(Bloomberg) — The head of New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority pledged to work with the city’s police department to decrease crime on a transit system that saw 8 murders in 2021, the most since at least 1997.
Earlier this month, a 40-year-old manager at consulting firm Deloitte died after being pushed onto the tracks at the Times Square subway station. Harassment and assaults have also increased on the city’s subway system as crime rises throughout the city, an issue Mayor Eric Adams addressed Monday when he released a public safety plan.
The MTA will be communicating with New York City’s Police Department every day to help address the spike in violent incidents on the system, Janno Lieber, the MTA’s chief executive officer, said Monday during a subway and bus committee meeting.
“It’s critical to the future of our city,” Lieber said. “We have to allow people to get back to their normal lives. And if they’re scared to travel on mass transit, they can’t. It’s that simple.”
The MTA needs to increase confidence in a subway system that’s struggling to bring back riders as many residents continue to work from home. While subway usage increased last year compared with 2020, recent weekday subway ridership is nearly half of pre-pandemic levels.
The drop in ridership has weakened the MTA’s finances. The agency last year brought in $3 billion in farebox revenue across its system of subways, buses and commuter rail lines, less than half what it collected in 2019 before the pandemic hit, according to preliminary revenue data for 2021.
The MTA anticipates a $1.4 billion deficit in 2025 as federal coronavirus aid is set to run out. Agency officials say they are hoping to attract more riders by modernizing and expanding the transit system. Officials have pledged to upgrade train signals to curb delays, make stations more accessible and rehabilitate Manhattan’s Penn Station.
Earlier this month, Adams said 1,000 police officers will shift to transit stations and will walk inside train cars and interact with passengers instead of monitoring from station platforms. Governor Kathy Hochul has pledged more mental health workers to work throughout the subway system.
MTA’s Lieber said he welcomed the additional police presence and help with riders who are suffering from mental health issues.
“We are now in a serious moment for our riders who are feeling extremely vulnerable on safety issues and we have to deal with it,” Lieber told reporters after the committee meeting. “We need solutions right now.”
Robberies, burglaries, and grand larceny were down in 2021 compared to a year ago, but murder, rape and assault felonies increased, according to police data highlighted in MTA meeting documents.
Uniformed police presence on subway trains and stations will be constant to address the issue, NYPD’s Chief of Transit, Jason Wilcox, said during Monday’s committee meeting.
“They will be on trains,” Wilcox said. “They will be on the platforms. They will be moving around Saturday night, Monday night, every night, every day.”
(Updates with additional comments from MTA chief starting in the seventh paragraph)
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