New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Construction & Development (MTA C&D) released “Better. Faster. Cheaper.” — the agency’s 2024 Year in Review and 2025 Strategic Plan, which found it has saved $3 billion on capital project delivery in its first five years. 

The strategic plan traces C&D’s progress since its founding in 2020 and charts a path forward for an ambitious docket of projects to be completed this year.

Savings Highlights

The Strategic Plan arrives as the MTA seeks full funding of its proposed 2025-29 Capital Plan, the largest State of Good Repair investment in the organization’s history. 

More than 90% of the proposed plan is dedicated to improving and rebuilding the existing system. Its priorities were informed by the most detailed system-wide evaluation the MTA has ever undertaken, the Twenty-Year Needs Assessment.

The savings identified in the report include:

• Better Contracts: More than $1.1 billion in savings from improved contracting strategies, before a shovel hits the ground on key projects.

• Better Planning: $750 million in savings from better upfront planning, identifying smarter design and correcting for over-customization.

• Better Delivery: $750 million saved from efficiencies found in the contract budget versus the actual budget cost, due to rigorous project management during construction.

• Better Management: $400 million saved on insurance reductions alone.

These savings have allowed the proposed 2025-2029 capital plan to deliver far more for riders than previous capital plans, while costing 4% less in inflation-adjusted dollars than the current 2020-2024 capital plan.

The C&D Strategic Plan

The C&D Strategic Plan comes as the MTA continues to make progress on the 2025-2029 Capital Plan. 

At its March Capital Program Committee meeting, the MTA announced the next 13 stations to be made accessible in the plan including stations in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. This will close gaps between accessible stations and provide new elevators, improved stairs, and updated fare payment areas.

MTA C&D awarded $4.6 billion in commitments in 2024 and completed $5.5 billion worth of projects in 2024 while making enormous strides on reliability, accessibility, resilience, sustainability, and other key priorities. That includes launching the first new subway cars on the Staten Island Railway in 50 years; making 16 stations fully ADA accessible and awarding contracts for work on five more; completing a flood wall and flood gates at 207th St Yard to prevent service disruptions in severe weather; purchasing 60 new battery-electric buses, and far more.

The department made a total of $784 million in payments to MWDBE firms in 2024.

Thanks to congestion relief, MTA C&D has proceeded with procurement on other critical projects, like Communications-based Train Control (CBTC) signal modernization, additional ADA upgrades, dual-mode locomotives for Long Island Rail Road, and other major initiatives.

Looking forward to 2025 and beyond, the strategic plan looks toward continued improvements in executing the remainder of the 2020-24 capital plan, advancing long-range planning for the future of the public transit system in New York, and growing its in-house capacity to further reduce costs and project timelines going forward.