CBC's new report, Needs and Wants: What to Look for in the MTA's Twenty-Year Needs Assessment, recommends five ways the MTA can ensure its upcoming Twenty-Year Needs Assessment (TYNA) includes the information that the public, policymakers, and MTA leadership need for a robust, informed debate and to make wise decisions on the best transit investments going forward. This TYNA will be the first reporting in a decade of the state of our transit infrastructure and will be the essential foundation for investment choices.

The TYNA should be to be a thorough, clear-eyed assessment of the MTA's current assets, their needs and the costs to meet those needs, and various possible modernization and expansion projects' benefits and costs. 

Since there will not be enough money to do everything—to fully bring the system's infrastructure to a state of good repair, to modernize it in all desired ways, and to undertake all desired expansion projects—CBC recommends the inclusion of specific information critical to prioritizing investments for the 2025-2029 capital plan, and additionally the tradeoffs that will need to be made among state of good repair and expansion projects.

CBC's analysis of past TYNAs found that:

• Capital needs assessments were not comprehensive;
• Data were aggregated at too high a level; 
• Changes in needs were not reconciled across TYNAs;
• Identified needs were not tied to performance goals and the impact of investment; and
• Projections of future demand lacked key details.

To address these shortcomings, CBC recommends that the upcoming TYNA: 

• Include a complete accounting of the system’s current and potential future capacity needs: The TYNA should be a complete accounting of system’s needs that prematurely omits nothing. The five-year capital plan—not the TYNA—is the correct venue to prioritize projects based on constraints including funding.  
• Disaggregate data to the functional group and component level: Disaggregating needs down to the functional group and component level is essential for the MTA to appropriately prioritize projects and to better inform public discussion. CBC encourages some grouping—for example, ventilation systems or elevators—but not so much aggregation as to hamper the quality of MTA decisions and vibrant and critical debate.  
• Include data on asset condition, needs, cost, and improvement timeframes: The TYNA should include data on the quantity of a given asset, the condition and distribution of need across the system, its useful life and average age, the method the MTA uses to determine a state of good repair, and cost and time needed to bring it to a state of good repair so that it can be on a normal replacement cycle.  
• Detail all projects’ benefits and costs based on rigorous analysis, standard measures, and MTA goals: The authority should standardize metrics to: a) identify the net benefit of each project, and b) bring transparency to the choices among investments, including between state of good repair work and network expansion. 
• Provide clear and complete data on future transportation needs: This upcoming TYNA should include detailed information about future service needs based on projected economic changes and user behavior, recognizing that there are forecast risks especially in this moment, given radical changes in technology and commuting patterns.