Lander Pushes 50-50 Federal Transit Split, Hopes New York Actually Gets Its Share

If New York is to remain America’s densest engine of mobility, it must persuade Washington to rewrite transit funding’s hoary script.

On any given weekday, nearly four million New Yorkers descend into the city’s subway—a throng equal to the population of Los Angeles, squeezed into rumbling carriages beneath Gotham’s streets. Yet, for all its role as the metropolis’s aorta, the transit system receives barely a sliver of federal largesse compared to highways. This mismatch is no abstract bureaucratic quirk: it shapes how millions commute, how the city grows, and, increasingly, how candidates wage political campaigns.

Enter Brad Lander, current New York City Comptroller and aspiring congressman. As the Democratic primary in a Lower Manhattan–Brownstone Brooklyn district approaches, Mr. Lander has made transit reform a campaign keystone. His not-so-modest proposal is to upend a federal practice dating to the Eisenhower era—specifically, the 80:20 split in surface transportation funding, in which roads claim the lion’s share and public transit makes do with scraps. Mr. Lander wants a 50-50 split, and, crucially, to lift federal restrictions that prohibit using transit funds for routine operations, which today’s MTA and its ilk desperately need.

The proposal is data-rich and plain-spoken: “Nearly four million people use our subway on an average weekday,” Mr. Lander observes, a figure only rivaled by entire countries. The city’s transit system, he notes, moves nearly half of all Americans who take public transportation daily, but receives just 15% of federal transit funding. Even by the standards of political rhetoric, this is a galactically lopsided deal.

For New Yorkers, a recalibration of federal funding could do more than patch potholes in the subway tunnels. The MTA has long been caught in a fiscal bind: ridership, while recovering post-pandemic, still lags (2023 weekday boardings hovered around 80% of pre-COVID levels), while costs—for maintenance, labor, and expanding service—tick ever upward. Fresh operational funding would not only keep trains running but also forestall fare increases and service cuts that drive even more residents into gridlock above ground.

Lander’s proposal is not the only transit-centric platform to emerge from this year’s Democratic primaries. Assembly Member Claire Valdez, running to succeed stalwart Nydia Velazquez, has floated her own, albeit less detailed, vision for federal transportation equity. The centripetal pull of “fair funding” thus seems to be gaining traction among the city’s progressive set. Even Governor Kathy Hochul, traditionally a reliable support for transit, would surely welcome more partners in Washington to fill the capital’s tepid enthusiasm for subway subsidies.

A rewrite of the 80-20 formula, long treated as sacred text by transport bureaucrats, would have reverberations far beyond city lines. At present, it perversely incentivises sprawl: rural highways across the heartland gleam with fresh tarmac while subways creak, their busiest lines serving the sorts of districts that reliably send Democrats to Congress. Little wonder, then, that would-be insurgents in New York now see transit reform as a way not only to rally the city’s base but to tag their more centrist rivals—such as incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman—as highway-funding dinosaurs.

Meanwhile, economic arguments pile up faster than road salt in February. A modern, efficient subway makes the city’s economy nimbler, reducing congestion and freeing up workers’ time (a currency as valuable as any dollar figure). Each additional billion spent underground ripples through union payrolls, construction firms, and, ultimately, the city’s productivity. To subsidise highways and cars over trains and buses is, in effect, to tax the city’s density-powered dynamism.

Yet obstacles remain elephantine. Congress, like Washington itself, is not built for speed, let alone for major redistributions that would pit car-loving states against their urban cousins. For every New York clamoring for transit parity, there is an Indiana, Wyoming, or Mississippi deeply attached to their generous highway allocations. Changing the federal formula will require not only a shift in policy but a revolution in political culture—something even the most skilled operator might struggle to bring to a vote.

Change on the rails, politics in the fast lane

The federal government’s stingy approach to urban transit is no new phenomenon. American cities from Boston to San Francisco face similar uphill battles. Some, such as Los Angeles, rely on local sales taxes to supplement threadbare federal grants. European counterparts, by contrast, devote much higher shares of both national and local spending to operations, leading to smoother service and lower fares. Scant wonder Paris’s Métro or Berlin’s U-Bahn appear almost utopian to New York’s frustrated strap-hangers.

In economic terms, the stakes are rising. As climate anxieties and urban populations grow, cities that neglect transit face mounting costs—not only in greenhouse emissions but in lost productivity and shrinking housing affordability. Transit-rich cities are magnets for both labor and capital; gridlock-prone ones are not. In this, New York’s predicament points to a national crossroads: whether to bank on urban density or double down on car-first sprawl.

We harbour no illusions about the politics. Proposals such as Mr. Lander’s tend to founder on the shoals of congressional inertia and rural-urban antagonism. Yet the mere fact that primary campaigns now hinge on transit policy—in a city whose voters reliably turn out to defend subways—suggests that the cultural tide may be turning. If New Yorkers can put transit spending at the centre of national debate, they may yet leverage their ridership into something approaching fair funding.

For now, the gantlet remains daunting. But over time, arithmetic may triumph where rhetoric cannot. With each MTA budget shortfall, with each election in which candidates campaign on “Even Steven” funding formulas, the case for overhauling the arcane 80-20 split becomes harder to dismiss as parochial special pleading. And if New York, by sheer scale and necessity, leads the way, other cities clamouring for rail, tram, and bus support may well follow.

The nation’s purse strings will not loosen themselves. But eventually, as the numbers mount and the evidence piles up, Washington may reckon with the elementary truth: in a country that is increasingly urban, investing in city transit bodes best not just for New York, but for America’s economic future. ■