N.Y., NJ agencies to receive $834M in Hurricane Sandy relief funds

Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx announced the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) will allocate the final $834.6 million available in Hurricane Sandy disaster recovery funding.

FTA is providing maximum flexibility for impacted communities to direct repairs and has validated additional eligible damage for each recipient agency. Agencies can utilize recovery funds on any validated Sandy-related damage that meets FTA criteria, including repairs to tunnels owned by Amtrak and used by New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Railroad. Agencies will also have the flexibility to apply some of their previously directed resilience funds for recovery projects.

“This final allocation of funding provides the Governors of New York and New Jersey, through their respective transit agencies, the flexibility to put Federal dollars to work where they are needed most to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Sandy,” said Foxx.

A Federal Register notice describes in detail this final allocation of $432 million to the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), $299.8 million for the PATH system operated by Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ), and $102.8 million to the New Jersey Transit Corp. (NJT). Funds are being allocated on a proportional basis based on each agency’s revised and validated estimated unfunded need.

FTA has determined that the need for disaster recovery funding will likely exceed the amount of FTA disaster recovery assistance available. As a result, FTA is ensuring maximum flexibility for the states to decide where relief funds are best spent and providing a voluntary option for MTA, NJT and the PANYNJ to request that some Hurricane Sandy relief funds that were previously allocated for resilience improvements be reallocated toward recovery needs.

Consistent with previous FTA Hurricane Sandy Disaster Relief allocations and program policies, recovery funding can be used for eligible recovery expenses in accordance with the Emergency Relief program requirements. Eligible expenses include the recovery costs of transportation assets owned by other entities, to the extent those assets are used for public transportation purposes, and in a proportion consistent with written agreement(s) between the public transit agency and the owner of the asset.

This is the fourth and final allocation of funds under this program and brings the total of Hurricane Sandy Disaster Relief funds allocated by FTA to date to nearly $10.1 billion. Of that amount, approximately $5.2 billion has been allocated for emergency response, recovery, and rebuilding projects and $4.9 billion has been allocated for resilience projects.