2023-11-30
56 分钟It boosts economic opportunity and social mobility. It’s good for the environment. So why do we charge people to use it? The short answer: it’s complicated. Also: We talk to the man who gets half the nation’s mass-transit riders where they want to go (most of the time).
How important is public transportation where you live?
In most of the US, at least, the answer is not very.
But in New York City.
In New York, transit is like air and water.
You need it to survive.
And so we've done, I think, a pretty good job of making transit affordable.
In New York, it's like between ten and 15% the cost of owning an automobile, that is.
Jan O.
Lieber.
I'm the chair and CEO of the MTA in New York City, also known.
As the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
MTA is the New York state agency that operates the subways, the buses, the paratransit operation, and the commuter railroads, as well as a lot of our tolled bridges and tunnels in the New York area.
I read here that the MTA network has not only the nation's biggest bus fleet, but also more subway and commuter rail cars than all other us transit systems combined.
Is that possibly true?
Yeah, that's definitely true.
We carry close to half of the nation's mass transit passengers.
So, yes, public transit in New York is pretty important.
Maybe not quite as important as air and water, like Lieber says, but still.
Before COVID the subway system had five and a half million riders every weekday and another 2 million on buses.
The agency's annual operating budget is around $20 billion.