NYC NOW - Morning Headlines: More Primary Voters Fill Out Ballots, George Santos to Report to Prison Friday, Yankees Legend to Enter Hall of Fame Sunday, and MTA Upgrades Train Communication System

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

Nearly 50 percent of voters in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary filled out all five ranked choice slots, a slight increase from 2021. Of those, 70 percent left Andrew Cuomo off their ballots. Meanwhile, former Congressman George Santos is set to report to federal prison Friday after pleading guilty to wire fraud and identity theft. Also, Yankees legend CC Sabathia will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday. Plus, the MTA is overhauling its train communication system, Hoboken PATH riders continue to face disruptions, more open gangway trains are arriving on the G line, and new guardrails along the 7th Avenue line are raising questions.

Welcome to NYC now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Friday, July 25th. Here's the morning headlines from Michael Hill. More New York primary voters are filling out all five slots on their ballot. WNYC's Bridget Bergen reports what WNYC discovered in new election statistics released this week. Nearly 50% of voters in the Democratic mayoral primary filled out their full ranked choice ballot. a slight uptick from 2021. Of those who filled out the full slate,

70% of the voters left Andrew Cuomo off their ballot. He was the target of a guerrilla campaign that educated voters about ranked choice voting and urged them not to rank Cuomo. The results also suggest cross-endorsements paid dividends for Zeran Mandi and Brad Lander. The two threw their support behind one another in the final days of the campaign.

40% of people who made Lander their number one made Momdani their number two. You can read more of WNYC's analysis of the election data at our new site, Gothamus. Former Queens Long Island Congressmember, George Santos, reports to federal prison today. Santos admitted to lying during his campaign and stealing from his donors. A judge sentenced the ex-federal lawmaker to more than seven years in prison after Santos pleaded guilty to wire fraud and identity theft. The judge also ordered him to pay him to.

pay more than $370,000 in restitution. The Federal Bureau of Prisons declined to share which facility Santos will go to until after he arrives because of safety concerns. Former New York Yankees pitcher C.C. Sabathia will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown over the weekend. WNIC's Amanor-Rosone has more. Sabathia is a six-time All-Star, and in 2009 he helped lead the Yankees to a World Series title. The lefty played for two other teams over the course of his major league career, but it'll be a Yankees logo displayed on the cap of his Hall of Fame plaque. Sabathia is also a black ace, a term that describes the 15 black American pitchers who've won 20 or more gains in a season. He'll now be one

of three black aces in Shrined in Cooperstown. Sabathia will be inducted alongside Billy Wagner, who pitched for the Mets, and Ichiro Suzuki, who mostly played in. with the Seattle Mariners, but also spent time in the Bronx. 74 and partly sunny, dangerously hot today with wind gusts up to 20 miles an hour. It's Friday. That means it's time for our weekly segment of On the Way, covering all things transportation. Stick around. NYC. I'm Sean Carlson for WNYC.

It's time for On the Way, our weekly segment on all things considered, breaking down the week's transit news. joining us is WNYC's transportation reporters Ramsey Caliphay and Stephen Nesson and editor Clayton Goza. All right, Ramsey, we're going to start with you. You've reported on the L train this week and how the MTA is planning to replace the back-of-house technology of its modern signal system. What's up with that? So it might actually come as a surprise to listeners. Those modern signals that the MTA is always talking about, always raving about, some of the systems already need to be replaced. So we're talking about communications-based train control.

It's CBTC. that's a tech that the NPA spent way too long trying to implement throughout its system. The lines already have it are already aging. So the L train was the first line to get this technology in the subway system around the early 2000s. It allows for trains to communicate with each other and for control centers to help calculate the closest distances trains can travel together and how fast they can travel. So this is a digital technology to shift from the mechanical signals that the system has been running on for over a century. but those computers, radios, servers that were state-of-the-art in the early 2000s are reaching the end of their useful life in the coming years.

And the MT is planning to replace them. Apparently that tech needs to be replaced every 25 years. So when I found this out, my main question was, how will this affect service? How often will riders expect disruptions if that useful life of the computers are so short? But what I've been told by the MTA officials are the impact will be surgical and it will be quite minimal. In a couple points of context here that most of the, that most of the, you know, the subway runs on what's called a fixed block system. It basically, you know, it has mechanical systems, has stoplights, and it ensures that trains don't run too close together. If a train operator

tries to get too close to another train, inside a block, it automatically stops and trips its break. CBTC system is kind of more variable, uses radios to ensure that they're spaced apart. It allows the MTA to run more trains faster, is the argument. But what this really kind of represents is, you know, the MTA has lauded this, um, um, this new system, this technique or this, the new signaling system as the future, the way, the silver bullet for improving subway service. But what we're learning from this is that it's not new. It's been, this technique, it's the technology has been around for a quarter of century in New York alone. And it's going to take years and years and years before we're even have half the lines in the city that are covered with the tech.

And the only thing I would add to that is something we learned during our reporting about the state of the subway system, these new signals actually use a lot of power, a lot more power than the old fixed block signals do. And to get that power, the MTS has to upgrade its substations. We learned that 77 out of their 224 are in poor or marginal condition in dire need of replacement. These are in abysmal shape. And so if they want to run all these new signals and all these new train cars that we're hearing about, they actually need more power to do that. So again, it just points to a long process that. riders have to wait a while for, you know, modern signals across the system.

Right. And if you want a sense of that weight, if you're a G-train rider, you have a good idea. Remember last summer when the G-train was shut down an entire chunks for the entire summer? A lot of the work that they were doing was signal upgrades. And, you know, we came out of the summer and riders were saying, okay, so the work's done. No, it's not done. The signals won't be up and running until at least 2027, you know, and it'll be nice. And it'll allow for, you know, automated train control. you know, where operators aren't running the train, but like robots essentially are operating the train.

That's kind of the modern standard. But it's going to take a long time just for the G to even get done. Wow. All right. Over in New Jersey, transit riders are still struggling with unreliable path service in and out of Hoboken. That comes after a major meltdown that left riders stranded earlier this month. Trains are still running with delays. Stevie and you were at the Port Authority board meeting today.

Riders up in arms. What can you tell us about it? Well, the Port Authority definitely got an earful from. angry riders who want to know when service is going to be back to normal. And not just riders, even the mayor of Hoboken. Ravi Bala showed up to demand answers. Here he is. The basic premise is pretty straightforward.

You know, you're probably not still using a laptop from 25 years ago. That's not, Robbie. He wasn't talking about laptops. He was talking about complete failures of the path train system. And he's pointing to other things that happened this summer. There were problems in Newport, as well as train breakdowns at the World Trade. Center. And I think what most folks, especially him and others, are so outraged about is the Port Authority just spent $31 million to overhaul the tracks at Hoboken in January. And guess what? They're broken now.

And Port officials actually don't even know what the problem is. They brought the manufacturer back. They're still trying to study, figure out what happened. Here's Jim Hightman, CEO of the Port Authority, and talking about how they brought in these outside experts. This is a safety item. It's something that as much as we'd like to fix it overnight, you have to do the proper analysis so that we get it done right. I mean, we wish we got it right the first time. Second time's a charm, pal.

Yeah. But, and he isn't saying how long it's going to take even, but a Port Authority spokesman told Larry Higgs, a New Jersey transit reporter, they expect delays through Labor Day. Wow. And look, Path train service has just been in trouble for a while now. Advocates told me over the past month

that weakened service, in particular, where riders have to wait 10 to 20 minutes for their train to arrive is worse than it's ever been. Just a few weekends ago, practically all available path service was facing delays. There were emergency track repairs and Hoboken signal issues on that Hoboken to World Trade Center line. And this is all happening while the Port Authority is pursuing their path forward project for the rest of the year, which will upgrade the system's aging infrastructure. What it's also doing is it's creating dozens of service disruptions every weekend. Interesting.

All right. We're going to move back to New York City Subway. G train riders can expect some changes to their commute. The MTAs moved all of its open gangway trains over to that line. Those are the ones without doors between the cars, letting riders walk the whole length of the train. I think they're very cool. I haven't seen one yet, which is insane to me. Well, as Clayton will call them the unicorns of the subway system.

There were actually only two of them. They used to run on the C line. But the MTA sort of broke them up. And if you, on the G, because as G riders know, they run shorter trains. So two open gangway cars on the C line equals four open gangways on the G train. So riders can enjoy that. You have a better chance on the G, Sean. And last year I actually learned that internally the MTA was barring those open gangway trains

from running on the express A track. That was a story from last year. That's because, you know, should an emergency break go off, there would be no safe way for riders to get out, but also for a train operator to make inspections in between train cars. So they only ran those open gangways. on the sea. But you can imagine some constraints there for a line that has both an express and a local route. It's not uncommon for a local route to go express, if there are any service

demands, if there are any disruptions, if they want to get trains moving. You don't have that flexibility when you have this open gangway train on the sea. So that eventually set the stage for moving and transferring all those sea line open gangways to the G line, where the cross-town train only makes local stops between Brooklyn and Queens. A couple points here. I mean, one, we should shout out daily news for breaking this G-train. Rigummer. a roll this reshuffling. That's a decent scoop by them. But another point we want to think about

here is that these trains, these open gangway trains are used all over the world. They're used in Paris. You see them in London. You can walk from one end of the train to another without opening a door. But they're being tested in New York because we have a uniquely chaotic city and environment

by global standards. I can't stop thinking about if you're on a G train at one in the morning on Saturday, And you're coming, you know, through Williamsburg, through Greenpoint, where the youngsters are out hitting the bars. And you're sharing this whole space and this whole like chaos theater. I think it's a good test for the G train, for the open gangway train cars.

How will they work? How will the environment be? Will people be disruptive? Will people be annoyed? I don't know. I mean, it's an anthropological study in real time that anyone riding should go and look at. The MTA seems to like it enough, though. They did order 80, I believe, 80 more of them.

So they have upped their orders because of their popularity. Well, I'll see you at 1 a.m. on the G train. We can test it ourselves. All right, we don't have that much time left, but I want to get to this every week in our on the way newsletter. We answer a question of Mercurias commuter. This one from Theo in Manhattan. What is going on with the new guard rails that have been installed along the 7th Avenue line? Are they part of a pilot program?

Or is the MTA planning on rolling out more in the future? Yeah, they're called platform edge barriers. They started to see them in the system last year. And up to now, the MTAs actually installed them at 58 stations. They hope to install them at 100 stations by the end of the year. And it's basically their response to a series of shovings that have been, that happened over the last couple years. Most, you know, notably, I guess, Michelle, Goh, who was fatally shoved in Times Square New Year's. And so they pledged to do something about it.

And this is sort of their response. But they can't do it across the internet. entire system because of, you know, station designs. And it's pretty costly, but they believe it's worth it. Okay. Well, thanks to Theo for that question. And thanks to WNYC Transportation Reporter, Steven Nesson and Ramsey-Khaly-Kalif and editor Clayton Guzib. You can stay in the know on all things transit or ask a question of our own by signing up for our weekly newsletter at gothamis.com slash on the way. My friends, I'll see you on the G-Train. Thank you. See you there, Sean.

Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday three times a day for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. More soon.