Last night, mayoral candidates gathered to discuss mass transit at a panel hosted by the Transit Workers Union. On hand were Tom Allon, Bill de Blasio, Adolfo Carrión, John Liu, Sal Albanese and Christine Quinn (Former MTA chairman Joe Lhota was notably absent from this transit panel). The discussion packed the room with concerned citizens and members of various advocacy groups. That this Friday-night panel filled the room indicates that New Yorkers, and the mayoral candidates who hope to represent them, are increasingly concerned with how we get from A to B.
But while candidates spent half the panel discussing safety issues, they surprisingly ignored the recent spate ofsubway fatalities, choosing instead to focus on mass transit violence, crime and sexual assauts/gropings—Allon jokingly suggested that, in addition to CompStat, "we might wanna start something called GropeStat."
Candidates outlined how they plan to respond to the sorts of subway crime, violence and sexual assault straphangers fall prey to all too often. Bill Thompson pointed to the efficacy of smartphones, noting, "We all have the technology in our hands to be able to help." Comptroller Liu agreed, adding that "Cell phone service in the tunnels and the platforms has to be made a priority."
But some candidates focused on increasing human presence on mass transit. "We need to increase the number of cops in this city," said Tom Allon, who went on to propose that "it might be time to look at unbundling" the Transit Police and NYPD, which merged in 1995. Public Advocate Bill de Blasio said that, "What we need .. is more police presence on the buses," and that "police need better training."
Whether advocating for policing or better technology to make mass transit safer, the candidates all seemed to agree that more transparent transit data will be essential. Quinn highlighted the importance of cross-agency sharing, noting: "There is no reason to collect all this data … and not share it between law enforcement agencies." So after Bloomberg is out, expect to see lots of data about subway violence and crime (In case dog poop and rat maps weren't cutting it for you).
Surprisingly, what excited the audience the most was the discussion of budgets and funding. Currently, the City budgets 0.2% of its budget to the MTA. Candidates were asked if they would consider increasing this to one percent. While most answered in the negative, John Liu was the sole candidate to go against the grain, saying: "The fact that we spend one fifth of one percent of the city's budget on mass transit is deplorable."
The comptroller soon got a rise out of the crowd, pointing out that the additional 0.8% of the budget would be "five-hundred sixty million dollars. Five-hundred sixty million dollars is a lot of money, but you know what? We're spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year giving it away to corporations and private developers that were supposed to create jobs but my auditing found in the vast majority of the cases, they created no jobs. That's money that could be much better used on mass transit." The crowd reacted with shouts of "Tell 'em Liu!"
Candidates who shunned the idea of increased City spending on the MTA offered a wide variety of ideas to generate cash: Allon proposed selling naming rights to to subway stations (because why should Barclays have all the fun?); Sal Albanese suggested a fair toll system to equalize bridge tolls; Quinn, Thompson and Carrion all advocated for the return of a commuter tax, which the City had until 1999 and would tax commuters who live outside the City.
There were a few glaring omissions during the evening: most prominently, there was no direct talk of the concerns over subway deaths, nor any of the proposed ways to curtail them. And there was little significant talk of bike lanes, a topic which only came up briefly in response to a question about environmental sustainability. A few candidates gave generic, BIKES GOOD! YAY BIKES! answers. But Allon established his position in the War On Cyclists, saying Bloomberg built bike lanes "in a hodge podge way" and that "I'm concerned about 15,000 [bike share] bikes being on the street next year."
