MTA Gets Full Funding as Hochul Finalizes Budget, but It Counts on Feds Paying All of Penn Costs

April 28 saw an early-evening update from Gov. Kathy Hochul about the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and it was the day the month-late 2026 fiscal year $254-billion state budget was unveiled. This budget, which at press time still had to be passed by the Senate and Assembly, is the biggest capital investment in New York’s transportation history and will fully fund the MTA’s proposed $68.4-billion 2025-2029 capital plan to improve, repair, and maintain the MTA.

Also, of special interest to Manhattanites, the new budget will invest $77 million for police officers on every overnight subway train, installing platform barriers and LED lighting, with other programs, and will allocate $25 million for centers to provide services and care for the homeless on our transit system.

Funding will be helped by changing the payroll mobility tax, charged to businesses in New York City and counties in the area served by the MTA; the tax will increase for large employers but go down for smaller ones.

Also added? The $1.2 billion that had been earmarked as the state contribution to the proposed $7-billion rebuild of Penn Station. Hochul is now saying the money saved—because she said the feds are taking over—will be spent elsewhere on NYS projects. But it is a contentious topic still. The Trump administration is insisting it has no intention of footing the entire cost, even if it wants Amtrak, the federal entity that owns Penn Station, to handle the rebuild, wresting control away from the MTA.

The MTA says buses are traveling up to 20 percent faster in Manhattan since the launch, on Jan. 5, of the congestion pricing zone below 60th Street in Manhattan and that congestion pricing tolls in the first three months came in at $159 million, even as the Trump administration is trying to derail the toll.

Hochul, in a release also on April 28, touted progress on the MTA’s combating fare evasion and better fare collection on the subway, buses, commuter railroads; and toll collection on its bridges and tunnels. Over the last two years, the MTA has implemented measures to reduce fare evasion. Total fare revenue is up, reaching $5 billion for 2024, an increase of $322 million from 2023.

Currently, a more robust subway service is generating more riders, with the NYPD saying major crime on subways was down 11 percent this year. “Subway crime is at its lowest rate in 27 years,” stated Gov. Hochul. “There are more police in the system, including two officers on every train overnight, cameras in every subway car, LED lighting at every station, and expansion of the number of outreach professionals to deal with severe mental illness in the system.”

The MTA estimates it loses $700 million to fare evasion, but says it is making major progress on subways, even as fare-beating on buses remains at an estimated 40 percent. The MTA says only 9.8 percent of the subway riders elected not to pay during the first quarter of 2025, down from 13.6 percent in the same period of 2024, according to MTA data. Turnstile modifications and delayed egress on emergency exits are helping.

Speaking of gates, delayed-egress gates, devices designed to delay the opening of an emergency door for 15 seconds after an exit attempt, are installed at over 70 of the subway system’s 472 stations. At gates that have delayed egress, there was a 10 percent drop in total fare evasion, the MTA said, adding that it plans new installations at more than 150 subway stations throughout the system.

But the New York Post was reporting that some transit advocates are decrying the 15-second delay. Dustin Jones, who uses a wheelchair and who has sued the MTA in the past, said the program is “very dangerous.” He told the Post, “The average person with a disability, if they have to wait for a certain time that’s time that you’re losing and in an emergency, every second counts.”

Not even turnstiles are being neglected. At stations where turnstile sleeves and fins were installed, there was a 60 percent decrease in turnstile jumping. This fall, the MTA said it will start testing gates from these new vendors in select stations, before making final determinations on which gate types will be qualified at 20 different stations. Two of the pilot stations will be 14th Street-Union Square and 42nd Street-Port Authority. Each vendor’s equipment will be tested at five different stations, looking to double the number to 40 stations by the end of 2026.

Fare evasion on buses

MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber said, “For the last two years, we’ve been attacking fare and toll evasion from all angles—hardening the system against fare-beaters, simplifying fare payment, raising awareness about discounted fares and, yes, doing more enforcement. Now those efforts are yielding positive results that will grow even more with the new modern fare gates that are coming.”

The MTA data cites a little downward tick from 44.9 percent at the end of 2024, to 44 percent the first quarter of this year. To that end, the MTA has increased Eagle Team deployment to be at bus stops and at times of day with the highest concentration of fare-evaders. The agency’s civilian bus fare inspection team, supported by the NYPD, enforces bus fare payment at 140 locations every week and has resulted in a 36 percent decrease in fare evasion at those stops.

Toll evasion for MTA bridges and tunnels? There’s some good news there. Toll revenue recovery has increased 44 percent since 2021, results assisted by last year’s launch of the largest city-state interagency task force. The group has been focused on removing cars with fraudulent, obscured, or altered license plates, and persistent toll violators. A legislative package on toll enforcement was signed into law by Gov. Hochul in last year’s enacted budget. Since the launch of the task force in March 2024, law enforcement agencies have collectively issued more than 45,000 summonses, towed over 4,400 vehicles, and made 1,025 arrests