Congestion Pricing Kicks Off

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Today, as you know, is January 6th and we're expecting the spectacle in Washington of no insurrection, no attempt to hang the vice president with the president saying maybe the vice president deserves it. No attempt to deny the election results or most of one party's members of Congress voting not to certify the election. Remember, there were 147 Republican no votes when they finally were able to take the vote in the early hours of January 7th four years ago.

That was a clear majority of Republicans in the House, plus another eight in the Senate. We note the difference and that this is not going to happen today because sometimes no news is not no news. It is news for things to go normally when it's not always a given anymore. Right? You know where else this year's election result was acknowledged last night on the Golden Globes. The host, Nikki Glaser, in her wonderful opening monologue addressed the TV and movie industry royalty in the room.

Nikki Glaser: You're all so famous, so talented, so powerful. You could really do anything, except tell the country who to vote for but it's okay. [laughter] You'll get them next time if there is one. I'm scared.

Brian Lehrer: Nikki Glaser from the Golden Globes on CBS. Nobody is trying to stop the peaceful transition of power this time. What people are still trying to stop by any legal means possible, is congestion pricing, which is such a news story that they just covered it on the BBC, as some of you just heard, for the entire world to pay attention to. Of course, it took effect to drive into Manhattan below 60th street as the clock struck midnight on Saturday night, Sunday morning.

Last minute court challenges, if you were paying attention over the weekend, failed on both Friday and Saturday. I had two versions of our promo for today's show that I recorded on Friday afternoon. One if it was delayed, one if it went through. Obviously, we used the went through version, but there are still more court challenges to come that could yet pause or reverse the toll again in the future. Here's the head of the firefighters union, Andrew Ansbro, making a dire prediction yesterday that fire department response times are going to suffer even though emergency vehicles themselves are exempt.

Andrew Ansbro: All we were asking for was an exemption from members bringing their vehicles into the zone. Those vehicles are regularly used to transport firefighters to and from their detail to another firehouse. There's a shortage in one spot and they need them somewhere else. We were denied at every turn. We have been putting ourselves out there for the City of New York and for the FDNY and now a lot of our members have asked us, "How do we get our money back for this unfair tax burden that's been placed on not only them, but every resident of New York City?"

Brian Lehrer: Andrew Ansbro, head of the firefighters union. Here's MTA Chief Janno Lieber saying all the money is going to go to mass transit improvements that will benefit everyone in New York and New Jersey alike.

Janno Lieber: We're buying new cars. We're replacing all that track and power and structure that came in when FDR was the president, Franklin Roosevelt. All that is being replaced. Projects are being done on time and on budget. This is a new MTA. I don't expect folks to notice it every day, but the numbers and the customer satisfaction are moving in the right direction.

Brian Lehrer: Let's talk about congestion pricing taking effect here on its first weekday. We'll also talk about the current perception and actual reality of subway crime with Clayton Guse, who's our WNYC and Gothamist editor on the Transit and Infrastructure desk. Hey, Clayton. Happy New Year. Welcome back to the show.

Clayton Guse: Brian, Happy New Year.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we're inviting your calls and texts for this segment on two tracks on congestion pricing. Did anyone do anything differently yesterday or today because the toll took effect? Help us report the first weekend day and the first weekday story. 212-433-WNYC. Did anyone do anything differently yesterday or today? Travel in differently, avoid traveling in at all, whatever, because the toll took effect?

What if you're a firefighter? Did you do anything differently per the clip of your union chief. 212-433-9692 or you can even call and say whoever you are, if you plan to change your travel behavior in any way as a result, even if it didn't come up for you personally yesterday or today? 212-433-WNYC 212-433-9692, call or text. We can also take your questions about the tolls now that they've gone into effect. I know not everybody knows all the details so if you have questions, you can call in for Clayton with those. 212-433-9692.

About subway safety, do you feel safe on the subways compared to the past with crime statistically down in 2024? Those number are in now but a few really horrendous high profile acts of violence grabbing media attention fairly enough and murders themselves up a little bit, but it's still a very, very low number of murders in the subways and murders usually are among people who know each other. How about subway safety reality, your perception again, your behavior compared to two years ago, three years ago when it was statistically worse or anytime in the past like decades ago when it was really worse. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692.

Clayton, before we go over some of the congestion pricing basics, are there any reports from yesterday or today about changes in driving or mass transit rates or too early even for first impressions?

Clayton Guse: It's still a little early to tell. Some of the early data we're seeing is that traffic speeds this morning in rush are roughly the same as they were on a comparable calendar day. It's also, we're finding it a little bit tricky to find an apples-to-apples comparison this morning. It's snowing. If you look outside and it's snowing much in Jersey, a lot of things are impacting traffic patterns so a little early to tell but at the very least, we're seeing a lot of comments and reactions from people who are paying the tolls.

Brian Lehrer: Here's one perception. This is going to be anecdotal evidence. Jeffrey in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi Jeffrey, thank you for calling in.

Jeffrey: Hey Brian, thanks for taking my call. I've lived on Delancey and Bowery for the last 15 years and I know yesterday was Sunday but this morning I wanted to see as well. The Delancey Street, the traffic is flowing beautifully. It's quiet. Every night I go to bed, it's a non stop horn fest. I just have to say I know yesterday was Sunday but it can still be quite loud and I'm seeing it already. The congestion pricing seems to be working.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Very interesting. Now you can send a reporter to Delancey Street, which is near, of course, some of those lower Manhattan east river crossings. Let's see, we don't have any other reports yet on the phones. We do have a lot of people calling in. We'll see what they have when they're screened. Some people are calling with questions. We'll get to those too. Let's go over some of the congestion pricing basics. I think that might be a good service for people right now. Who is getting charged, what, when?

Clayton Guse: If you start with just regular passenger vehicles, the bulk of the drivers into the city from 5:00 AM to 9:00 PM on weekdays, that starts at 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM on weekends, it's a $9 charge once a day. If you go in and out of the zone, if you're a passenger vehicle or a motorcycle, you're only getting hit once a day. That's assuming that $9 charge is contingent on having an E-Zpass.

The MTA was very clear yesterday that that E-Zpass, you can't just have the transponder in your car. You need to make sure that synced up to your license plate. Otherwise, if you don't have an E-Zpass, if it's just tow by mail, you're going to pay an extra 50% so that $9 fee goes to $13.50. I think it's a serviceable thing to point out for people and something that MTA chair Janno Lieber was very clear about yesterday. Those cars are getting a $9 charge.

Overnight, it drops very low. On weekdays from 9:00 PM to 5:00 AM, that goes down to $2.25, less than a subway fare is to get into the city just because the congestion isn't as bad as night. Trucks are paying a lot more and they're getting paid-- Trucks have to pay every time they enter or exit the zone. Small trucks, $14.40 during the daytime hours. Larger trucks, big rigs are paying $21.60 during the daytime hours. There's obviously, if you're coming in from Jersey or on the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel or the Queens Midtown Tunnel, you're already paying a toll.

The MTA has set up toll credits for those but at the end of the day, if you're a driver coming in from New Jersey during rush hour, even with the crossing credit, if you combine the existing port authority tolls, which by the way just went up yesterday as well by about $0.68, a marginal percentage, you're going to end up paying in the ballpark of $22 total to enter the zone. That's typically a once-a-day fee.

Brian Lehrer: Now, those numbers are going to be daunting and angering for people in New Jersey for sure but there may be another effect of all of that despite the complaints or in addition, let's say, to the objections that individuals have for their individual travel. I think we're going to hear some of this from Miguel in Nutley, who's calling in. Miguel, you're on WNYC. Good morning. Thank you for calling us.

Miguel: Good morning. One of the things I haven't heard anybody mention was the cost of goods and services that are going up because I manage a fleet of service guys and they have to go south of that line all throughout the day. Every one of those trips is going to cost us $9 more. I'm going to have to pass that fee on to my customers. I can't absorb that on top of what I'm already absorbing with going through the tunnels already and parking already. Another $9 every time, one of my guys, that adds up. That is me and I have a relatively small fleet.

Brian Lehrer: When you say service vehicles, what are we talking about? What kinds of vehicles to do with?

Miguel: We do security. If somebody has a camera go out or a card reader or if I'm installing new devices and I have to send my teams below the line, and we do a lot of work in that area of the city, all of those costs are going to have to be absorbed and we can't absorb all those. We're going to have to start charging the customer more.

Brian Lehrer: Miguel, thank you for your testimony. We'll see what happens. Clayton, sounds like some things are going to get more expensive as a result of this because people in whatever business, who have to pay the toll, are going to pass it on.

Clayton Guse: Yes. I think there's something we've been thinking about a lot. How much of it is? In this case, it might be just a passenger car service vehicle, $9 once a day. What is the actual math on what you're passing along to your customers? Is it a huge difference? A lot of the trucking charges, which can get hit for larger vehicles multiple times a day, is that actually going to be passed along? $21 seems like a lot but if you have a truckload of groceries, the actual difference to the shipping costs might be marginal.

I think it's on a case-by-case basis in a lot of these cases. The trucking association, pretty influential lobbying group in the city, has been very vehemently against these tolls and they're threatening to pass it along. I think one thing that our newsrooms should watch out for and everyone should look out for is to say how much of this cost is rightfully being passed along to consumers and how much of it is companies using as an excuse to raise their prices. I think both cases are likely to happen, but I think it's fair to expect some around the edges, marginal price increases in a lot of goods and services in the city.

Brian Lehrer: Another testimonial from A listener who says, "I took my kids to American Dream Mall yesterday from Brooklyn for a Sunday afternoon drive. It was a dream. The only slowdowns were entering the Lincoln Tunnel," writes this one listener. Of course, we don't know if that had something to do with congestion pricing but here's another observation about this first Monday morning commute of it from Kevin in Manhattan. Kevin, you're on WNYC. Hi there.

Kevin: Hi. I'm going to be a little cheeky with my response here because I did do something different today on my commute to Manhattan because today I did it with a smile because on my walk from the F Train I noticed a noticeable decrease in the noise from this time this year. I live in the city. I look forward to less pollution noise for my kids who do live in the city because people forget families do live here. New Jersey doesn't want New York City traffic. Trust me, neither do we.

Brian Lehrer: Kevin, thank you very much. Kevin being around 60th Street, Clayton, raises another issue. Some of the loudest last minute complaints have been coming from people who live just outside the zone, right? That would be a little north of 60th Street and maybe all the way up through the rest of northern Manhattan and some places in New Jersey where you can hop on a PATH train or whatever, the new park and ride, some people are calling it, right?

Some people will drive to Inwood or Washington Heights or 62nd Street and put their cars in lots and then get on the subway or try to park on the street if they're gaming out, which is actually going to be cheaper driving into the zone or finding a place to park. That's another thing that I guess we'll be watching for, is how much of a burden, whether it's a pollution burden or a traffic burden or a parking availability burden or whatever, it places on the communities just outside the zone.

Clayton Guse: Right. The MTA studied this pretty extensively. That's all theory. Now we're seeing it in practice. I think there's been a lot of concerns, especially uptown. They've had these concerns for a long time in the almost six years since the legislature approved this law that Jersey or out-of-state drivers would start dumping their cars in free parking spots in upper Manhattan and then taking the subway down to avoid the toll. A lot of people that compete for parking spaces uptown are concerned about that.

There was a lot of conversation even five years ago about establishing a residential parking permit program that some other cities have in some of those uptown neighborhoods. That hasn't come into fruition so we're going to see if-- I'd be interested to see if people uptown are seeing an influx of Jersey drivers or Jersey plates parking up there this week.

Brian Lehrer: Another report from the road. John in Glenrock, you're on WNYC. Hi, John.

John: Hi, Brian. Happy New Year to you and your guest. I drive somebody into the city every day from Ridgewood to Lower Manhattan at 5:30 AM and I particularly was was looking to see if I noticed any difference. The traffic I found especially for a Monday was lighter and there was no backup at 79th Street off the West Side Highway because that's the last exit before the congestion pricing zone. The exit at 57th Street was relatively non-existent.

Normally, it's a two lane backup all the way up, but that wasn't there. I stay on the West Side Highway all the way down and all the way back. On my trip back north, there was heavy traffic going south on the West Side Highway, especially at 79th Street. Again, anecdotal, I just was aware of it and we'll see what happens. I'm very aware when I'm south of 60th Street, not to make a left hand turn because that left hand turn is going to cost me $9. That's all.

Brian Lehrer: John, thank you for sharing your observations. All right, so there was an observation from a driver's seat. Here's an observation from a bicycle saddle, I think. Corey, bicycling at this moment across the Williamsburg Bridge, is that right, Corey? Hello?

Corey: Hey, can you hear me, Brian?

Brian Lehrer: I can hear you just fine.

Corey: I just crossed the Williamsburg Bridge on my bike. I bike from Williamsburg to the Lower East Side almost every Monday morning and traffic is usually backed up at least, getting into Lower East Side, at least, a third over the bridge, bumper to bumper, a third or almost halfway over the bridge. Today, there was still some backup, but it was maybe a quarter of the bridge. There was definitely fewer cars backed up waiting to get into Manhattan. I really didn't want a bike this morning, but I did want to see if it was working and it looks like in Lower Manhattan from Williamsburg it's working a little bit, definitely on the bridge.

Brian Lehrer: Corey, thank you very much and be careful out there. Calling from his bike phone. I don't know about biking and calling a talk show at the same time, but maybe he pulled over and he said he was across the bridge at very least once he got on. Clayton, I guess people do that now, right? If you have a hands-free phone in your car and that's okay. Maybe people have hands-free, of course, they're hands free phones, mounted on the handlebars and people do that. I wouldn't do it personally.

Clayton Guse: Oh sure, yes, you can call into this show from anywhere except the subway, basically.

Brian Lehrer: I guess. Listener texts and I want to contextualize this text by saying we're getting a lot of text messages on both sides of the congestion pricing debate. A lot of people with their objections, but also I want to say out loud, a lot of people supporting it. Like this one, "I am a Brooklyn resident who commutes into Union Square for work. I have never contemplated driving into work. That feels insane. I've been so discouraged by a lot of the media reporting focusing on car people. WNYC has been more balanced, which is encouraging." Thank you, listener. "But good Lord, why are we allowing this false narrative to persist that somehow everyday New Yorkers are driving into Manhattan regularly?" Clayton, what would you say as a transportation and infrastructure editor to that to that listener?

Clayton Guse: I think this is something that our crackerjack transit reporter, Stephen Nessen, points out a lot is that it's always when people pay for something that they're used to having for free, there's always uproar, especially in New York City. It's going to cause a lot of consternation. At the same time, we point this out, the vast majority of people who go into Manhattan below 60th Street are taking mass transit. They're taking buses or taking subways or they're biking or walking.

The vast majority of people who drive are above slightly higher income. That doesn't mean that there aren't several thousand people in this city who have to drive into Manhattan, who don't qualify for an exemption, who don't make a lot of money and are getting really hurt by this around the edges at the very least. I don't think that it's a completely monolithic issue. There's a lot of nuance here and a lot of people affected. There's 700,000 people up to a day that drive into the central business district.

Some of them are going to have sad stories. Some of them you're going to say you don't need to drive in. A lot of the other problem here is with congestion that's been growing and growing and growing in the city, really for the last decade or more is taxi and Ubers. Ubers have grown from basically 0, 15 years ago in the city to coming upwards of 80,000, 90,000 of those cars in the city. They've been a huge source of congestion.

Actually a lot of the talk around congestion pricing ahead of it getting passed by the state legislature almost six years ago, was to reduce congestion caused by Uber and Lyft and other for-hire vehicles. I think there's a lot-- Some of the media narrative writ large in the city. It boils down to a lot of incendiary headlines, but there's a lot of nuance here and a lot of interesting stories about how this is affecting people or how it's helping people.

Brian Lehrer: Here's an Uber driver calling in. Charles in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hey, Charles.

Charles: Brian, good morning. Very important topic. I'm pretty familiar about the Vision Zero initiative, but the area as a cab driver or Uber driver I don't hear people talk about is the cost in terms of productivity. The average New Yorker suffers going to Midtown or driving to Midtown. Most people suffer a lot of costs. They don't really quantifies in dollar terms. I think if they can be shown that instead of a 30-minute trip taking you 1 hour, knowing the difference in cost maybe assuage some of these negative feelings about congestion pricing.

As an Uber driver, I'd rather take a trip to Manhattan after a very short time, get out of there because most of us don't really go there. It's the passengers that take us there or wherever they are going. This issue of congestion of Uber or Lyft in Manhattan is actually a consumer-driven thing. I live in Queens, I wake up in the morning, maybe two or three rides, somebody want to go to Manhattan. That's how I get to Manhattan and I go to Manhattan, somebody want to go to airport. It's not really the fault of the Uber or Lyft driver, but the cost of time we spend on [unintelligible 00:23:44]. Nobody has actually highlighted--

Brian Lehrer: That's where your customers want to go so it's consumer-driven. I get that. I guess the other side of that equation could be the city government could have decided to regulate the number of Ubers and other for-hire vehicles as they used to regulate the number of such cars on the street because it was just yellow taxis and green taxis before the Uber and Lyft era but that's a policy thing.

Charles, I heard a sound bite of one of the leaders of the anti-congestion pricing movement saying one of the big winners here will be Uber drivers because it's the personal vehicles, people's own individual vehicles, where they're going to change their behavior and not drive in as much. You're going to have more efficiency, you're going to have less crowded roads and you might make more money as a result of this, even though you have to pay the fee and maybe you pass it on to the customer anyway that the Ubers get charged. Do you have an opinion about that?

Charles: If it makes the trip efficient. For example, I went to Manhattan yesterday. There was virtually no traffic, but it was a Sunday so I cannot judge with that. My opinion is if that improves the environment, make everybody. I have two vehicles, but I don't drive to Manhattan when I'm not working. I use the subway. If everybody uses public transport, subway, Uber, taxi, that would decongest the road and make the environment more sustainable for that.

Brian Lehrer: Charles, thank you. Stay safe out there. Clayton Guse is our guest, WNYC Transportation and Infrastructure Editor. We're going to get to subway safety as part B of this conversation in a few minutes. Clayton, the dire warning by the firefighters union about response times. We played the clip at the beginning. For New Yorkers who think of the objections as being essentially an outer borough and New Jersey thing, we had the main public employee unions among those objecting, including firefighters, as we heard in the clip, as well as teachers and others. Do you think this is just a scare tactic or do you think we're really going to see slower response times?

Clayton Guse: I think we're going to have to see, but I do think-- A point that the gentleman driving the Uber said and I think is a real point and this applies to truckers, this applies to everybody, if there is less traffic on the streets, then everyone else who's using them is going to move faster. Might there be some exceptions for some logistics of certain city employees who need to respond to scenes that need to pay the toll and don't want to work in Manhattan anymore?

Maybe the city also Mayor Adams last year negotiated a pretty big carve out for a lot of city vehicles doing essential business that wasn't expected earlier on. A lot of the city municipal fleet was expected to pay. You've heard a lot of uproar and a lot of scare tactics from people. I think it's too early to say whether or not we're going to see response times diminish or increase due to congestion pricing, but every municipal union under the sun has either sued or pushed back against this.

Brian Lehrer: Let me replay the clip of the firefighters union chief, Andrew Ansbro, that we used at the top. It was almost a half hour ago now, so a lot of people who joined who didn't hear it and his very specific complaint.

Andrew Ansbro: All we were asking for was an exemption from members bringing their vehicles into the zone. Those vehicles are regularly used to transport firefighters to and from their detail to another firehouse when there's a shortage in one spot and they need them somewhere else. We were denied at every turn. We have been putting ourselves out there for the City of New York and for the FDNY, and now a lot of our members have asked us, "How do we get our money back for this unfair tax burden that's been placed on not only them, but every resident of New York City?"

Brian Lehrer: Have we reported on this specifically, Clayton? He's talking about firefighters who use their personal vehicles to get from place to place within their workday. Was there deliberation at the MTA as far as you know, to make any accommodation for people in the fire department, in the emergency services sector using their personal vehicles on the job?

Clayton Guse: They denied all those exemptions. From what I'm hearing here, it sounds like, and I could be wrong but, "I'm a firefighter at a firehouse outside of the zone. I get reassigned to a firehouse inside the zone. I need to drive my personal car there. Who's going to pay the $9?" The MTA is going to tell you, take the subway. That's the stick of it all. The carrot of it all, it's a carrot and a stick kind of situation. The stick is you have to pay to enter the zone. The carrot is twofold, less congestion and also eventually, in theory, more reliable subway service, as they use this money to finance $15 billion worth of construction bonds to pay for new train cars and upgraded track and signal infrastructure.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute with our Transportation and Infrastructure Editor, Clayton Guse. We'll talk a little more about congestion pricing day two, and also the 2024 subway crime stats. Stay with us.

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Janno Lieber: The time for debating and lawsuits is over. It's time to get to work making this new initiative a success for New York. I think we're ready.

Brian Lehrer: MTA Chief Janno Lieber over the weekend. By the way, he's going to be a guest on this show on Friday so if you want to say your piece about congestion pricing or subway safety or anything else directly to the head of the MTA, he's very generous with his time when he comes on, I have to say that. He does take calls and texts from you, not just answer questions from me. Janno Lieber scheduled for Friday. As we continue for another few with Clayton Guse, our WNYC and Gothamist editor on the Transit and Infrastructure desk. Clayton, one thing about that clip, he said the time for lawsuits is over, but it's not really yet, right?

Clayton Guse: This is America. [laughter] The time of lawsuits is never over. He's referring to the Jersey case. A lot of the cases filed all over against congestion pricing, attempting to stop it were dismissed. This case filed by the state of New Jersey against the Federal Highway Administration over the environmental review for congestion pricing dragged on. The judge just bringing people up to speed on New Year's Eve. Judge in that case out of Newark, issues a 72-page ruling on Wednesday or on Tuesday and New Year's Eve, very clearly explains a lot of the decision, but doesn't clearly explain whether or not the tolls can move forward.

Jump to Friday. He finally makes a call at 8:30 at night. We had our reporters out there that says that the tolls can go live. Jersey's lawyers then attempt on Saturday to get the Third Circuit Court of Appeals at the federal level to dismiss the case or give it a temporary restraining order. That gets denied but New Jersey still has the legal avenue to go through the federal appeals process which could drag on and on and on for a very long time.

Brian Lehrer: I got publicity email from a member of city council in Queens who as soon as the New Jersey ruling came in saying congestion pricing could go forward. This was Friday night, Right? Why I'm looking at my work email on Friday night, that's my problem. This email came in from a city council member right away saying, "Ah, that lawsuit may be dead, but my lawsuit is still alive." There are, I guess, several.

Clayton Guse: Yes. I think there's some in New York, there's some at the state level, there's some at the federal level. I think you're going to see-- Right now, the MTA has a good bit of precedent on their side in terms of just what the judges decided. Brian, this took a long time to launch. The state legislature approved this in 2019. Since the Biden administration came in at the federal level, started working with the MTA on the environmental process. They spent a long time on outreach, on studying. The appendix for this is they did it that way so that it would be with the intent that it would be legally bulletproof but that doesn't mean that some lawsuit couldn't come and upend it.

Brian Lehrer: Here's that press release. I just pulled it up. This came in Friday at-- I don't have the timestamp, but it was Friday night. It says, "Council member Robert Holden, Democrat from Queens, issued the following statement on the decision in New Jersey federal court on congestion pricing." "While I'm disappointed in the New Jersey federal court's bad decision, I'm confident the Hempstead SAPA State court case will pause the congestion scam tax. This regressive toll would hurt New Yorkers, outer borough residents, and even those from out of state who work in the city. We won't let king Lieber and tyrant Hochul destroy Manhattan's economy and punish hardworking commuters to line the MTA's pockets."

That is some language from a Democratic member of City Council. King Lieber and tyrant Hochul destroy Manhattan's economy and just to line the MTA's pockets. Wow.

Clayton Guse: Bob Holden, a pretty conservative Democrat at that, but not bad writing, at least for the fun of it. [laughs] There's still the outstanding Hempstead case that they didn't loop in with the other ones. I think it's wait and see. I think all the other judges in New York and New Jersey have said, "You don't really have a case to stop this so we're going to keep moving forward with it."

Brian Lehrer: I thought we were going to spend about half our time talking about congestion pricing, about half our time talking about subway safety but you could tell from the calls and the texts and everything, nobody ever gets tired of talking about congestion pricing. We're just going to do a short addendum on safety for the moment. As WNYC and Gothamist have been reporting, violence in the subway system is rare but when it happens, it can make all of our commutes feel extra stressful.

New York City's public transit system ended 2024 with a series of violent encounters. I'm reading from our news department's texts here, including a woman being set on fire, a man being stabbed to death, and another man being pushed in front of an oncoming train. Police data show that transit crime fell overall last year compared to 2023. Homicides, on the other hand, doubled. Here's our public safety reporter Samantha Max. A few seconds of her story on Weekend Edition.

Samantha Max: It's statistically quite safe. Millions of riders get from point A to point B every day with no problem. Violence is the rare exception but when it comes up, people hear about it and it's scary. Just to put it into context, there were way more traffic fatalities than subway fatalities in New York City last year. There were more than 250 traffic fatalities per NYPD data. That's compared to double digits for subway fatalities.

Brian Lehrer: WNYC public safety reporter, Samantha Max. Clayton, I was glad as I heard that, she was in conversation with David Furst over the weekend on Weekend Edition. She brought in the comparison with traffic fatalities and injuries and it made me think, at least for myself, I feel much safer when I'm on the subway than when I'm driving a car. There's this whole field of risk perception. It's a field of psychology.

What makes people feel safe compared to the actual statistical risk or what makes people feel endangered compared to the actual statistical risk. One of the things that make people feel safe, whether accurately or not, is when they feel like they're in control. When people drive a car, they think, "Well, I'm in control of my car. I feel pretty safe." When people ride the subway, they feel more like they're just one person sitting there passively and somebody could come up to them or the train could collide or whatever. It's kind of a warped perception. I don't think people, when they get on the train or when they get in their cars, think very much about the comparative risks.

Clayton Guse: Right. I think that's absolutely true. It's certainly safer to ride the subway than it is to be in a car, just statistically speaking, but at the same time, there are-- Right now in this moment when the MTA is asking people to take the subway instead of driving and doing that through congestion pricing, you have this trend of high profile crimes that are concerning to people. A homeless woman being lit on fire at Coney Island is horrifying. Caught on camera man being shoved unprovoked in front of the subway is concerning.

While crime is down, assaults are still up from before the pandemic. Assaults are still up by about to the tune of 40%, 50% from 2019 or 2018. It's still relatively low. Your risk is relatively low according to just the crime data that the police department puts out but there is a-- I always think of the subways as a good litmus test for where the health of the city is just writ large. It is this great huge, sprawling public commons that, for better or worse, sometimes binds us or divides us apart.

This spree of high profile incidents reminds me of 2020-2021, right when we were gearing up for the mayor's race and Mayor Adams really ran on a tough on crime, tough on subway crime thing. That winter, if you remember, there was some horrifying incidents. There was four homeless people stabbed, two fatally by another homeless man on the A line overnight. There was a spree of shovings that winter. It became a central issue in the 2021 mayoral campaign that ultimately Mayor Eric Adams won.

Now we're looking down in the next few months at a new mayoral campaign trying to unseat Adams and it's going to be really interesting to see how these high profile crimes, as rare as they may be, compared to traffic deaths or otherwise, becomes the central issue.

Brian Lehrer: He's going to run on, "I brought crime down." Of course, there are big national trends here. A lot of kinds of crime went up at the beginning of the pandemic and have come down nationally but in New York, what can he claim if you have this at your fingertips? What were the overall crime statistics? That even though these high profile incidents are horrific and to the extent that they are random, they make everybody feel afraid and that's human nature. When they say, "When we report that crime came down in 2024 on the subways," can you put any numbers on that?

Clayton Guse: Yes. I don't have it at my fingertips, but it's a handful of percent. Like I said, assaults went down a little bit, but still remain up from before the pandemic. Obviously, I think we had 10 murders. You can fact check me on that, but I think we had 10 murders on the subway last year, which is relatively high, but still low compared to the rest of the city. There is evidence that he's made some advancement. The big I think-- When people talk about crime on the subway, I think, or when a lot of people talk about crime on the subway, they often conflate that with homeless and mental health issues.

Adams and Hochul have made that a focus from early on. The effect of that, though, is hard to say. Adams and Hochul have deployed these mental health response teams to basically force people into care when they are posing a threat to others or themselves. That has shown some signs of progress in terms of getting people who are in a bad situation off the trains but at the same time, the underlying issues that cause people to lose their sense of mental health, lose housing, fall through the cracks that have really seemingly, not seemingly, certainly accelerated since the pandemic in 2020 are still there.

You're still seeing people sleeping on the trains quite often. You're still seeing people in dire straits. Can Mayor Eric Adams take credit for solving that problem? I don't know but he can at least point to some initiatives that he's done to address it.

Brian Lehrer: Clayton Guse is WNYC's editor for Transit and Infrastructure. Thanks for joining us today to help kick off the year. Obviously, so much at stake for our whole region when we talk about quality mass transit, when we talk about affordability and place that congestion pricing might play in that. Here we are at the center of life in the greater New York area here at the beginning of the year. Thanks for joining us.

Clayton Guse: Thanks, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Much more to come.

 

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