The MTA is gearing up to sue the U.S. Department of Transportation if the feds don’t stop interfering with funding for Phase 2 of the Second Avenue Subway, MTA officials said Wednesday.
“DOT’s refusal to comply with its payment obligations has jeopardized the project and placed the MTA in an impossible position, requiring it to plug the gap by diverting critical transportation infrastructure funding from other priorities,” Roberta Kaplan, an attorney for the MTA, wrote in a letter sent Wednesday to federal officials.
“Unless all past due reimbursements are paid by March 6, 2026, the MTA will have no choice but to seek expedited judicial relief.”
The Second Avenue Subway project is one of two transit projects — along with the Hudson River Tunnel — that were singled out for funding interference by the Trump administration in the early hours of the federal government shutdown in October.
The funding freeze, ostensibly over compliance with a last-minute change to contracting rules for so-called Disadvantaged Business Entities, has kept the MTA from accessing nearly $60 million in funds promised by Congress.
The feds have ultimately promised to fund $3.4 billion of the subway project’s $7 billion price tag. To date, Kaplan wrote, the government is in arrears of at least $58,652,146.02 worth of reimbursements due to the MTA.
Jamie Torres-Springer, the MTA’s head of construction and development, said the agency has demonstrated it is in full compliance with federal contracting rules.
“We were asked to comply with certain changes to the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program within the scope of this contract,” Torres-Springer told the MTA’s board Wednesday. “We complied immediately.”
But the Trump administration’s funding interference has not ceased.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Transportation, which is responsible for distributing the funds, did not respond when asked if the MTA had demonstrated its compliance, and why funding remained on hold.
The Trump administration has given a grab bag of reasons for freezing the funding for the Hudson River Tunnel project — from the initial contracting compliance explanation, to supposed Democratic Party intransigence on “illegal” immigrants, to a personal beef with the Empire State’s Democratic senior senator, minority leader Chuck Schumer.
But the administration has been relatively quiet on its reasons for identical treatment of the Second Avenue Subway.
“Whatever the administration’s true motivations,” the letter sent Wednesday to U.S. DOT reads, “there is no question that DOT is in breach of the [Full Funding Grant Agreement contract.]”
“DOT’s actions are all the more inappropriate because — far from ‘breaching’ the [contract] — the MTA has fully cooperated with the investigation to date, including by reaffirming its commitment to complying with all applicable laws and responding promptly to DOT’s requests for information,” the letter continues.
Work on the multibillion-dollar project — which seeks to extend the long-delayed subway line three stops northward into the underserved neighborhood of East Harlem — has been quietly progressing since the October funding freeze, with utility relocation work progressing and a pair of tunnel-boring machines being built in Germany.
That work is not in immediate jeopardy of running out of money.
But the MTA has been receiving bids for a contract to begin excavating to build the future E. 106th St. and E. 116th St. stations, a contract MTA Chairman Janno Lieber said cannot be awarded without the promised federal funds.
“There’s an excavation contract that needs to get awarded,” Lieber said. “We can’t chance an impact to the project’s schedule and budget by letting the federal situation drag on and on.”
The contract had been expected to be awarded next month.
Sean Butler, a spokesman for Gov. Hochul, called on the Trump administration to “stop playing games” with the transit project’s funding.
“Enough is enough, the federal government needs to stop playing games and release the funding they pledged to the Second Avenue Subway immediately,” he said. “East Harlem has been promised a subway connection for almost a century, and Governor Hochul will fight like hell to make sure this project gets built.”
Wednesday’s letter from the MTA putting the feds on notice comes as funding has — temporarily — been restored to the Hudson River Tunnel project, by order of a Manhattan federal judge.
The Gateway Development Commission, the bi-state body overseeing the tunnel’s construction, is currently suing the Trump administration for breach of contract in an effort to permanently restore funds. The states of New York and New Jersey have jointly filed suit in a separate case, also seeking to permanently restore tunnel funding.
