Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll look at the ramifications of a letter from the secretary of transportation requesting data on crime in the subway. We’ll also look at why an independent commission says closing the Rikers Island jail complex should be someone’s full-time job.
It wasn’t really about crime. Or was it?
A letter from Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation, demanded details about crime in subways and on buses in New York City. He wrote that passengers “need to feel secure and travel in a safe environment free of crime.”
But subway crime has declined 40 percent so far this year, compared with the same period in 2020, shortly before the pandemic. Fare evasion was down 25 percent in the last half of 2024, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
Janno Lieber, the chairman of the transit agency, deflected a question about whether Duffy’s letter was a threat. “I feel like the kid who gets called on” by a teacher “when you’ve actually done your homework,” Lieber said. “We have done so much to improve subway safety.”
But to transit watchers and officials in New York, the possible subtexts of Duffy’s letter mattered more than the subject itself. Here is a look at some of them.
Timing. Was it a coincidence that Duffy released the letter three days before the deadline he had set for congestion pricing to end?
The letter said nothing about congestion pricing and the standoff between the Trump administration and the M.T.A., the state agency that oversees the toll-collection program pricing and also runs the transit system. The agency has no plans to stop collecting tolls of as much as $9 from cars that enter Manhattan south of 60th Street.
“This is what people predicted,” Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University who is the former director of the Rudin Center for Transportation there. “If the M.T.A. did not abandon congestion pricing, the administration would find other ways to retaliate.” Federal agencies could delay or withhold federal funds for critical programs and projects in New York, including a long-sought expansion of Pennsylvania Station.
Politics. Championing safety has been a reliable issue for Republicans, and with the letter, Duffy has challenged the credibility of the M.T.A.
“That he has found a way to enter the debate on transit beyond congestion pricing is amazing,” Moss said of Duffy, a former congressman from Wisconsin and a former Fox Business host. “I don’t think this guy would know the A train from the F train,” he said, “but he understands that he can use the hammer of safety to force a response to his demands.”
The mayoral campaign. For voters, the perception of crime may matter more than the statistics. The subway is a shared space with a singularly up-close-and-personal connection for New Yorkers: When you hear about an incident in the subway, you think, “That could happen to me,” even if it happened in the middle of the night at a station you never go through. There’s a sense of shared vulnerability that ultimately affects voters’ decisions.
Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul have worked together to increase police patrols. But Adams is lagging in fund-raising among Democrats hoping to replace him. On Tuesday, the day Duffy sent his letter to the M.T.A., Andrew Cuomo, widely considered the front-runner in the campaign for mayor, unveiled a plan to “restore order and confidence in New York City’s transit system,” as a news release from his campaign put it.
If elected mayor, Cuomo would not control the subways, as he did when he was governor. But his plan calls for increasing police staffing levels in the transit system by about 50 percent. The mayor does control the Police Department, which works with the M.T.A. on policing in the subways, so the mayor has at least some influence — even if many major decisions are ultimately made by Hochul, who replaced Cuomo when he resigned in 2021 amid allegations involving sexual harassment. (He has consistently denied the allegations.)
Money. Duffy’s letter laid the groundwork for citing crime as a reason to ultimately withhold federal money or compel a shift in funding to put more police officers in the subway.
The M.T.A. has asked for $14 billion in federal money for its next five-year capital budget. And when it comes to congestion pricing, the money at stake is staggering — an expected $48.6 million in the first month of the program. It is money the M.T.A. could use to borrow significantly more in the municipal bond market, money it plans to spend on repairs and upgrades. It wants to modernize subway signals, some of which were installed during the Depression; make stations more accessible for riders with disabilities; and extend the Second Avenue subway line to East Harlem.
Weather
Expect some light drizzle and fog until early afternoon. Temperatures will be in the mid-50s. In the evening, there will be showers and a dip into the low 40s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until March 31 (Eid al-Fitr).
The latest New York news
Closing Rikers should be a full-time job, a commission says
The city’s deadline for closing the notorious Rikers Island jail complex is two and a half years away, and the city is not on track to meet it. A commission appointed by the City Council speaker says the way to shut down Rikers once and for all is to make that the full-time job of “a senior point person” at the Department of Correction.
The commission — which called Rikers “decrepit, dysfunctional and violent” — also said there should be a “senior point person” at City Hall.
“A senior leader with real clout who is solely focused on closing Rikers is critical,” the commission said in a 111-page report. “To date, responsibility for closing Rikers has been diffuse, and numerous senior officials have taken turns as the ‘point person.’”
The report from the commission was the second offering city officials a path to closing the complex and replacing it with four borough-based jails. The commission was initially set up by Melissa Mark-Viverito, the City Council speaker at the time, and reappointed in 2023 by Adrienne Adams, who had become speaker in 2022 and has pressed for the shutdown of the complex.
The speaker, who is not related to Mayor Eric Adams, is a candidate in the crowded field of Democrats campaigning to replace him. He supported doing away with Rikers when he ran in 2021 but has lately backed away from the idea.
The report was released days after the death of a 20-year-old man who was found in his cell at Rikers. The man, Ariel Quidone, had been arrested on robbery charges. He was the third person this year to die either while being held at a city jail or shortly after being released from custody.
METROPOLITAN diary
Coffee shop
Dear Diary:
I was having a lunch meeting with a colleague at a coffee shop on First Avenue. We were discussing the art market and galleries when a man in the next booth turned around.
“Excuse me,” he said, “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation. I work at a financial company but am trying to start an art education and aesthetics company. Can I ask you a few questions?”
We listened. His ideas were interesting, and my colleague took his card.
Then, as we were finishing lunch, out of the corner of my eye I saw an older woman approaching us from another nearby booth.
“Excuse me,” she said, “I’m 90, but I’m confused about when it’s correct English to use ‘me’ or ‘I’ in a sentence.”