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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. With us now, John, better known by his nickname Janno, Lieber. Chair and CEO of the MTA, the MTA, of course, runs the buses and subways in the city and the commuter rails too, Metro-North and Long Island railroad. Janno Lieber has now been officially confirmed by the state Senate, but he's been running the MTA since last summer, really, and ran the capital construction side of the agency before that. In fact, his experience with public transit stretches back to the administration of New York City mayor Ed Koch in the 1980s.

Of course, it's a daunting time to head the agency, with subway ridership hovering around half of what it was before the pandemic. Weekday ridership on Metro-North last week was only around a third of pre-pandemic levels from the stats sheet that I saw. Then there's crime and fear of crime, with assaults in the subways up to levels not seen since the 1990s, though other subway crimes are down. Of course, there have been those incidents of people being pushed onto the tracks. Today's MTA headline in our newscasts is about Manhattan officials asking the MTA to try a pilot program of putting up barriers at the platform edge that open when the train is in the station only.

I think Mr. Lieber has expressed some openness to that idea. We'll certainly talk about that. Plus Governor Hochul has proposed Interborough Express idea to run trains on existing freight lines from Brooklyn through Queens without going through Manhattan, and more. Mr. Lieber, thanks for making yourself accessible for this. Welcome to WNYC.

Janno Lieber: Great to be with you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take your calls as well. What's one thing that you think would make getting around on mass transit better? 212-433-WNYC. For Janno Lieber, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. Well, to start on some good news, Mr. Lieber, do I see correctly that all the subway lines are running again after Omicron staffing shortages led to having to suspend some lines? Is staffing back to normal?

Janno Lieber: Yes, thank you for making that point. We had a we had a blip in crew availability. Just like the rest of the economy we had a hit from Omicron, but we did a very targeted reduction suspension of a couple of lines, the B, the Z, the W, which overlap with other lines. Every one of our 472 stations was always operational. Nobody was ever stranded, and we're now back, connection on every line on every service.

Brian Lehrer: Also on the pandemic, we'll probably get this so maybe I'm preempting a caller, but I get calls every time we have a COVID in the city segment from people complaining that mask-wearing on the subway, including when the car is crowded, is less than universal and not well enforced. What's the reality that you're willing to acknowledge? Is there anything new that you as the new head of the system are doing about it?

Janno Lieber: Yes, we're actually back up to a very high level, which is 97% in our most recent survey, of mask wearing. Listen, I ride a lot. It's no secret, there's frequently one person, it gets a little worse as you get later at night, who is not wearing a mask, but the overwhelming evidence, Brian, is that mass transit has never been a vector of transmittal of COVID. Our riders, because in the off hours and the weekends, they're riding even more than they're riding on the weekdays. They're expressing a high level of confidence that it's safe, and it's a good idea to ride mass transit.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have actual data, excuse me, on COVID transmission in subway, cars, or Metro-North, or Long Island cars, railroad cars for that matter, or is it just too hard to know and you fall back on saying the cars are cleaned and the ventilation is good?

Janno Lieber: The data that I'm talking about is based on what we've seen in Europe and Asia, which have returned to much higher levels of mass transit usage compared to pre-COVID, Brian. Those places, they've studied whether mass transit has ever been a vector of transmittal. It wasn't, and obviously the cleaning of the cars has made people feel very much more comfortable coming back to mass transit. We have continued that with federal support right up to now. Every car gets cleaned every day and the stations get cleaned twice a day, or disinfected I should say, and it's helping us to bring our ridership back.

Brian Lehrer: Stanley in Morningside Heights. You're on WNYC with the CEO and chair of the MTA, Janno Lieber. Hi, Stanley.

Stanley: Hi, thank you for taking my call. I'm calling about the homeless crisis. I have seen more homeless, aggressive homeless, clearly mentally ill homeless, on the cars when I take my kids to school every morning. Sometimes they are spread out on the seats. Sometimes they come up to you and it feels aggressive and it feels dangerous. I know this is a city-wide issue, but I'm asking you what practical steps are being taken towards a solution? I still have yet to see any mental health crisis workers or police officers in large numbers. I'm asking you, what is being done to deal with this clear problem?

Janno Lieber: Stanley, thank you for your question. We're really focused on this issue. Number one, the first step was taken by Mayor Adams and by his new police commissioner when he said, and it's actually happening, I'm not sure it's reached every line, but that they're moving the police officers, not adding to the number, but they're moving police officers, as I had been asking for a while, onto the platforms and onto the train. The new police commissioner and the new head of the transit bureau have said that is the foundation of their policing strategy with the transit cops on trains, and on platform. Big step forward.

Yesterday, having cops on platforms, which is a big plus, enabled a rider to step off a train at Times Square and tell a cop that he thought that somebody on the train had a gun, the cops intervened and they arrested somebody with a loaded 9mm pistol. The cops on the trains, cops on the platforms, is the first step. Your question also goes to the bigger issue of mental health services. Both the state and the city and the mayor affirmed it yesterday again, the state and the city have said they're going to bring a lot more mental health professionals into the subway to try to reach those people who have mental health issues and who are, they're using the system as a hotel or they have nowhere else to go, to get them out of the system.

That has not unfolded fully yet, and you're absolutely right, but the commitment from the governor and the mayor is right there and we're counting on it coming through. What you're describing does need to change, and we're very much in support of your viewpoint.

Brian Lehrer: As a follow-up before the MTA board meeting yesterday, I mentioned this in the intro, the Manhattan Borough president and all of the Borough's council members sent you a letter asking for barriers for subway tracks, something that could not only prevent the horrific crimes of people being pushed onto the tracks but also accidental falls, not to mention dropped phones and such. From my understanding, you've studied this and you've decided it's not feasible for most stations? I saw some other press reports that said you're open to a pilot program. Tell everybody right now, where are you on that request?

Janno Lieber: Honestly, I understand politicians want to get noticed, but the MTA, long before the Michelle Go incident, has been studying this because it's a real idea and something that we had to study for safety and other reasons. We look at every station, we have a 3,000-page report that includes analyzing the engineering at every station. There are serious challenges to installing platform doors, Brian. You know as an old New Yorker, we have different cars. We have three different subway systems that were combined historically. We have different cars all over the system with doors in different places, that's one thing.

The platforms in many cases can't support the additional load. The ADA access for wheelchairs, because of platform width, is an issue. That said, we found, depending on a lot of variables, 40 to 100 stations where platform doors are possible, and we're now going the next step to study exactly how that could be done because we would like to explore a pilot. I am disappointed that the Manhattan Borough president, who was the health committee chair of the city council for years, is acting like the MTA, which is already, long before he got interested, and has been doing a 3,000-page study.

He was the chair of the mental health committee. What was going on when they spent billions of dollars on mental health that left us with the conditions we're seeing in the system? I'd ask the politicians not to try to make hay out of this issue, but to work with the MTA for real solutions based on the engineering reality. We can't click our heels together and wish away.

Brian Lehrer: Does that mean you agree with the New York Post editorial today that says basically barriers are a stupid, expensive idea? What we need to deal with is mentally ill people in the subway.

Janno Lieber: You know what? I do think we need to deal with mentally ill people in the subway. I'm interested in immediate solutions that improve the conditions for our riders. That's what I'm about ,safety and the rider experience. That doesn't mean, though, that we're not going to keep studying and try to move forward on this idea of platform barriers and other safety enhancements, but they're going to take some time. My focus first has to be on what's going on now that affects the riders and the safety of our ridership.

Brian Lehrer: I think this next caller might have a whole other reason to be in favor of barriers on the platforms. Sasha in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with Janno Lieber, head of the MTA. Hello?

Sasha: Hi, Thanks, Brian. Chairman Lieber, as you know, the New York City subway is far behind on accessibility. Barely 25% of stations have stairs-free access for wheelchair users like me, but also older adults, families with strollers, et cetera. In other cities like Chicago and Boston, the systems that are as old are far ahead, let alone features that other riders with disabilities need like for disabilities of hearing, vision, or cognition. I want to recognize that you, Chief Accessibility Office Aroyo and board member Calls have been shifting elevator construction into a higher gear. With those new elevators that are coming online, that is a big win. Thank you for that.

I have an ongoing issue, that's really a safety issue, that's about elevators that constantly go out of service, even when you build new ones, and that's not treated with urgency and severity. For instance, last week, I was at 14th Street, I get almost to work, I'm three elevator rides in and I get almost up to the [unintelligible 00:11:35] and boom, the elevator is out getting me from just the mezzanine from the station up to the sidewalk.

There's just a little paper sign. There's no work going on. There's no announcements, nothing that could have told me further up the line. I'm stranded. At that point, it's really a safety issue, not just an inconvenience, because my choice to get upstairs is either we could call the FDNY. I know from experience, that's the thing they do if I go to the station booth, I can try to find someone to carry me up the stairs. It's not just frustrating, it's demeaning. I have places to be, I have to get to work, and there's no recognition. I guess what I'm asking is, a station when the elevator goes out is really offline for people with disabilities and it's really dangerous for anybody who needs that stair free access, like parents with strollers who have to end up carrying that up the stairs.

Brian Lehrer: Sasha let me get your response. You hear that issue Mr. Lieber, obviously.

Janno Lieber: Yes. I recognize Sasha's voice and he's been a strong advocate for accessibility. I appreciate the recognition that we're building elevators to make the subway system ATA accessible faster than ever before and it's something I'm passionate about. The system is for everybody. It's for people with mobility impairments, it's for families with strollers, it's for older people who can't get up and down the stairs the way they used to, and we've got to make it better. Sasha is very much part of that effort. Here's what I would say on the maintenance of elevators.

One, the new ones that we're building, we're making it part of the contract that the builder is responsible and they don't get paid if the elevator isn't available, if it's not operable, if it's broken more than a very small percentage of the time. We're trying to solve the problem that Sasha is describing by building it into the contracts. The second is, we've got to get our customer service operation has to be close. What Sasha is describing, we need a faster communication. We do have elevator and escalator status on our website. We have to do better if Sasha is experiencing it. No one should go through what Sasha described, getting all the way through the system and then being frustrated at the final end. I'm very sympathetic.

The one thing I would say is, is that the other piece of this, we're proud that the whole bus system is accessible. Buses serve a huge portion of the city, it's an equity issue, we've got to make the bus system faster so that people with mobility issues can use the bus and know they're going to get somewhere fast. A lot of the city, not as much access to the rail system. We need to make buses better for everybody.

Brian Lehrer: Sasha for you as a people with disabilities advocate with respect to transit, did you have any take on the barriers for the platforms? I see that that's being raised as a disability issue? I don't think relevant to wheelchairs, but other kinds of disabilities like being sight impaired?

Sasha: Absolutely. For people with sight impairments, I'm so admiring and amazed that they are able to use the New York City subway and it seems terrifying. I was fortunate to go to Tokyo a couple of years ago and I thought, "Oh wow, this can really work." It was a real mind shift. I thought, "This is possible." I would love to see that in New York for that.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. On the platform barriers, but it also raises a larger issue, Mr. Lieber, to the extent that it's the cost that would be a barrier. Can we talk about the recent report comparing the MTA's operating costs to those in other cities? It's not apples to apples in all cases, I understand, but the MTA comes out lower in efficiency, higher in cost, than many other transit systems. Do you accept those numbers and what are the main drivers of those differences?

Janno Lieber: Listen, I accept them. I actually view them as a challenge to the MTA. Our operating costs need to be able to deliver more at the same cost. I think everyone agrees about that. We have some special challenges, you talk about apples to apples. Operating a 24-hour system means that there are all kinds of implications of that . We have a really old car fleet, Brian, and that the maintenance of the old equipment and the other old equipment in the system is also part of the inefficiency. There are some things that we have to attack. Our availability of our workforce. We're getting fewer days per year out of our MTA workforce, who are great, and we love them, and they're great professionals but that has been a trend that I think we need to focus on.

Workers comp is getting more and more expensive. There are things that we can do to work with the legislature and others to try to make us more efficient. I accept those numbers and view them as a challenge.

Brian Lehrer: The other big MTA financing news just recently, our listeners, some of them know this, some of them don't, that the agency got its largest grant ever from the federal government this month, $6 billion on top of smaller grants earlier during the pandemic. Does that make up for the drop in ridership? What's the picture for the agency's finances when that runs out?

Janno Lieber: Thank you for the question because it is important. The $6 billion was part of the three bills that Congress did during COVID. That included things for businesses and individuals and renters, all that COVID relief money. One thing went to transit in transit operations that had been lost ridership and lost money because of COVID. We got $14 billion out of those three bills, which is great, but it only carries us a few years, Brian. As you remember, at the height of the pandemic, we were losing $200 million a week. We kept running all service for essential workers right through the pandemic so everybody would be able to get to hospitals and grocery stores, and pharmacies and so on. The money is going to run out, that COVID relief money in a couple of years. We need to work with the legislature and the governor to find new recurring revenues, because ridership is probably not going to come 100% back.

It's an equity issue, as I always say. The transit system, we found out during COVID, is like police and fire and sanitation. It's an essential service and we need to fund it that way, rather than having a totally on the backs of the riders. I'm looking for the legislature and others to help us solve that problem in the next couple of years.

Brian Lehrer: How important is congestion pricing to drive into Manhattan business districts to the long-term financing of the MTA? Do you actually have a start date for that yet?

Janno Lieber: Yes. Congestion pricing is, as everybody knows, it's charging a special toll to the central business district in Manhattan. We need it. The money from congestion pricing, which is a few years off, has been assigned to the capital program, which is what we use to buy new subway cars and rebuild the system and create new lines, and so on and so on. Congestion pricing is a good policy for a lot of reasons. We need the vehicles that need to be in the central business district to be able to get around. That's buses and emergency vehicles and para-transit vehicles for people with disabilities. Those need to be able to get around, and they can't move around now because of congestion.

We also need to deal with air quality because of the impact on climate change and get rid of congestion that way. There are a lot of good policy reasons for congestion pricing. We are on schedule per what the federal government is requiring of us to satisfy federal environmental law before we implement it. We're on schedule to get the environmental review done by the end of 2022 this year, and then we will be actually building it out and starting to charge tolls in 2023. The actual tolls are going to be determined by this special board that legislature created and that group is going to be selected and impaneled sometime in the spring, in all probability, of this year.

Then they will figure out what exactly the tolls are going to be and we'll start to implement the system. Mass transit is the environmental solution. We are the antidote to climate change and congestion pricing is part of that.

Brian Lehrer: A few more minutes with Janno Lieber, the Chair and CEO of the MTA. Kenneth in East New York, you're on WNYC. Hi Kenneth.

Kenneth: Hi. Good morning and thank you for taking my call. I'd like to ask a question to the CEO of the MTA. Is there anything that can be done with the C Train and the dearth or the lack of trains on the C Train? This has been happening way before the COVID pandemic. I've waited at canal street or west fourth street and have seen three, four, even sometimes five E Trains are passed by before you see a C Train going to Brooklyn and then when it's coming in the station it is packed. Those E Trains that come before that, hardly anybody is on there. Especially during this time of this COVID pandemic, you get the heebie jeebies about being all tight and close to people. Those trains going to Brooklyn are usually packed, and then they cut back the service. When is the C Train rider going to get some love and respect finally from the MTA and give us a handful of trains during the rush hour? Can you increase, give us a few extra trains?

Brian Lehrer: I can tell you, as someone at the other end of the line, that people from upper Manhattan have the same question as you just posed from east New York, Kenneth. Mr. Lieber, go ahead.

Janno Lieber: All I got to say is east New York's entitled to some love, number one, because that is a transit intensive community with a lot of folks who rely on mass transit. They were essential workers, they rode more than people in Manhattan and in more affluent precincts right through the pandemic. What Kenneth's talking about, I'm right with you. Right now, I just checked the app, we got six minutes between C Trains. What Kenneth is describing, I think is attributable in part to the problems we had with crew shortages in the last portion of the pandemic dating back to last summer.

We didn't hire anybody, Kenneth, when we didn't know if we were going to get money from Washington, if we were going to be able to keep running service. We didn't hire people, people retired and we were short of train operators and conductors. Unfortunately we don't always get to choose where those train operators and conductors to go, it's part of our union agreements. We were especially short on the C Train. Kenneth is not wrong, we were definitely running less C Train service than we want to and it's something, now that we are getting our workforce back, that deserves more attention and that I hope the candidates will start to feel that there is more C service than there was during the last year or so of the pandemic.

Brian Lehrer: Those C Trains go through some of the city's Blackest neighborhoods as well, residents who also have tended disproportionately to be both affected by COVID and to be essential workers. It's yet another way that there was disparate impact from the pandemic, in this case flowing through the MTA.

Janno Lieber: You're not wrong Brian. All I'm going to say is that, we're actually doing signal replacement on huge portions of the 8th Avenue line right into Brooklyn, because we want to run more trains on that line because of its importance to central Brooklyn and upper Manhattan and our essential worker and low income communities. We want to run more trains, more reliable service, we're redoing all the signals. That's a major investment, but no question that is got to be a priority, because that is a transit dependent community, both ends of that line.

Brian Lehrer: I know you got to go in a minute. Give us your take on Governor Hochul's interborough express proposal, transportation via rail between Brooklyn and Queens without having to go through Manhattan. Are you for this? Why isn't the Bronx included, as some people have asked, and how is it different from the BQX that Mayor de Blasio was proposing to run along the Brooklyn and Queens Waterfront?

Janno Lieber: Number one, Governor Hochul has been great to work with because she's passionate about transit. This was an MTA study that we were doing, she got excited about it because it connects some, both low income communities and especially communities that are transit deserts, where they don't really have access to the rail system conveniently. East Flatbush especially, Maspeth, Middle Village, whole swaths of Brooklyn and Queens that don't really connect to the rail system would be connected by this new IBX Interborough express system.

It talk about transit equity, all of those people who don't have access to the subway system now would be connected to 17 lines as you move north-south with this new line. How's it different than the system that de Blasio proposed? That system went on the Brooklyn and Queens Waterfront, which is already pretty developed in not every space, but generally pretty affluent. This connects communities like East New York, like East Flatbush, communities of color, communities of low income residents, to the broader opportunities in jobs, education, everything New York has to offer.

That's why we love it and that's why the governor who's focused on transit equity a lot. The other thing, Brian, not to be overlooked is it uses an existing right of way. We love that because my motto is, "Let's get more transit out of the infrastructure we have." Sometimes you have to build a new tunnel like in the 2nd Avenue subway, but let's get more out of the infrastructure we have. We're doing it in the Bronx, you mentioned the Bronx. The Bronx is actually not being excluded, they are going first because we took the Hell Gate line in the Bronx, it's now only used by Amtrak. 25 trains a day, and we're putting 150 Metro north trains a day there so people in Co-Op City and Parkchester can get to Manhattan instead of 75 minutes, an hour and a quarter, in 35 minutes.

They can go pursue jobs or education in Westchester, Connecticut as well as coming south into Manhattan. We're connecting the Bronx to the whole region first and now the interborough express is going to get this Brooklyn and Queens component done as well.

Brian Lehrer: Are there also going to be freight trains on that same track?

Janno Lieber: Right now it's a freight line, it's got a very small number of freight trains. We've worked it out so that you could have, and this is an idea that Congressman Jerry Nadler has been passionate about it for a long time. If we end up being able to have more Cross-harbor, Cross-Hudson freight they could simultaneously use the line, not the exact same tracks, but the same right of way for a freight travel as well as having passenger travel. That was the first thing that the consultant engineers studied so that we could have both passenger and freight. The passenger analysis is going forward, we're doing the environmental review and we could actually implement it and build them separately, irrespective of how quickly the freight component is moving.

Brian Lehrer: Great. We can address transit deserts and the supply chain at the same time.

Janno Lieber: God willing.

Brian Lehrer: We want to thank you, Janno Lieber, Chair and CEO of the MTA for coming on and answering so many of my questions and our listeners questions. I hope we can do this from time to time because, as you can hear, there's a big appetite for it and I know our listeners really appreciate you coming on today.

Janno Lieber: Glad to be with you.

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