New York Governor Kathy Hochul urged employers to get workers back into the office.
Gov. Kathy Hochul meant well when she asked Manhattan business leaders last week to tell their workers: “Everybody back in the office. . . . We need you back at least the majority of the week.” But she misreads the problem and solution.
New York state needs to adjust to a new era for Manhattan, its economic powerhouse — starting with Hochul’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
Cheerleading people back to work is better than not doing it. Mayor Bill de Blasio has never cared one way or the other.
But nearly two years into an entirely different way of working, Hochul may as well cheerlead to bring hundreds of thousands of garment workers back to the West Side of Manhattan to sew clothes.
It’s not happening. Only one-third of pre-COVID workers are back in their offices, most of them only a couple times a week.
We don’t need a short-term “Wait ’til New Year’s” scheme. We need a plan to make more daytime visitors want to be here, even just slightly more often.
To get people here, the state needs to make their commutes easier and cheaper.
But subway ridership has bounced back to only 55 percent of normal, and bus ridership to two-thirds. Commuter rail is about half.
Why are people still staying away?
It’s no mystery: The MTA asked them, and tens of thousands of people answered:
- Of people who say they ride the subway sometimes but less than they used to, half say it’s because they are worried about violent crime. One-third say that the subway “is not reliable” or “takes longer.”
- Of people not riding the subway at all, two-thirds say they fear crime.
For reliability, the MTA is adding new crews to make up for a previous hiring freeze and a high level of retirements.
As for crime: In October, 75 violent felonies — robberies, assaults — took place on the subways, six more than in October 2019, despite the far lower ridership.
The subways are safer than they were last year, when violent criminals had the run of the place and seven people were murdered, a modern-day record. But crime rates are nowhere near normal — and people are naturally more fearful on emptier trains and platforms.
A totally random subway murder on a Penn Station train this weekend — the fifth subway murder of the year, compared with one or two pre-COVID — is hardly going to lure riders back.
City Hall is responsible for transit crime. Let’s hope the Adams administration will understand that both the reality and the perception matter here.
Eventually, though, Hochul must realize: The MTA must radically adjust its thinking — both its revenues and its costs — to account for the fact that for millions of New Yorkers now, taking mass transit to work is a choice, not a requirement.
Even short term, the MTA doesn’t really grasp this.
On commuter rail, it gets the “cheaper” part, offering off-peak fares full-time and new bonuses for riders.
But it doesn’t quite get the “easier” part: It’s not running a regular express-train schedule because it doesn’t see the demand — ignoring the fact that if it ran the faster trains, more people might come back.
Longer term, the MTA’s new budget, released last week, doesn’t acknowledge that the option of working from home isn’t going away.
Yes, it’s good that Hochul has pledged not to raise fares next year; no reason to deter more people. But it’s not clear when people are going to resume buying monthly subway passes or whether they’ll ever want to pay another, say, $10 or $15 for them, on top of the existing $127 price.
For now, $14.5 billion in federal funding over six years, 2020 to 2025, fills these holes. Without that help, the MTA would have had a $2.4 billion deficit next year, against $18.5 billion in proposed spending.
Starting in 2023, though, a $3.4 billion deficit looms through 2025, as federal rescue funds dwindle. What’s the MTA going to do to save money then?
Well, nothing.
Over the summer, the MTA was planning a partial wage freeze. Now, with Hochul running for governor next year, it’s “no longer being considered.”
The budget shows labor costs going up: from $10.4 billion this year to $12.1 billion by 2025. High inflation may make those numbers seem optimistic.
The whole point of the proposed wage freeze was to use it as a bargaining tool — asking unions to “buy” raises with more efficient work practices that save money. Taking away that leverage sends a signal that it’s just business as usual.
The problem is: By 2025, it may still not be business as usual for the customers.
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Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal. Follow her on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in New York Post