NYC NOW - May 29, 2024: Midday News

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

Mail voting in the New Jersey primary continues and early in-person voting begins Wednesday. WNYC’s Nancy Solomon reports. Meanwhile, a MarketWatch Guides study finds New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey have among the highest annual car insurance rates in the U.S. Plus, according to MTA data, the rate of fare evasion on buses and trains has more than doubled since the pandemic. In fact, more than half of bus riders aren’t paying for their ride. At an MTA board meeting last week, Chair Janno Lieber said the agency would allocate more resources to address the problem. WNYC’s Sean Carlson speaks with Lieber about the new measures being taken.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Wednesday, May 29th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. Mail voting and the New Jersey primary continues and early in-person voting begins today. WNYC's Nancy Solomon reports. Joe Biden and Donald Trump are essentially shoe-ins for New Jersey's presidential. primaries, but there are Republican and Democratic primaries for the Senate seat held by Bob Menendez, who's not on the ballot. Several congressional races are up for grabs, too. Some 236,000 voters have

already mailed in their ballots. Each county has at least one in-person early voting location, and polls are open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day, except Sunday, when early voting closes at 6 p.m. Those sites will shut down on June 2nd for two days in preparation for primary election day on Tuesday, June 4th. A recent study finds New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey have among the highest annual car insurance rates in the USA. Market Watch guides analyze the numbers and found the highest average minimum liability rates are in Michigan with rates of more than $1,600 a year. Connecticut was next with just more than $1,500, and New York came in third with more than $1,400. Florida is fourth, and New Jersey is just more than $1,000 a year.

The cheapest state? Vermont, where drivers pay an average of $282 a year. 73 with sunshine now, we have a slim chance of afternoon showers and thunderstorms, maybe late afternoon, increasing clouds in a high of 77, and then tomorrow, chance of showers and thunderstorms, partly sunny in 73. Friday we dry out, sunny and 76. Stay close. There's more after the break. On Dolly, when my C, I'm Sean Carlson. Bus and subway fare evasion continues to be a growing problem for the MTA. The transit agency has attempted to address the issue in recent years, but its data indicates the rate of strap hangers skipping fares has more than doubled since the pandemic, and more than half of bus riders are not paying for their ride. At an MTA board meeting last week, Chair Janeo Lieber said the agency would begin throwing more resources at the problem. So joining us now to talk about what that means is MTA chair and CEO Janelle Lieber.

Chairman, thanks so much as always for coming on. You bet. Good to be with you, Sean. So the MTA had a board meeting last week where you presented some new enforcement measures to try and crack down on what's been seen as a persistently growing problem for the MTA since the pandemic. Can you talk about what some of those measures are and why you think they might make a difference where previous efforts haven't worked? Yeah, Sean, in fairness, we don't think of this as a crackdown. We think of this as implementing a whole set of a new and balanced strategy to address this growing problem. Bottom line is the subway system and our entire transit system is affordable because everybody pays.

And the core goal of the subway system is equity. Make sure that everybody has a chance to get to work, to school, to, you know, you know, to use New York. And if all of a sudden people aren't paying, that is going to hurt poor people and people working class people more than others because we're going to end up charging more. Number one.

Number two, it creates a feeling of disorder in the system, which hurts everybody. And we hear from all of our customers up and down the demographic and neighborhood and economic spectrum that when they see people not paying, one, it makes them feel like this isn't a, safe and orderly place. And two, it creates a sense of unfairness. Why am I paying when that guy is not? And so what we're trying to do is not to the old just crackdown, but really to introduce

some new strategies. We want customers not convicts. But we're going to use enforcement to encourage people to pay. It is an important nudge that everybody remembers. If you do this, you might get a ticket. So there are more tickets that's not, we're not arresting people, but there are more of these summonses, which is like a ticket being issued, double what there were before. But together with that, we're also doing things to make the system more affordable for low income folks, cutting fares in half for low income folks, doing a lot of education for kids that they're going to school and are really casual about whether or not they bring their free metro cards, the free passes that they get. We want to get them into the habit of being customers

and swiping, so we're creating incentives for them to do that. And we're dealing with also the physical infrastructure, which is a little too permissive. We have an exit gate that opens all the time, and it kind of becomes a super highway of fair evasion. So we're doing some things to shut that down and working with the fire code authorities to make sure that that's not opened all the time. And we're ultimately going to buy a new system of turnstiles also. So all these things together are not a crackdown, but kind of a broad and equity-oriented balanced approach. Does that make sense? So, as we said, about half of bus riders aren't paying for their ride.

Meanwhile, 13% of subway riders dodge the fare. So why is the agency's focus seem to be on the subways and not on where most of the evasion seems to be happening? Well, the real challenge is in the bus system is, you know, we're talking about like six or seven thousand buses that are in operation in our system. So it's really hard to do fair enforcement. But we have moved in the direction of doing that by having what we call Eagle teams.

They're unarmed but uniformed revenue enforcement agents, like sometimes you see in Europe. We've started hiring up those kinds of people. We're working with the NYPD so they're not on the buses, but they're at bus hubs to try to make sure that unarmed folks who are trying to enforce the fair are doing it. And we're working with, as I say,

with the schools very closely because so many of the bus riders are kids on their way to and from school. And finally, we've installed Omni readers in all of our buses. That happened really quickly during the pandemic. And so making it easier for people to pay, whether it's tapping a credit card or using an Omni card or whatever. Remember, Sean, during COVID, the bus was free because we were trying to protect the drivers and have everyone get on at the back, that created some bad habits that clearly were having trouble getting back from. And our last minute here, Chairman, you said that the agency could lose $800 million this year due to fair evasion. Can you talk about what that means in terms of the MTA's bottom line

and what the impact is on riders? Yeah, I mean, it's a really good point. I mean, we're, you know, a 4% a 4% fair hike, which is what we did last year after many, many years of not raising the fair at all, only generate it's like $100 or $200 million. So you're in effect creating a potential for needing to recover something that's equivalent of a 15 plus percent fair height. That is, you know, really unfair to everybody who pays. You know, I've always been passionate about the things where New Yorkers share, transit, libraries, and parks. We expect people to go into the park and not tear it up. We expect people not to steal library, but. We expect people not to steel library books. We also expect it's kind of New York respect for each other that everybody

pays the fare on transit just so we won't have to height the price for a lot of people, mostly working class and poor folks who can't afford it. That's the spirit of this. It's not about crackdown. It's really about sharing the burdens that makes the city possible. That's MTA chair and CEO, General Lieber. Chairman, thanks so much. You bet. Thanks for listening. This is NYC Now from W. You in YC. 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 podcast. We'll be back this evening.