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Arun Venugopal: It's The Brian Lehrer Show, on WNYC. I'm Arun Venugopal, from the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian today. How was your commute this morning? For more and more of us it might have involved actually leaving home to go to-- What do they call them? Offices, right? Although Mondays are not exactly the number one choice for going to the office for hybrid workers, for the past couple weeks, it's been Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, on days when ridership has actually topped 4 million, five times.

Big numbers there. To talk about all that and other transit news, including the start of free bus rides on one route per borough, we're joined by Stephen Nessen, transportation reporter for the WNYC newsroom, and my colleague. Hi, Stephen.

Stephen Nessen: Hey, Arun.

Arun Venugopal: Let's talk about the ridership numbers, just to start. It's up, as a lot more people seem to be heading into the office, at least midweek. How do the numbers from the last couple weeks compare to before the pandemic?

Stephen Nessen: Well, the MTA is celebrating some record-high ridership last week, and the week before that. They're topping 4 million subway riders a couple of days in a row. Like you were saying, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, seem to be the primo days for ridership, and that's high. That's basically pandemic-era highs for them. I think they hit those numbers back in May as well, but to have it consistently, day over day-- They had three days in a row with over 4 million riders.

They're super stoked about that, but to your point, what is it compared to before the pandemic? That's still 30% below what it was. There was over 5 million riders back in the old shoulder-to-shoulder, take-your-backpack-off days. We're not there yet.

Arun Venugopal: Well, that makes sense, given that when I look around where we work downtown, you have all these empty glass buildings still. It's not like Manhattan is filling up yet, so still 30% shorter. Are we seeing a lot more problems with keeping the schedules when there are more people trying to hold those doors open?

Stephen Nessen: Well, I don't have the exact dwell times in front of me, but the MTA is pretty happy with their service delivered, basically. They have many ways to measure whether the train's on time, or how long you're waiting at the platform. Just to generally say, they're pretty happy, they think it's decent. I will note, I was just taking a quick peek at some numbers that are somewhat less accessible these days to find, due to the way the MTA presents its data, but they have something called--

It's called the mean distance between failures. Basically, it measures how long a train runs before-- How many miles it can run before it breaks down. You want trains to go many miles without breaking down, like your car or whatever. I was looking at the 2020 numbers combined. We know it's a big system, lots of different types of train cars, some older ones, some newer ones. Basically, in 2020, they were going 146,000 miles without a breakdown. It's alright. It's pretty good. Last month, in August, it was 116,000. That means that--

Arun Venugopal: 146,000 to 116,000.

Stephen Nessen: That's right. Cars are breaking down more frequently than they were back in 2020.

Arun Venugopal: What do we make of that? This is like a hardware-- Weren't there all these replacements in the last couple years?

Stephen Nessen: There are. There's, I think, five or six of the new R211 trains running on the A-line, if you've ever had the luck to run into one. I've done it exactly once.

Arun Venugopal: I've seen pictures from your Twitter handle.

Stephen Nessen: They're cool cars and they will break down a lot less frequently, but there's a lot of old trains in the system, so they're still breaking down.

Arun Venugopal: I would think there's less incentive to be doing those replacements unless you have the same numbers that-- I don't know how that plays into [unintelligible 00:04:00].

Stephen Nessen: Well, they're swapping out the older trains, so the super old 70s, 80s era trains. You'll know it when you're on them.

Arun Venugopal: These numbers, when we were talking about, whatever, 5.5 million, these are paid fares, correct?

Stephen Nessen: That's correct.

Arun Venugopal: Okay. Tell me about fare evasion. That's been a talking point the last so many months. Is the MTA saying that's a big problem, and does that actually imply, to the extent there is fare evasion, that actual ridership is higher?

Stephen Nessen: Yes. Fare evasion, according to the MTA, their research, and their analytics, their studies, it is a huge problem. It's actually a bigger problem on buses than on the subway, I should add, but it's a multimillion-dollar problem for them. They put together this task force to study it. If you've ever ridden the subway, you know, when someone props an exit gate open, even folks who maybe have the intention of paying are just going to waltz right through it.

We see it every day. I see it constantly. I saw people going through an open exit gate today.

Arun Venugopal: You would never do that yourself, given your stature?

Stephen Nessen: Well, yes, obviously that, but also, I know how much it costs to run a subway system. They really do rely on your fares. You think it's no big deal, but to the MTA, that's nearly $300 million a year loss on the subways. It's a big deal. Let me just add, they are doing stuff about it. I've seen it, especially in Midtown, they have these private security guards, you see them wearing orange vests with the words Allied Security on them.

They're not exactly handing out tickets or anything, they're basically keeping exit gates closed and making sure people aren't propping them open. You'll see them in the system. The MTA says, according to them, you have to pay these people to stand out there to prevent fare evasion. They're basically policing people skipping out on a $2.90 fare, but the MTA says it is worth the cost. They are making more money from people paying the fare than paying people to watch the gates and make sure people aren't jumping.

Arun Venugopal: All right. We've got a few callers who got some comments, or perhaps questions. Let's take one of them. This is Sasha, calling from Manhattan. Hi, Sasha.

Sasha: Hey, Arun. Hey, Stephen. Good to be on. I wanted to talk about another way that, basically, the MTA can increase ridership, and a really important way is to make the subways work for more people, including wheelchair users like me, people pushing strollers, with luggage, and with deliveries. A way to make it work for us, make the elevators more reliable. We filed a class action case more than six years ago, that had two parts. You got to build the elevators and you got to make them work.

Last year, we finally settled to build the elevators part. Now there's a concrete schedule to make that happen, but so far, the MTA is still fighting, and Governor Hochul, who runs them, is refusing to settle this case, to say there has to be a standard for making elevators work. Just like other cities have, you have to make it work a certain percentage of the time, so that it works for everyone. That's how you get more riders, that's how you make this a first-class transit system in 2023.

It's preposterous that we have up to 30 elevator outages a day. Those are times that the subway is not available or safe for all of us. This is how you get more riders. Fix the elevators and we will all show up.

Arun Venugopal: Thank you, Sasha, for your call. Stephen, anything to add to that?

Stephen Nessen: No. The caller is absolutely right. It's definitely some issues I've been following. The MTA was actually being sued, I think there were three or four lawsuits over its lack of accessibility. Up until recently, really, 25%, I believe, maybe 20% of the subway was accessible. Even still, it's just under, I believe, 30% at this point. I will say, to the MTA's, I suppose, credit, during the pandemic, they did scale back a lot of work they were doing, but they continued with some installations of accessibility upgrades, improving it with elevators at stations.

They do say they want this to happen, and they are making some serious progress. In the last couple of years, they've definitely installed more, but out of a system of 472 subway stations, 30% is still-- When you hear like, "Oh, there's an accessible station," it's like, "Well, little more than 100 of the stations have elevators." The majority of the system is not accessible.

Arun Venugopal: Well, thank you for that, and thank you to Sasha for your call. Other listeners, let us know if you have any questions for Stephen Nessen, our transportation reporter here at WNYC and Gothamist, questions, or perhaps comments, about the state of your commute. Call us at 212-433-WNYC. That number, again, is 212-433-9692. You can also text us or tweet us, @BrianLehrer. Stephen, what does it mean for MTA finances to have the ridership numbers up where they are now?

Stephen Nessen: Well, it's certainly promising. I did a story-- The MTA has its projections of where they want to be at this time. They do some major financial planning to get ahead, to prepare for the future. The pandemic just totally decimated any financial planning, so they really had to rebuild it from scratch. They hired this small firm you may have heard of, called McKinsey, to do an analysis, so they've been tracking their progress.

They've got best-case scenario and worst-case scenario for ridership. Ridership, at one point, made up-- I forgot. It's like-- Almost 40% of their operating budget came from fares. Now it's down to 24%. It's really low. It's really low. They made up for it with a lot of federal funding, which they're still enjoying and spending. They got something like $16 billion during the pandemic, because they're running full service for essentially no ridership, but the essential workers, so they didn't want to cut that.

Arun Venugopal: When it comes to infrastructure, has that money translated, or can we expect us to really start manifesting in visible improvements?

Stephen Nessen: No, no. That money is just used for running the system. Paying workers, keeping the lights on, so to speak. Keeping the trains running on a regular schedule. These ridership numbers are promising. Like I was saying, they have their best-case scenario, worst-case scenario. They're right in the middle right now, which I think they're pretty pleased with. In fact, the credit rating agency, Moody's, which actually has a lot of sway over the MTA, they do their bonds, they need to generate money through borrowing.

Their credit rating just went up because of the increased revenue from increased ridership. They're feeling pretty good about that. That's going to only help them in the future, with their borrowing. It makes them look good, as a well-functioning agency. As I'm sure we're going to talk about soon, people need to trust that they're going to be spending money well. They're about to get a bunch of money soon, maybe.

Arun Venugopal: Let's talk about buses. You were actually riding a bus this morning, correct?

Stephen Nessen: I was.

Arun Venugopal: Without paying, as I'm told.

Stephen Nessen: That's true. I did not pay. It was a free bus.

Arun Venugopal: We'll have to just trust you on that. Tell us about who you were talking to. There's a free ride happening. Fellow riders on these buses, how are they reacting to this free ride? Tell us about this experience and where it's happening.

Stephen Nessen: The MTA is doing this free bus pilot for six months. One bus line in each borough is free. This was actually part of the state budget that just passed. Lawmakers got the MTA to agree to spend a little extra money to improve midday and weekend subway service, because they can't really improve bus service, exactly. They're at the whims of traffic and whatnot. The one thing they could do is offer free buses. They're doing a pilot where there's one free bus line in each borough.

This morning, I rode the B60 in Brooklyn from Williamsburg to Canarsie. It was a, I don't know, eye-opening experience, but it was [laughs]--

Arun Venugopal: It's a pretty long stretch.

Stephen Nessen: It's a long stretch, and there's a good range of people that get on from Williamsburg, compared to down in Canarsie. I would say, generally, everyone is pretty low-key about it. They're like, "Oh, free. All right, cool." I was like, "Oh, you don't seem very excited. Free bus. I'm happy to save that money." They were like, "I already took a Subway to get here, and there's a free transfer," so it was free for them anyways.

Arun Venugopal: That's New Yorker gratitude for you.

Stephen Nessen: I got it, but I did meet a carpenter, for example, who lives and works on the B60 line, and he's like, "This is great. I'm going to save $600 over the course of this time. That's money in my pocket. I like that." I spoke with a nurse, similarly. She was like, "Wow, 30 bucks a week, I'm going to save. This is good for me." That's what the lawmakers wanted when they put this in, is to save working-class folks some money right now, with inflation, and just the way things are in the world, the cost of everything.

Throw them a bone, help out. This is what they can offer. It's going to run for six months. MTA is testing it. It's somewhat, I don't know, questionable about what they're going to get out of this so-called pilot. They say they're going to track ridership and see what they can learn about it. I'll tell you what I learned about it. I talked to a woman who got on on the back of the bus, and I asked her, "Are you excited about this?" She's like, "Yes, it's fine. A lot of the time, I just don't pay anyways." Going back to our fare evasion discussion.

Arun Venugopal: Interesting. Do you think this is in any way an acknowledgement of just a hard reality of the bus system?

Stephen Nessen: For sure. For sure. I think the MTA knows they have problems. I don't exactly know why they don't address some of them. For example, rear door boarding on local buses. This woman was telling me, "This bus is crowded." She's like, "This bus is usually late and it's usually crowded." She can't even muscle her way to the front to pay the fare, even if she wanted to. They're complaining about lost fares, but they're also not making it easy for people to pay in the back of the bus.

Arun Venugopal: Isn't the issue, also, that there's-- Nobody going to monitor whether you do actually pay at the back of the bus?

Stephen Nessen: There's that, too. The MTA is cracking down on this bus fare evasion. In fact, they say one in three bus riders aren't paying the fare. They have so-called eagle teams that are going on local buses and they will issue tickets to people who skip the fare.

Arun Venugopal: Let's take a quick call, perhaps, from Nora. Hi, Nora, calling from Harlem. You're on the air.

Nora: Hi, how are you?

Arun Venugopal: Great.

Nora: I'm calling because people have gotten very entitled about bringing their animals on the train, and they fall into the same category as turnstile jumpers, as far as I'm concerned. It's just a blind eye to that issue, and it's increasing exponentially, all the time.

Arun Venugopal: This is something that upsets you, Nora?

Nora: Oh, yes. They're not in their cases. People bring big animals on. Sometimes they're not on a leash, even, and on the platforms, in the cars. If it's not going to be against MTA rules, then I guess they need to make that public, but as far as I know, you're not supposed to bring your animals on the subway.

Stephen Nessen: Nora, in fact, it's so crazy. This morning, there were two dogs in one subway car that I was in, and they had to separate each other because they were going to bite or bark at each other. I've definitely seen what she's talking about.

Arun Venugopal: Interesting.

Stephen Nessen: They are supposed to be in bags.

Arun Venugopal: That's right. Which we've seen can be quite enormous in the cases of some people with very large dogs that they're carrying around. I'm sure there's all kinds of hernia issues that go with that too, which we're not going to talk about today. If you're just joining us, I'm Arun Venugopal from the WNYC, Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian today. Talking to my colleague here at WNYC, transit reporter Stephen Nessen.

Stephen, we've got ridership numbers up. Why don't you give us a lesson, for people who are just getting back into the system, about OMNY versus MetroCards? Give the primer and the advantages of one over the other.

Stephen Nessen: Sure. OMNY is the MTA's newest fare payment system. It will be the only fare payment system, probably, in a year or so, but basically, it's the ability to pay for your trip using either a contactless credit card, if you have a credit card, or a debit card with one of those little Wi-Fi symbols on it, that means you can just tap it at the OMNY machine and it will take the fare out of your account. Very easy, very fast.

If you have a smartphone and you use Apple Pay or something on your phone, or whatever smartphone you use, you can use that. I will say, pro tip here. I'm even educating people in our own newsroom about this on the regular. We get our transit benefit card or whatever, but for reasons I won't go into, it doesn't have a contactless chip in it. I can't actually use my commuter benefit card at the OMNY machine, but what I can do is add that to my smartphone in the credit card section, the wallet, and then I can use it at the OMNY reader.

I can use my smartphone at the reader. You put your transit benefit card on your smartphone, then you can tap, and then you can go. That's the basics of OMNY. It's great. I really recommend it. At this point, there's no benefit to using a MetroCard unless you really just like holding a MetroCard. I suppose it's somewhat more anonymous because it's not connected to a phone. If privacy is an issue, you can use a MetroCard.

It's somewhat more private, I suppose, although they can certainly track your swipes as well. We're in a modern era here, where--

Arun Venugopal: That's one of the things. It's so easy to use your credit card, or whatever, but I don't even know what the privacy issues are. It just seems so vast.

Stephen Nessen: I don't want to open that can of worms, but the MTA says everything's secure. However, if we want to go down just a little bit of a rabbit hole, a website recently found that if you just have someone's credit card number, say, a spouse, you can check on the website all of their entries for the last week, just with that credit card number. Some domestic abuse folks raised the flag, like, "Excuse me. This could be really dangerous for a partner who's trying to get away from another partner, who doesn't want an abusive partner to know where they're going."

The MTA disabled that feature immediately, once that was flagged. We'll call it a work in progress. Can I add one more thing?

Arun Venugopal: Sure.

Stephen Nessen: One really great reason to use OMNY, for MTA, and also for us the users, is the seven-day unlimited. They have this program now, where you tap-- Ideally, you're going to use the same card every time, or the same app or whatever, on your phone. If you tap 12 times in a seven-day period, once you do 12 times, let's say you take 12 rides, you start on a Monday, you take 12 rides by Wednesday, the rest of the seven days are free. Essentially, it's like an unlimited card that you don't have to buy upfront.

Arun Venugopal: Great incentive for people who are not in the hybrid mode so much, is out and about.

Stephen Nessen: It makes a lot of sense. They actually let you start that seven-day whenever you want. Let's say you want to come in on a Tuesday, it will start for you on Tuesday then, Tuesday, Wednesday, until the following Tuesday. You have that seven-day window to hit the 12 rides, and then the rest of the week is free. Just to do a quick math-- If you buy the seven-day unlimited, it's $34 at this point. If you buy the monthly unlimited, it's $132. No matter how you add it up, the twelve-day OMNY is still going to be your best option.

Arun Venugopal: Let's take a call from Lisa in Brooklyn. Hi, Lisa.

Lisa: Hi. Speaking of OMNY, I have a friend who has just gone over to using OMNY. He uses it with his iPhone. He's also registered as a half-fare customer. He has discovered that every time he enters the system, he gets charged full fare. He has been in contact with OMNY, he's been in contact with Apple Pay. I think he's been in contact with his credit card. They all pointed fingers at one another. He has changed method of payment.

Nothing he has done works, and he can't be the only one this is happening to. I wonder if you heard of it, and if you haven't, could you please look into it and escalate it?

Stephen Nessen: Yes. I believe that discounted fare users are not eligible to use OMNY yet. I will say, the OMNY rollout has been totally botched by the MTA. Perhaps not a surprise to critical MTA watchers over the years.

Lisa: And former transit authority employees. I also, please, [unintelligible 00:21:53] when referring to the New York City transit authority, the subways, MaBSTOA, and Staten Island Rapid Transit, please, please, say TA or transit authority, and do not [unintelligible 00:22:03] everything with the MTA, which is a different agency and covers a much wider range. For New York City-specific things, it's the Transit Authority

Stephen Nessen: Point taken. Thank you very much.

Arun Venugopal: All right. Well, let's see if there's anything else there. Let's just do a quick around upon congestion pricing. Stephen, where are we with that right now? It's supposed to start in May, correct?

Stephen Nessen: They're still aiming to start in May. We still don't know how much drivers are going to pay. We still don't know the cost of it yet. In fact, I asked MTA chair, Janno Lieber, just last week, "When are we going to find out?" He says maybe next month. He's thinking next month, definitely, probably next month. You'll recall the traffic mobility review board, the panel of experts that are in charge of coming up with the pricing scheme, are still putting the final touches on what they think they want to propose for drivers to pay.

We still don't know. The MTA, meanwhile, is barreling ahead installing the gantries, the easy past readers. You might even see them in Manhattan at this point. I think more than 30% of them have been installed. They're barreling ahead with that process, and like you said, they are hoping to install it, get it up and running by May.

Arun Venugopal: What kind of carve out--? Are there any carve-outs, if you will, that have already been announced, or seem likely?

Stephen Nessen: No, we don't know what it's going to be. This group, yes, they're in charge of coming up with the price. They're also in charge of whatever carve-outs, or exemptions, as they would call it, are going to exist. There are the exemptions that were mandated from the state legislature that made congestion pricing possible. Those still stand. I believe it's people who live in the zone and make less than $60,000, vehicles that are designated for transporting-- Wheelchair-accessible vehicles designated for transporting those folks.

There's all kinds of concerns that are being tossed about left and right at this point. For example, on the wheelchair issue, taxis that transport people in a wheelchair are exempt, but what about someone that has a wheelchair pass, like one of the cards, or whatever? It's not clear that they're exempt yet. There's a myriad of different groups that want to be exempt from this, and the more exemptions there are, that means the more that everyone else has to pay, so the cost goes up for every exemption that they include.

Arun Venugopal: It wouldn't necessarily just say that they make less money through congestion pricing?

Stephen Nessen: That's really the issue, the big issue is that they're required to raise a billion dollars a year, so matter what you charge, it has to total one billion a year, which is a lot of money. I'm seeing rumblings in the press today. John Samuel said, who was the head of the transport workers union, he is on this board, and he's also on the MTA board. He's on the traffic mobility review board set for coming up with the prices.

He's also on the MTA board, and he's complaining that it's just a cash grab at this point. The MTA really is just focused on how are they going to get the billion dollars. They're not necessarily doing that much to improve service before it goes into effect. They're not going to add dramatically more buses, subway lines, or service to help out or incentivize people to get out of their vehicles.

Arun Venugopal: We have a text that's been sent to us from a listener, who says, "I'm on senior gate and the OMNY does work. You have to make an account on OMNY and designate the credit card in a setting on the phone." Thank you for that little bit of advice. We're going to leave it there for today. I've been speaking with Stephen Nessen, Transportation reporter for the WNYC Newsroom. Thank you, Stephen.

Stephen Nessen: Thank you, Arun.

 

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