The Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority gets an A+ in budget management from the Authorities Budget Office. Their 2019 Annual Report lists operating expenses for all of New York State’s 583 state and local authorities and showed NFTA with a 4.6% increase between 2014 and 2018, against an average of 15.6%. Other major transportation authorities in New York State have averaged an operating expense increase of 13.5% over the same period.

“We are proud,” said Executive Director Kimberley Minkel. “Thanks to the hard and careful work of this staff we are holding costs increase to about one-third of what we are seeing in the industry. Those savings are put directly back into service and maintenance.”

The NFTA has managed their savings without cuts to service or a fare increase. Cost containment has come instead from a wide variety of sources, including safe operation, fuel conservation and other economies.