NYC NOW - November 8, 2024: Midday News

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

We get the latest on the trial of Daniel Penny, the former Marine charged with fatally choking fellow rider Jordan Neely on the subway last year. Plus, New York Attorney General Letitia James is condemning racist text messages sent to some New Yorkers, including middle school students. And finally, in our weekly transit segment, we look at how Donald Trump’s return to the White House might affect the future of the congestion pricing plan, which was put on hold by Governor Hochul earlier this year.

Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Friday, November 8th. Here's the midday news from Alec Hamilton. A deadly encounter on an uptown F train that divided New Yorkers is now dividing a Manhattan courtroom. WNYC's Samantha Max reports. Daniel Penny is on trial for putting Jordan Neely in a chokehold on the subway for about six minutes last year. Neely was pronounced dead soon after. Some people have praised Penny because he said he was

protecting fellow passengers after Neely started dealing threats. Others have called him a vigilante. As witnesses have been testifying in Penny's trial, those same diverging perspectives have made their way into the courtroom. One witness who was on the train described Neely as satanic and said she was relieved when Penny restrained him. But a witness who stumbled into the chaos at the Broadway Lafayette station described Penny, not Neely, as the villain. Fire officials are investigating after a car exploded in South Ozone Park Queens this morning. It happened on 133rd Street, a little before 7. FDNY Deputy Chief George Healy says some equipment in the car was to blame. There were some pressurized cylinders in the vehicle.

One of those cylinders experienced a failure that experienced this. this catastrophic explosion of the car. Five houses were damaged, but there were no reported injuries. New York Attorney General Letitia James is condemning racist text messages sent to black and brown people across New York, including some middle schoolers. Her office says the messages came from unknown numbers. James calls the messages, quote, disgusting and unacceptable. She urges anyone who receives one to report it to the AG's Civil Rights Bureau.

Sunny today with a high near 65 degrees. Stay close. There's more after the break. For WNYC, I'm Jene Pierre, and it's time for On the Way, our weekly segment breaking down the week's transit news. Here's my colleague, Sean Carlson, in conversation with WMYC Transportation Reporters, Stephen Nesson, Ramsey Caliphate, and editor Clayton Gusa. Okay, the re-election of President Trump has many New Yorkers asking questions about how his second term will affect everything, right? from the region's undocumented immigrant population to Mayor Adams' legal troubles. And there's also plenty of concern in the transportation world about congestion pricing,

our favorite topic here. Talk more about that. Well, before the tolling program was set to go into effect in June, Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social, in all caps, terminate congestion pricing in my first week back in office. That's what he wrote. Yeah. Okay. But it's not in effect.

Hockel paused it, as we all know. But she also said it's just a pause and she would like to toll the vehicles sometime, just maybe not at that $15 rate. The concern is if the tolls aren't up and running by Trump's inauguration on January 20th, it's just never going to happen. Here's Danny Pearlstein. He's with the Group Riders Alliance and his group was part of the lawsuit to force Hockel to turn on the tolls. Federal and state officials have worked for years to make sure that congestion pricing has dotted every eye and crossed every T of the law. It has been vetted now in state and federal courts successfully. Once it starts, it'll be tough to stop.

Hurlstein and others believe it'll be tough to stop, mainly because once the federal government gives the final sign-off, that's like a contract. And it would be difficult to break it just because Trump felt like breaking it. Well, I realize I'm not an expert here, but what is the holdup? Like, they have the tolling things like up and ready to go. So what would it take to turn those on? Can't Hokel just flip a switch? Right. Today, Sean, she could. The camera infrastructure is up. They have toll readers all over Manhattan. They spent a half billion dollars installing them. The state lawmakers approved this five years ago. But the legal mechanism that Hockel was held up is this agreement between the federal government and the state DOT. She's basically said the state DOT isn't going to sign it for now, but she might. Now, if they were to relaunch it today with the same price point, that $15 toll,

some exemptions that they've laid out, this pricing structure for trucks, that's all been approved. They could turn it on today. The risk is, is if they come back as Hockel wants them to, or Hockel's indicated that she wants them to, with a lower price point, you know, maybe something $11 to enter Manhattan south of 60th Street. Then that would trigger a 60-day public review period. So if she were going to change the toll, she really has to do it in the next couple weeks. But still, Hokewell at a news conference this week, she didn't really sound like she's in a big hurry to get the program launched. Before the end of the year, you know, in a timely enough frame, we will have our announcements and a plan and a funding plan.

And we'll also be talking about the capital projects for the next five years as well. So we have a comprehensive approach to this. This is literally the day after the election. But we have had robust conversations with the federal administration about, both scenarios and what needs to be done in the right time frame. It really means a lot to the MTA. The MTA says they really need the money from congestion pricing. Remember that the tolls are supposed to finance $15 billion worth of transit upgrades,

really improvements and maintenance to the system to keep it from falling apart. Hokel's saying she'll find that money one way or another, whether it's from congestion pricing or not, but she has not specified how. And just sort of a little post-mortem. Remember, Hockel has always maintained the pause was strictly about not charging drivers who are maybe already hurting from inflation, but reporting from our newsroom and others have found that Democrats in Washington were really urging Hockel to hold off until after the election. They were hoping to flip several seats in Congress and something like congestion pricing might

sour voters and turn them to Republicans or Republicans might use that to generate votes. It's not clear that congestion pricing was a determining factor in this past election, but New York did flip three seats from Republican to Democrat, although, to be fair, one is in Syracuse, likely had nothing to do with congestion pricing. But as our Albany reporter, John Campbell, points out Democrat Tom Swazi from Long Island also won re-election, not quite a flip, but that was the seat that he won in a special election after George Santos. Republican was expelled. Okay, switching gears here, Ramsey, I'm really curious to hear more about this. You reported on a Brooklyn Heights grocery store that banned all MTA employees.

Yeah, very different news compared to everything that's happened in the past week. But look, there's this grocery store that sits on the last stuff. of the B-63 bus route in the Brooklyn Bridge Park. It's called Town Market. And a few weeks ago, a sign was posted on his front entrance that said, quote, we cannot serve or allow any MTA workers in the store or the cafe. So obviously, photos of that sign made its rounds on Reddit and other net forums. That's how it got my attention.

So I decided to take a look and I went and checked it out myself. The issue, it turns out, actually seems to be something about bathroom access for bus drivers. So the union that represents some of the MTA bus drivers confirmed that one of their drivers had gone into an altercation with the store manager there. The union also said that the store was a common spot for drivers to go in and use the bathroom and refresh, maybe grab a quick bite to eat as well. And look, this is actually very representative of a bigger problem happening in New York for bus drivers across the city.

That is, where can they actually use the bathroom? That is both accessible to them and keeping up with on-time bus service. Look, they're on a very tight schedule. Yeah. The nearer the bathroom is to one of those stops, better. So bus drivers, you know, there aren't like office employees. They don't have bathrooms where they work. There's no bathrooms on the bus. So that same problem actually exists for taxi drivers, rideshare app drivers. But look, those drivers aren't actually beholden to a schedule like

bus drivers are. The Adams administration, I don't know if you remember this, but earlier this year announced they'd be building more public restrooms in the city in the next five years. And the union actually said they would love more public or even private options for their drivers to go to the bathroom. Look, the MTA declined to comment about this altercation, but they did confirm that the employee involved in that altercation no longer works for the transit agency. Okay. Every week in our on-the-way newsletter, we answer a question from a curious commuter. This week, Camille and Brooklyn has one about those private security guards that you see throughout the subway system. She asks, and his claimer, this is a bit of a scathing question here.

Is there any information about what the MTA's long-term plan is here? Are these useless security guards going to be there indefinitely. Wouldn't the money be better used for maintenance? Well, to be fair to the MTA, I don't think they would call them useless security guards. They have a purpose. But the private security guards, they're from this company Allied Universal, and they've been in the subway since 2022. The idea came out of the MTA's blue ribbon panel on fair evasion. The panel also proposed, by the way, redesigning the subway's turnstiles. That's a longer-term project. But the MTA likes the guards. Officials argue they deterred. quote, opportunistic fare evaders. Think of the people who just casually walk through an open exit gate.

And the MTA plans to increase the number of guards. It's going to be over 1,000 by early next year at a cost of $35 million. The agency claims it loses about $300 million a year from subway fare evasion. Still, I should point out, subway fare evasion has actually only increased since the program launched about 12.5% of riders at the beginning of 2020. to skip the fare. That's up to 14% as of June. And that's even with the massive increase in NYPD patrols in the subway. Still, the MTA argues it's a good use of its resources. That's WMYC Transportation Reporters, Ramsey Caliphé, Stephen Nesson, and editor Clayton Gusa talking with my colleague, Sean Carlson. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC. Check us out for updates every weekday,

three times a date for the latest news headlines and occasional deep dives and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. We'll be back this evening.