Poll: Voters Behind Initiative To Borrow $2.9B To Invest in Transportation Projects
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Voters in New York would support a ballot initiative authorizing the state to borrow $2.9 billion to invest in transportation projects, half of which would go to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a poll released yesterday shows.
Overall, 56% of the 1,219 New York State registered voters polled support the bond act, listed as Proposal 2 on the November 8 ballot, while 36% oppose it and 8% said they did not have enough information to answer. In the city, 67% of registered voters support the bond act and 26% oppose it, according to the poll. A majority of registered voters upstate – 47% – oppose the bond act, barely edging out the 45% who favor it, a closer margin than the pollster expected.
In the suburbs around the state, 60% favor the initiative and 32% oppose it.
“The suburbs are heavily for it and, frankly, that surprised me,” the director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, Maurice Carroll, said, adding that the election was still too far off to know whether the numbers will translate into actual votes.
The Citizens Budget Commission last month came out against the initiative, saying the $2.9 billion bond would increase the state’s debt burden, which already stands at $46.7 billion.
Proponents of the initiative concede that despite the poll’s findings, the bond act is largely unknown among voters in New York City, whose support is considered crucial for the initiative to pass.
The New York Sun surveyed 15 subway riders yesterday, all of whom said they are registered voters and planned to vote in November’s mayoral election, and none had heard of the bond act.
A spokesman for the Regional Plan Association, Jeremy Soffin, said the bond act was defeated in 2000 because “50% of New York City voters simply did not vote on it at all.”
Mr. Soffin, whose group is advocating in favor of the bond act, said support for the initiative among transportation, environmental, and labor groups, as well as Republican and Democratic legislators, is a crucial difference from five years ago that will help raise the profile of the issue among voters.
Advocates also expect support from suburban commuters, as ridership on commuter railroads is at an all-time highs. “I’m not so surprised,” Mr. Soffin said of the poll’s findings that suburban commuters support the measure. “Urban and suburban communities have more shared concerns than ever before. The issues of congestion and gas prices are becoming more and more a part of life in the suburbs.”
The bond act would allocate $326 million for subway maintenance and operation; the Long Island Rail Road would receive $73 million, and Metro-North Railroad would get $51 million. One big-ticket expansion project that would benefit suburban commuters – the extension of the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal – would receive $450 million, as would the plan to build a subway line under Second Avenue.