MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber appeared live on WBAI/99.5’s Driving Forces with Jeff Simmons and Celeste Katz Marston to discuss transportation topics.
A transcript of the interview appears below.
Jeff Simmons: Janno Lieber, welcome back to Driving Forces.
Janno Lieber: Good to be with you, Jeff.
Simmons: OK, it’s just beenꟷ I’m going to start with a very softball question, but it's on my mind because you know, you testified up in Albany, very dire straits you talked about with the budget, but you just hit your one-year anniversary at the helm of the MTA. So how has this past year been for you?
Lieber: Listen, we are firing on all cylinders. The MTA is all about supporting New York and coming back from the pandemic. And I think we're crushing it. And here are the key reasons. Obviously, we have a huge financial problem. But that's because of work from home. The things that we control, service: best on time, this January best on time performance in 10 years on the subways. 2022, best on time performance ever on the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North which is 97% and 96% respectively. Ridership: Up 50% since I got the nod from the Senate. Safety problem, which we were all very conscious of in the in the fall, especially on subways, and the sense of safety and the reality of safety: We've dialed crime back by 30%. And in fact, you know, whenever there is a crime, more than half of the people are being apprehended on the spot by the cops. And we're knocking out all the big capital projects. Jeff, you and I worked on the rebuilding of downtown together. These are historic projects, not unlike the World Trade Center and not just Grand Central Madison, and the Third Track Project and fixing the train and redoing the Time Square Shuttle during COVID. But they're all getting done on time and under budget, which is new for the MTA. So I'm very proud of what this agency has done and is doing in the last year. Obviously, it's a ton of people who contribute to it. It's definitely not just because I get to sit on the 20th floor, but we are making progress.
Celeste Katz Marston: Mr. Chairman. It's great to have you back here on the program. Always glad to hear from you. And wanted to ask you: Big picture looking at the new State budget, the Governor's spending plan, does it help the MTA at all considering the agency is facing these major shortfalls? $2 billion deficit in ’24. $3 billion if things stay the same in ’26. What is this plan going to do for you?
Lieber: I said the day that it was released that I was walking on air because the Governor stepped up with a plan to fix the fiscal cliff, to make sure we didn't head over the fiscal cliff at the MTA. We have, as you said a $2 billion budget deficit that is the result of the fact that some people are working from home, they're working remotely. It's not a bad thing. And it's mostly the white-collar industries we all know. But the result is our ridership is only about two thirds of what it was before COVID. And that has blown a hole in the budget. The Governor’s plan fixes that deficit. And you know what? It makes sense because New York couldn’t be New York without the MTA. And that’s not an assertion of primacy. It’s actually the reality. Because of our density, there just ain’t enough room on the streets if we were a car city. You got to fund the MTA, it’s essential to our economy, and the Governor stepped up with a plan that does just that. And it, among other things, assigns to the MTA the preponderance of future casino revenues. That gives us real security for the long term, because that's the next big revenue source for State government.
Katz: We're talking to Janno Lieber, the CEO and Chairman of the MTA. This is Driving Forces on WBAI New York. And Mr. Chairman, looking ahead, it’s great that we can fill these gaps with this budget, and that we’re planning ahead. But as you look ahead, are we going to see a fundamentally different MTA? We have some companies saying okay, return to office, stop working from home or if you spend some of your time in the office, but some companies are not saying that. Some companies are staying either fully or mostly remote. Are we looking at just a different mass transit system for New York City, going ahead in say the next five years?
Lieber: You know, Celeste, I don't think so. Because what I have said to people is: I don't want to cut service for the overwhelming majority of working class and low-income New Yorkers, many from Black and Brown communities who are traveling distance mostly, because they got to show up to work and they can't afford a $50 Uber because white-collar workers in Manhattan are taking a Citi Bike or working from home or dialing in from Aspen. That's not what I want to do. We want to maintain the same level of service. And it’s been a high quality of service as of late. As I said, January was the best January in terms of on time performance in the subways, 85%, in 10 years. We don’t want to cut service. We want to maintain or maybe even grow service. We are actually growing service on the Long Island Rail Road, thanks to that new system we have which we call Grand Central Madison. We have a second route under the East River and a lot more terminal capacity because we now have a Long Island Rail Road terminal at Grand Central. And we are going to give a lot more service not just to Long Island, but also to Queens so the people who live in far out Queens can cut their commutes in half, and we’re going to give them a discount ticket. And we’re going to make the Long Island Rail Road maybe work a little better for New York City residents as well as Long Islanders.
Simmons: Mr. Chairman, you mentioned about increasing service. One of the things that advocates are pushing for is what they call the Fix the MTA package, freezing fares, increasing service during off peak. Your thoughts on this plan and how realistic for anyone who’s listening to take the subways or buses? How realistic is a potential fare increase within the next few years?
Lieber: Well, number one, as the head of the MTA, I love it when people talk about increasing service, and I said that at the hearing. I love it. We do have to focus first on getting the money to maintain the existing level of service, which is pretty good, but I’m never going to talk against increasing service. I was asked how I would propose to increase service, what would be my priority? I said, in the evenings after the peak, the evening rush hour, up to 10 o'clock, as a time, and even later on the weekends, when I think we could see that would be justification for growing frequencies. And likewise, on the weekends itself, you know, we're at, you know, 80% usually on the weekends relative to pre-Covid, because people have somewhere they want to go as opposed to the weekdays when a lot of people are not going to the office like the old days. So, we love weekend service and so on. Sometimes folks are talking about ꟷ you hear people talking about ꟷ they’re supporters of transit, so I love them, about having six minute service. Using that as a benchmark in all lines and most of the day. I think that is hard to achieve because we don't have enough trains and frankly, we need we need some time to be able to fix the system and do maintenance and all that. But I love the idea of more trains and more buses and more travel.
Katz: We’re going to open the phone lines. 212-209-2877 is the number to call 212-209-2877. Our guest right now is MTA CEO and Chairman Janno Lieber, and Mr. Chairman, wanted to ask you what have we learned, and what are we putting in from what we have learned, from the pandemic? Maybe areas where ridership is lower, times when ridership is lower? Are we going to fundamentally change anything about the MTA as we look ahead, based on the actual data?
Lieber: It’s a very good question. One is that we have got to figure out how to make buses faster, because during the pandemic, so much of especially, you know, lower and moderate income communities’ travel was dependent on the bus system, and as people are coming less to a traditional commute in and out of the central business district, maybe because of work from home and so on, more of their travel proportionally is in the neighborhoods. And the bus system is what provides that mobility. And right now, buses are moving too slowly because people are in the bus lane and there's too much traffic congestion, and we need to figure out how to make buses faster. It's not just more buses. It's that buses can't move in our street system right now because they just can’t get around. That is the reason why Congestion Pricing is under consideration in the Manhattan Central Business District because literally ambulances are not getting to hospitals and fire trucks can't get the fires. So that’s one learning, and the other is that the subway system to a great extent has to serve the moderate and low-income communities which tend to be more in the boroughs. The problem is, it’s hard to cut service to Manhattanites, even if they're riding less because it’s the same lines that people ride in from Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, and so on, and upper Manhattan, so it’s hard to cut subway service without hurting the people who are totally reliant on it. Coming back to bus, we're redesigning the bus networks in all of the boroughs one by one to try to make it faster to move around by buses, even if they’re not express buses. Local buses and buses that take you to trains and commuter rail stations.
Simmons: And if you just tuned in we’re talking with Janno Lieber chair and CEO of the MTA The number to call, only for a few more minutes, is 212-209-2877. That’s 212-209-2877. There's so much more we can talk about but I do know you just announced ꟷ you had a very positive announcement ꟷ regarding service at the Grand Central Madison and I don't know if a lot of our listeners know about it when you just mentioned that. But, at the same time, there's something in the governor’s proposal that will also impact Long Island listeners that they may find difficult to digest. She proposed an increase in the payroll mobility tax to writers from Long Island could pay a bit more in the wake of opening this third track at Grand Central Station. Can you just bring us up to date up to date on those two elements?
Lieber: Sure. Well, that is what you described the payroll mobility tax. The PMT. It’s not a tax on individuals, it’s a tax on businesses that is dedicated to the MTA. And in fact, what the Governor proposed would only touch large businesses, businesses that had payrolls in excess of almost $2 million a year. So actually, it’s not directed at Long Island, in fact, 80% of that increment that the Governor proposed on the business tax for the MTA would be paid by New York City businesses and, in a man bites dog moment, it was actually endorsed by the head of the New York City Partnership, who you know, Jeff, Kathy Wylde, who said it was a reasonable way to fund the MTA. So, the trade association of the companies who would get hit with this extra tax is actually endorsing it. And so it is, I think, a very fair way to do it. As I always say, if companies are letting their employees understandably come in one to three days a week instead of five days, but they want our service to be there frequent and reliable five days a week, we need a little help from the business community to cover that extra cost as well as from other sources. We're asking the city to help contribute, the MTA is cutting ꟷ without reducing service ꟷ by $400 million. So, it's a balanced plan that Governor Hochul has put on the table.
Katz: And Mr. Chairman, I know you were tight on time. So, before we let you go, one more question. We know that the MTA, the State, the NYPD have been doing a lot of work to try to improve safety in the subway. Do you have any sense of whether people now perceive the trains to be safer, whether they feel more comfortable being in the system?
Lieber: Celeste, I don’t know whether that's a softball question or not, but the news is very positive on that front. Since we started what the governor and the mayor called their “cops, cameras and care” program, which brought more NYPD officers into the subway system but also an expansion of our camera programs and also more outreach for folks who are struggling with severe mental illness in the public space. But since then, we have had a dramatic improvement in customer satisfaction, so you get people saying, I feel safe. Almost 60% of people said I feel safe or very safe in the subway system in December, as opposed to October when it was only 40%. So, dramatic improvement. And in fact, the significant percentage are actually saying I directly feel safer because of that program. Now, in addition to putting more cops there, we're also announcing to folks that there are NYPD officers on the platform and in the system. And the result is, whenever there’s something bad – and there are like three to seven major crimes a day in our subway system, which has 3½ to 4 million riders, and more than half of those episodes result in in the perpetrator being apprehended, partly because we're letting everybody know where the cops are so they can get help. It's working I think very, very well.
Katz: I wish we had more time and I wish you had more time, but we will certainly look forward to having you back again here on Driving Forces. Chairman Janno Lieber, thank you so much for joining us today to talk about the MTA.
Lieber: Thank you.