The MTA comprises six agencies: MTA New York City Transit, MTA Bus Company, MTA Long Island Rail Road, MTA Metro-North Railroad, MTA Bridges and Tunnels, and MTA Construction & Development. The administrative arm is MTA Headquarters, located at 2 Broadway in Manhattan.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is North America's largest transportation network, serving a population of 15.3 million people in the 5,000-square-mile area fanning out from New York City through Long Island, southeastern New York State, and Connecticut.
The MTA network has the nation’s largest bus fleet and more subway and commuter rail cars than all other U.S. transit systems combined. It provides around 2.6 billion trips each year, accounting for about one-third of the nation’s mass transit users and two-thirds of its commuter rail passengers. MTA Bridges and Tunnels, which recorded a record 329 million crossings in 2019, carries more vehicles than any other bridge and tunnel authority in the nation.
The MTA’s provision of safe, clean, efficient public transportation is the lifeblood of the New York City area, one of the world’s major economic hubs. It opens up employment opportunities for millions of area residents, linking them to jobs miles from their homes. It revives old neighborhoods and gives rise to new business corridors. It links millions of residents and visitors to cultural, educational, retail, and civic centers across the region.
Many additional benefits flow from the MTA transit network. While nearly 85 percent of the nation's workers drive to their jobs, four-fifths of all rush-hour commuters to New York City's central business districts use transit, most operated by the MTA, thus reducing automobile congestion and its associated problems. By using MTA transit, New Yorkers avoid an estimated 17 million metric tons of greenhouse gases (GHG) annually, while emitting only 2 million metric tons. This makes the MTA arguably the greatest single source of GHG avoidance in the U.S. and has made New York the nation’s most carbon-efficient state.
In short, the combined benefits of the MTA network help ensure New York's place as a world center of finance, commerce, culture, an education. The city ranks near the top of numerous surveys for business and livability because it has, as Fortune magazine has written, "what every city desires. A workable mass transit system."
To restore, improve, and expand this irreplaceable public asset, the MTA has committed some $132.9 billion in capital program funding between 1982 and 2019. This includes the major restoration-resiliency projects stemming from Superstorm Sandy in 2012, as well as the network’s largest expansions in over six decades. The latter include the Second Avenue Subway, Phases 1 and 2; the extension of the 7 Line to the Javits Convention Center; LIRR’s East Side Access to Grand Central Terminal; and the expansion of the LIRR Main Line.
As, the MTA continues to complete its $30 billion 2015-2019 Capital Program, it has begun work on its $51.5 billion 2020-2024 Capital Program, by far the largest in MTA history. In tandem with this unprecedented investment in modernization and expansion, the MTA is also undertaking its most comprehension internal reorganization in the last half century. Under the MTA Transformation Plan, mandated by the MTA Board in 2019, the authority is consolidating and centralizing nonoperational functions and improving operational efficiency to deliver more value to customers.
A public-benefit corporation chartered by the New York State Legislature in 1965, the MTA is governed by a 17-member Board. Members are nominated by the Governor, with four recommended by New York City's mayor and one each by the county executives of Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Dutchess, Orange, Rockland, and Putnam counties. (Members representing the latter four cast one collective vote.) All Board members are confirmed by the New York State Senate.
Contact us
For more information about the MTA and its agencies, please write to:
Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Marketing & Corporate Communications
2 Broadway, 4th floor, New York, NY 10004