BROOKLYN — The Brooklyn Borough President said Wednesday he wants to know how much money recent MTA subway disruptions, including Tuesday's power outage at the DeKalb station, are costing the city.
BP Eric Adams called on the New York City Independent Budget Office (IBO) to conduct an “economic impact analysis” on recent outages to study the loss “economic productivity of hundreds of thousands of workers” and its impact on local businesses and lost taxes.
“After the second incident at the DeKalb Avenue subway station in just three days, throwing the commutes of tens of thousands of New Yorkers into a miserable snarl, it is time for the Governor’s Office and the MTA to prove how seriously the state takes the impact that an underfunded and outdated transit system has had on straphangers’ daily lives as well as our local and statewide economies,” Adams said in a statement.
A spokesman for the IBO said they had just received the request and would discuss “what we think is viable internally” before they get back to Adams.
There have been a number of large-scale subway disruptions this year, including a recent Con Edison power outage that caused a delays on 12 lines.
The MTA said they have already spent billions to modernize the system.
“The MTA is requesting a meeting with ConEd to immediately address these recent issues. The MTA is the life blood of the region’s $1.4 trillion economy, which accounts for approximately 11 percent of the nation’s GDP," spokeswoman Beth DeFalco said.
"That is exactly why we have spent more than $4.7 billion to modernize signals and why we are spending an additional $2.5 billion on signal modernization in this Capital Program alone.”
Adams added that continued disruptions could have a major impact on city finances.
“Tax revenue is directly correlated with the strength of our city’s economy, of which the transit system is the lifeblood,” the borough president said.
