Under questioning from City Council members about when overnight subway service will return for riders, MTA leaders once again said it will happen when the pandemic is over, but they would not say what metric they would use to make that determination.
During an oversight hearing on Wednesday, Council Speaker Corey Johnson told MTA Chairman Pat Foye that the city’s most vulnerable essential workers, many of whom come from communities hardest hit by the pandemic, rely on service at all hours.
“I want to make sure we’re not compounding the inequities that made this pandemic so devastating to New York City,“ Johnson said. “Proposing fare hikes and service cuts, keeping the subway system closed overnight. Those are no solutions to our problems. It’ll make it harder for us to recover, and if the city doesn’t bounce back. The MTA’s finances will only get worse.”
Before the pandemic, the MTA had about 150,000 riders using the subways between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m., the hours that the subway is no longer open to paying customers. Now, about 50,000 people use overnight buses, according to the MTA.
“We’re asking businesses in New York to keep their doors open, but we are forcing many of our most vulnerable workers to spend hours a day finding alternative transportation,” Johnson said.
The subways are, in fact, still running overnight, just not for paying customers. They run because the MTA needs to ensure police and transit workers can move around the city, and because the agency doesn’t have the space to store trains overnight.
During the council hearing, MTA Chairman Patrick Foye said there is no timeline for restoring overnight service, which ended last May. He has maintained for several months that when the pandemic is declared over, 24-hour subway service will be restored.
“This decision is driven by FTA guidance, CDC guidance,” Foye said.
Council member Brad Lander interrupted Foye’s testimony.
“I don’t think it is, I don’t think it’s the real answer,” Lander said. “I believe that you’re engaged in hygiene theatre. I think it’s a cynical approach. The science would support reopening the subways overnight in a way that was safe. And if you helped communicate to riders that they understood it was safe, it would work.”
The MTA has been aggressively disinfecting subway stations, handing out free masks, testing new virus killing technologies, all in an effort to win back public trust, and ensure riders feel safe enough to return to the system, which badly needs their fares.
“As long as riders comply with mask-wearing and social distancing guidelines, the MTA can safely resume overnight subway service,” the Tri-State Transportation Campaign wrote in a statement. “It is critical, though, that the Biden administration and state legislature ensure the MTA has the funding it needs to run high-level service, and any demands on the MTA should come hand-in-hand with federal and state support,”
MTA leaders and workers have made no secret of the fact that in closing the subways to customers, it has also removed the chronically homeless from trains and stations. The MTA says the move is essential in order to properly clean the system.
But advocates for the homeless, like Giselle Routhier, Policy Director of the Coalition for the Homeless said the overnight closures, and the recent incident in which a bench was reportedly removed to prevent the homeless from using it, are cruel.
“People who take refuge in the subways out of desperation for a warm space simply need the safety and dignity of a home, not callous policies that make their lives more difficult,” Routhier wrote in a statement. “If the MTA is concerned about homelessness, they should ask their boss Governor Cuomo, and Mayor de Blasio, to fund housing for New Yorkers and low-threshold, single-occupancy hotel rooms for emergency shelter.”
During the hearing, Council members also asked MTA leadership about its policy on removing benches from subway stations, following backlash about missing benches at the 23rd Street F/M line station. Over the weekend, the agency deleted a tweet stating they were removed to keep the homeless away.
“No, the short answer is that’s not why the benches were removed,” Foye said.
New benches appeared at the station on Tuesday. Both Foye and New York City Transit Interim President Sarah Feinberg described the swap as routine.
“We removed the benches, and cleaned and sanitized them, and then put new ones in,” Feinberg added.
The MTA’s press office has refused to explain when the decision was made to remove and replace the benches at the 23rd Street station. Nor would it explain why the agency would clean and sanitize the benches, and then replace them with new ones days later.
Feinberg pushed back at Wednesday’s council meeting by asking lawmakers to do more to address the homelessness crisis.
“If we could get some assistance being able to use the 311 system, being able to get mental health intervention into the system, being able to get substance abuse intervention into the system, we would be incredibly grateful for any help,” she said. “I have begged the city to send more mental health assistance into the system.”
She said in the past, the MTA has removed benches because of the homeless.
“I think going back several years at this point for various reasons, because we’re changing the layout of a station, because it makes sense to remove them occasionally as a last resort due to some encampment issues, and then often replace them,” she said.
Council member Ydanis Rodriguez asked if this has happened recently at any other stations.
Feinberg gave a one word answer: “Nope.”
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No Timeline On Return of 24-Hour Subway, And No Clarity About Why MTA Swapped Out Benches - Gothamist
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