MTA Acting Chair and CEO Janno Lieber appeared live on Fox 5 Good Day New York with Bianca Peters and Steve Lacy to discuss post-Tropical Storm Henri service and his new position as leader of the MTA.
A transcript of the interview appears below.
Bianca Peters: As pummeled areas in and around the city affecting some mass transit service, portions of the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North were suspended.
Steve Lacy: All right, joining us now this morning with an update, new head of the MTA, Janno Lieber, he is the Acting Chairman and CEO appointed by Andrew Cuomo just last month. Janno, thanks for being with us. To start, let's just paint a picture of how mass transit is doing this morning.
Janno Lieber: Well, you just heard from your traffic and transit reporter there are a lot of problems on the roads, but mass transit is, with very few exceptions, operating normally. And the partial shutdowns we had of the two commuter railroads, Long Island Rail Road east of Ronkonkoma and Patchogue, and on Metro-North -- we shut down yesterday the New Haven line -- but both of those lines are back in action, and the entire system is functioning normally, which is great. A real testament to the work that the MTA workforce -- the extra thousands of people who came back to work yesterday. The work they did clearly paid off.
Peters: I want to hear everything is back up to speed. Now, Steve just mentioned, you know, you're appointed as CEO of MTA in July 31st. The first couple of weeks in, how are things looking so far and maybe what's the biggest hurdle as we finish out 2021?
Lieber: Listen, the focus has got to be on making sure that we support the region's recovery. Obviously, we're going through this storm emergency, but we're thinking about after Labor Day when people start to go back to work, when people start to go back to school, and ridership is anticipated to grow. We want to provide fantastic service so that people can get that regional recovery can take place as quickly as possible.
Lacy: You know, and obviously this is Governor Cuomo’s last day in office, you were appointed by him, we have a new governor starting at midnight, that changes the politics of funding in particular. I know your job is really to bring in a lot of money trying to move forward, rebuilding this subway mass transit system, how do you think the new change in Governor will affect that mission?
Lieber: Well, I've had my discussions with the lieutenant governor, the soon to be governor, Kathy Hochul, and she's committed to the mass transit system in the New York area, she's passionate about it. We've already talked about how do we make sure we move forward with congestion pricing. So, which is a huge issue, both for our environment, for traffic, and also to fund the MTA. We've talked about major projects and how we're using the MTA capital program which was on hold during COVID. How do we get that jump started, so that we're doing whatever we need to do to create a better system, new signals, ADA accessibility, better service, more modern rolling stock subway cars, more zero emission buses. All of that needs to pick up speed if we're going to support the regional economy now and in the future.
Peters: Mr. Lieber, is the congestion pricing absolutely necessarily needed even when you're getting these massive amounts of federal funding because of COVID?
Lieber: Well, you know, the first thing is that congestion pricing has been something that has been talked about, is good for the environment in an era of climate change. We really have to come up with policies that will react to that. But it also is a part of the strategy, the legislature and the governor adopted to try to fund this massive MTA capital program. Everybody wants a rebuilt mass transit system with electric buses with, as I said, ADA accessibility, re-signaling the subway lines so that we can actually run more trains. Congestion pricing is going to support those investments, and I think everybody in our ecosystem is supporting it in the legislature and in the new governors team as well.
Lacy: You know, one thing that the legislature did not move on was the idea of before, by Governor, to split the top job in two. Is that something you're hopeful will eventually take place in the coming months?
Lieber: When that issue was discussed, it was an honor to be paired with Sarah Feinberg and was proposed to be the first MTA female chairman, an incredibly qualified person with a distinguished career in public service and mass transit in particular. Right now, I'm focused on doing this job. We have to support, New York, getting back to work, people getting back to school, and to support a model of environmentally friendly travel. We're concerned about “carmageddon,” the idea that people are going to come back to work, but they're going to want to use car travel. Mass transit is much faster, more efficient, and easier on the environment. So, we want to provide great service to encourage that.
Peters: Janno Lieber, Acting Chairman and CEO. Glad to hear everything is back up and running this morning.
Lacy: Good news, welcome to the job, thanks for being on your first appearance on Good Day New York.
Lieber: Thank you, Bianca Thank you, Steve.