MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber appeared on WABC-7's Up Close with Bill Ritter to discuss upcoming fare and toll hike public hearings, congestion pricing and other transportation issues.
A transcript of the interview appears below.
Bill Ritter: Welcome back to Up Close. The MTA, crucial link in New York and the tri-state in getting this economy full throttle once again. There's no question about that. Is raising the fares, however, the answer? Is slapping a $23 a day, congestion pricing, surcharge on drivers the answer? Is stopping fare jumpers the answer? The truth is, the MTA needs all the money it can get. Joining us— I mean, but don't we all? Joining us now, the Chair and CEO of the MTA, Janno Lieber. Janno, great to see you again. Thank you for coming.
Janno Lieber: Good to be with you, Bill.
Ritter: You know, you're always in the news in some way or another because, how many people use the MTA?
Lieber: Six million every day.
Ritter: There you go. Where are you in relation to pre-pandemic, now?
Lieber: Good question. We're at roughly 70% of paid ridership. Fare evasion has gone up as you pointed out. Apples to apples versus pre-COVID, we’re probably closer to 80%, headed in the right direction. A lot of progress in the last year.
Ritter: How much longer might it take to get back to that? And is it taking you longer than you thought?
Lieber: No. Actually we're probably a little bit ahead of schedule. We projected that it would take us a couple more years to get to the mid, you know, another 10% from where we are now. But that's one of the reasons that Governor Hochul went to the Legislature this year and said we got to solve the MTA budget deficit and that was accomplished. It's one of the huge successes that happened in Albany this session. Governor Hochul really led the way.
Ritter: And is it solved?
Lieber: Yeah! We actually got the Legislature to help us to make sure that for the next four years that deficits that look like they were going to be like $2 billion are actually dealt with. Now, the MTA had to find $400 million of efficiencies on our own without cutting jobs or cutting service. But the Legislature came up with some new money and the MTA financial picture, pretty secure for the next few years.
Ritter: So, do you need the money that you said you need? Do you need the fare hikes? Do you need congestion pricing?
Lieber: Listen, part of the plan was always that we would resume. We haven't raised the base fare since I think 2015. The $2.75 fare was scheduled to go up a couple times before this year. We've been doing that for about 10 years, incremental fare increase, about 2% a year, just to keep up with inflation, make sure we can pay our people properly. That is being restored. We're having a 4% fare hike. And we're going to go back to that pattern of very incremental small increases, makes sense for financial stability.
Ritter: Tell me if I'm wrong, I'm just a lay person. But if you're talking about billions of dollars is what we're talking about. 15 cents per train ride doesn't seem like a big deal.
Lieber: Yes, but it adds up to hundreds of millions of dollars. And you know, listen, New Yorkers understand that the cost of everything has gone up 6%, 7%. We have to give our workforce appropriate raises. You know, that that's part of the reality. 80% of our cost structure at the MTA is paying the people who drive the buses and fix the trains and run the trains. It's about the labor force.
Ritter: But a lot of the people who take the trains and I take it several times a day. A lot of people who take the trains clearly don't have a lot of money. And that 15 cents is a big deal.
Lieber: You know, it's a good point. Our approach has been let's target affordability and discounts to people at the low end of the income scale. So, that's why we are pushing what we call the Fair Fares program, where people below the poverty line get a 50% discount like seniors do already. So, targeting affordability at the people who are really short of money makes a lot of sense to us. Just giving to, frankly to you, to me, to all our neighbors in better off parts of New York makes less sense.
Ritter: I go the other way, when someone jumps the fare in front of me, I say I want to do this. I want, I'll swipe you in because that camera right there is taking your picture.
Lieber: You're absolutely right. Fare evasion is one of the challenges, the biggest challenge we face. What happened is a lot of behavior broke down during COVID. It's no secret.
Ritter: It's a lot of that, about behavior. It's not necessarily about low income.
Lieber: No, you're absolutely right. You know, we see people in all neighborhoods of all demographic groups, taking advantage. People who are standing there with their MetroCard or their phone open and their OMNY account. See the fare gate, the exit gate open and they veer off and take a free ride. I stopped them. And what I did, and this has been a problem for some time. It's grown significantly. Is we put together a panel of experts, you know, people who are in law enforcement and also social justice people. And they came up with 100-page report with a lot of recommendations which we're starting to implement. Fare evasion is not just an economic problem. It tears at the social fabric. We share in New York, we share the public space. We share so much. Because of our density, you have to know that everybody around you is playing by the same rules. Fare evasion undermines that.
Ritter: So when we see young people, especially, they go and they hop the, hop the gate. You know, they twist it a little bit.
Lieber: Backcocking.
Ritter: What’s is called?
Lieber: Backcocking.
Ritter: Backcocking. We can’t say that on television.
Lieber: There's a lot of different ways to fare evade.
Ritter: That's what we see a lot. They go back and then they go forward. And they do it and they don't look like they. They look like they could afford $2.
Lieber: You know, you're right. Listen, there is a special. I put, among the people I put on that panel was the Chancellor of the City school system, David Banks. And we actually sat down with high school students and did focus groups on why are people fare evading. Frequently, I stop kids and this is true across the system, who are fare evading and they have their student MetroCard in their pocket.
Ritter: They can get in for free anyway.
Lieber: They have their student MetroCard in their pocket. So there's a lack of education and culture and understanding of what it means to fare evade. And we're going to work on that because they're part of New York. We need them to play by the same rules as everybody else.
Ritter: I want to get all the topics we want to talk about in. So, let me start with congestion pricing. You know, people do legally, law,. How can I say this? To those who are elected around the tri-state, you know, you're like a poster child for this. And they got a poster on the wall and throw darts at them sometimes. You're getting a lot of flack for all this. They say, look, it's just an attempt for the MTA to get a lot of money. It's going to hurt our people who come in and drive in and have to pay $23.
Lieber: Listen, you know, honestly, I'm happy to take the flack but it, the New York State Legislature enacted congestion pricing back in 2019. This is not some crazy idea that Janno Lieber came up with in the middle of the night. The bottom line is we have to do something. The business district, you know, Manhattan south of 60th St is so congested ambulances can't get the hospitals, fire trucks can't get to fires. We're stopping functions. We have to do something. Congestion pricing is proven in London and Stockholm and a million other places that it works. When is it going to start? I think probably about a year from now sometime in the spring of 2024. We're in the process of developing the final toll structure which will deal with all the requests for discounts and exemptions and credits and so on. But I expect it will be in action about a year from now.
Ritter: The last time you were on the show, it seemed a little more frenetic, your desire to get this going right now, it's less so now because the financial burden is not as great.
Lieber: No. You know what happened, the good news for those of us who care about dealing with congestion, dealing with air quality, making better transit and safer streets because by the way, less congestion means less people getting hit by cars. But the good news is the federal government finally looks like they're on the verge of approving our environmental review. We had a 4,000-page environmental study. It’s federal law and it looks like it's getting the OK from Uncle Sam. So now I am more optimistic and ready to move forward. We're ready to start building out the network of sensors and all that. It's all been designed. We are ready to go.
Ritter: Last question. We have about 20 seconds for you to answer. MetroCards.
Lieber: Yes.
Ritter: A lot of people have these, they don't have the OMNY. WageWorks, which a lot of people who work in buildings get these from WageWorks. They don't, they're not passing out OMNY stuff. How do we work that?
Lieber: OK. Number one, anyone can use OMNY. They don't need to have an OMNY account.
You just take a credit card, you can tap and go, you hit that OMNY validator, and it works. And you get the same discount after 12, as you would if you had an OMNY account. So, credit card is as good as a MetroCard. Those benefit programs that you mentioned, we are working with those guys to make sure that instead of sending you a MetroCard every month, they create an OMNY account for you, or put on your credit. We're making the transition. It’s under way.
Ritter: We have a lot of people asking that question.
Lieber: You bet.
Ritter: Janno, thank you very much for joining us, making the case.
Lieber: Good to be with you.
Ritter: Have a good rest of your weekend.
Lieber: Thanks.