoman of the MTA’s Metro-North committee, praised the state-controlled authority for increasing overall spending compared with previous plans. The current plan, which runs through the end of this year, totaled $33 billion

[quad50cal]

As it very well should, a very large percentage of Metro North's ~300,000 ridership figure is from Connecticut. Subtract the Connecticut ridership and the funding is comparable.

[Tadman]

Yeah I keep seeing this argument that LIRR is getting more than MNCR and it's quite simplistic.

Division of funding should be based on questions like: Where do the riders live? How many are on MN vs. LIRR? How many seat miles are on each system? Is the trackage or terrain on one railroad more complex than the other? Does one carrier have an older fleet than the other?

And for some reason nobody is saying a word about the imbalance, if any, between subway and regional systems funding. Or the imbalance, if any, between the three MTA systems and NJT, which primarily serves New York City as well.

The "equal funding" thing seems like clickbait to me.

[SRich]

It's normal that the part with te most users get's the biggest piece. If the MNR county want to spend more, ask for investments in future upgrades....

[BM6569]

LIRR is getting an extra million for Capital programs, which is in a different part of the capital plan. The two capital projects are ESA and Mainline third track. Otherwise it's equal