In this aspirational universe, the subway might no longer run 24/7 — a concession to the needs of subway maintenance crews. | AP Photo A once-in-a-generation plan evokes a better tri-state region

It’s 2032. Donald Trump is no longer president. And, in sharp contrast to the current state of affairs, the New York subway system is in tip-top shape.

In this aspirational universe, the subway might no longer run 24/7 — a concession to the needs of subway maintenance crews. But the subways themselves are no longer an international embarrassment. They are clean and modern. They run reliably, and in rapid succession along tracks equipped with modern signals. The stations no longer seethe with rats and discontent. Some stations even have platform screen doors to prevent riders from jumping — or falling — onto the tracks.


That future is in fact possible, according to the Regional Plan Association, the venerable think thank that on Thursday released its fourth regional plan, a once-in-a-generation effort to guide the development of the tri-state region.

But that 15-year “moonshot goal,” as the association’s president called it, can only happen if the region’s politicians take some uncharacteristically apolitical steps.

First, they must wrest the job of repairing the subway system away from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which has proven time and again that it is bad at doing big things on time and within budget, and give the monumental task to a brand new entity — a “subway reconstruction public benefit corporation.”

That entity would have one mandate: to rebuild a subway system that is now losing riders, even as the economy grows. The new corporation would, like the MTA itself, answer to the governor, but without the sort of opacity that the current authority structure allows.

The idea is “not to have any confusion about to whom it is ultimately accountable,” said Scott Rechler, the chair of the Regional Plan Association and a Cuomo appointee to the MTA board.

A spokesman for the governor referred reporters to the MTA.

"While we don’t need to create a new bureaucratic structure, we agree that securing a dedicated revenue source — preferably one that also battles congestion — is essential," MTA Chairman Joe Lhota said in a statement.

The idea is but one of more than 60 contained in this plan, which the association has been working on for years. The planners explicitly try to ignore political realities. While seemingly pollyannaish in their outlook, these regional plans have proven influential over the decades.

The first plan, issued in 1929, recommended building the George Washington Bridge at 178th Street, where it now stands. The third regional plan called for a Second Avenue Subway and a Long Island Rail Road terminal beneath Grand Central. The first phase of the former was completed this year. The latter is still being built — at an exorbitant cost of $519 million per mile, compared with just $107 million per mile for London’s Crossrail.

“The thesis of the plan we came up with, it’s an optimistic one,” acknowledged Tom Wright, the association’s president, during a Monday briefing with reporters.

The plan’s prescriptions span the region's 782 municipalities and 23 million residents. To accommodate the effects of sea level rise, it recommends turning the low-lying New Jersey Meadowlands into a national park, with wetlands that absorb floodwaters. The Army Corps of Engineers, it says, should consider a regional surge barrier. The states should incentivize residents to relocate from particularly vulnerable coastal areas, almost sure to be uninhabitable in a few decades.

The plan also argues that, by simply allowing single-family homes to tack on a second unit, the region could create 500,000 new apartments to accommodate the growing population. Local governments could also discourage property owners from leaving apartments vacant during a housing shortage and thereby dissuade the use of real estate as a pure investment, the association argues. Those changes alone could theoretically house more than a million new residents.

Another quarter of a million homes could be created by allowing development on existing parking lots adjacent to regional rail stations.

“If you want to see a real-life experiment of what happens when your economy is growing, but you don’t provide housing opportunity for people, go to the Bay Area and look at what’s happening in San Francisco,” Wright said. “That’s not what we want to have happen here.”

By 2040, the plan envisions a more functional, and modern, tri-state region.

The region’s airports would no longer evoke the "Third World," as the former vice president so famously put it.

Having shed the shadow of Bridgegate, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey would operate with accountability, with each of its business lines — from ports to airports — answerable to its own board and CEO.

“When I was at the Port Authority, we spent almost no time talking about the ports, which is kind of crazy,” said Rechler, who served as the Port’s vice chair. “It’s a big business and a big element of this region.”

Meanwhile, the post-Bridgegate Port Authority reforms Govs. Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie agreed to implement in 2014 would finally be enacted.

"We look forward to reviewing the RPA's report," said Ron Marsico, a spokesman for the Port.

By the conclusion of the 21st century, the plan envisions a region that would be unrecognizable to a New Yorker of today.

A Bronx housekeeper would be able to take a quick jaunt on a new Triboro Rx rail line from Parkchester to a job in Astoria and pick up her child from day care on the way home. A New Jersey resident would be able to take a one-seat ride to Long Island, via new tunnels that also carry freight. Penn Station would be airy and light-filled, now that Madison Square Garden would no longer be crouching on top of it. There would be a bus station in the basement of Javits Center, easing the load on the over-capacity Port Authority Bus Terminal.

NJ Transit, Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North would merge into one system, called the Trans-Regional Express, or T-REX, that would provide easy connections between New Jersey, Connecticut, the Hudson Valley and Long Island.

Third Avenue would have a subway line extending into Brooklyn. Subways would travel beneath Northern Boulevard and Jewel Avenue in Queens, and beneath Utica Avenue in Brooklyn. The Nostrand Avenue line would be extended to Avenue Z.

The fourth regional plan is being issued during a precarious time for the tri-state area. Its subways and bus systems are declining. The sole rail tunnel connecting commuters from New Jersey to Manhattan’s Penn Station is on its last legs. In the era of Trump, funding for a new tunnel seems an ever-more-distant possibility.

The affordable housing crisis remains acute, despite the de Blasio administration’s efforts to increase the housing supply. The city’s and state’s leaders remain locked in a bitter feud that hampers their ability to work together.

The picture the plan paints is a far rosier one.

It’s a picture of a future where the government is capable of building big things quickly and efficiently. Where the idea of building a new rail tunnel between the Palisades and 57th Street to serve the bus riders streaming into the bus terminal doesn’t seem beyond the realm of political possibility.

“We’ve identified this idea of a different future,” Wright said.

Sally Goldenberg and Danielle Muoio contributed to this report.