MTA Chair: Riders feel like 'suckers' when others skip the fare

Janno Lieber defends his fare evasion enforcement plan [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( [VIEW IN BROWSER]( [DONATE]( [WNYC Politics Brief] MTA chair Janno Lieber says paying riders feel like 'suckers' when others evade the fare Plus: Fare evasion still targets mostly Black and Latino riders, despite A.G. Letitia James' pledge to investigate disparities. We could be in for a Hot E-Bike Summer. And Grand Central is hosting a new exhibit about transit in the Bronx. --------------------------------------------------------------- 🚆 --------------------------------------------------------------- [a cop stands behind a turnstile] Kathy Willens/AP With the MTA claiming a $500 million loss due to fare evasion on the subways and buses, the transit agency's chair and CEO, Janno Lieber, announced last week that the MTA would be creating a blue ribbon panel to examine ways to make sure riders pay the toll. "Pervasive fare evasion is a threat to the spirit that makes New York not just a great city, but a great community," Lieber told a group of business leaders. While Lieber insisted that he was "especially not interested in targeting kids who ... make mistakes" — and that increased enforcement would involve tickets, not criminal charges — skeptics immediately expressed concern that this would be a crackdown on [lower-income riders](. On The Brian Lehrer Show yesterday, Lieber defended the agency's new approach to fare evasion, and discussed other challenges facing the MTA. Below are highlights from their conversation: On why he created the blue ribbon panel: "It's not just about financial impacts. It's really about the fact that a lot of the riders who want to play by the rules are feeling like they're suckers because they're paying the fare and they see people sail right past them through the emergency gates. "I'm not interested in criminalizing a kid who makes a mistake, that's not the point of this. That's why I put so many civil rights leaders who have spoken out about fairness in the enforcement of fare evasion on this panel ... We're definitely going to avoid that problem that you've alluded to with fare evasion becoming part of the mass incarceration process." On why fears of crime are significantly [higher now than they were in 2001]( when the crime rate was higher, and whether increasing the police presence in the subways only amplifies those fears: "I am not interested in arguing with people who feel uncomfortable. We've had a couple of high-profile incidents, there's no question that has increased the sensitivity. I was a kid in New York in the '70s, when obviously crime was much, much worse. There's no question there's been improvement, but what people are feeling is a sense of disorder on the system. "It's not just the technical statistics of crime, it's also that there are people breaking the rules, there's smoking, there's open drug use, there's vandalism. When people see that, they think, what might that person do to me? That is part of what I think we need to address as a group. Because every day, [subways] are the place where New Yorkers prove out the viability of tolerance and diversity in small spaces. We have to make it more comfortable to eliminate these things that are making people feel vulnerable. That's what we're trying to do." Responding to a subway conductor named Chris who said he was attacked by a passenger, and that the cops don't do enough to protect MTA workers and riders: "The mayor himself is a transit cop. He is the one who is moving cops to the trains and the platforms, which is something we were asking for, for some time before this mayor came into city hall. I think that over time, that will make a difference. "Chris has made some comments about the effectiveness of those patrols. I respect that, but I also think that there's a commitment in the NYPD and in City Hall to making sure that putting cops where riders feel vulnerable and where our workers are vulnerable is going to overtime deter the violence and intimidation that Chris has described." On funding the transit system if pre-pandemic ridership levels don't return any time soon: "Historically, the MTA has been asked to fund more than half of its costs through farebox revenues and raising fares periodically. I think we need to start with what COVID has taught us, that we have to start thinking about the MTA and mass transit as an essential service like police, fire, or sanitation. "What probably makes sense is for the discussion to begin about what recurring sources of revenues other than fare hikes, or service cuts, or layoffs, which we don't want to do, what are the recurring sources of revenue that will fill what looks like a gap, at least for the near term in the MTA budget. I'm hoping that that conversation will start to unfold the second half of this year." [Listen to the full interview here.]( --------------------------------------------------------------- 🚆 --------------------------------------------------------------- As fatal crashes spike, Adams blows deadline for recommending solutions [an SUV that drove onto a Brooklyn sidewalk and caused multiple injuries] Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky/Gothamist Last spring, in response to longstanding complaints about the NYPD’s handling of crash investigations, the City Council voted to create a safety unit within the Department of Transportation that would conduct "systematic evaluations" of crash sites and then make quarterly recommendations on street design interventions. But more than a year later, as traffic deaths have reached their [highest level]( in nearly a decade, the highly-publicized unit has shown little signs of progress. Just about half of its positions have been staffed, and the April 30th deadline to publicly share the results of completed investigations and proposed design changes came and went last week without any city acknowledgement. While the initial goal of supplanting the NYPD’s traffic investigators was ultimately dialed back, the Council's bill still gave the DOT, rather than the police department, "primary responsibility for all public statements, press releases or any other public communications regarding serious vehicular crashes and related investigations." So far, that has not happened. When a 16-year-old was fatally struck by a truck driver in the Bronx on Wednesday, information on that tragedy was transmitted by police. It remains unclear what role, if any, DOT would have in investigating the circumstances of the crash. Vin Barone, a spokesperson fo the DOT, told Gothamist that the agency was "finalizing our first-ever quarterly report and will have more to share soon." — [Reporting by Jake Offenhartz]( --------------------------------------------------------------- 🚆 --------------------------------------------------------------- Here's What Else Is Happening New York City is launching a $4 million ad campaign to discourage reckless driving. The ads, which will run in nine languages across billboards, TV, radio, gas station pumps, and elsewhere, feature terrifying sounds and images of pedestrians and cyclists being hit by cars and flying through the air, with the tagline, "Speeding ruins lives. Slow down." Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez said the majority of crashes in the city involve drivers who have suspended licenses, were driving while intoxicated or were speeding. ([Gothamist]( New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a leading congestion pricing critic, urged New Jerseyans to just stay home. "Rather than pay the absurd congestion price, rather than pay the expensive tolls, deal with traffic, why not make life easier? Why not stay in New Jersey?" Gottheimer said this week during a press conference on the side of a Paramus highway. Census data from 2015 indicates that more than 75% of New Jersey residents who work in Manhattan take mass transit, and thus wouldn't have to pay the tolls anyway, but Gottheimer said he's still looking to offer tax breaks to New York-based companies to open satellite offices in the Garden State. ( [Gothamist]( Despite a 2020 pledge by Attorney General Letitia James to tackle racist policing in the subways, fare evasion arrest demographics haven't changed. In January of 2020, when 70% of the people arrested for fare evasion were Black or Latino and the zealous arrest of a churro vendor made headlines, A.G. James announced an investigation into the NYPD's enforcement methods. More than two-and-a-half years later, Black and Latino New Yorkers make up 88% of the people arrested for fare evasion and 70% of the people given summonses, just as the NYPD prepares to ramp up its fare evasion enforcement efforts. A spokesperson for James' office, which hasn't provided an update on the investigation, said today that it's "ongoing." ( [Hell Gate]( Camera feeds weren't working during the Sunset Park mass shooting because of a broken fan in the communication room. MTA chair Janno Lieber explained in a letter to Congress this week that in the process of replacing a faulty fan in the room where security footage from the 36th Street station is processed, the camera feed went down for about 48 hours, during which period 10 people were shot. He added that the subway system, which is 100 years old, needs additional federal funding to update its security system. ([NY1]( Subway station escalators have been breaking down at a far higher rate in the Bronx. According to MTA data, station escalators in the Bronx had an operationality rate of 80% from March 2021 to March 2022, while the system-wide escalator fleet was 96% operational during that same period. The transit agency said that four Bronx escalators, including ones at the Pelham Bay Park, Pelham Parkway and Intervale stations, were out of service because they were being replaced, but 86% of the 1,640 outages that were reported over the last year were attributed to "unscheduled breakdowns." ( [Bronx Times]( Are we in for a "Hot E-Bike Summer?" Citi Bike is introducing thousands of 20 mph, pedal-assist e-bikes onto city streets this year, and there's a bill in Albany that would grant New Yorkers a 50% tax rebate if they buy their own e-bikes. But there are still hurdles: a lack of places to charge, and narrow bike lanes that constantly have trucks and cops parked in them. ([Bloomberg]( --------------------------------------------------------------- 🚆 --------------------------------------------------------------- And Finally: A new exhibit at Grand Central tells the history of mass transit in the Bronx [a City Island monorail train flipped over, in 1910] New York Transit Museum, Lonto/Watson Collection Before City Island voted to become part of New York City in 1895, and before it was consolidated into the Bronx in 1898, the area relied on a horse-drawn railroad — a trolley car that rode on rails and was pulled by horses — to connect to the Bartow station of the Harlem River and Port Chester Railroad. But the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, which built New York's first subway line in 1904, was focused on using newer technologies to improve commutes. So around the same time they were building the subway in Manhattan, the IRT took over this Bronx railway, which was called the Pelham Park and City Island Railroad. A few years later, they decided to substitute the horse railroad for New York City's first monorail. The Flying Lady — so called because of its "long, cigar-shaped yellow car" — could fit 40 people, and took only a few minutes between stops, instead of the 40-plus minutes by horse. More than 100 people came out for its inaugural ride on July 16th, 1910. Things did not go well. Because of all the extra passengers, it was "much heavier than it was supposed to be," New York Transit Museum curator Jodi Shapiro told Gothamist. "The track that the monorail ran on was over a road bed that didn't have cement under it. So it was not as sturdy as it could have been. As it started to move, the tracks began to sink, and the pole that was connected with the electrical wires overhead — which is what powered the car — separated. So the car lost power. And then the car tipped over." The rise and fall of the city's monorail is just one of the fascinating episodes of innovation, failure and renewal featured in Building The Bronx, the Transit Museum's newest exhibit, now on view at Grand Central Terminal on Wednesday through Friday, through October. — [Reporting by Ben Yakas]( --------------------------------------------------------------- 🚆 --------------------------------------------------------------- Support WNYC + Gothamist Make a donation to support local, independent journalism. Your contributions are our largest source of funding and pays for essential election coverage and more. [DONATE]( [Facebook]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( [Instagram]( [WNYC]( [WQXR]( [NJPR]( [GOTHAMIST]( [WNYC STUDIOS]( [THE GREENE SPACE]( Copyright © New York Public Radio. 160 Varick Street, New York, NY 10013 All rights reserved. [Terms of Use.]( Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your [preferences]( or [unsubscribe]( from this list