Infrastructure protectionNew York public transit systems preparing for sea-level rise

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which operates many New York state public transit lines, is beginning measures to factor for future sea-level rises within its projected five-year capital plans.

Included under purview of the Authority are systems such as the Metro-North Railroad, Long Island Rail Road, and the New York City subway and bus systems.

Tobey Ritz, chief engineer of capital engineering at Metro-North, recently told the Poughkeepsie Journal, “For Metro-North, I have become the guru of climate change, storm surge, and sea-level rise.”

As the newspaper reports, the MTA has allocated $5.8 billion “to protect assets against future severe weather events and enhance overall system resiliency.” $5 billion alone has been put toward improvement of the subway system, which has two crucial points — Mott Haven Junction and the Harlem River Lift Bridge — which, if impacted, could interrupt the transit of 280,000 people daily.

Factoring into these improvements are predictions of sea level rise ranging from roughly two to seven inches by the turn of the century. Ritz goes on to add, “It’s not so much for us to pick which study is right, but to look at the entire range, look at the time frames that are predicted and then consider when is the right time to act.” Ritz also revealed that some within the organization were looking at the “upper mid-range.”

The time to act, however, is also a tricky gamble. Sacha Spector, director of conservation science at the Poughkeepsie-based environment nonprofit Scenic Hudson, explained to the Poughkeepsie Journal, “They are looking at the two-faced coin of over-investing too soon and the opposite, which is you under-invest and then you get clobbered,” adding that issues like sea-level rise “are inherently difficult to deal with in our political structure, it’s going to take some real leadership and real will to do something.”