Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul and Mayor Mamdani Unveil Historic Plan to Build the Fastest, Best Bus System in New York City History

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani unveiled Next Stop: Fast Buses, Better Service, a sweeping bus action plan to build the next generation of bus service in New York City. The plan marks a historic partnership between the New York City Department of Transportation (NYC DOT) and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to transform how New Yorkers experience the city's buses - with investments that will make service faster, more accessible and more comfortable from curb to destination. Next Stop: Fast Buses, Better Service identifies 50 priority bus corridors for improvements across the five boroughs and launches the City's next generation of rapid bus service along five key routes. Together, these investments will shorten commutes, improve reliability, expand accessibility and create a bus system worthy of the city that depends on it.

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor's Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Hello, New York. You want to go faster? So do I. I want to thank our Mayor and his team for working so closely with us. We've wanted to do this before. This is not a brand new idea, but we never had the partnership and the leadership in City Hall that we have right now. I want to give them a huge round of applause.

And to all the transit advocates, the Riders Alliance, and everyone else, let's give them a huge round of applause for always being on the front line of what is right. I want to thank Janno Lieber for running an extraordinarily complicated system, but does it in an incredible way. Let's give him a round of applause as well.

Betsy Plum, the Executive Director of the Riders Alliance, and all of you, I thank you so much. You are an important part of us getting congestion pricing over the line. Thank you very much. And we'll continue to stand up to the Trump administration and say, "That ain't going anywhere, Mr. President." We're keeping our congestion pricing because it's 27 million fewer cars on the roads in our city. You're also helping me with the next phase of the Second Avenue Subway so we can eliminate transit deserts and let people have an opportunity to get to the better-paying jobs. Thank you, Riders Alliance, for being here with me on that one.

How do you like the sound of the Interborough Express? You want to be able to go from Brooklyn to Queens without a nice stop in Manhattan? We're going to make that happen. So we've done an awful lot to help people on our subways and make our trains faster, and rider satisfaction is up. But you know what? Let's focus on the bus riders.

I want you to have the same positive experience that you deserve. This is a way that people get to their jobs. The nurses wake up at the crack of dawn and need the bus to get them to the hospitals to take care of us and our families. The school teachers who show up every single day. The people who work the night shift and have to go home, the bus is their lifeline. And the students who go to school every day.

I remember being a student. Yes, it was a few years ago, I get it. But I remember being a 16-year-old living in a blue collar suburb outside of Buffalo, and I used to leave school every day at noon - don't tell my teachers - and I went and volunteered at the Democratic headquarters. I had an hour bus ride every day. I would have liked somebody to say, "Let's make those buses go faster," and that's what we're doing today.

It is about putting the money where our mouths are, right? This could have happened, but the resources were not there, and that's part of my historic $68 billion investment in public transit. That's how we're able to get 2,500 brand new buses. You're going to love these buses. They're incredible. You're never going to want to get off the bus, you'll want to go to the next stop. It's going to be so great.

We're going to make sure that we speed it up at 50 priority locations. We're going to allow people to be able to come off the back, on and off the back. Think about that, how it's going to speed things up. We'll get that done as well, use every door for the boarding, and we're going to complete the transition to tap and ride.

So I'll be shorter than the Mayor's six minutes. How do you feel about that? Got you beat there, Mayor, because I know these people are in a hurry. They are in a hurry to finally have faster buses in New York City. We got it done. Thank you, everybody. Thank you very much.