Tim Mulligan is heading up a newly created rolling stock programme office at New York MTA, tasked with widening and deepening the relationship between the authority and its supply chain. He explained the plans to Nick Kingsley.
‘We want US rail car manufacturing to be strong’, emphasises New York MTA’s Rolling Stock Director Tim Mulligan as he sets out the agency’s vision for how it could rethink its relationship with the supply chain.
Underpinning Mulligan’s remit is the task of efficiently funding renewal, maintenance and operation of the rolling stock used on the New York Subway. Never far from the headlines in the ‘Big Apple’, the Subway has emerged from the pandemic facing a slew of challenges related to rising costs and a sluggish ridership recovery. And, like some of its peers around the world, the Subway is a vastly complex tangle of legacy metro routes with ageing infrastructure and some entrenched operating practices that make renewing the network a daunting task.
This challenge is arguably made even harder by the intense political scrutiny that the Subway — and its owner, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority — faces on a near daily basis. The Subway needs a consistent funding stream to support renewal and enhancement, but over the past decade or so, the impacts of ‘superstorms’, the pandemic and wrangling about road pricing in Manhattan have all contributed to a sense of uncertainty about how the metro will get the investment it needs.
The much-delayed congestion charge for road vehicles entering lower Manhattan came into effect on January 5, reviving hopes that it could provide a long-term multi-billion dollar revenue stream to fund mass transit enhancements.
Capital Plan 2025-29
Against this backdrop, MTA is taking steps to rethink its procurement and investment strategy to ensure smoother delivery and greater integration between projects. This aspiration is set out in the latest Capital Plan, covering the period 2025-29. Issued in September last year following approval by the MTA board, the Plan is worth an indicative $68·4bn over the five years.
The last of the R32 Subway cars were withdrawn from service during the pandemic as part of MTA’s fleet renewal drive.
Fully funding this programme will not be easy — as demonstrated on December 24 when a scrutiny committee at the state legislature in Albany rejected the plan a day before it would have been due for automatic ratification and implementation on January 1.
Much hinged on the state’s executive budget that New York State Governor Kathy Hochul presented on Jan…
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