NYC NOW - June 17, 2024: Midday News

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

Police are investigating after two men were killed and a third was injured in a shooting at 207th Street and 10th Avenue in Inwood on Sunday night. Meanwhile, New York City officials are urging residents to take precautions ahead of a major heat wave expected to hit the region from Tuesday to Friday. Mayor Adams says cooling centers will be open. Plus, the news of Governor Kathy Hochul’s last-minute reversal on congestion pricing has dominated the headlines and the president of New York City Transit, Richard Davey, has stepped down. This comes as uncertainty about funding for the MTA continues. WNYC’s Michael Hill speaks with reporter Stephen Nessen who spoke with Davey this past weekend.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Monday, June 17th. Here's the midday news from Lance Lucky. Police are investigating after they say two men were killed and a third was injured from gunfire in Upper Manhattan last night. They say officers responded to 911 calls just before midnight at 207th Street and 10th Avenue in Inwood. Police say they discovered three men. ages 37, 40, and 44 had been shot. No arrests have been made. And as you've been hearing on WNYC,

New York City officials are urging residents to take precautions ahead of a major heat wave expected to hit the region tomorrow through Friday. Mayor Adams says the city's cooling centers will be open for that period and that New Yorkers should make sure that they and their neighbors have regular access to air conditioning. He also says officials are monitoring air quality after smoke from Canadian wildfires engulfed the city last summer. Extreme heat is not our only concern. We saw what happened with the Canadian fires. We want to make sure that the air quality is also monitored.

The heat index combining temperatures near 90 plus high humidity is forecast to reach around 100 degrees later this week. Stay close. There's more after the break. On WNYC and Michael Hill, the news of Governor Hockel's last-minute reversal on congestion, has dominated the headlines. But during all this, the president of New York City Transit, Richard Davy, has stepped down. This comes as uncertainty about funding for the MTA continues. WNYC Stephen S and spoke with Davey this weekend and joins us to discuss. Stephen, many listeners may not even know who Richard Davy was. The job has had a lot of turnover in recent years. Four presidents in his many years. Why did he leave now? And did it have anything to do with congestion

pricing? Right. It seems kind of like a bad time to leave or maybe a good time depending on how you look at it. But he tells me he was as shocked as anyone by the decision of Hockel for her last minute reversal of congestion pricing. He actually comes from Boston. He ran transit agency over there for many years and worked with the governor there closely. So he's going back to familiar territory to run their port authority. You know, as you mentioned, for transit presidents in as many years, I think listeners maybe remember Andy Bifert. He was maybe the most well-known of them when he was president of the subways and buses. And since him, the job really hasn't been the same. You remember he left because he clashed with Governor Cuomo at the time, who sort of took away his authority to do big projects. So the job really sort of got shaved down this responsibilities to more of a day-to-day operations kind of job. In fact, Davy tells me when he started, the bulk of his job had almost nothing to do with running trains.

It was dealing with the homelessness issue that we were having at the time. The crime that seemed to really spike, or at least the perception of it, he had to deal with that, as well as the mental health issues of the various people that have taken refuge in the subway system. All those things have nothing to do with running a transit system per se, but that's how it is in New York City. But he did tell me he thinks a lot has improved since he started. And the interim president, Dimitri Critchlow, he's an MTA veteran, knowledgeable about the logistics, the day-to-day of what it takes to run a system, which Davy admitted actually was not his strongest suit. Davey was at the MTA last week as the agency scrambles to reorganize his plans now that Hockel has paused the $15 billion expected to come in from congestion pricing. Did Davey have any insights about how it went down at MTA headquarters? Well, he was telling me the day that Hockel announced the pause,

there was actually a luncheon planned for him and several former transit presidents, including Andy Bifert, who I just mentioned, and Sarah Feinberg, they were all in the MTA at MTA headquarters that day. And of course, he said they were all totally shocked. They even invited MTA chair, Jan O'Leber, to their lunch because he thought he must be feeling bad right now and maybe it would cheer him up. But if there was like cursing or yelling or like throwing of papers or anything like that, he didn't have those details to share.

He did say, you know, there was a meeting later that day with senior staff. MTA chair, Jano Lieber reminded folks there, many of whom he said had dedicated the past several years of their lives to working on congestion pricing. He said, you know, the transit agency has faced many challenges and the MTA always pulls through. This agency's been through 9-11, it's been through Superstorm Standy, and it has persevered and become better. Let the politics and, you know, elected sort of figure this out. In the meantime, we have a job to do and so do it. And so Davy says now it's all about math. The MTA had nearly $29 billion worth of projects it wants to do, but now it only has

$13.5 billion to spend on them. Right. Without congestion pricing, money to to make some cuts, but does Davey think it will affect service? Well, you know, we did report last week that even before congestion pricing was cut or paused, there would actually been more delays across the system this year than the same time last year. Davy acknowledged that, but he does say, you know, you have to look at some lines are doing much better than others. For example, for anyone that's been on the A train recently, there have been some major improvements in service on that line, and that's because of all the new train cars About half of the fleet has been replaced recently.

But he does say with cuts to the capital plan, that means fewer new cars could be coming. I don't think it's going to be all of a sudden a magic wand is waived, by the way, and service is bad or good. It takes time for these things. It's not rocket science. If you're not investing in this major asset on a regular basis, then it will slowly decline.

He reminded me of the summer of hell in 2017. Remember when Subway Service just was atrociously bad, he would be doing the alphabet soup every morning of delays. He says one reason that happened is because the MT had stopped investing in day-to-day improvements. And we're not anywhere close to that yet. But cutting things like the capital plan does result in summer of hell-like scenarios. And I should add, you know, he's heading back to Boston. The mayor of that city, Michelle Wu, has spoken about her interest in congestion pricing. So Davey and I were joking that, you know, New York City came up with the idea of the subway first, but Boston got it done first because of politics at Tammany Hall gumming things up.

It'll be interesting to watch if Boston becomes the first U.S. city to implement congestion pricing. Stephen. Stephen, thank you so much for this. WNYC, Stephen Nesson on Richard Davy leaving the transit agency. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives. Also subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back this evening.