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Fare Hikes

As part of the 2021 fare hike, the MTA is considering eliminating unlimited ride Metrocards. Why?

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on December 9, 2020

No matter what happens with its Doomsday budget, whether federal transit funding comes through or not, the MTA is going to raise the fares next year. The uptick is part of the never-ending, biennial fare increases that see the cost of transit inch upward in New York City every two years like clockwork and not, as MTA Chair and CEO Pat Foye has repeatedly said, part of the MTA’s effort to close its multi-billion-dollar budget gap.

In other words, the fares would be going up with or without the pandemic next year, and while New Yorkers have grown numb to the drumbeat of ever-escalating transit costs, this year’s menu of potential changes to the fares sure has raised eyebrows among the city’s transit cognoscenti. In particular, as part of the strategy of throwing everything against a wall to see what sticks, the MTA has proposed eliminating unlimited 7- and 30-day Metrocards. The agency had previously cut the 1-day Fun Pass and a 14-day card a few years ago due to low usage rates, but it’s not clear why the MTA would look to do away with passes that incentivize more transit usage. To make matters worse, the rationale offered by Larry Schwartz, Andrew Cuomo’s MTA enforcer and right-hand man on the agency board, were mystifyingly mysterious.

We’ll get to all the politics and policy decisions in a minute. Let’s start with a look at the proposals on the table.

Usually, when the MTA prepares for these fare hikes, the agency offers two menus of fare hike options. But after increased criticism a few years ago from MTA Board members who felt they were denied a say in the policy of the fare hikes, the agency has opted for a series of blanket policies and a variety of logic games. It’s not yet clear how the MTA is going to get from here to a concrete set of new fares, but the net impact of the changes to the fares will be a 4% jump in fare-based revenue. The table below, which the agency has labeled “for illustrative purposes” only, offers a glimpse at the “policy options” under consideration.

The MTA put more details online last week, and here we have a quasi-glimpse of the various proposals at play. The permutations are confusing with a lot of conditional statements, but the MTA is essentially considering maintaining the base pay-per-ride fare or increasing it by 25 cents. If the pay-per-ride fares increase, the unlimited ride cars would see smaller increases — a 7-day card could cost $34.75, up $1.75 from the current price, and a 30-day card could cost $134, up $7. If the MTA holds the base fare, the weekly pass could cost $36 or $3 more and a monthly could cost $139, up a whopping $12 from current rates. The monthly hasn’t seen this large an increase since 2010 when the cost went up from $89 to $104.

In this great puzzle of either-or-maybe options, the MTA has also said it could keep the fee for new Metrocard purchases at $1 or increase it to $3 per card. This fee, which is avoidable if you stick an expired Metrocard into a vending machine, should be increased as both an incentive to get riders to switch to OMNY and a way for infrequent or tourist riders to offset commuting costs for transit regulars.

But I’m burying the lede: The MTA is considering eliminating “one or more” time-based passes. There is no trigger here or an either-or option, and it’s not clear what will happen if the MTA decides to embrace the proposal. That is, the move to cut unlimited ride passes stands alone, and the MTA has not the public what the trade-off would be. Would it mean no increase in the pay-per-ride fare or a separate slate of fare proposals? We do not know, and instead, this is a pure policy consideration by the MTA, allegedly separate from the ongoing pandemic slump. It also makes absolutely no sense.

Generally speaking, one goal of a well-run public transit system in a heavily populated cit is to incentivize transit usage. The only way for millions of New Yorkers to move through the city each day efficiently is via high-capacity,, rail, and the more riders the better. Unlimited Metrocards were a revelation for New York City and one that unlocked the transit system for millions. For a one-time upfront fee each month (or week), potential riders could swipe as many times as they wanted, and taking short trips — whether by bus or train — became second nature. It was, in fact, best to maximize monthly swipes to get a better deal. At a time when the MTA needs to attract riders to shore up its finances and help avoid crushing gridlock on city streets, doing away with time-based incentives is foolhardy.

If anything, in fact, the MTA’s unlimited ride, time-based passes should be cheaper. Currently, the breakeven point for a 30-day Metrocard is a shade over 46 rides and for a 7-day card, 12 trips. With the 47th swipe in a 30-day period, it becomes more cost-efficient to pay $127 than to buy rides at $2.75 per trip. This is generally a high bar to clear when compared with international norms. Most international transit systems heavily incentivize time-based passes – in Stockholm, for instance, the break-even point for a 30-day pass is 26 rides and a 30-day Navigo pass in Paris pays for itself after the 39th trip. So the MTA already over-burdens users of time-based compared with international peer systems.

Meanwhile, as OMNY completes its system-wide rollout in a few days, the MTA should look to further incentivize transit while making the system more accessible through fare capping. In essence, fare capping means that after a certain number of rides per time period – whether it be day, week or month – a rider no longer pays for additional trips. In London, for example, generally, rider aren’t charged each week after their 15th trip. This allows riders who can’t afford a monthly pass upfront to enjoy the benefits of limitless transit after reaching a fare level. The MTA has yet to determine if they will implement fare capping with OMNY, but this, rather than the elimination of time-based passes, is the policy discussion worth having.

So why is the MTA considering a shift in fare policy that would disincentivize riders while shifting away from international norms? The answer appears to have arisen in the form of a half-formed rant by Cuomo aide and MTA Board Member Larry Schwartz during last month’s board meeting. Here’s what Schwartz had to say:

I’m going to take the same position I took two years ago. I don’t think the people who depend on the MTA’s mass transit system should have to pay more. It’s for the casual rider that I believe should be paying more in offsetting any increases that the riders who depend on the system. That is why I like freezing the New York City subway fare at $2.75 because it would actually mean a $2.65 fare. It would be a 10 cent decrease. That is why I believe the 30-day commuter – these are people who depend on the mass transit system to get to work as opposed to the casual daily rider that buys an off-peak ticket or to go to a show or restaurant, the doctor or has a trial in New York City. So I’m all in favor of that.

The other thing I want to say is that right now, I am somewhat in favor of eliminating the time based passes because I believe there is a lot of fraud associated with them…I would really like to see the 7-day time based fares on ZIP code or something. Who is purchasing those 7-day time-based passes? Because again, I am not here to hurt the people who rely on the system the most. The people that can afford to should pay more, the people that cannot shouldn’t. But I’m also concerned with the 7-day and the 30-day. There’s been a lot of fraud associated with these things that hurt people who pay the 2.75 trip on New York City subways.

Again, my goal is not to see the base fare increase for both the bus and subway riders and also for those people who depend the most on commuter rail, those monthly pass holders. Again, the people who depend on the system the most should be held harmless, and the people that are casual riders who use the system….um, you know, they can…It’s the best deal in town. They’ll never find an alternative source of transportation other than walking to get from Point A to Point B whether it’s coming into the city or going from one part of the city to another than it is the MTA system….My thing is for those casual people, they can probably absorb a little bit more.

So much of what Schwartz said makes no sense, and if you can make heads or tails of these arguments, more power to you. Even though in pre-pandemic times, over 50% of riders used time-based cards, Schwartz thinks they’re used only by casual riders. He also seems to think those riders don’t rely on the system most and should be socked by higher fares, again a shift from a rational fare policy. I don’t know how or why he thinks eliminating unlimited cards would lower the fare, but the biggest red flag is in his evidence-free claims of fraud.

The last time Schwartz raised an argument like this, it sent us down a years’-long path arguing over fare evasion and its impact. Now, Schwartz, without providing a shred of evidence, claims that 30-day cards are subject to “a lot of fraud.” On its face, that makes little sense as each time-based card carries with it an 18-minute timeout to combat fraud, and Schwartz has provided nothing to back up his claim. But we have to listen to it because he’s the one on the board closest to the Governor, and the Governor is responsible for the decisions made within and about the MTA.

So here we are, staring at fare hikes that involve a lot of moving parts and a threat to cut off the city’s unlimited cards, transit lifelines for millions and one that makes riding easy. If the MTA is truly considering eliminating these cards, they owe it to the public to explain why, and Schwartz owes it to the public to present evidence of this fraud. Otherwise, the MTA should leave well enough alone and make these time-based cards more readily affordable for everyone rather than cutting them out entirely.

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Doomsday BudgetMTA EconomicsMTA Politics

Facing a $6 billion deficit in 2021, MTA could cut subway, bus service by 40%. But is this a real threat or simply a political one?

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on November 29, 2020

What happens to New York City without its transit system? Can the city function? Can it succeed? Can it serve as the self-professed Center of the Universe if the subways and buses that, in normal times, serve well over 7 million riders a day, can’t run frequently throughout the day? Can the Big Apple recover from the economic crisis of the pandemic without robust transit or will a transit decimated by political failures at every level drag down the city and the country as NYC and the USA, both hanging on by a thread right now, look to a post-COVID future? We may soon find out.

Facing billions of dollars in revenue shortfalls due to the ongoing pandemic, the MTA Board two weeks ago took another step toward enacting the agency’s Doomsday budget. With paralysis gripping the U.S. Senate and Mitch McConnell still refusing to negotiate a new stimulus package, the MTA’s financial picture has not improved since the Board first contemplated the worst-case scenario in August. Now, with the remainder of 2020 measured in days rather than months, the MTA has just a few weeks left to wait for federal relief before the Board is faced with the unenviable task of approving the budget presented at November’s meeting. It’s one that could cut service by up to 40 percent, but it remains a very political document aimed at Washington and with a glimpse at what the MTA truly needs to stay afloat through 2021.

During November’s Board meeting, the MTA did not vote on a 2021 budget; that procedural move will wait until December’s meeting, likely to be scheduled shortly before Christmas. Instead, the agency rehashed the same story it has been telling since the spring and again reissued its non-stop call for federal aid.

“The MTA continues to face a once-in-100-year fiscal tsunami and this is without a doubt one of the most difficult and devastating budgets in agency history,” MTA Chairman and CEO Patrick J. Foye said. “No one at the MTA wants to undertake these horrific cuts but with federal relief nowhere in sight there is no other option. As I have said, we cannot cut our way out of this crisis – we are facing a blow to our ridership greater than that experienced during the Great Depression. We are once again urging Washington to take immediate action and provide the full $12 billion to the MTA.”

What we learned was this: Since the MTA’s July budget, its financial picture has worsened, largely due to federal inaction on a pandemic relief package. Ridership remains as expected — subway ridership is hovering at around 31-32 percent of normal while buses have seen between 45-50 percent of riders return — but the $3.9 billion in HEROES Act funding never arrived. The latest budget projections include a total deficit of $15 billion, as you can see below, and here is where this document turns political.

Visual representation of the MTA's five-year $15 billion budget deficit.

The MTA keeps asking for $12 billion in federal funding, and that number has raised eyebrows. Could the agency actually be this far into the red through only eight months of the pandemic? As the chart details, the answer is no, the MTA’s deficit does not stand at $12 billion for one year. Rather, this is the MTA’s ask across multiple years. To be whole through the end of this year, the MTA needs $2.4 billion – which it can secure through the Fed’s Municipal Liquidity Facility. That loan though will come with more interest that we the riders will have to pay off over the years. It’s an imperfect, though necessary, way to keep the trains running.

For 2021, the MTA’s immediate need is around $6 billion or half of its continued request. The agency then anticipates deficits of $3.6 billion in 2022, nearly $1.8 billion in 2023 and almost $2 billion in 2024 for a total of around $13 billion. Securing $12 billion in one lump sum gives the MTA flexibility to restructure this out-year deficits, incorporating whatever internal cuts the MTA can institute with the federal funding to show balanced budgets on paper, but its immediate needs are $6 billion. If that amount comes in, the MTA can fight anew for a few more billions for 2022 and 2023 – if the Biden Administration and whoever controls the Senate are still in the mood to pass stimulus packages.

Ask for all you need now because you don’t know what will come later. At its very heart, it is a political request, and the MTA is not shying away from politics. Earlier this year, MTA CFO Bob Foran stated the MTA’s ask included $1 billion to account for the Trump Administration’s slow-walking of congestion pricing, and the MTA is asking for more than it needs in the hopes that it can start negotiations with recalcitrant Senate Republicans at a higher baseline. It’s a dangerous game. For most of its existence, the MTA has been politically neutral while leaving the lobbying to politicians, but with federal politicians playing a game of economic chicken with states and municipalities, current MTA leaders have, at the behest of Gov. Cuomo, turned into partisan lobbyists. In fact, Foye recently penned letters to leading Georgia-based companies warning them that MTA capital funding could dry up without federal aid. This was a clear partisan shot aimed at drawing support for the Democratic candidates in the upcoming Georgia Senate run-off.

But the MTA is also hedging on its ask, aiming to draw out that $6 billion. Take a look at the MTA’s internal deficit reduction plan – a series of cuts that lowers its long-term deficit to a still-unmanageable $7 billion over five years.

Make no mistake about it, though, these cuts would be devastating. The MTA plans to cut $343 million from annual subway service expenditures and $641 million from annual bus service expenditures. For subways, this means service cuts of up to 40%, including 15-minute weekend headways and other off-peak frequency adjustments. One of the questions driving a cut of this nature is whether the MTA can actually implement a 40% reduction in service. As with overnight trains running but without passengers, there is simply not enough room to park trains that aren’t running, and it’s not cost-efficient to cut service significantly. Just the thread is enough to see how this would ruin the subway system and save a small percent of what the MTA actually needs.

The buses, as always, would bare double the cuts as subways, and a 40% reduction of bus service would practically zero out many local routes. “Bus service reductions of up to 40% may result in reduced frequencies by up to
33% on bus routes that are not eliminated,” the MTA notes ominously. The agency is planning only $265 million in annual cuts to the LIRR and Metro-North but still halving service by up to 50 percent.

But this is all still a threat aimed at scaring the Senate into saving the MTA and the U.S. economy. In my view and in the views of many advocates, the MTA should cut service as a last resort, especially as the pandemic drags on and essential workers need to be able to maintain their commutes. “Failing to save transit at this pivotal moment is not an option,” Betsy Plum, executive director of the Riders Alliance, said. “Should Congress fail to act, the MTA’s doomsday budget must be the absolute last resort. As Chairman Foye said, literally everything must be on the table. At the end of the day, Governor Cuomo must do all he possibly can to safeguard our transit system and New York’s future.”

Yet, the MTA is heading down this path as a way to exert political pressure on Washington. Let New York fail? We dare you.

The state, in fact, has yet to do much to shore up its own struggling revenue picture, and Andrew Cuomo has a responsibility to ensure transit survives. I know various budgets and services have seen the pandemic blow billion-dollar holes through their budgets, but the state should look at other possible revenue streams — gas tax increases, legalizing marijuana, taxing the rich — while at the same time avoiding service cuts and lobbying for federal aid. (Streetsblog’s Dave Colon had a deep dive on this topic worth reading.)

As a last ditch resort before cutting service, the MTA should also look to restructure its debt and secure more credit. The state could help enable this as well by legislatively permitting the MTA to explore bankruptcy, an option currently foreclosed to it due to state prohibitions. This would be additional bargaining chips, designed to bolster political support in Washington for a direct transfer of funds back to a state that, in normal times, pays more in federal taxes than it gets back.

While we can appreciate the budget as the political document that it is intended to be and hope these service cuts are a threat rather than an omen, at some point, though, reality has to settle in. Mitch McConnell isn’t very likely to fund transit on his own, and the state should use the levers it has to cut into the MTA’s deficit so that subway and bus service could survive un-cut in a New York City on the rebound. Otherwise, with transit on the chopping block, cars will choke a city that grinds to a halt, hinder mobility and New York’s recovery and the national one at a time when the country can least afford it.

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Metro-NorthMTA Politics

Metro-North launches air filtration and purification pilot as FRA grants collide with the politics of Trump’s ‘anarchist jurisdictions’ declaration

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on October 18, 2020

Metro-North Chief Mechanical Officer Jim Heimbuecher demonstrates the new air purification technology. (Photo: Marc A. Hermann / MTA New York City Transit)

While the world has yet to find a link between transit and coronavirus transmission, in the age of COVID-19, transit agencies themselves are working hard to build up public trust in buses and trains. For New York, masks were an early and easy focus, and compliance remains high across the region. In fact, a 6 train car of around 35 passengers I was on this past Saturday afternoon had universal compliance. Now, as the long-term effects of the virus settle in, ventilation has become the next frontier.

As the world has learned more about COVID-19, we have come to understand that ventilation and air replacement are keys for reducing transmission risks in enclosed spaces. Generally, train cars are very efficient at air replacement. The MTA’s commuter rails, for example, filters air 30 times an hour or once every 120 seconds, far in excess of CDC guidelines, and the air in New York City’s subway cars is fully replaced every 200 seconds. Now, the MTA is piloting a new way to filter and purify air, and if successful, the agency claims these new units could kill 99.9998 percent of virus particles, further enhancing transit safety.

The pilot launched last week on one car of Metro-North’s M7 rolling stock and will soon begin on one Long Island Rail Road car as well. It builds on a proof of concept launched over the summer that uses an electrical field to generate a wave of ionized particles that destroy airborne viruses, bacteria and particulate matter. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will also test this new technology to determine if it can be useful around the country.

“As more and more customers return to Metro-North trains, they want to be confident that we are doing everything that we can to keep them safe and healthy,” Metro-North Railroad President Catherine Rinaldi said at a press conference last week. “If the pilot proves successful, not only does this new air purification technology kill COVID-19, it kills any virus including the standard flu or bacteria that cause the common cold, and even particulate matter like diesel fumes. The benefits provided by this new system would last well after the pandemic has ended.”

An MTA press release added further details:

The new system passes air through three stages. The first stage applies an electrostatic discharge to actively target viruses, and then uses physical filtration to remove the charged particles. The air is then safely exposed within a self-contained unit, to ultraviolet radiation that has long been proven to kill bacteria, mold, and viruses. Third, the air is exposed to a wave of ionized particles that attack pollutants, chemically decomposing them. The ions further travel deeply through the air distribution ducts of the car and into the vehicle interior to enhance the railroads’ existing disinfection of surfaces inside the cars.

MTA officials did not talk about any potential benchmarks for the pilot program other than “effectiveness” and will use the time to assess how quickly this system could be installed on each of the 2200 cars Metro-North and the LIRR couldn’t employ. These officials noted, however, that since Knorr and Merak created the train’s ventilation systems, it can be treated essentially as an add-on. “This addition to our ventilation would be completely invisible to the customers,” Metro-North Chief Mechanical Officer James Heimbuecher said. “We like that it can be incorporated into our existing ventilation systems with minimal intrusion. If this pilot proves successful, our crews are ready to begin adding this system across our entire fleet.”

Ventilation is clearly the current focus as the world hopes to return to some semblance of normal before any potential COVID-19 vaccine arrives, and this pilot gets the commuter rails — where ridership has lagged in recent months — on the right track. Could something like this come to the subway? It’s an intriguing possibility and one I’ll follow up on. Politically, though, there’s a rub.

Last week, the FRA put out a call for the nation’s transit agencies to apply for some or all of a $10 million grant to research COVID-19 (PDF). The goal of the grant is to encourage agencies to “develop, deploy, and demonstrate innovative solutions that improve the operational efficiency of transit agencies…in four major areas: (1) Vehicle, facility, equipment and infrastructure cleaning and disinfection; (2) exposure mitigation measures; (3) innovative mobility such as contactless payments; and (4) measures that strengthen public confidence in transit.”

This sounds right up the MTA’s alley. It is, after all, the largest transit agency in the nation and has been aggressive in testing a variety of approaching to disinfecting train cars through UV light and improving ventilation, as this new pilot demonstrates. But the MTA may not be eligible to apply for this grant. Following the Trump Administration’s political decision to label New York City an “anarchy jurisdiction,” the FRA has said they will consider this designation in determining which transit agencies can receive these grants.

The FRA is the first federal agency to make such a statement, and transit advocate organizations are not happy. NACTO sent out an aggressive statement opposing the move:

Denying transit agencies funding obstructs their ability to develop best practices to make transit safer for millions of riders and workers, and the people with whom they interact. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York, TriMet in Portland, and King County Metro and Sound Transit in Seattle together make up nearly half of national transit ridership and have already made major contributions to our understanding of how to keep riders and operators safe from the virus. From testing vehicle filtration and UV light sanitation systems to instituting mask outreach and mandates, the ability of these larger, urban transit systems to evaluate new interventions is especially instructive for operators serving smaller, rural communities where Covid-19 outbreaks are currently most acute and resources are limited.

The Trump administration’s attempt to condition FTA grants on political criteria unrelated to need or merit sets a disturbing precedent. If applied to other forms of federal funding, this “guidance” has the potential to thwart cities’ long-term economic recovery efforts. Cities and transit agencies need a strong federal partner to maintain and restore service, invigorate local economies, and create new jobs.

Withholding federal funding from cities in retaliation for political disagreements is not only legally dubious but vindictive and undemocratic in its intent. Our organizations, representing cities, transit agencies, and transportation experts and advocates, stand in firm opposition to the Justice Department’s designation of New York, Portland, and Seattle as “anarchist jurisdictions” and against the arbitrary and capricious decision to deny some of the world’s most-used transit systems acutely-needed funding solely to serve a political agenda.

Close to home, Transit Center’s David Bragdon echoed these sentiments. “Secretary Elaine Chao’s willingness to expose innocent transit riders and essential transit workers to greater risk of COVID just because of Donald Trump’s unrelated personal vendetta against certain local elected officials is both reckless and un-American. No American, in any city or state, should be sacrificed to a pandemic because of a President’s petty whims,” he said.

The FRA later told Streetsblog New York that the agency had no choice but to follow Trump’s guidance. The MTA meanwhile is “reviewing” the grant application, and the de Blasio administration has threatened to sue if funds are denied. The election could render this all moot in a few days, but for now, at least, studying and enhancing transit disinfectant procedures during a pandemic remains hijacked by the same politics gripping the nation even as the MTA moves ahead with its own clean-air initiative.

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View from Underground

In Defense of Transit: New APTA report finds no link between coronavirus cases and public transit

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on October 11, 2020

An APTA study led by Sam Schwartz found no link between virus cases and transit usage.

It’s been hard to resist starting every post focusing on the MTA’s current ridership situation and budget woes with the sentence, “It’s been a rough few months for transit,” but it’s been a rough few months for transit. Often associated with the hoi polloi and dirty masses, most transit systems didn’t have reputations for cleanliness before the pandemic and whether fairly or not, quickly become associated with the spread of disease as the pandemic descended on the world.

After a spring in which a spurious MIT study that relied heavily on a correlation/causation error drove the conversation, a group of pro-transit researchers are fighting back, and in a new study released by the American Public Transportation Association, they report no known links between coronavirus cases and public transit.

“As of August 2020, no outbreaks have been traced to public transit in the United States,” the report, authored by New York’s own Sam Schwartz, said. “Based on our data review of case rates and transit usage in domestic cities, the correlation between infection rates and transit usage is weak or non-existent.”

Schwartz’s survey of current pandemic experiences is part of a larger report on transit-related best practices for the COVID-19 era, and you can access the report here as a PDF. It’s very much yet another attempt to change the narrative. The MIT study came out early in April, and despite debunking by Alon Levy and Aaron Gordon, two well-respected voices within the transit community, it set the stage for months of American fears over transit.

Nearly immediately, many one-time transit riders relied upon the MIT study to reinforce ideas that transit isn’t safe and is a source of spread. Even now, seven months after New York started working from home en masse, subway ridership is only around 1.7-1.8 million per day, approximately 30% of normal, and many New Yorkers have said their commute is the biggest barrier to returning to work. The problem is one of psychology and one of science. I understand why people may be hesitant to ride the subway or hop a bus where they may have less control over everyone around them, but sitting in a poorly ventilated office with other people for 8-10 hours a day is more dangerous than the ride shorter to get there. Schwartz is trying to prove it.

Schwartz has to overcome the challenges of proving a negative, and he makes a compelling case. He looks at transit agencies large and small, from NYC to Hartford to the Quad Cities to Northern Kentucky. In each case, after lockdowns eased, increased transit ridership hasn’t corresponded to an uptick in coronavirus cases. Since the spring at least, when mask mandates were instituted and social distancing became the norm, careful transit usage coupled with disinfectant procedures haven’t led to an uptick in positive tests. Here’s Schwartz’s conclusion:

COVID-19 rates appear to be independent of ridership: in Northeast cities such as Hartford, Connecticut and New York, New York where the pandemic has been largely controlled, ridership has grown since peak pandemic low points, but case rates have been significantly reduced. Meanwhile, in Southern, Southwestern, and Midwestern cities, ridership has remained consistent while cases have skyrocketed. These areas are experiencing serious community outbreaks primarily attributed by public health experts to the reopening of bars and restaurants, large gatherings, nursing homes, prisons, and community fatigue of physical distancing practices. In fact, of the fifteen metro areas with the highest cumulative case rates as of August 2020, not one had a typical commuter transit share more than 5%, and most have minimal transit services with very light usage.

What Schwartz cannot ascertain and what will always remain unanswered is whether transit had a role in community spread before we had a better understanding of the science behind COVID-19. It’s generally accepted that the virus was in the U.S. long before the middle of March, and 5.5 million people were riding the subways each day well into early March and long before we knew how effective masks were at slowing the spread. Schwartz even admits as much, noting that “public transit has some characteristics associated with higher COVID-19 transmission risk, including the potential for crowding in enclosed environments on trains, buses and indoor stations.” Ultimately, though, masks, a lack of talking, frequent air replacement and a steady flow of passengers mitigates against risks today whether or not the trains helped spread the virus in March. Based on what we know now, so long as most riders are masked, it’s safe to ride transit.

But will this report matter? That is a question I can’t answer. People’s fears about COVID-19 are fairly baked in right now, and while mayoral candidates are making a show of riding trains, neither Bill de Blasio nor Andrew Cuomo have issued full-throated defenses of subways lately. For better or worse, potential transit riders take their cues from leadership, and leadership is wavering. Still, Schwartz’s study and overview reinforces what many of us have been saying: With proper precautions and a smart approach to personal and communal care, transit trips are no more riskier than any other activity these days.

The final wild card in this psychological battle for the minds of transit riders is, of course, the Trump Administration. Hardly allies to cities and transit riders, the White House has blocked a national order requiring face masks on all transit hubs. Instead, it’s up to localities to approve and enforce these orders. At a local level, the MTA is also prohibited from applying for a federal grant to study how to combat coronavirus spread on transit, as Politico reported late last week.

We’ll know more about this development on Monday, but this is the heigh of petty politics. Despite its flaws, the MTA is best suited to understand how to combat COVID on transit, and the fact that they can’t apply for this grant because the Trump Administration is playing politics with public health three weeks before the election is a travesty. Still, we know the answers — masks, constant service, less talking, ventilation and high-quality air filters. That’s how transit is safe, and that’s why you could ride the subways today without worrying too much about putting your health at risk.

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Podcast

Podcast, Episode 12: Inside the history of the Second Ave. Subway with Philip Plotch, author of Last Subway

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on September 25, 2020

Earlier this year, Phil Plotch, a one-time transit planner who is now a professor of political science at Saint Peter’s University in New Jersey, published the definitive account of the Second Ave. Subway. The book is called The Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City, and it traces the tortured political history of the Second Ave. Subway and its various trials and travails. I’ve wanted to talk with Phil about his book and the Second Ave. Subway and finally had the chance to sit down with him this week.

In the latest episode of my podcast, Phil and I discussed the sagas of the Second Ave. Subway, from its often-delayed origins in the early 20th century to its role in pushing the formation of the MTA to the Gov. Cuomo-inspired rush to completion. Is the three-stop extension of the Q train that made up Phase 1 of the project really New York City’s last subway? You’ll have to listen to find out.

As always, you can find this episode at all the popular podcast spots — iTunes, Google Play, Spotify or Pocket Casts, to name a few. Or you can listen by clicking the “play” button below. If you like what you hear and have been enjoying the podcasts, please consider leaving a review on your iTunes.

Thanks for listening, and a big thank you as well to Joe Jakubowski for sound engineering. The podcasts are great fun, but they take a lot of time and effort. I can keep doing them only through the generous contributions of my listeners so please consider joining the Second Ave. Sagas Patreon. Since this site runs entirely on Patreon contributions, your help keeps the proverbial engine going. You can find a copy of Last Subway online or at your local bookstore.

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View from Underground

Thoughts on what’s driving New York’s $50 fine for refusal to wear masks on transit

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on September 23, 2020

MTA Chairman & CEO Patrick J. Foye, Interim NYCT President Sarah Feinberg, LIRR President Phil Eng, and NYCT Chief Customer Officer Sarah Meyer hold a press conference at Atlantic Av-Barclays Center on Mon., September 14, 2020 to launch a new public service campaign to encourage mask usage along with the new $50 fine policy for those who refuse to wear face coverings on public transit. (Photo: Marc A. Hermann / MTA New York City Transit)

For those New Yorkers venturing onto the subway these day, it has become a hobby of sorts to track mask compliance. Jose Martinez of THE CITY runs Twitter scorecards tracking mask compliance using the terminology from the MTA’s own ad campaign, and while mileage may vary by line and time of day, mask compliance on transit in New York City is generally very good with 90-95% of riders properly masked up, according to MTA figures. For public health purposes, that level of mask usage is sufficient to significantly slow the spread of an airborne virus.

Still, compliance – with a mask over both one’s nose and one’s mouth – may have been slipping in recent weeks, and even 90% compliance isn’t good enough for the governor. Why? I’ll get to that shortly, but to that end, earlier this month, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced a new executive order “directing the MTA to develop a plan to bolster mask compliance across public transportation system’s subways, buses and railroads.” The MTA, in turn, announced a $50 fine for any rider who refuses to wear a mask. In a sense, that’s an academic recitation of events. As Cuomo controls the MTA, he’s the one imposing the $50 fine, and the agency is simply serving its purpose as political cover for the governor’s decision.

“While mask compliance in the MTA system remains very high, we want to make sure that people feel comfortable coming back to public transportation,” Governor Cuomo said in his press release last week.

On Monday afternoon, MTA officials gathered at the Atlantic Ave. subway stop to discuss the enforcement effort and $50 fine. Enforcement of rules in the subway has turned into a bit of a hot-button issue in recent years as the MTA has faced criticism for heavy-handed fare enforcement efforts that seemingly target minorities and a ramp-up of NYPD expenditures at a time when transit budgets are crashing. Yet, during the press conference, MTA leaders took pains to stress the public health effects of wearing a mask and de-emphasize punitive punishment, especially when asked about the impact of a $50 fine amidst an ongoing economic downturn. “We’re not,” NYC Transit’s interim president Sarah Feinberg said, “looking for the police to fine people. We‘re looking for compliance.”

MTA CEO and Chairman Pat Foye echoed this approach. “This is not about revenue,” he said, “and we have no interest in issuing fines and summonses.” Rather, MTA officials said, agency employees and cops will first request that maskless passengers don a proper face covering, and if these riders do not comply, they could face a $50 fine.

On the surface, this seems pretty straightforward: In an effort to drum up confidence in transit, whose reputation has unfairly taken a hit during the pandemic, the MTA is enforcing the state’s mask mandate. The health behind wearing masks is clear: They are one of the single best ways to protect yourself and other people from the spread of COVID-19, and the MTA, which has drawn criticism for resisting permitting its workers to wear masks early on during the pandemic, is trying to be responsible to the riding public and its workers as New York City reopens.

But the intricacies are worth probing because this appears to be a tacit attempt at luring Manhattan desk jockeys back to their offices. Time and again, surveys have indicated that transit rides are a point of contention. Even though sitting in an enclosed office for 8-10 hours a day is far riskier than the 25-35 minute subway rides people take to get there, New Yorkers seem to fear those subway rides – where socially distancing is tough, if not impossible – more than anything. They fear unmasked passengers; they fear buskers and candy sellers. They fear an environment they cannot control, and if even those fears aren’t borne out by the science of the pandemic, they are legitimate psychological fears that politicians and bureaucrats should attack. By mandating masks and making a show of enforcing the mandate, the governor is trying to negate those public fears – and perhaps generate a push to get people back to work. He should ride the trains too. “We have to be able to say to the riding public that everyone will be wearing masks,” Cuomo said, “and if they refuse to wear a mask they will be penalized.”

It’s not quite that easy though, and the pitfalls are obvious. For instance, in late August, when I took a 2 train from Grand Army Plaza to Borough Hall, every passenger on my train was properly masked, but when the doors opened at Atlantic Ave., two cops without masks were patrolling the platform. In fact, some of the most egregious mask violators in the city are cops. Pictures abound online of officers gathered without masks, and a Twitter account tracks those incidents. Mayor de Blasio routinely claims he has spoken with NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea about mask compliance, but cops wear masks only for official press events (and even that’s not a given). Shea says his cops will be a part of the enforcement effort, but will they be wearing masks? MTA officials said only that they’ve requested as much from the police, but they have no authority here. Recently, I have seen an increase in masked cops in the subway, but they still seem to the most egregious and frequent offenders.

The second issue concerns enforcement. When asked by Dave Colon of Streetsblog how the MTA planned to avoid targeting vulnerable communities, Foye said he disputed the premise of the question and declined to offer an answer. Will the enforcement effort focus on everyone? Will the cops target minorities as they often do with quality-of-life enforcement in New York City? Or will the cops pull back when video emerges of an escalated altercation as happened in the spring? Policing transit spaces in New York remains a prickly subject, and tensions are high.

Ultimately, as ridership inches toward 1.7 million per day, still just 31 percent of a normal weekday in 2019, and city politicians and business leaders make more noise about getting office workers back to their desks, comfort with transit will become a key issue. That’s why Cuomo and the MTA are going to enforce this mask mandate. Whether this leads to better compliance with public health orders or more flashpoints between the cops and New York’s citizens is an open question, but persuasion first and fines only after refusals is the path to follow. The MTA and the cops instructed to serve as enforcers should adhere to this approach carefully, and politicians should show their faith in the system by making a show of riding. Otherwise, transit will stagnant amidst public health concerns, and the city’s recovery will be that much slower.

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MTA Politics

Thoughts on the politics and possibilities behind the MTA’s Doomsday budget proposal

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on September 9, 2020

After the MTA’s Doomesday budget proposal in late August, more than a few New Yorkers reached out to me worried about the future of travel in and around New York City and worried about their own subway lines. These weren’t the usual gang of anti-car crusaders, the bike advocates or the busway champions expressing the daily clamor for a better, more transit-focused and equitable transportation network. Instead, these were the workers who power New York City and need the subway to get around. They’re afraid the MTA’s pandemic-related budgetary woes will cut off their transit lifelines.

“Will the MTA actually have to get rid of the D train?” one concerned straphanger asked me, clearly focusing on the Riders Alliance’ Doomsday map. What would it mean, another wondered, if headways on local buses were increased even more? Is a bus that runs once an hour during the day even worth operating? Clearly, threats of massive service cuts — more so than looming fare hikes — hit close to home.

A July Riders Alliance report painted a bleak picture of the MTA’s future.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking more and more about MTA CFO Bob Foran’s presentation and what we should take from it. Needless to say, it paints an ugly future. After all, Foran’s service cuts threatened a 40% reduction of service on subways and buses, increasing subway headways to eight minutes, cutting bus frequency by 15 minutes and axing entire LIRR and Metro-North lines, crippling to the usefulness of any transit system. To make matters worse, while the MTA stares down a deficit of $10-$12 billion, these massive service cuts save just a fraction of the billions the MTA needs. Cuts to New York City Transit would generate just $880 million annually once the MTA factors in revenue loss from riders who abandon an infrequent system, and the commuter rail cuts generate just $160 million in annually. Even running a bare bones system puts the MTA in the red each year by a few billion dollars.

What then should New York make of the MTA’s proposal? And what is the future of a robust transit system in New York City? After all, we were all celebrating the successes of Andy Byford’s Fast Forward plan, the Subway Action Plan and the massive capital investments this calendar year. Is there any hope for the future? Or are we doomed to a death spiral that leaves the subway tunnels quiet, the city paralyzed and the MTA broke?

This is the question I’ve been mulling for weeks, and it’s one with no real clear answer right now. It’s important to understand the MTA’s Doomsday budget presentation as a political document first and a budget proposal second. It was very much designed by MTA executives who think they can get the attention of the federal government and, in particular, the Senate GOP and Trump White House, by warning of the dangers to New York’s economy should the MTA fail. “The pandemic-caused losses are beyond the capacity of any agency” to absorb, MTA CEO and Chair Pat Foye said following August’s meetings. “We’re agnostic as to the source of revenue. We’re realistic to the city’s financial conditions. We’re realistic to the state’s financial conditions….We’re going to do everything we can to reduce the size of the deficit for the federal government, but without federal funding, we will not be able to get out of this box.”

The MTA’s out-year budget include billions of dollars in projected revenue losses due to the long-term impacts of the pandemic on transit usage.

One “tell” regarding the political intent of the document is the request for an additional $1 billion in 2021 to offset revenue the MTA had expected from congestion pricing. Because the Trump Administration has completely slow-walked US DOT’s congestion pricing assessment, the MTA does not know if an EIS is required or if a less onerous Environmental Assessment would be sufficient. Thus, the MTA does not have federal approvals to start congestion pricing in January, and thus, the MTA’s anticipated revenues are short $1 billion. By requesting that $1 billion now, the MTA is both sending a political message and over-asking. It’s a shot across the bow in what should be rational negotiations regarding an MTA bailout, as the feds gave following the catastrophic damaged caused by the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The second “tell” came in the form of an op-ed in The New York Times co-written by Foye and TWU President John Samuelsen, one of transit’s oddest odd couples. Enemies at the negotiating table, the two transit titans wrote about the “five-alarm fire” facing the MTA. Citing the Grand Depression as a comparison, the two noted that even during the depths of the 1930s, transit ridership fell only by 10-12% and not 80-90%. It’s an inapt metaphor though as the Great Depression was an economic crisis and COVID-19 is a public health crisis first and an economic crisis due to the public health crisis.

Still, Samuelsen and Foye tried to get Washington’s attention. “Punishing the M.T.A. and transit systems across the country over an ideological political agenda is not only wrong; it is bad economics,” they wrote. “The downstate New York region — New York City and the surrounding area — accounts for about 8 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. New York City cannot recover without a robust M.T.A., and the country cannot rebound economically without a healthy New York.”

But the MTA’s biggest mistake is assuming rationality. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, certain factions in Washington, DC — notably, the Senate GOP Majority Leader and the Trump White House — do not operate rationally. A rational response to the pandemic would involve bolstering state and municipal finances, including the nation’s transit agencies, to stave off job losses and economic collapse brought on by faltering transit systems. After all, the MTA is not asking for the feds to step in and cover its inefficient spending; it is asking to be reimbursed for pandemic-related revenue losses. Still, for now at least, the feds do not seem interested in staving off this economic catastrophe because, for now, it’s not their problem.

It’s not their problem because of the election in November, and that’s the big wild card. The equation in DC right now involves ignoring the local government funding crisis and punting it to the next team. If Joe Biden wins and the Democrats capture the Senate, Republicans will be powerless to oppose a funding package but can disingenuously claim to be concerned about the deficit, as they do any time they’re in the Senate majority. If Biden wins and the GOP hold the Senate, a traditional DC negotiation can ensue. If Trump wins, any rescue package will depend upon the party in control of the Senate, but a Trump win with a Republican Senate represents an outcome for the MTA more akin to the August presentation than we wish to consider. Still, the MTA’s ask is about politics right now; the pain for the riding public comes later.

The MTA has more than a few options in its pocket. I’ve written in the past about the operations savings the MTA could realize by shifting to a proof-of-payment model on commuter rail and reducing the number of employees required to punch tickets. Back in July, I asked Pat Foye is the MTA would consider a quick pivot to one-person train operations. He hedged at the time but was clearly ready for the question, stating the following:

Everything is on the table. There are collective bargaining agreements with our various unions that may have to be part of the discussions, but everything is on the table. We have not made that specific proposal to any union and what we’re focusing on is getting federal funding, one; two, reducing expenses, overtime, consulting contracts, non-personnel, non-labor expenses. We’re going to continue to do that. If the federal funding doesn’t through this year in 2020 or for 2021, the size of the deficit is going to require that everything be on the table. Things that are covered by a collective bargaining we may have to respect, and they may be the subject of negotiation which may be successful or not. The unions, on behalf of their members, are going to have very strong positions on many of these issues.

I’ll let you interpret that comment, but it’s clear the MTA has put some thought into what it would take to implement OPTO, just as they have put thought into the message they wanted to send to the federal government. I am ultimately left thinking about one of Foye’s statements. “The MTA,” he said, “is not going to shut down.” That’s all well and good, but it’s no comfort to millions of New Yorkers worried about the future of their buses, their subways and their D trains. The MTA isn’t about to cut full subway lines, but the subways could be a heck of a lot less useful if that funding doesn’t come through and soon.

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MTA Economics

Doomsday Budget: MTA threatens 40% service cuts to buses, subways if federal aid fails to arrive

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on August 26, 2020

As the U.S. Senate Republican majority has refused to bail out states, cities and public transit agencies, the MTA has unveiled its own proposal for addressing a budget deficit expected to reach $12 billion by the end of 2021. In a presentation to the MTA Board today, agency CFO Bob Foran warned of a 40 percent cut to subway and bus service, a crippling decrease in commuter rail service, the loss of nearly 10,000 jobs across the entire transit agency and a halt to much or all of the MTA’s capital work.

The following images show the top-line budget reductions that could be on the table if the federal government does not step in to fund transit. As MTA Board members called upon the feds to act and some urged the MTA and state to prepare alternative solutions, it’s worth examining if this presentation is a promise of bad things to come, a political salvo in the funding fight or a mix of the two. I’ll have more analysis on that front later, but at a top line, implementing cuts of the nature contemplated by the MTA today would spell the short-term collapse of public transit in the New York City region and a bleak prospect for the area’s and the nation’s economic recovery out of the pandemic.

“The future of the MTA and the future of the New York region,” MTA Chair Pat Foye said today, “rests squarely in the hands of the U.S. Senate.”

Cuts to New York City Transit would drastically increase wait times and crowding

Commuter rail cuts would make some lines nearly useless while others may shut down entirely

The MTA could shelve most or all of the ambitious 2020-2024 Capital Plan, delaying expansion, modernization and accessibility initiatives throughout the region

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MTA Politics

Overnight subway service remains in political limbo as local bus fares return next week

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on August 26, 2020

MTA officials gathered last week to announc front-door boarding and fare collection on all local and SBS buses will resume Monday, August 31. (Photo: Jessie Mislavsky / MTA NYC Transit)

My friend Marcia Herold tends bar at the Greenwich Street Tavern in Tribeca, and as with so many of New York City’s service workers, 2020 has been a tough year. Her bar was closed for much of the spring, and it has reopened only as much as any of the city’s thousands of restaurants and bars have — with outdoor service only and hours scaled back to 11 p.m. For a place that used to serve food and drinks late into the night, the Greenwich Street Tavern is just trying to survive through the pandemic.

For years, Marcia, who lives in Boerum Hill, never had to think twice about getting home. Even on nights when the bar would close late, Marcia could easily jump onto the subway and be home quickly, but these days the trip is more complicated. By the time Marcia wraps up service and she and her co-workers finish cleaning, catching that last train back to Brooklyn is no sure thing. Sometimes she’s make it; more often, she doesn’t.

A few weeks ago, she waited on the platform for a train that wasn’t going to show up, and the MTA worker keeping an eye on things never told her the train wasn’t coming. More recently, she and a co-worker split a cab back to Brooklyn after missing the last train, but her co-worker, who couldn’t right now afford the cab fare all the way back home, had to get all the way to East New York. It’s usually just a 20-minute ride on the 3 or 4 train but can take 45 minutes or longer via a bus or two.

This is the current reality for around 15,000 New Yorkers who need late-night train service to get to and from their jobs but have found passenger service shutting down as early as 12:30. And yet, as New York City struggles to return to any semblance of normalcy, there is no end in sight to the MTA’s overnight passenger shutdown. Imposed in early May under the guise of “disinfecting,” by all accounts from multiple MTA and New York State sources, the shutdown was the brainchild of Gov. Andrew Cuomo in response to multiple news stories concerning homeless New Yorkers inundating an empty subway system. Instead of attempting to address the root causes of homelessness in New York, Cuomo ordered the state agency in charge of operating the city’s subways to shut down service, foisting the problem onto the city’s streets, and promoted the idea that the subways have to shut down for cleaning.

The MTA has added a few Night Bus-like buses on some key subway routes and had been paying for a handful of taxi rides every night. But their response to decreased overnight demand has been to tell essential workers trying to get home to just take local buses. For some, that’s a three-bus, multi-hour trip. For others, the trip home is a long walk or a nightly taxi ride few can afford. Meanwhile, the trains aren’t actually stopped. They run all night, on the same sparse schedule as before, but without passengers. The MTA’s disinfecting efforts — largely sanitation theater based on what we know about transmission paths for COVID-19 — continue with or without train service, and no one at the MTA has answered the two questions I have continued to post regarding the overnight shutdown:

  1. Which elements of the overnight disinfecting would be impossible to accomplish if passengers were permitted on the trains that are still running?
  2. And how would that impact the overall risk of COVID-19 transmission on subways?

Each time I think the issue could be coming to a head, the Governor puts a stop to any speculation. State Senator Brad Hoylman has proposed legislation requiring the MTA to provide 24/7 subway service but only “after a declared end to the COVID-19 pandemic,” as he said in his statement. With no end in sight to the pandemic, that bill is largely meaningless right now. We’re in a state of emergency, and the governor can do whatever he wants.

When pressed on the issue earlier this week, the governor punted. The MTA has recently announced that due to low usage and a high cost amidst an existential budget crisis, the Essential Connector cab service would be suspended. The agency had reported only around 1500 riders per night and a cost of $49 a ride on average. The last night of for-hire vehicle rides will be August 30, and on August 31st, the MTA will reinstitute fare collection on local buses. Since the early days of the pandemic, local buses had been free to protect bus drivers, but the MTA cannot afford to give away rides right now. The agency has built barriers to protect drivers and is upgrading filtration systems on all of its buses to go along with the fares the agency says it must collect.

But what about that overnight subway service? The MTA can’t afford anything right now, but it can continue to afford running empty trains all night. When asked about these recent moves, the governor this week said of 24/7 service, “You’ll have to ask the MTA.” The MTA bounced it back to another state agency. When pressed by reporters, Pat Foye, increasingly annoyed with the question, said, “As we’ve said, while the pandemic continues, the 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. closure will continue. The state commissioner of health will determine the continuation of the pandemic. We’re not in the public health business. The commissioner of health will opine on the continuation of the pandemic.” While Foye tried to claim the overnight shutdown allows the MTA to be more productive, when asked, Foye could not name a single project outside of the L train work on an accelerated schedule thanks to the pandemic shutdown. It all just rings hollow as it impacts the lives of thousands.

This is, of course, a classic case of political hot potato. The MTA, under orders from the governor, shut down the overnight service but won’t say when it will restart, and the governor, who controls the MTA, wants nothing to do with the question. So we’re stuck. We’re stuck with buses that cost the same as the subway but cannot provide the same long-distance service and relatively fast travel times the subway can generally guarantee. We’re stuck watching workers like Marcia struggle to get home after their jobs each night, and we’re stuck in limbo with businesses trying to hang on while the state and city stack the decks against them. Few local politicians are speaking out, and few are fighting for the transportation needs of a New York City just trying to hang on for a few more weeks and months. The pandemic continues, and that’s all the cover the MTA and Andrew Cuomo need right now.

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MTA Economics

A few thoughts on flattening ridership and the MTA’s economic abyss

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on August 18, 2020

The mezzanine above the Lexington Ave. line at Grand Central sits empty on a recent Thursday morning. When will ridership start to grow again? (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

The following post is an updated version of a post I published a few weeks ago on my Patreon. As a reminder, Second Ave. Sagas is entirely reader-funded, and I depend upon you to keep the site running. Now that my wrist is finally on the mend, I expect a more regular posting schedule, and I promise not every post will be about how the MTA is completely out of money.

Has transit ridership plateaued? I first asked this question when New York City entered Phase 4 of the governor’s reopening plan in late July, and the answer nearly three weeks later still appears to be guardedly yes.

It’s been a disjointed reopening in the city so far. While the open restaurants program has enlivened NYC streets and shown us that public space isn’t just for cars, city residents are the only New Yorkers not permitted to dine indoors (rightly so, in my view). Meanwhile, gyms and museums have only just been cleared for opening within the next few weeks while most white collar office workers are still telecommuting and the state of schooling is very hazy. With few places to go, transit ridership has plateaued.

In the week before and the week after Phase 4 began, subway ridership had leveled out at around 1.22 million per weekday, approximately 23% of an average 2019 weekday, and bus ridership settled at an average of 1.18 million. For Phase 4, daily subway ridership now sits at 1.25 million, still not even 24% of an average weekday, and bus ridership has creeped upward to 1.21 million. A system that used to serve nearly 7.5 million per day is now seeing just 2.46 million, many of whom are still riding local buses for free, and ridership that had been increasing by 100,000 per week is going up by just a few tens of thousands instead.

Despite a one-day dip for Tropical Storm Isaias last week, the plateau is visible if we look at subway ridership throughout the pandemic, beginning with the start of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s NY PAUSE order on March 23.

You can see the big jumps in ridership each week once New York City entered Phase 1 on June 8 and smaller increases in recent weeks. Despite lower ridership on Wednesday and Thursday last week compared to the week before, a strong Friday pulled total weekday subway ridership to 6.5 million, a pandemic high. Had Tuesday, August 4th been storm-free, the total ridership figures for the past two weeks would have been nearly identical.

Bus ridership has shown a similar trend.

While the trajectory is an upward one of slight growth, barring some unexpected spikes over the next few weeks before school starts, transit ridership in New York City is no longer adding more than a few thousand new riders each week. After all, without indoor dining, entertainment or culture and with offices still largely vacant, New Yorkers simply have few places to go that requires transit trips.

There are, however, reasons to think this plateau may last only until early September before we see our next big bump in ridership. First, the upcoming museum openings — even at reduced capacity — will give people more places to go. Second, local bus fare collection is expected to resume soon, and that could lead some travelers to return to the subway (while driving up revenue generated from buses). Third, while tourism powers NYC over the summer, July and August are generally low ridership months as school is out of session and many families decamp from the city for the summer. This year, many New Yorkers with family or second homes out of the city have left and are planning to return to the city when schools start up again in September. Fourth, while many white collar employees will be working from home for the foreseeable future, some offices are expecting to reopen after Labor Day especially as kids return to school. Thus, September and October, traditionally the MTA’s busiest months, could see an uptick in transit ridership.

How much of an uptick the MTA can expect is an open question. In April, when consulting firm McKinsey modeled ridership and fare revenue based on the severity of the pandemic, they presented a “moderate” trend line and a “severe” trend line. Right now, the MTA is tracking at or below the “severe” trend line with fare revenue around the 30% range in August, jumping to 40% in September before a second wave in October sends ridership and revenue plunging back into the teens. With local bus trips still free, it’s tough to get a handle on the MTA’s current fare revenue figures (as opposed to ridership numbers), but the MTA is near the 30% fare revenue threshold.

Reaching 40% – or 2.2 million per weekday – is a questionable bet right now, and the rosier projections of 50-60% seem like relics of another era. The restoration of bus fares is in limbo over labor disputes regarding adequate driver protection, and the wild card remains schools. If schools open for in-person learning and stay open while avoiding an uptick in infections, ridership will increase on the backs of school passes but how much will be on the revenue side is an open question. As more companies keep workers at home for longer than expected, the revenue might still fall short of expectations. (On the ridership side, as a side bet, Gotham Gazette’s Ben Max and I set the over/under for subway ridership on Thursday, September 10 at 1.6 million.)

So what does this all mean for the MTA’s revenue and tattered economic outlook? Nothing good.

It’s hard to overstate the dire impact the pandemic has had on the MTA’s finances. With paid subway ridership holding steady at under one quarter of 2019’s figures, the agency is on the precipice of a nearly unimaginable fiscal cliff. I wrote about the agency’s multi-billion-dollar budget gap in a lengthy post last month, and nothing good has happened since then. The Senate GOP and Trump Administration failed to endorse the House Democrats’ plan to fund cities, states and transit, and my point from July stands: While the MTA should look to streamline operations and cut expenses and while the state could explore a gas tax increase to help the MTA close its budget gap, fare hikes and service cuts would decimate transit in NYC without moving the needle more than a few percentage points. It’s federal bailout or bust.

But that comes with a caveat. A few weeks ago, my MTA sources felt confident that the feds wouldn’t hang the MTA out to dry, and they still might not. But it seems increasingly unlikely that a bailout will materialize before Election Day unless the country’s municipal funding crisis begins to torpedo the stock market. If Trump loses, it’s likely that federal transit funding will be available come January, but that’s a long five months. Even if New York, scarred from its tragic spring, avoids a second wave, the MTA won’t see transit ridership rushing back to pre-pandemic levels before a cure or vaccine arrive. So what is the MTA to do?

I’ve started to think the MTA should just keep borrowing. It’s a dangerous and risky strategy that could lead to an eruptive disruption in the municipal bond market, but so long as someone is willing to lend the MTA against the promise of eventual federal bailout, the agency should just keep tapping that line of credit to keep service running while avoiding calamitous fare hikes and service cuts that would dig the MTA out of this current hole by only a few percentage points. The MTA, transparent and consistent in its spending, has been maintaining its operations per usual at the cost of around $200 million a week and has consistently stated it will need $10-$12 billion to get through the end of 2021. The agency should look to streamline operations and reduce its costs, but it should also hold the line on service.

Borrow until the money runs out, the federal funding comes through, and ridership rebounds. The city’s future depends upon it, and the lenders realize this. It’s certainly not a sound fiscal strategy for the long term or a sustainable one should the federal government fail to come through. But none of this is normal. The subways and buses will power New York’s eventual recovery, and keeping the lights on and trains moving is going to require a bit more fiscal and operational creativity than usual.

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