Trump Threatens to Defund the NYC Subway

There are few issues scarier to the conservative mind than mass transportation in a significant metropolitan metropolis. To that finish, Donald Trump’s decide to run the Division of Transportation, Sean Duffy, is demanding New York Metropolis officers present an inventory of actions that they may take to cut back crime on town’s subway system or danger dropping out on federal funds.

In a letter delivered Tuesday to New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority head Janno Lieber, Duffy requested for an inventory of “actions and plans to cut back crime on its system,” together with addressing assaults, fare evasions, and “subway browsing”—the act of driving exterior of a transferring rail automotive. Lieber and the MTA may have till March 31 to offer Duffy along with his wanted checklist, or face “enforcement actions as much as and together with redirecting or withholding funding”—although he didn’t provide any specifics as to how deep the cuts may very well be.

There have been a number of high-profile and significantly brutal crimes on New York’s subway lately, together with a woman getting set on fire, the killing of a homeless man, and a collection of incidents wherein folks have been pushed in front of trains.

However within the general scheme of issues, these high-profile circumstances appear to outweigh within the public thoughts the truth that crime is down on the subway. Total crime dropped 5.4% year-over-year, per NYPD statistics, and down 40% for the reason that pre-pandemic interval, according to MTA Chief of Coverage and Exterior Relations John McCarthy. There have been 1.2 billion rides on New York Metropolis’s subways in 2024, and a couple of,211 crimes reported. An analysis of transit knowledge from 2023 discovered that about 1 in each 740,000 rides experiences assault and about 1 in each 1 million experiences harassment.

After all, for most individuals, notion is actuality. As Important Metropolis, a journal centered on points in New York Metropolis, points out, crime will not be the one factor that may make folks really feel unsafe. Seeing dilapidated and uncared for infrastructure provides to a way of unease. So, too, can seeing a complete slew of police, who could convey a way that an space is unsafe somewhat than protected. Notably, New York Governor Kathy Hochul deployed 1,000 further members of regulation enforcement within the subway final yr as a part of her personal five-step plan to extend security on the subway.

All of that to say, you understand what received’t make the subway safer? Slicing off its funding. According to The Gothamist, the MTA has about $14 billion earmarked in funds from the federal authorities over the subsequent 5 years, a lot of which can go to fund a major endeavor to revive crucial infrastructure within the transit system, together with upgrading systems which can be a number of many years previous their advisable utilization limits.

The Trump administration is already making funding this initiative tougher than it must be by difficult the MTA’s congestion pricing program in Manhattan, which had generated about $50 million in simply its first month of operation and was anticipated to assist open up about $15 billion in available funding for town as soon as totally carried out. As an alternative, that coverage is hung up in court, and now Trump’s DoT is making an attempt to squeeze extra concessions out of town. Certain looks as if they is likely to be extra excited about profitable a political battle than really bettering security.