TRANSCRIPT: MTA Chair and CEO Lieber Appears on WABC-7's Up Close with Bill Ritter

MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber appeared on WABC-7's Up Close with Bill Ritter to discuss the first weeks of congestion relief, subway safety, and other transportation-related issues.

A transcript of the interview appears below.

Bill Ritter: And, good morning, everyone. Welcome to Up Close, I'm Bill Ritter. We're going to talk about tomorrow's inauguration in just a few moments, but we're going to begin with the MTA. New York Governor Hochul coming up with a plan to add more cops in the subway system. It included two officers on every overnight train. Governor Hochul also stepping up efforts to stop fare beaters. All this on the heels of some recent high-profile crimes and, also the implementation of congestion pricing. As for the MTA, not only will it get some much-needed money from the new pools of money, but the nation's biggest transit agency is also hoping that more people will leave their cars home and take the subway and buses. Joining us this morning, the CEO of the MTA, Janno Lieber. Mr. Lieber, thank you for joining us.

Janno Lieber: Good to be with you, Bill.

Ritter: Good to see you. You know, we haven't talked to you for a while. There was a time as this was coming to bear, congestion pricing, that you stayed away a little bit because it seemed like you were getting shot at, verbally, from all angles.

Lieber: Yeah, well, listen, New York is a tough town, but, you know, as Sam Schwartz says, you've got to get to your first couple weeks on Broadway, or the show's going to close, and we have. It's been a great success. I was at a dinner last night with a couple thousand people, and literally hundreds of people came up to me, talked to me about how much time they are saving in cabs, when they're driving, and frankly, the benefits that they're seeing just in terms of their employees being able to get to work much more quickly. We're really happy with how it's gone.

Ritter: Let's get into the nitty-gritty of this. How do you measure that?

Lieber: Yeah, I mean, what we're seeing is like between five and ten percent fewer vehicles entering what we call the congestion relief zone, south of 60th street, every day. Speeds on the crosstown streets, hugely difficult, congested streets like Canal, 42nd Street, 57th Street, speeds have picked up. People are getting through the Holland Tunnel in half as much time as they were before. People are noticing that this is really changing the traffic pattern in New York.

Ritter: Of course, we don't want to go too fast because there is a speed limit law, 25 miles an hour.

Lieber: Amen, amen.

Ritter: But going two miles an hour isn't a good thing.

Lieber: It's a good point. Right now, for a long time, our buses in Midtown Manhattan were moving slower than walking, like less than five miles an hour. That's not fair. People who are riding the bus have to be able to move faster than walking. And as a life safety matter, that ambulances are stuck in traffic is a scandal. We have to do something about it, and we have. We're making progress.

Ritter: Just for the record, I was talking to the commissioner of the FDNY, and he was more interested and more worried about ambulances than fire trucks going because the fire trucks do make it through there faster than the ambulances sometimes do.

Lieber: It's absolutely right. EMS, what you have, you know, it's ticktock about someone's life surviving in an ambulance. You've got to get them to the hospital. And emergency response times, Bill, have been going up steadily for many years, especially since COVID. We've got to turn that around. Congestion pricing is already doing that.

Ritter: Okay, talk a little bit about how many people are now using the subway. What are the numbers like compared to what they were a month ago?

Lieber: Listen, they're good. You know, we're roughly 10% ahead of where we were in terms of numbers a comparable day a year ago. That's our measuring point. What was it like on the comparable day in 2024. So, there is more ridership. But let me just be very clear: we are well below ridership pre-COVID. We have a ton of room on the buses and the subways and the commuter railroads. There is no crunch. And remember this, there are only 130,000 people who drive to Midtown for work as commuters. Even if a third of those people switch to transit when we're carrying six million to seven million people a day, it's a drop in the bucket. We've got plenty of room for anybody who wants to switch over.

Ritter: How worried are you that you're not going to get the money needed really quickly to be able to improve the facilities that you have on these -

Lieber: It's a good point. It's a good point. Congestion pricing, obviously, the projects take a long time, you know, take a little while to implement with the money that we're going to receive from congestion pricing. But knowing that the money is on the way allows us to confidently make other investments in improving the system. If we didn't know the money was coming, we'd just have to invest in things to make sure it didn't fall apart. So, we're buying new railroad cars. We are buying new zero emission buses, rather than having dirty diesel-spewing buses. We are investing in track and signals to run the system faster. We're investing in a ton of elevators for ADA stations, so people with disabilities and parents with strollers and just regular oldsters can get in and out of the system. We can confidently make those investments now that we know the congestion pricing process is underway.

Ritter: And how long will it take? You're talking about all the money that's going to be needed, billions of dollars ultimately. You went from $15 a day to $9 a day. That's not going to pay for it.

Lieber: You know what? Governor Hochul wrestled with this issue for, it's no secret, for many months, and her decision to make it $9 has made it, I think, much more acceptable to a lot of people. We've got it going. It is succeeding, and even if it takes a little bit longer to fund all the projects, she is a big supporter of the MTA Capital Program going forward. So, we're going to be able to keep moving on the improvement of the system with her support.

Ritter: And how long will it take to really get the improvement that you need for some of this equipment? I take the 1 train, we were talking about it. You know, it's old, it's 100 years old, these trains.

Lieber: You know, we need to replace all the cars on your line, on the number 1 line, we need to replace a lot of cars. That costs money. We need to invest in - we've got 100-year-old system. If you have 100-year-old house and you don't maintain it, things start to happen.

Ritter: Yes, they do.

Lieber: It is not responsible for me to tell the world, don't worry about it, we've got it. It's going to have consequences. So, we need to make the investments. New Yorkers understand that the system can get better. When I was a kid, the subway broke down every 5,000 miles. Now it breaks down every 150,000 miles. We can improve this if we make the investments.

Ritter: We had a thing on Thursday, a case in point we were talking about - the b and c trains were suspended in both directions because of a third rail power problem there at Columbus Circle.

Lieber: It was last night. I was on the way to this event I just mentioned, and I heard about this, and I rerouted over to go to Columbus Circle because I wanted to be there and see it. It was a transformer component that is from the 80s that hasn't been upgraded, and it blew out. We lost signal power, which automatically puts all the stop arms up to prevent trains from advancing. Eight trains caught in the tunnels. We got all the people out in about an hour. But you know, that is exactly the kind of investment we have to make. We've got to fix the power systems. They're like The Land That Time Forgot. You cannot play with that.

Ritter: That time forgot. Lots to talk about, we have about five minutes left, and I want to get to a lot of things. Let's talk about what is happening on Monday, and that is Governor Hochul's, you know, announcement that you were going to have cops on these nighttime trains. Now it's not overnight trains. They are, but it starts at 9 p.m. which is not overnight, at least not where I - I do the 11 o'clock news, so it's not overnight to me, but then it goes to 5 a.m. So how big a deal is this? Was it as much as you wanted?

Lieber: This is great news. Listen, you know, 37% of the crime happens during those overnight hours. To have cops on the train really will make a difference. We're only running 150 trains, but there is a disproportionate share of the crime happening, number one. Number two, we want New Yorkers to feel safe on the system. It's not just, you know, turning around numbers. It's about feeling safe on the system, and the presence of cops on the platforms, and in the trains in the overnights, is a real shot in the arm. Governor Hochul made a significant investment in deciding to do that.

Ritter: And the NYPD also taking it.

Lieber: Yeah, the NYPD, listen. I've talked to the new Police Commissioner, Jessica Tisch, a big supporter of subway safety. She found, you know, figured out how to make sure the cops were available for these extra tours of duty, and there are also gonna be more cops on the platform. We keep doing that, and then the cops disappear over the course of a year. We want them to be there every day, all day. It makes the riders feel safe. That's my concern.

Ritter: Our reporter, NJ Burkett, this week did a story about the spikes that you're now putting into the fares, the jumpers, so they don't get the jumpers actually, and people are going to go up. Is that enough to do it? It didn't look like it was going to hurt anybody.

Lieber: Now listen, the bottom line is, we're going to do everything in our power to turn around the fare evasion. And we have made, Bill, important point: we've made progress in the last two quarters, the last six months of 2024, we knocked fare evasion on the subways down by, from 14% to 10.2%. That's like a 25 to 30% reduction in fare evasion because we're putting gate guards out to block people opening the gate and just walking in. We're making these physical changes to the subway turnstiles to try to do everything. And we're also, you know, together with the NYPD, seeing a lot more summonses being written. All of those things matter. But Bill, I got to tell you, none of this is going to be really successful unless the criminal justice system steps up and turns around, reverses the policy that they'll never prosecute fare evasion. New Yorkers are sick and tired of seeing people who are, you know, with an $8 latte in their hand, walking through the gate, cheating other New Yorkers. That's wrong, and we've got to stop it.

Ritter: I take the subway several times a day. When I see someone beat a fare like that, I say, 'Hey, there's a camera right there. You've just been photographed. I want to get you and go back again. I'm going to get you in there.' Now, I don't know if you people like that or not. My people at work think I'm crazy.

Lieber: I love that you do that. I do the same thing. Listen, you have to, there are a lot of people who can pay the fare who are just being opportunistic about it. I'm not talking about, you know, the kids. We've got a lot fewer kids subway fare jumping now, we gave them OMNY cards. It's really about the better off middle class and upper-middle class people who are walking in the gate that we got to stop.

Ritter: Quick question, two questions, quickly, because we have two minutes left, and I want to get both in. There are legal actions to try to stop congestion pricing. Odds of that happening?

Lieber: Listen, I don't know what...

Ritter: And Donald Trump.

Lieber: Yeah, of course. I don't know what the next administration...first of all, we've been sued in every federal court and state court east of the Mississippi, and we're batting 1.000, we've won every time. So, I think I'm pretty comfortable with where we are legally. But...

Ritter: Will Donald Trump stop it?

Lieber: But the question is, we don't know what the next administration is going to do. I'll say it again and again, Donald Trump is a New Yorker. He understands that 90% of people going to his office buildings are taking transit, and that there's bad traffic in front of Trump Tower. I bet he gets it. I don't know what's gonna happen.

Ritter: Okay, but we'll see. Last question, and it's a quick one, but it's a quick answer. It's a complicated question. On the Queens...

Lieber: Bus Network Redesign?

Ritter: There you go. No, no, no, the outbound and inbound. Some people get messed up and they have to have the congestion pricing going in the wrong direction. Other people are not. The Ed Koch Bridge.

Lieber: Yeah, the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge. Listen, the way the law was written back in 2019 said everything south of 60th Street was in the congestion relief zone. We are complying with the law. We are also, folks who are coming from Queens, if they get on the [upper] level, can get out without paying the...

Ritter: Right, but it's not fair to the people that are doing it right now, right? How do you change it?

Lieber: I can't change the law. What I can do is have good signage to make sure that everybody who's going towards the Queensboro Bridge knows that if you aren't going south to 60th Street, stay on the [upper] level. That's what we're going to do.

Ritter: Or maybe just take off the counter. Can you do that?

Lieber: No. But, anyway, but the point is the whole system... But I'll tell you this, people on the Queensboro Bridge are saving 10-plus minutes a day, and a lot of them are saying, 'Hey, this is worth it.'

Ritter: I think if you take off those devices, you'll be happy, they will all be happy. Janno Lieber, always a pleasure, sir.

Lieber: Thanks, Bill.

Ritter: Appreciate your insight.

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