This summer, the Metropolitan Transit Authority made a decision both small and remarkable in one of the New York City neighborhoods most vulnerable to climate change.

The city’s public transit agency, commonly known as the MTA, rerouted the Q114 bus along the Jamaica-Far Rockaway line in Queens. The reason given at the time of the service change? “Because of frequent tidal flooding on Brookville Boulevard,” a main drag that cuts through the saltwater marsh of Idlewild Park before stretching south toward the mouth of Jamaica Bay.

This small shift was noteworthy in being the first longterm route change within the MTA’s sprawling bus and subway system that was caused by an effect of climate change: frequent “sunny day” flooding into low-lying coastal land.

The decision was unique, but can be traced back 12 years to 2007, when climate started affecting the MTA in ways the agency couldn’t ignore. Following a nor’easter that August, in which precipitation flooded the underground subway system, the agency installed raised flood grates to push water away from vulnerable subway areas and into sewage canals. “Those were pretty much the first manifestations — physically, you could start to see — that the MTA was beginning to incorporate resilience into its planning and design,” says Projjal Dutta, director of sustainability initiatives for MTA.

Dutta was just starting his job as the agency’s first-ever sustainability director. Since then, he witnessed the entire system crippled by Superstorm Sandy, requiring a major recovery that continues seven years after the storm. He stayed on as the MTA faced a worsening fiscal crisis alongside a rapidly deteriorating system — major challenges that are far from resolved. And he remains as climate continues to transform New York public transit, both by threatening the system and placing the utmost importance upon it.

Projjal Dutta, director of sustainability initiatives for the MTA, stands in front of one of his resiliency efforts at a Manhattan subway station. (Photo by Emily Nonko)

During this period Dutta’s viewpoint has been more or less unchanged: that the MTA is one of the strongest assets combating climate change in the city, region, state and country — and that asset could be monetized so that it thrives into the future. The timing could not be more urgent for the MTA, or for the planet. The agency’s viability rests on what happens in the next few years, as it unrolls a $54-billion capital program, at the same time the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change announced that emissions worldwide need to peak by 2020, to avoid the worst devastations of climate change.

“We are in the sustainability business, more than many others,” Dutta says of the MTA. It’s something he suspects the public, even his own agency, doesn’t fully recognize. “New York State has the lowest per capita greenhouse gas emissions of all the United States,” he continues, “And New York State is the lowest because two-thirds of the state lives in MTA territory.”

An Early Canary in the Climate-Change Coal Mine

In the early 2000s, scientist Klaus Jacob started studying the effects of climate change on New York City infrastructure. He approached major transit agencies in the region, like the MTA and Port Authority, seeking collaboration and access to relevant data.

“The MTA was very reluctant,” he says, “Because, as always, they were under financial stress. They said: if we know we have certain problems, then we have to do something about it. It’s one more thing on our plate we just can’t cope with right now.”

Jacob moved ahead on his research without them. A special research scientist with Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, he sent students to subway platforms with barometers to measure the elevation and depth distribution of the tunnels. They modeled how water would rush into the system in an 100-year-storm: “We had preliminary results of what would happen and made a presentation to the MTA, asking, ‘Are you concerned about this?’”

Jacob found out the MTA had started an internal investigation of its own, regarding the vulnerability of its rolling stock (subway cars, some not in use) located in low-lying train yards. (The Transit Complex at Coney Island, one of the largest transportation facilities in North America, is at increasing risk to both flooding and sea-level rise.)

Potential areas that could be affected by the 100‐year flood in the 2020s, 2050s, 2080s, and 2100, based on NPCC2 projections of the high‐estimate 90th‐percentile sea level rise scenario. (Credit: New York City Panel on Climate Change 2015 Report)

Jacob says their interaction opened the door for increased communication, and collaboration, around climate risk. He released a report in conjunction with the agency in 2008, MTA Adaptations to Climate Change: A Categorical Imperative. In it he urged (in italics), “The climate-induced change of the physical environment necessitates that MTA find an effective way to adapt its infrastructure, operations, and policies.” In a 2011 report with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, Jacob found that “in a generic 100-year-storm, the subway system would flood within 40 minutes,” he recalls. “These results set off alarm clocks for the MTA.”

The August 2007 nor’easter, followed by Hurricane Irene in 2011, were troubling object lessons in how stormwater could flood the system. Superstorm Sandy arrived in 2012 as the wake-up call, filling stations and tunnels with gallons of corrosive saltwater that devastated the system. In a Herculean feat, the MTA restored 80 percent of the subway system within five days.

Sandy marked a dramatic turning point for the MTA and rest of New York. It exposed not just the vulnerabilities of public transit, but how essential a functioning system is to the city. (Jacob estimates that restoring service within a week, versus a month, saved the New York City economy “tens of billions of dollars.”)

Climate resilience has always been a part of Dutta’s role at the MTA, but after Sandy people started paying more attention. “It’s very often the case that when the first bits of disaster happen, that’s when people finally take action,” he says. “Sandy ups the response. First is to restore service at any cost, and once that is done, figure out how we will deal with the next storm.”

Sandy also prompted a necessary component for recovery and future resiliency: funding. The MTA secured roughly $5 billion of federal money for its “fix and fortify” initiative, a monumental effort that is ongoing. “It’s layers of work … a system-wide effort at different levels [of the agency],” explains Steven Loehr, recovery and resiliency manager with NYC Transit.