MTA chief says subway fears overblown despite attacks


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The MTA’s top executive downplayed subway safety concerns during Monday’s congestion pricing rollout, even as more New Yorkers are being pushed to use the transit system.

During a “Bloomberg Surveillance” interview, MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber dismissed safety worries, suggesting that “Some of these high profile incidents, you know, terrible attacks have gotten in people’s heads and made the whole system feel unsafe.”

Lieber attempted to paint a rosier picture of subway safety, stating that “The overall stats are positive. Last year we were actually at 12 and a half percent less crime than 2019, the last year before COVID.”

When questioned about implementing protective barriers similar to those found in London or Tokyo’s transit systems, Lieber indicated that addressing fare evasion was the immediate priority, with safety barriers to follow.

“We put a billion dollars in our new capital program since fare evasion and this whole phenomenon has definitely accelerated post-COVID. So we are going to start to replace all these turnstiles, which worked when I was a kid, but clearly are ineffective now for in the area that we’re living in, we got to replace them,” he explained.

Lieber’s dismissive stance on subway safety comes at a concerning time, following two recent violent incidents: a passenger narrowly survived being pushed onto the tracks in front of an approaching 1 train on New Year’s Eve, and a woman suffered fatal burns in a horrific attack on a Brooklyn F train just weeks prior.

 

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