TRANSCRIPT: MTA Chair and CEO Lieber Appears Live on Inside City Hall
MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber appeared on NY1’s Inside City Hall with Errol Louis to discuss congestion pricing and other transit-related issues.
A transcript of the interview appears below.
Errol Louis: The Chair and CEO of the MTA Janno Lieber joins me now in the studio to break down their plan to revive the toll. Welcome back to the program. Congratulations!
Janno Lieber: Good to be with you, Errol.
Louis: I'm going to talk fast, because I don't have you for very long. From your point of view, was this a matter of not if, but when? This is, after all, is a law.
Lieber: You’re quite right. This is the law of the State of New York. We needed to figure out the right way to approach it, and the governor chose, in the end, the lowest toll that would satisfy the environmental requirements, but also would get us on the way to achieving the goals of cleaner air, less congestion, which makes this good for drivers - frequently overlooked - safer streets, less traffic violence and investing in our transit system.
Louis: Well, yea that explains it. There's political math and then there's Wall Street math, right?
Lieber: Yes.
Louis: The political math is that we're going to have a 40 percent reduction from what would have been $15 to $9 which the independent panel has suggested was the 15. But explain the bottom math, it's 40 percent less, but it's going to still get to 15.
Lieber: Listen, the bottom line is that, we will be able to raise the 15, it may take us a little bit longer, but the overlooked part of the news today, Errol, was the governor's full-throated endorsement of the next MTA capital program, which means that we're going to have a $68 billion dollar, 5-year program that's going to enable us to invest in 1,500 new subway and rail cars, more ADA accessibility, new signals so we can run more trains, zero-emissions buses, electric buses, all kinds of great stuff. So, the fact that the back end of the 15 may be a little slower is fine. We're going to have a lot of work going on to preserve and improve this great system.
Louis: Does that capital plan assume current ridership levels, or are we going to get above wherever we are now?
Lieber: Yeah, we're doing great. The Long Island Rail Road is pushing 90 percent of pre-COVID numbers and subways, we’ve had our best month ever, and we continue to set new records almost every week. People are coming back to transit. The interesting thing is they're coming back to transit when they have somewhere to go, nights and weekends. Yeah, hybrid work has impacted our commuting population, but people are choosing transit, and part of that is safety. Our system has lower crime now than it did before COVID. So don't let anybody represent this as like some kind of dystopian hellscape.
Louis: Oh, no, no, no. We've been very clear on this program that what people see and think of as crime is disorder, which is very troubling. And you know, we're going through this trial now with Daniel Penny. I mean, it can really get out of hand. But if the program does not get final federal approval, I know you’ve got to get somebody to check, somebody in Washington has to check off on this plan -
Lieber: Yeah.
Louis: If they don't do it before Mr. Trump is inaugurated, could he block it permanently?
Lieber: Yeah. Obviously, one of the goals here is to get the approval. We got the approval for the basic tolling structure. We’re doing all that's happening now is we're adding a feature of this phase-in process that the governor announced today. So starting at nine for at least a few years will allow us to ease into what is a new system for some New Yorkers. But remember, less than one percent of the people in the region actually drive to the Central Business District. The overwhelming majority, 90 percent, of the people come to work in Midtown, in Lower Manhattan, take transit. Those are the people we should be talking about, not only the drivers.
Louis: Well, think of him for a minute as Mr. Trump, businessman, owner of Trump Tower, which is right in the high 50s, right near the edge of the congestion boundary. What would you say to him about why this is a good idea?
Lieber: Thank you for asking, because I said this today. I think of Donald Trump - putting aside the politics and knee-jerk reactions - Donald Trump owns office buildings, and 90 percent of the people who work in those office buildings actually come by transit. And one of the reasons those buildings have value is that they're close to transit. This is good for our economy, because people won't be spending hours waiting in New York. And it's even good for real estate. That's why the Real Estate Board, the real estate industry, as well as the business community, the banks, the law firms and so on have supported congestion pricing.
Louis: At the time of the pause your agency had spent an estimated half billion dollars on the scanners and some of the other infrastructure. I was walking by in the area around 60th street. I didn't see it. Is that equipment still in place? Is it ready to be used?
Lieber: Oh yeah, it's ready to be used. We're making sure that every little thing is working properly because there's a whole network of cameras. But let me come back to saying that what Governor Hochul did today is reaffirm her status as a transit supporter. She supported the MTA when we had, you know, the fiscal cliff in ‘23 in the Legislature. She solved the congestion pricing issue in a way that I think works for everybody as we ease into this. And she's now announced her full-throated support for the next MTA Capital Plan that is supporting transit. And I'm grateful we have a governor of that kind.
Louis: Okay. And I know you can't speak for her on this, but are you saying this is going to go forward, even if somebody at a diner comes up to her and says, ‘hey, this is, this is killing me. I've got a 10-year-old car and I can't afford this.’?
Lieber: Listen. I mean, Kathy Hochul has experience. My responsibility is to speak for the six and a half million people who ride transit every day. The number of people who drive to the CBD is tiny, and they're much better off because they're paying for parking overwhelmingly, like it's just 50 bucks or more a day. So I’ve got to look out for those transit riders. That's my responsibility, and I believe that she is looking out for them as well.
Louis: You mentioned cameras. Are we going with license plate readers...?
Lieber: Yes.
Louis: ...as the primary, it's easily frustrated, right? I mean, you've discovered that on the bridges. People buy stuff online and just mask their plates.
Lieber: Yeah, but more and more, what is becoming increasingly easy is with the level of photography. As I say, we have cameras, not only at the entry point, but around the whole Central Business District. It gets pretty easy to identify those cars, and we're systematically with toll evaders going and identifying them, even if they try to mess with their plates. I am going to be asking the Legislature, in addition to other stuff we'll be dealing with in the next legislative session, for more power to remove the plate covering anything that's trying to deface the plate. That's not right. We’ve got to take it away, right there.
Louis: Okay. The MTA earlier this year agreed to extend exemptions under this plan to 11,000 school buses, 15,000 municipal vehicles. I mean, you can make the exceptions will end up becoming the rule.
Lieber: No, actually, we actually took a pretty narrow view of exemptions. We had 120 different requests for exemptions from everything from farmers and people with special kinds of business. In the end, who has an exemption? People with disabilities can get a full exemption. And low-income New Yorkers who have to come to the CBD can also get a serious discount. Not to be forgotten, everybody who comes in nighttime, late-time hours, will also get a 75 percent discount. So this is going to be something that works its way into New York. I think people are going to adapt to pretty quickly. I'm excited that it's come out the way it has.
Louis: In our last minute, let me switch topics and ask you about the upcoming changes in service to Rockaway.
Lieber: Yeah.
Louis: From January 17th to May 19th there’s going to be service changes that affect about 9,000 commuters. Extra service is what people are really concerned about. That if there's not extra ferry service, or if there's bus service, but it's not dedicated bus lanes, they're going to be in an impossible situation.
Lieber: Listen that is a community that we care about a lot, relies on mass transit, working-class community, and they’re a little isolated, because they have to, you know, they're off the mainland. But we’ve got to do this work. Because just tonight, the bridge actually wouldn't close. This is a bridge that, like some others, is so old that the mechanics don't work anymore. Every time they open it for a boat, frequently it doesn't close. We've got to fix that. We've got to fix the elevated structure and so much more. So we're going to have dedicated buses. We just proved we can do alternative service well on the train closure, and then we're going to run the subway up and down the Rockaways, both end to end, and have that be free. And we're going to have dramatically reduced Long Island Rail Road costs. The ferries, honestly, I hope that the city will want to do some extra ferry service but it doesn't carry as many people. The Long Island Rail Road has space, and we're going to make it really attractive.
Louis: Okay. And presumably you'll push for dedicated bus lines?
Lieber: Amen.
Louis: Yeah, push the city to get that done.
Lieber: Always.
Louis: Okay, best of luck. Congratulations. Thanks for coming by. Great to talk with you.