MTA Chief: NYC Subway System "Canary in Coal Mine"

The future of nearly every major mass-transit system in the US is on the line in Albany when the New York State Legislature finalizes a budget at the end of this month.

That’s what Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman and CEO Janna Lieber told GlobeSt. when we got a few minutes this week to ask him about the state of NYC’s subway system.

Lieber was the featured speaker on Wednesday at an event celebrating the recent opening of Grand Central Madison, a new connection with the Long Island Railroad that opened earlier this month and already has increased by 25% ridership on LIRR to New York’s grandest railway station.

It was clear from the start of our conversation that the MTA boss, who took over the nation’s largest mass-transit system in January 2022, is focused like a laser on the decisions that will be made in the next few days in Albany.

Lieber told us NYC’s subway system—and mass-transit systems across the country—will be afflicted for the foreseeable future with a chronic condition: budget deficits caused by decreased ridership due to the widespread adoption of hybrid work patterns.

“Compared to pre-Covid, it’s now about 75% [of what it was]. Our projections are the low 80s in a couple of years, but we’ll still be stuck at 20% less than what we used to be,” he said.

Lieber said the future of the NYC subway system is riding on whether Gov. Kathy Hochul and the leaders in the legislature can deliver on a commitment to fully fund the subway at pre-pandemic levels despite reduced ridership overall.

“Our position is that transportation is essential,” he told us. “Now, we have the governor and both houses of the legislature responding in ways that say we do need to fund transit and we don’t need to drastically cut service and raise fares.”

Hochul announced last week that NY has canceled a planned light-rail connection between newly rebuilt La Guardia Airport and NYC’s No. 7 subway line after the estimated cost of the rail link ballooned to more than $2B, opting instead for increased bus service at the airport at a cost of about $500M for expanded bus lanes in Queens—and, presumably, freeing up development funds in the budget that now can be used to help cure deficits in the MTA’s budget.

Proposals now on the table from Hochul and leaders in the Assembly and Senate for the budget due April 1 would eliminate MTA’s budget deficit and put it on a path to fiscal stability while maintaining full service—and setting a powerful national example elevating mass-transit as an essential public service, Lieber said.

“We’re the canary in the coal mine,” the MTA chief said. “The other systems have deficits that are worse than ours. The people in Albany are dealing with the new reality.”

The alternative is bleak, he said: immediate fare increases and eventual cutbacks in service that are likely to become a feedback loop further decreasing the number of people using the subway system.

The fiscal crossroads for NYC’s subway system is coming in the midst of a pitched battle to restore safety and end a wave of violent crime underground by putting cops back on the subway platforms at a time when NYPD manpower has been stressed by a wave of early retirements.

“Crime [in the subways] is down 20% in the first two months of the year,” Lieber said.

“We have an increased police presence and we have much more rider awareness of a police presence. When there’s an officer on the platform, the conductors are announcing that on the trains as they come into the stations, so [riders] know there is help and they can get help if they need it,” he told us.

Lieber said recent MTA rider surveys are showing rapidly increasing public confidence in the safety of the subway system.

“We’ve gone from 40% feeling safe to 63% in the past month,” he said.

The MTA also is hoping the increased police presence in subway stations will curtail an epidemic of fare-beating that cost the system an estimated $400M in 2022.