MTA falls short of climate change plan goals, audit says

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority hasn’t fully implemented a plan for hardening the subway system against climate change, according to an audit by New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

The 18-page report faults New York City Transit for green-lighting capital projects without making sure they were resistant to flooding, inconsistently activating extreme weather plans and not sufficiently checking equipment to make sure it can withstand severe weather.

“Friday’s extreme weather shows how serious and immediate the challenges are for our transit system,” DiNapoli said in a statement.

He said NYCT “has made significant improvements since Hurricane Sandy hit, but that more can be done, starting with the release of their climate change adaptation master plan.”

In response, the MTA pointed to last week’s storm as proof that it enhanced the subway’s infrastructure against increasingly more extreme storms.

“Crews were able to resume full service while the storm continued to drench the area,” spokesperson Michael Cortez wrote in a statement.

In 2009, the MTA issued the Blue Ribbon Commission’s Report on Sustainability which made nearly 100 capital project recommendations. In a sample review of those projects, the comptroller found they were often incomplete. In one example, NYCT completed just two out of six flood resistant projects, the report said.

Transit advocates said the task of keeping the subways running during storms shouldn’t fall just on the MTA.

“The subway is all too often acting as a second sewer system,” said Danny Pearlstein, policy director at Riders Alliance. “That is minimized when the city is more absorbent and so less water ends up in the subway to begin with. So there’s less water to be pumped out.”

Pearstein said the city needs to invest in less pavement and also pavement that can absorb water.

In an interview with Fox 5, MTA CEO Jano Lieber said the MTA did work with the city to clear catch basins so water…