Welcome to Transit TLDR, where we watch the MTA Board meetings so you don’t have to! If you have 3 hours, you can totally go watch the whole thing yourself, but if not, here’s the 5 minute recap.
Here are the highlights riders should know:
Janno’s Updates
CEO and Board Chair Janno Lieber kicked off the meeting with updates on:
Ridership records
In the latter half of October, the subway hit a new post-pandemic 5-day weekday ridership record with 22.4 million riders. That same week, it also broke the post-pandemic 7-day weekly record with 29.7 million riders.Metro-North also set a new weekly ridership record with 1.6 million riders over 7 days.
Congestion pricing
Personal vehicle entries into the congestion relief zone are down by around 26,000 vehicles per day year-over-year, a 5% reduction from 2025 and a 15.5% reduction from pre-congestion pricing 2024.The MTA is also on track to hit their annual $500 million net congestion pricing revenue target. That money goes into a lockbox fund that can only be used for capital improvements to the transit system.
So where are we seeing those capital improvements as of late?
Major accessibility upgrades at 42 St-Bryant Park
The transit hub will soon be fully ADA accessible with new elevators, upgraded stair free corridors AND an accessible in-station transfer from 42 St to the 7 train at 5 Av.Construction started on accessibility upgrades at 5 additional stations
Kingsbridge Rd (4)
167 St (B,D)
Gates Av (J)
Briarwood (F)
Parsons Blvd (F)
Largest signal upgrade project in MTA history
Updated signals are coming to the A and C trains in Brooklyn and Queens over 42 miles of track, spanning 23 stations from High St to Ozone Park–Lefferts Blvd!
MTA’s got $$$ troubles
State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli released a report on the MTA’s financial health that reinforced what they’ve been saying at these meetings for months: The MTA’s budget is stable right now, but gaps loom as costs rise pretty much everywhere. Healthcare is getting more expensive to provide employees, fuel costs continue to soar, and Washington’s tariffs are unpredictable to say the least.
Trump still hates transit
Washington is sorting out a federal surface transportation reauthorization bill, which would cut guaranteed federal funding for transit and give that money to highways. :(Janno and the MTA are assembling a tariff coalition, including representatives from states where MTA’s rolling stock is assembled, to beef up their strategy to fight unpredictable tariff changes.
Commuter rail booms
Janno gave the floor to MTA Chief Customer Officer Shanifah Riera to present on the surge in ridership on commuter rail in recent years.
Ridership records
Ridership on the LIRR has reached 102% of 2019 pre-pandemic levels twice this year, and Metro-North has reached 90% of pre-pandemic levels.Should we call it leisure rail now?
Maybe, because the dominant cohort of riders on commuter rail is… not commuting. Folks are taking LIRR and Metro-North more on the weekends and in the evenings for leisure trips than to commute in and out of the city on the weekdays.
Screenshot from MTA Chief Customer Officer Shanifah Riera’s October 2026 presentation on the commuter rail boom in recent years. They didn’t publish the presentations themselves this month for some reason, so the screenshot’s a little blurry since it was pulled from the video stream.
Golden (city) ticket
The fastest ridership growth the MTA’s seen has been at commuter rail stations within the city, thanks in large part to the expansion of City Ticket in 2022.Since then, Fordham ridership in the Bronx has increased 34%, St. Albans in Queens has increased 95%, and Melrose in the Bronx has increased 103%. Shanifah credits these booms to a 3-pronged strategy: speeding up trips, adding more service, and expanding affordable fare options. Turns out if you make it easier for people to take transit, they’ll take transit. Go figure!
Committee reports
The only major notable thing from the committee reports came from Finance, where CFO Jai Patel clarified some things about Cubic, the company that operates OMNY.
She said the MTA’s biggest priority with Cubic right now is to make sure they finish their integration into the cloud, because she says that’s what’s been delaying the rollout of features customers miss about Metrocard, like tracking fare caps and trip history.
They also did an audit over the summer to better understand people’s gripes with OMNY, which showed that the only trackable issue with OMNY is payment lags from Cubic.
Jai also notes that for now, customer service issues around OMNY are being handled by Cubic, not the MTA. They’ll re-evaluate bringing customer service back in-house once everything is stable and fully transitioned to the cloud.
EAGLE team investigation
After the committee reports, Janette Sadik-Khan, one of the newest board members, brought up the suspension of fare enforcement by EAGLE teams on buses. In case you missed that news a few weeks ago, Janno removed EAGLE teams from the bus “temporarily pending investigation” after several high profile assaults on riders over whether or not they paid their $3 fare.
She asked whether the investigation will be internal or independent, if results will be made public, when they expect the investigation to be complete, and what procedures are currently in place to review complaints and incidents about EAGLE teams.
Demetrius Crichlow, president of New York City Transit, responded and said that the investigation is independent, some results will probably be made public (?), and the investigation should be done any day now.
Janno then jumped in to semi-answer the question about the process for reviewing complaints. He said that he and Shanifah Rieara (you remember her from earlier) are ‘working on a plan’ to make the public more aware of how to complain about an MTA employee. He says those complaints are also reviewed independently. But what he didn’t say was HOW to actually make a complaint…
Board member David Jones then added that he’d like to review the hiring procedures and vetting process for members of the EAGLE teams. In response, Demetrius said they’re looking into whether or not prior police records can be used in the hiring process. Hopefully he’ll keep us posted…
… and we’ll keep you posted on all things NYC transit!
Make sure you’re on our email list so you don’t miss an update. Until next month’s meeting! 👋
