MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber appeared live on NY1’s Inside City Hall with Errol Louis to discuss the State budget, MTA finances, and other transportation related issues.
A transcript of the interview appears below.
Errol Louis: Welcome back to Inside City Hall. As I mentioned at the top of the show, Governor Hochul and State lawmakers continue to negotiate the State budget as the deadline quickly approaches. One of the big issues they remain divided over is how to fund the cash strapped MTA. State legislators have floated a lot of different proposals including charging for parking permits in the citym, or collecting property taxes from Madison Square Garden, or raising the corporate franchise tax. Meanwhile, the Governor has suggested increasing the payroll mobility tax and is pushing the city to contribute an additional $500 million annually. Now, during today's MTA board meeting, officials showed support for the Governor's plan which they say would provide a permanent renewed source of funding for the agency. Joining me now to talk through a lot of these issues is Janno Lieber. The Chair and CEO of the MTA. Welcome back to the program.
Janno Lieber: Thank you, Errol.
Louis: What kind of reception did you get in Albany when you went up there? And what kind of funding do you think is most likely to come out of all of this process?
Lieber: The conversations I had in Albany, I was there all day yesterday, were very positive. The Governor set out a plan which does exactly what you said. It gives a full and complete resolution to the MTA’s deficit brought on by the ridership drop after COVID. And everybody, Assembly, Senate as well as the Governor has declared their commitment to get to fully fund the MTA deficit. None of us want to be cutting service for middle class and working-class people because more affluent white-collar folks are remote working. That doesn't make sense. So, the commitment is there. The question is how to get there? The Governor had a plan, what I said to everybody is, whatever approach you want to take, it's got to be certain. No, we don't want any experimental money that you know, outcomes that you suggest, oh that's going to produce $100 million. I want to know that that money is going to be here because I don't want to be back here in a year telling you that that didn't work out and that we need more money. The riders need certainty, and we need to plan for a bigger and better system.
Louis: Well, I mean, if that's the case, we just showed a chart from Reinvent Albany that had some of the different proposals that have been kicked around. I mean, you know, not all of these proposals are born equal, right? I mean, some of them are frankly one shots, COVID emergency payment, that goes away. Things like even the parking permit program. Well, we don't have one, so it would take some time to create it. We don't know who would pay it. How much would be charged for it. Do you sort of mentally at least kind of put those off to the side in a different category?
Lieber: I've been very upfront about the fact that we need certainty. The riders need certainty. They don't want to go through this drama every year. And we've actually been getting riders back. Service is as good as it's ever been on the subways in 10 years. Long Island ridership last week, high point since COVID. So, we're moving in a positive direction. But we need the riders to know that the drama about the MTA potentially having to cut service or do layoffs or something that's really negative is taken off the table. That's why I think that people are not in the end going to opt for more speculative approaches, and they'll go with the stuff that really is going to produce a positive outcome.
Louis: Okay, since we're talking about money, the idea of fares going up from $2.75 to $2.90. Is that a bargaining position? Or is that going to happen?
Lieber: The Governor put on the table an approach, which is the MTA is going to cut $400 million, businesses which by the way, the New York City businesses who are going to pay 80% of these additional payroll mobility taxes have endorsed it. How frequently does the guy who's going to pay the taxes say yeah, that's the right thing to do? We have to settle up on some historic issues that are imbalanced between us and the city. Only a small portion of this is solved by the fare increase. All the Governor said was let's restore those very small incremental increases that existed before COVID. She put it off for a year. That was a good idea about how to maintain security for the MTA over the long run. It worked for 10 years. It's a small increase, makes sense.
Louis: Okay. There's a bill in Albany that would freeze the $2.75 fare, provide funding for universal six-minute subway service, and make bus service in the city totally free for riders. I'm wondering what you think about that?
Lieber: All those are good, you know, interesting ideas I would say if properly funded. It's no secret. I've said to folks that my first priority is making sure the MTA deficits are addressed. As I said before, certainly, that it's not, it's recurring money, and that it's not going to sunset. I don't want to go back to Albany in four years and go through this drama again. But if there are some innovative experimental ideas put on the table, we're happy to listen as long as they're funded. Some of the riders, you know, the riders’ advocates that I've talked to are excited about additional service, but the first thing that has to happen is what the Governor said. Let's fill the deficit and make sure we got the service we need.
Louis: Not to say that this is what legislative leaders are doing, but they will often sunset different provisions because they want you to have to come back, right? They want to sort of take a look at it for good or bad reasons.
Lieber: Listen, everybody can audit the heck out of the MTA. 80% of our costs are wages and benefits and pensions. That's where we spend money on so they can audit us till the cows come home. But what I don't want is to have drama every couple of years where the riders are facing cuts in service, especially people who depend on mass transit and who don't have the bucks for a $50 Uber. That's what we need and who we owe a permanent solution to.
Louis: As one of the people who is using the system, I was pleased to see some of your performance reports. One that really stood out, one number, weekday on time performance is 8.6% percentage points higher than February 2019.
Lieber: Yeah.
Louis: Meaning, doing better than before the pandemic.
Lieber: Rich Davey who runs New York City Transit and the team at subways and buses are doing great. We have better on time performance than before COVID. We are better in all the different metrics, customer journey time, platform wait time, progress, progress, progress. And what's happening is that folks are using data to really analyze: where are the holdups on the system? That use of data and analytics by the subway team is great. Now, we're also getting faster activity, faster performance on the buses, and that's a real priority because buses are equity in our city. You and I are outer borough guys. You know, there's some parts of the city where buses are the only mass transit. You're not close to the subways or commuter rail. We have got to make the bus system faster. We're making progress, but we need what we proposed in Albany, which is more camera bus lane enforcement. That's the only way to get people out of the bus lane is to make sure that they know it's a ticket if they do it.
Louis: Okay, let me switch topics. Streetsblog and the New York Times are reporting that you're considering, the MTA is considering, spending $130 million to help address potential impact to Bronx neighborhoods. If you get congestion pricing downtown, the thinking is that it will increase the number of truck trips across the Cross Bronx Expressway and other parts of the Bronx, leading to more particulate pollution. Is that something you've sort of spec-ed out and is it pursuant to federal requirements?
Lieber: Errol, you know this stuff, what the federal environmental process requires is you do a ton of analysis. We have literally analyzed, for congestion pricing - which by the way was dictated by the Legislature back in 2019 - we've analyzed for the federal environmental review intersections and traffic going almost all the way to Philadelphia. So, it's a little kooky, but in good faith, we're obviously looking at all these processes to make sure that there are no negative side effects. So, we've done the analysis. We've done the outreach, we've compiled all that analysis, it's now with the federal government. They're working their tails off to go over it, to make sure it all makes sense and complies with the law. I'm not going to get into the specifics, but obviously mitigations are generally part of a project of this size.
Louis: Okay, and I saw filtration units and additional parks and green space, we'll find out more about that in the future. Before I let you go, there was talk about a vote today, I don't know if it took place at your board meeting today, about rules of conduct for Grand Central Madison terminal. In particular, the one that would limit the amount of time that commuters can sit on benches, which was seen as a way of moving people along and is being interpreted as a way to sort of move homeless people along.
Lieber: The rules of conduct that were adopted for the new Long Island Rail Road Grand Central Madison terminal are identical to the rules of conduct upstairs for the benches on Metro North.
Louis: Right, right, I mean, you’re not supposed to lay on benches anyway so.
Lieber: And it's the same for our whole system. We’re not doing anything innovative here. There are seating areas in the new Grand Central Madison terminal, but most of our commuters, the overwhelming majority, these are New Yorkers. They time it to the minute about how they're going to get to their trains and they're not sitting around in the terminal. Right now we don't have retail because there were no retailers who wanted to bid on this during COVID. We're going to eventually get some retail and some restaurants going, but we have a seating area and we mostly have commuters who want to time their commute right down to the minute.
Louis: Fair enough. And then finally, 2300 station agents who are going to be outside the booth now.
Lieber: This is great! You know, the station agents, those are customer service professionals. And right now, MetroCard vending machines handle almost all the transactions, even with OMNY, even more of the transactions no longer go to the booth. The booth transactions are down to like 1%. So, what we're doing is, we made a deal with the union for the station agents that come out of the booths and interact with people. So, giving directions, helping people with the vending machine just deal with problems and being eyes and ears in the system. They're all going to have cell phones where they can look around, make sure whether it's a maintenance issue or a safety issue, they can have additional presence, we can have additional presence in the station. Great breakthrough for customer service.
Louis: Okay. Well, listen, I've been talking to people all week about what they hope to get out to Albany. I hope you as much and maybe a little bit more than most get what it is you're looking for because it’ll affect a lot of people.
Lieber: Amen. Thank you, Errol. Amen.