It's the Brian Laird show on WNYC. Welcome back everybody. I'm Cusha Navadar filling in for Brian who is on vacation this week.

Up next we're turning to some local transit news. Construction on the new Second Avenue subway extension is back in business.

The project is one of many that was halted when Governor Kathy Hockel indefinitely paused the much awaited but controversial

congestion pricing program back in June. But Hockel announced last week that she

managed to squeeze $54 million in state funding to continue work on the project

and bring the line further uptown. Phase one of the second Avenue subway opened in 2017 and it was the result of a

decades-long effort to bring better public transit to historically underserved

communities like East Harlem. But so far it only extends up to 96th Street.

And just to Joggar Memories congestion pricing is a program that would have charged all

vehicles a $15 base fee to drive below 60th Street in Manhattan.

When Hockel indefinitely paused the program, which was supposed to take effect in July,

there were more than $16 billion worth of crucial transit upgrades that got put on hold.

So some people are pretty happy that the Second Avenue subway work will continue,

but a lot of transit advocates are

still frustrated at what they see as a band-aid approach because ultimately that

project is only a fraction of what the MTA had planned for in capital investments across the city.

Were a little past the one month anniversary of when congestion pricing was supposed to start

but didn't, so today along with the second Ave subway expansion

we're going to take a look at some of the fallout more broadly of the governor's decision to

pause the program.

With us now to help us parse through how all of this

is playing out is Anna Lay, a New York Times reporter

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