A Gap between Current NYC Public Transit Infrastructure and Future City Development: A Problem and An Opportunity

19





ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers), "2013 Report Card for America's Infrastructure", 2013, Online.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority, "2013 Adopted Budget: February Financial Plan 2013-2016", 2013, Online.
Ibid.
NYC Department of City Planning, Current Population Estimates, http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/census/popcur.shtml, 2014, Online.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority, "2013 Ridership Reaches 65-Year High", 2014, Online.
Ibid.
Ibid.
New York State Comptroller, "Progress Report: The MTA Capital Security Program", 2014, Online.
Robert Ruentes and Jennifer Thompson, Brooking-Rockefeller, "Banking on Infrastructure: Enhancing State Revolving Funds for Transportation", 2012, Online.
Ibid.
Ibid.
New York State Comptroller Office, "Private Financing of Public Infrastructure: Risks and Options for New York State", 2013, Online.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority, "MTA Capital Program 2015-2019", 2014, Online
Ibid.
Urban Land Institute, "Infrastructure 2014: Shaping the Competitive City", 2014, Online.
Center for an Urban Future, "Caution Ahead: Overdue Investments for New York's Aging Infrastructure", 2013, Online.
NYC Department of City Planning, "World Cities Best Practices: Innovations in Transportation", 2007, Online.
The City of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, "Housing New York, A Five-Borough, Ten-Year Plan", 2014, Online.
Pratt Center for Community Development, Rockefeller Foundation, "Mobility and Equity for New York's Transit-Starved Neighborhoods", 2013, Online.
Cushman & Wakefield, "Urban Development: Faster Greener Commutes Key to Sustained City Growth", 2014, Online.
Aecom Technology Corporation, "Fostering a Larger Private-Sector Role in United States Infrastructure", 2013, Online.
ULI, ibid.
New York State Comptroller, ibid.
Vishaan Charkrabarti, A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America, 2013, Print.
Edward Glaeser, The Triumph of Cities, 2013, Print.
Parsons Brinckerhoff, "No.7 Secaucus Extension Feasibility Analysis: Final Report", 2013, Online.
Ingrid Gould Ellen, Amy Ellen Schwartz, Ioan Voicu, "The Impact of Business Improvement Districts on Property Values: Evidence from New York City", 2007, Online.
The City of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, "Housing New York, A Five-Borough, Ten-Year Plan", 2014, Online.
ULI, ibid.
Hong Kong MTR Corporation Limited, "Interim Report 2014", 2014, Online.
















A Gap between Current NYC Public Transit Infrastructure and Future City Development:
A Problem and An Opportunity










Lizzie Li

December 2014

INTRODUCTION

Since the establishment of modern New York City back in the late 19th Century, public transportation that supports the lives of the constantly evolving demographics and their daily activities have worked as the blood and vessels of the city's socioeconomic development. However, increasingly noticeable underinvestment in transportation construction and lack of good quality maintenance has made public transportation a stagnating factor of the city's development. Instead of actively catalyzing the city's socioeconomic transformation, the state of public transit infrastructure has now halted the urgent need for faster city development.

This research paper will address the gap between current public transportation development in New York City and the demand for faster socioeconomic growth, and proceed to argue that there is a promising opportunity to help solve of the problem by adopting deliberate future city planning as well as by adopting the new trend of public-private collaboration especially in support of the pace of affordable housing reform recently proposed and advocated by Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration. The findings will help demonstrate that the process of planning new communities and supplementary infrastructure development will create a great opportunity to reinvigorate the public transportation system, animate city development that appropriately match the need of current pace of socioeconomic growth, and maintain the competitiveness of New York City compared to other global metropolitans.


The Current Gap between NYC Public Transportation System and Socioeconomic Development

Current underinvestment of public transit infrastructure in New York City has been consistent with the general trend of underfunding of infrastructure across the United States persistently on the federal, state, and local level. The lack of funding in public transportation has effectively lowered the productivity and quality of life of U.S. citizens. On the local scale, lack of public transportation investment has hindered the growing and rapidly evolving socioeconomic activities and the hospitality of unprecedentedly large population and business input in New York Metropolitan Area.

Increasingly, the current transportation system is no longer capable of sustaining the daily demand of existing population engaging in commercial activities in New York City. On the one hand, the current state of public transportation needs proper repair and stabilization. On the other hand, new construction projects that have been postponed for decades due to lack of funding are in higher demands than ever due to their potential in bolstering the city's productivity, capacity, and land value. Furthermore, the lack of repair in existing neighborhoods and the absence of new development in potential new neighborhoods are also imminent.

The following pages of this section will address 1) the realities of lack of both public and private funding in public infrastructure as a trend in the United States and in the New York Metropolitan Area 2) trend in public investment in New York City under national context 3) the cause of underinvestment in public transit infrastructure 4) the specific consequences of the gap between lack of funding in transit infrastructure and the resulting hindrance on the city's overall progress of innovative planning and development.

The size of NYC public transit infrastructure underinvestment

First of all, it is important to understand that underinvestment in transit infrastructure through public sector funding is not an isolated local trend in New York City. In fact, infrastructure investment and maintenance have been continuously underfunded by federal, state, and local agencies across the nation. As indicated in "2013 Report Card for America's Infrastructure" issued by ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers), despite a growing ridership of public transportation of 9.1% in the past decade, incommensurate investment on public transit infrastructure across the United States has resulted in deteriorating and poorly maintained system costing $90 billion in the country's economy in 2010.

Consistently with the status of infrastructure investment from public sector on the national scale, New York City government agencies have also been experiencing tremendous funding gap between proposed funds needed to sustain ongoing transit infrastructure construction and budgets available for proper distribution in other governmental functions. For example, premium public transportation provider in NYC Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has a budget composition of 41% fare-box revenue, 35% dedicated taxes including real estate taxes, 12% toll revenue, and only 5% state and local subsidies and 5% other revenues such as advertising according to its 2013 figures. Meanwhile, the proposed capital program of all agencies including MTA Capital Program Review Board (CPRB) Core Capital Program, network expansion, and bridges and tunnels demand a total budget of $32.046 billion with a funding gap of $15,176 according the agency's official report.

While the funding gap is significant enough to presume that the delay and uncertainty of budgets will result in the expenses of the impending constructions for new projects and repairs of existing facilities, the number of people affected by the consequences of public transit underinvestment in New York Metropolitan Area is also very palpable. According to Census Bureau population estimates, New York City's population increased 2.7% from 2010 to 2013's up to a number of 8,405,837 people, with higher-than-average population growths of 3.5% in Brooklyn and 2.8% in Queens, among which 229,627 are net international migration population. Meanwhile, NYC Transit ridership reached its highest statistics in an annual ridership of 1.708 billion and a weekday ridership of 5.5 million, constituting over 65.5% of total NYC population. Even after the adjustment of irregular passenger activities during Hurricane Sandy, MTA still saw an annual increase of average ridership of 2.5% compared to the year before.

Therefore, while the city embraces growing population and vibrant economic activities, it is not difficult to notice the disconnection between the unfulfilled demand of more stable and expansive public transportation system and the growing population and socioeconomic activities. The funding gap witnessed in major public transportation provider MTA is therefore ostensibly problematic. While we have seen similar disconnection between the need of economic recovery and growing demand for higher quality of life across the nation and lack of infrastructure investment from the local, state, and federal level, the problem is even more pressing and consequential due to New York City's incomparable role in the country's economy. As mentioned above, the funding gap in New York City public transportation is disproportionally enormous compared to the speed of growth of demand coming from population growth. Specific consequences in public transit funding gap will be explained in a later section.

The trend in public transportation investment


The trend of public transportation infrastructure investment in New York City is consistent with that on the national level. The ASCE report estimates that, by the year of 2020, the total needs for surface transportation infrastructure investment will exceed $1,723 billion with an estimated 49.1% funding gap of over $877 billion based on current investment trend, constituting the largest need of investment and funding gap among all aspects of infrastructure within the scope of the research. It is foreseeable that the federal and state governments will be under even higher pressure in allocating limited funding to more and more impending infrastructure construction projects in the next decade.

Unfortunately, investment in public transportation sees a similar trend on the local level in the New York Metropolitan area. A report by Center for an Urban Future finds that city agencies will face a $34.2 billion funding gap in the process of fulfilling the need of $47.3 billion essential capital investment in the year 2014-2019 in order to maintain the safety and functionality of current city infrastructure asset classes including Port Authority, New York City Transit, Housing Authority, and CUNY system. More staggeringly, as the report points out, construction projects primarily funded by public sectors in New York City usually incur very high costs that are much more than they would in other cities. Additionally, delays in construction due to lack of funding and the failure to meet the budget gap in time drastically increase the cost of construction. For example, Seven Avenue subway and 7-line extension project is projected to $2 billion a mile. High construction cost beyond budget control also makes funding for other high-demand projects even more inaccessible due to procedural and financial priorities that planners must take into account.

In addition to lack of funding in general repairs and good quality maintenance of public transit system, there has been an alarming underinvestment and decline in federal budgetary allocation designed to support the capital security system development in the MTA subway system as an important security measure, and such trend is likely to continue in the future. According to a recent report by New York State Comptroller DiNapoli specifically addressing this matter, Department of Home Security has cut its security grant to support the system from its peak of $3.1 billion in 2009 to the current level of $1.6 billion due to deficit reduction efforts. The cutback has further reduced the financial flexibility of the project that has already encountered hindrance caused by delays that are incurring significantly higher costs. According to the report, the deepened funding gap will almost definitely be reflected in the expense of other capital projects.

From the perspective of private investment nationwide, much of support for transportation projects comes from state infrastructure banks (SIBs) that issue below-market revolving loans and loan guarantees, according to a research conducted by Brookings-Rockefeller Project on State and Metropolitan Innovation. SIBs are not-for-profit institutions that rely on principal repayments, bonds, interest payments and other types of fees to systemize the source of debt financing from the private sector. Similar loan programs on the federal and state levels also include Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Acts (TIFIA), the Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing (RRIF) Program, Grant Anticipation Revenue Vehicle (GARVEE) Bonds, and so on. Some of the programs also allow private entities to apply for financing at lower interest rates through revolving funds if they are building projects involving public infrastructure. However, according to the findings in 2012, SIBs only concentrated in a few states and remained inactive and underutilized despite its superiorities over traditional federal and state grant problems.

Meanwhile, according to the Brookings research, although New York State Governor Cuomo has called forth the creation of New York Works Infrastructure Fund aiming to establish both publicly and privately capitalized fund, no specification on allocation of such funding program to public transportation is established. By 2012, New York State SIBs that are designated in the Comptroller's Office remained inactive. According to a 2013 report issued by New York Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, current public-private partnerships in mass transit development remain concentrated in the spheres of "Design-Build" model while most public projects remain state-financed and state-operated. As a result, the state remains heavily burdened by public debt due to the long-established public finance law.

The cause of lack of public transit infrastructure investment and maintenance

As illustrated earlier, since funding for public transportation infrastructures consists of a majority governmental budgetary contribution as well as private investment generated from primarily revenues taxes and direct contributions in forms of low-interest loans. It is evident that the funding gap in public transportation infrastructure is created by both cutbacks and stagnations in policy reforms from government supporting agencies as well as under-motivated private contributions and the limitations constraining its scope of contributions. Current findings indicate that both sectors in New York City experience financial and political hindrance in investing in public transportation infrastructure.

It is crucial to recognize that New York City transit infrastructure involves very complex and interconnected jurisdiction that encompasses a variety of agencies and bureaucratic hierarchies. The fact that a complexity of government agencies and levels involved including federal government, New York State government, Connecticut State Government, and New York City Government and relevant agencies that work as the main contributors of development budget further complicates the consideration of political agenda, with each party having its own political priorities and budgetary concerns. That primary public transportation funding still come from government budgets and streams of parties involved is numerous make it extremely difficult to differentiate responsibilities in both financial and political aspects, especially in those directly impacting voter opinions further differentiated by districts and income groups involved in designated projects.

Aside from the structural complexity of institutions, because public transit funding comes from predominantly government sources, burdens on public debts is simply too high for each level of government maintaining its functionalities through in a recovering economy. MTA's 2015-2019 Capital Program booklet indicates that 97.38% of projected funding coming from non-MTA operated sources (including MTA Bonds, fare-revenue, asset sales/leases, and other MTA sources) is designed to be collected from federal and city government funding (including federal formula and flexible, City of New York Capital Funds, and Federal New Starts). The overwhelming dependence upon public funding creates significant instability of its budget source. When government agencies fail to provide funds or when the delay of design and construction cause defaults of permits and contracts, projected investments could easily fall short.

In the aforementioned MTA Capital Program funding sources, private developer financial contributions only take up $200 million out of the total of $16,870 million, a mere 1.18% of total projected funding sources. The reasons for the paucity of private contributions in MTA as well as in almost all other public infrastructures can be explained by a high uncertainty of internal return ratio. Assuming that developers and private corporate investors are given the political flexibilities and sufficient degree of participation, it is often unclear how well can investments in infrastructures, especially in expensive public transportation infrastructure, can align with a possible increase of property values of their own projects. As Comptroller DiNapoli's report pointed out earlier, the current "Design-Build" model of public-private collaboration gives private investors very limited governance over the initiation, early-stage design, and operations of the infrastructure built. The unsubstantial weight placed on the private side of the infrastructure equation makes investments riskier and less profitable in the long run for private investors. According to a survey organized by Urban Land Institute (ULI), only 25% of survey respondents consist of top-tier public leaders and private developers and investors say that long-term operations and maintenance are integrated in their decision-making process in dealing with collaborative projects with public sector.

The consequences of the funding gap in public transit

The lack of necessary and sufficient funding in public transit infrastructure construction and maintenance has resulted in fragmentation in the current transit system causing perennial and frequent malfunctioning and low mobility as well as limitation on the scope and rapidity of current socioeconomic development. Both consequences must be addressed in order to understand the severity of the current deficiency of fund allocation in public transportation and the profundity of its negative impact upon the growth of the city in both social and economic capabilities.

The lack of repair and good quality maintenance of the current mass transit system has caused inefficiency in its service delivery as well as poor customer experience. In fact, much of the city's cardinal public transit infrastructure is stagnated at the level of its initial construction back in the early 20th Century. According to a report by Center for an Urban Future on NYC infrastructure, for a typical example, MTA subway's 269-mile-long signaling system has passed its 50-year usage life and is frequently causing delays of trains and making it impossible for maintenance workers to find replacement parts. Meanwhile, subway and surface congestions that significantly lowers the viability of buses as a real traffic alternatives in neighborhoods lacking subway services are problems that have been begging solutions for a long period of time. Despite significantly increased capital spending during the Bloomberg administration, congestions and overcrowded subway cars are still an unresolved issue affecting the experience of 5.5 million passengers every day. For example, the low density of east-side Manhattan underground public transportation have led to 85% ridership of its full capacity on 4,5,6 trains and over 100% during rush hours in 2007, yet the problem remains and continues to worsen. Deteriorating subway systems and increasingly unstable transportation services above ground will not make up the ideal amenities necessary to attract future talent inputs and business developments.

More critically, compared to the rapid pace of overall city development, the NYC public transportation system is dragging behind and is highly counterproductive. For example, the proposed Affordable Housing Reform proposed by Mayor de Blasio aiming to create 80,000 additional affordable units in the 4 boroughs outside of Manhattan will demand a tremendous amount of public transportation infrastructure input. The current funding level and pre-existing funding gap will potentially create a formidable hindrance to the necessary community development projects. According to a research conducted in late 2013, lack of public transit funding in New York City has resulted in prolonged inaccessibility to hospitals, schools, and local businesses. Furthermore, without appropriate changes, MTA is under threat of severe delays and further incurred costs of its current developments and remedies that would affect impending reconstructions after Hurricane Sandy, making potential neighborhoods highly inaccessible. Furthermore, the current funding level will not sustain 70% of 4 million working New Yorkers' daily commutes, nor will it easily contain the people who will be moving into the 8 million square feet new office space that is currently under construction.


II. The Solution to the Funding Gap in NYC Public Transportation

A recent report issued by Aecom Technology Corporation (AECOM) argues that there has been a precedent of innovative financial models for infrastructure financing from private sectors in support of projects on national and state levels that successfully minimized federal assistance and tax subsidies and emphasized the leverage of borrowing from private sectors. Such methods enable faster funding of larger infrastructure that further prevents increase in costs due to possible avoidance of certain institutional complexities and shortage of government budgets incurred by construction delays. The public-private partnership structure that AECOM has been observing across the nation and in some other global metropolitans as well has successfully encouraged private sector participation.

The solution proposed here, then, is based on the assumption that real estate developers and investors in New York Metropolitan Area will find it meaningful and strategically fruitful to participate in public-private partnerships that specifically focus on transportation infrastructure. According to a Cushman & Wakefield study, 91% of major new office construction projects including World Trade Center, Hudson Yards, Manhattan West, and Grand Central Rezoning projects are transit-oriented development. In addition, since Mayor de Blasio has proposed the new affordable housing reform places much focus on sustainable city planning, new developments will face increasing need of new and updated transportation infrastructures. Since quality of transit infrastructure is among the top of investors' concerns, it is save to anticipate tremendous potential in using affordable housing development as leverage and improve the current underinvestment of NYC public transit for the purpose of closing the gap between transit system inadequacy and growing need for faster city development.

The solution to underinvestment in NYC public transit system

Provided with limitation of governmental budget and the resulting political difficulties involved in public financing of public transit projects, the solution should focus on broadening the scope of public-private partnerships in the integration of infrastructure initiation, evaluation, and financing. As mentioned in a previous section, current public-private collaborations do not have particular emphasis on the financing stage of mass transit projects, resulting in heavy public debt and deepened difficulties in budgeting for future designs and constructions. As envisioned in Comptroller DiNapoli's 2013 report, the next step of public-private partnership should incorporate "Design-Build-Finance" integration and thus create more financial freedom and higher voter approval, which would otherwise be compromised by budgetary concerns.

In his book The Country of Cities, Professor Vishaan Charkrabarti makes a promising suggestion of the implementation of a "cap-and-trade zoning" concept of future sustainable city planning. The concept, as he introduces, is a major project in the Center of Urban Real Estate at Columbia University aiming to assist official planning departments with reviewing current zoning regulations that could allow higher proximity between future government-sponsored housing developments and public transit centers as well as planning new transportation centers near higher-density neighborhoods that are already in the process of new affordable housing developments in particular. Such methods, as he argues, will generate higher returns of investments in public projects and thus make private financing more appealing to private developers.

The solution's response to the causes of NYC public transit underinvestment

Economist Edward Glaeser in his book The Triumph of Cities summarizes three factors that modern metropolitans must strive to preserve in order to maintain attractiveness and competitiveness: great education resources, superior infrastructure amenities, and a good mixture and balance of affordability, education, and amenities. New York Metropolitan Area has the potential and necessity to incorporate and maintain all three factors precisely because of the popularity and socioeconomic significance that it is recognized with on a global scale.

The incorporation of a more meaningful and more efficient public-private partnership in transit infrastructure initiation, design, and financing addresses the sources of budgetary difficulties because it combines the necessity of creating high property and land value for the public sector and answers to public budgetary shortages. Both issues are among the key interests of investors and voters, and the approval of the latter could impact the performance of the former. In a Brinkerhoff report on NY-NJ extension of the Number Seven Subway Line, the transit project connects major commercial and residential neighborhoods with a unique support from its passage through the Hudson Yards Development Project. In this case, funding purpose is translated into a good mixture of transit-oriented city planning, high-profit commercial real estate, and an upgrade of public transportation. The organic mixture makes financing much more politically and financially feasible.

Moreover, as illustrated in a survey in Urban Land Institute's report "Infrastructure 2014: Shaping the Competitive City", quality of infrastructure including transportation and telecommunications is the number one driver and determiner of real estate investments compared with all other considerations among both public leaders and public-private leaders and investors combined. According to the survey, transit, roads and bridges, and pedestrian infrastructures all feature important priorities. Specifically, projects indicating the trend of public transportation facility developments such as bus and fixed-rail systems generate keener interests in future investment considerations. As a result, investors have strong faith in the combinations of real estate and transportation developments as indicators of optimized internal rate of return. Since one of the major causes of under-funding of public transportation system and transit infrastructure in general is the inability of city government to attract sufficient funding and allocate such funding to transportation without significant political consequences, a combination of infrastructure and real estate investment will enable more private participation, thus creating more available assets for city planners.

Furthermore, a research conducted by NYU Furman Center showed specifically the impact of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) on property values in New York City. The study concludes a positive impact of BIDs on its surrounding neighborhoods, with commercial developments more significantly improving the areas' property values while residential developments show more variations. BIDs also often entail more intensive and efficient infrastructure developments that boost the productivity of businesses and individuals. While it is true that BIDs that predominantly feature residential projects show less staunch support of such claims, it is important to note that, since future housing plans encourage significantly more mix-use development projects, the effects of both residential and commercial projects can be adopted in the newest planning models. Therefore, it is then safe to presume that real estate development will correspond more closely and interactively with infrastructure investment, and that the potential of additional profit-generation coming from mix-used public project investment will carry more weight in investors' decision-making process.

Potential supports and controversies

In the ULI report, the survey conducted among public leaders and private investors indicated that improved public transit services including both bus and rail would be the number one infrastructure improvement priority for future considerations of investments. The report also argues that more developers nowadays are willing to financially contribute to infrastructure improvements surrounding their proposed development projects. If public-private partnership programs can in fact produce more efficient city planning and higher property value, real estate developers will certainly show stronger support.

On the other hand, those who already oppose aggressive high-density city planning and community transformation will likely oppose further and larger-in-scale transit-oriented developments. However, a less sizeable demand on government spending on tax dollars will possibly earn more favors from opponents who are directly involved in the neighborhoods in the process of transformation.

Consideration of vulnerable assumption

The solution to embrace more joint development and cooperation between city government and developers in lieu of city planning and affordable housing reforms, of course, faces the challenge of maintaining a reasonable level of compulsory policies regulating private sector's financial contributions. As the ULI report indicated, it is still unclear how development-driven infrastructure funding process can be adopted at a systemic level, and that if policies are proposed with insufficient consideration for private participants, some developers may be easily discouraged by unreasonable demand of financial contribution deducting either a larger portion of sales revenues or other measures of interests.

A promising answer to the challenge could be to refer to one of the world's most successful public transit models in Hong Kong, developed and operated by Hong Kong MTR Corporation since its establishment in 1979. What is truly unique about the Hong Kong model is that MTR is both a public transit provider (with Hong Kong local government as main shareholder) and a developer, allowing the private corporation to integrate its own mix-use development such as major shopping centers with close proximity to its stations and attributing over half of its operating revenue from properties rather than transit service. The MTR model allows more cost-efficient ridership generation that guarantees the complementation of service and sales. According to Hong Kong MTR's 2014 Interim Financial Report, the first six months of 2014 have seen a 3% increase of total patronage to 909.7 million and an operating margin of 48.2% accompanied by HK$245 million profit from property development and HK$2026 revenue from property rental and management. The premium financial performance driven by the rail-property model has secured an astounding record of 99.9% on-time performance overtime and enabled further infrastructure development in Hong Kong, Mainland China, and overseas.

The success of Hong Kong MTR model applied to smaller scale development in New York City constructions and neighborhood developments could potentially translate into a higher participation of infrastructure management and operations near new development projects. When developers are offered more definitive revenue-driven combination of public-private projects, they will be able to see more definitively the positive impact on their IRR (Internal Rate of Return). The challenge, though, still remains on whether the cooperation between city government and private developers can share the same degree of elasticity as what MTR Corporation and Hong Kong government have maintained over the years. Unless New York City government can bypass the political constraints and convince the public of the necessity of private involvement and ownership of public transit infrastructure development, such collaboration cannot be guaranteed effective or sustainable.


IV. Conclusion

The current lack of funding in New York City public transportation infrastructure designated to maintain good-quality repairs and facilitate necessary new constructions constitutes a major gap between the current level of infrastructure maturity and the indispensable level that could match the present and future need of socioeconomic development in New York Metropolitan Area.

Based on the findings of precedent and ongoing transit-oriented developments and the key interests held by private developers, researches indicate that the current funding gap primarily attributive to insufficiency of public funding sources and the heavy dependency on such sources can be ameliorated by the proposal of deeper and more efficient collaboration between public service providers and private investors and developers. It has been shown that the co-development model more integrated with both short term and long term interests of private developments and more incorporative of public and private interests and concerns can accelerate the initiation, design, and financing process of public transit infrastructure financing.

Although much more considerations are needed in the process of policy design and implementation, the co-development model can duly help reduce the funding cap that is halting the city's infrastructure and other socioeconomic developments and significantly help bolster the hospitality and competitiveness of New York City in the drastically evolving global market.