If the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) gets full funding for its proposed $68.4 billion 2025–29 Capital Plan, it will hire up to 300 new workers, agency heads said during an MTA Board — Capital Program Committee Meeting on March 24.
The agency wants to be able to hire workers who can replace and/or maintain segments of the MTA system that have been in use for decades and are now degrading. They want to use $6 billion from the planned budget to get ahead of what they call the “decay curve.”
David Solimon, who leads MTA Facility Groups and Readiness, told those in the meeting about necessary repairs to interior staircases and platform barriers, upgrading signal systems, and overhauling other structural defects. The MTA’s plan also calls for purchasing new trains and electric buses, and installing more elevators.
“We’ve identified additional programmed work to add over 300 jobs in the New York City Department of Subways alone,” Solimon told the meeting. “These additional 300 positions are yet another piston in the economic engine that is the ’25–’29 Capital Plan. These projects are estimated to generate tens of millions of dollars in savings versus the traditional third-party route.”
New Yorkers looking for employment with the MTA can check the MTA’s career website for open positions and upcoming exams. The website will have job postings and exam schedules for positions such as bus drivers, train operators, conductors, and track workers.
Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100, which represents New York City’s bus and subway workers, heralded the MTA’s announcement. The union wrote on its website: “This is a direct result of Local 100 and the International working hand-in-hand in Albany to get key members of the state Assembly and Senate to support our efforts to have more capital work assigned to the in-house TWU workforce.”
“You’re talking multiple trades because we do all of it,” TWU Local 100 President John Chiarello told the AmNews. “I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but we do masonry, everything –– everything related to station repair. We do track work, there’s electric buses in there; you name it, so, we’re in support of [this plan], obviously. It seems like they know that we could do it cheaper in-house, too.”
If funding for the Capital Plan comes through, it will lead to work for TWU members, some 75% of whom, Chiarello estimated, live in New York City’s five boroughs.
MTA head Janno Lieber explained during the Capital Program Committee Meeting that “we’ve discovered that there is certain scope and certain kinds of projects that really do match up much better and more cost-efficiently with in-house work. And we will hire more people in-house to do that work and we will save money by doing it. We’ve talked to the … unions, plural –– especially TWU Local 100 –– and there’s a lot of enthusiasm for this.
“We’ve got to start catching up on what everybody didn’t do, honestly, until 1982. It was a 100-year-old system that was left to, basically …deteriorate because it was bankrupt almost from the day it opened. We all know that history, with the fare and no investment, and we are trying to catch up now. If we don’t, the riders are going to pay the price. That’s the bottom line: We have to catch up with the condition of the system or the riders will suffer. It’s a must-do.”
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