The more than $1 billion in federal infrastructure money Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi has won for New York City under the federal infrastructure law — one of President Joe Biden’s most important accomplishments — will buy electric vehicles, reduce freight transport carbon emissions, make ports more energy efficient, plan the overhaul of expressways that have divided communities and make some of the city’s most dangerous streets safer.
But her favorite is the $117 million she has secured to fund the first mile of QueensWay, an ambitious effort to build a seven-mile High Line-like park over the Long island Railroad’s abandoned Rockaway rail line in central Queens under the federal Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program.
“People do walk their dogs there but there is a lot of trash,” Joshi said. “But it is bordered by two vibrant communities and 10 schools. Imagine if this was a real park with a pace for people to walk, a bike path, archways for bridges and light.”
The QueensWay grant is so far the largest the city has won under the federal infrastructure law, which has so far brought $1.7 billion in federal funds, half distributed under formulas based on population and half through competitive grants.
But the city wants a lot more, with applications pending for another $2.6 billion, many of which are for programs that will make their largest or only awards this year.
“It’s a five-year bill and we are almost three years through it, and coming up is a big round of grant awards,” said John Porcaria, who headed the Biden infrastructure group that came up with the framework of the infrastructure program.
The infrastructure law passed with bipartisan support in 2022 will provide $1 trillion nationwide over five years.
The biggest infusion of money in New York is going to build the badly needed Gateway rail tunnel under the Hudson River. Under a final agreement announced last month, the federal government will provide about $12 billion of the $16 billion cost of the tunnel, most of it from the infrastructure law, with New York and New Jersey picking up the rest.
The MTA has received $4.5 billion, with all but $400 million under the money allocated by formulas. But Gov. Kathy Hochul’s decision to pause congestion pricing has endangered the plan to extend the Second Avenue subway and $2 billion in federal money available for that project. In addition, the MTA may not have enough money for the required local match on infrastructure money available for disability accessibility and sustainability projects.
The city’s wins so far include money to buy 394 electric school buses, launch a collaborative program to decarbonize freight movement and improve the safety of Queens Boulevard.
QueensWay illustrates the kind of choices the administration of Mayor Eric Adams is making and the law’s emphasis on thinking about infrastructure in a new way.
Transit advocates have been trying to convince policymakers like Joshi to reactivate the rail line to provide transit to areas of Queens that have little access. But the law emphasizes projects that can connect communities, especially low-income ones that had been divided by expressways.
“When we went to D.C. to pitch the project they asked us how this was reconnecting communities,”Joshi said. “We asked them to think more broadly that transportation isn’t just highways. Transportation is walking. Transportation is biking.”
The city didn’t have to be as imaginative in winning money for highways that did divide communities.
It has almost $6 million to figure out how to reconnect communities along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway when key sectors of that expressway are rebuilt and another $2 million to see if it could do the same with the Cross Bronx Expressway, the poster child for the damage the Robert Moses New York highway system did to communities.
The city hasn’t always been successful. An effort to win nearly $1 billion to help rebuild the cantilever section for the BQE failed because the project is far from starting construction. The competition for the grant it applied for was intense, with 300 applications requesting $54 billion for a program that had only about $5 billion available.
Also, when the city does come up with plans for the BQE and Cross Bronx it will have to find the money for construction.
Overall the city has won about 30% of the grants it has applied for. While no one is tracking how major cities are doing in the competition, New York would seem to be very successful.
“Thirty percent is an extraordinarily high batting average,” said Porcaria. “They have the technical expertise and the compelling case of showing the cost of not investing in infrastructure.”
Joshi, who had been involved in passing and implementing the new law while working at the federal Department of Transportation before joining the Adams administration, revamped the city’s approach to federal funding.
She has assembled a task force of about 50 regular participants from 15 city agencies, with each usually represented by its chief finance, policy and capital officials. In a reversal of previous city policy, agencies can submit competing grants to the feds rather than having the city choose just one application, and projects must have several objectives, such as a public space that also includes measures to resist climate change.
Most of the projects were already on the city’s extensive to-do lineup of pending capital spending projects, which is so large the city needed Albany to increase the city’s debt limit in the last legislative session.
“Winning accelerates the projects,” Joshi said. “And when we get money, that frees up money for other projects.
The city is now anxiously awaiting decisions on applications for another $2.6 billion.
The biggest asks are for a combined $1 billion from the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant and Mega Grant programs, which will make one-time awards this year.
The city seeks $500 million for heat pumps and other steps to electrify energy in schools, NYCHA buildings and other institutions like libraries and police precincts. Another $500 million would be used for commercial cargo bike incentives, micro hubs, truck electrification and charging stations, and upgrading piers. Two requests that come to about $900 million are to be spent primarily on upgrading and creating green ports.
The emphasis on freight may not be sexy but could make a big difference in New York by reducing congestion and pollution.
“A lot of the applications have to do with goods movement and modernizing and taking advantage of the post-COVID economy and the growth of e-commerce,” said Tom Wright, president of the Regional Plan Association. “They could be catalytic and would transform communities.”