New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority is buried under a $48 billion mountain of debt — and paying it off threatens to undermine the agency’s core function: running mass transit for more than 5 million people a day.

For the last 40 years, the MTA has taken out loans to help pay for new tracks, stations, trains and buses — and maintain the ones it already owns. Money from fares, tolls and taxes pays back the lenders, plus interest.

That business model worked until the pandemic sent ridership plummeting. This year, the payments on the debt are slated to exceed $3 billion – a 600% increase from $425 million in 1993, according to a Gothamist investigation.