NYC NOW - September 20, 2024: Morning Headlines

Episode Date: September 20, 2024

Get up and get informed! Here’s the local news you need to start your day: A Manhattan judge has sentenced a woman to 12 years in prison for shoving someone into an oncoming train at the Times Square subway station. WNYC’s Samantha Max reports. Meanwhile, New York Governor Kathy Hochul is standing by New York City Mayor Eric Adams as investigators examine his administration. Plus, in this week’s “On The Way” segment, WNYC transportation reporters Stephen Nessen, Ramsay Khalifeh, and editor Clayton Guse discuss the MTA’s new five-year capital budget, Sunday’s shooting at the Sutter Avenue subway station, and a listener’s question about the cost of replacing the subway system and how it compares to the capital budget.

Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Friday, September 20th. Here's the morning headlines from Michael Hill. A Manhattan judge is sentencing a woman to 12 years in prison for shoving another person into an oncoming train at the Times Square subway station. WNYC Samantha Max reports. Prosecutors say Anthonia Ikebara randomly pushed a 40-3

year old woman into an oncoming train during morning rush hour in 2021. The shove caused a broken arm, bleeding, and other lingering injuries, but the victim survived. Iigbara pleaded guilty to first-degree assault earlier this year. Her attorney is calling for more robust support for New Yorkers with mental illness and also says his client praise the woman she shoved can eventually heal. Subway shovings are rare, but they happen enough that they're a common concern for New Yorkers and Taurus. 29 people were pushed onto the tracks in 2022, and 17 were pushed last year, according to NYPD data. Governor Kathy Hockel is standing by New York City Mayor Eric Adams, as investigators circle his administration, asked whether she still has confidence in the mayor's

ability to govern. Governor Hockel said it's her job to work with the mayor, and she's going to keep doing it. We'll continue working on closing illegal cannabis shops. We'll continue working out the migrant crisis, will continue working on driving down crime, and continuing to deliver for New York. The Democratic governor and mayor have remained allies during their times in office, unlike many other of their predecessors. New York City officials are facing at least four separate federal investigations. Neither Mayor Adams nor his aides have been formally accused of any wrongdoing thus far. The National Weather Service is issuing several warnings this morning for southern Queens and southern Nassau County's

coastal flood warning is in effect from 8 this morning until 1 this afternoon with 1 to 2 feet of inundation possible. Manhattan also has a coastal flood advisory in effect from 9 this morning till 2 this afternoon till Saturday morning at 2 o'clock, we should say. And then impacts could include widespread flooding

near the waterfront and shoreline including roads, parking lots, parks, lawns, and homes and businesses with basements near the waterfront. Also, coastal flood advisory, coastal flood watches, and rip current statements for parts of the Jersey shore all the way through Sunday. Could be dangerous. If you're going to the beach, be careful. 70 with some clouds right now, mostly sunny and 78 for a high on this final Friday of summer, and then tomorrow

and Sunday some sunshine mid to low 70s as fall begins on Sunday. It's Friday. That means it's time for a weekly segment of On the Way, covering all things transportation. That's after the break. NYC. I'm Sean Carlson for WNYC. It's Friday, which means it's time for On the Way, our weekly segment breaking down the week's transit news. Joining us is WNYC Transportation Reporters, Stephen Nesson and Ramsey Caliphate and editor Clayton Goosa. Okay, this week, the MTA released its next five-year capital plan. It lays out how the agency plans to expand transit service and

prevent the existing system from just straight up falling apart. Steven, what is in the plan? How much does it cost? Well, yeah, a lot of the keeping things from falling apart is part of it. But basically, it's a $65.4 billion plan, which is pretty similar to the last capital plan they had. There are a ton of projects, but let me just highlight two big ticket items. There's $10.9 billion in there for buying new train cars. Folks maybe have seen the new A-trains out there on the tracks.

Well, the MTA wants to buy 1,500 more subway cars to replace the oldest cars, the ones that are still running the date back to the 1980s. There's also money to buy 500 new Long Island Railroad and Metro North train cars to replace ones that have been brought back into service due to a train shortage. Some of the ones out there are 40 years old, and they have seats that are literally held together by duct tape. One other sort of big spending item of interest is the accessibility projects. The MTA wants to make 60 stations accessible, and, if, you're not. If it does that, including finishing the last 23 from the previous plan, then about half the subway system would be accessible. But really, that's, I would call maybe the more fun stuff. The bulk of the plan is just fixing old stuff, electric wires, crumbling tunnels, and elevated train structures that are in decay, basically.

Here's MTA chair, Jan Oliber. A lot of that infrastructure is over 100 years old. If the MTA system is going to survive, let alone grow and prosper. we're going to need to deal it, deal with that stuff. We can't put off dealing with it any longer. I should say that there is one big expansion project, and that's funding for Governor Kathy Hokel's Pet Project, the Interboro Express.

What that is, it's a light rail line that would repurpose a set of freight tracks running from between Jackson Heights in Queens and Bay Ridge in Brooklyn. It's 19 subway stations, and it will be connected to 17 subway lines. It aims to connect several neighborhoods that are considered transit desert.

It's hard to get around. The MTA is pitching almost $3 billion in this construction program that would work on, do the environmental review for it, the design of the project and early construction work. And that's only roughly half of the total estimated cost for this project. MT officials say that this project will save time for families who mostly commute between the two boroughs. Yeah. Last week, we were talking about how Governor Hokel's pause on congestion pricing just through the MTA's construction plans into disarray. They're missing more than $16 billion from their previous. construction plan. Now you're telling us they want to spend $65 billion on new stuff. Help us do the math,

Clayton. How can they afford it? Yeah, that's exactly. And Stephen and Ramsey here have just laid out all the projects that they want to do. The big question is how they're going to pay for it. And the bigs at the MTA have explained it by saying, hey, $65 billion we need to keep the system from falling apart and to expand it. We need about half that money. They say they have half the money. We need another $33 billion at least. Last time they passed a plan, they had all the funding shored up through new taxes and congestion pricing, which is now on pause. Now they've made the plan. They have to go to Albany and ask lawmakers in January in the new budget to come up with $33 billion in new taxes, new revenue, state bonds, anything that they can come up with to give them this money

over the next five years. It basically comes down to two possible scenarios. New Yorkers can expect to be more in one form of another to help the MTA, or the MTA doesn't get the money, and the subway system has a real risk of falling apart. And whether they get that money is a big question. I joined our scribes here at a MTA press conference briefing on Tuesday to really, you know, show our... Dusting off the old notebooks. Dusting off my old notebook, returning to 2 Broadway. And I verbatim asked the MTA officials if they had the guts to go to Albany and get $33 billion to save the subway. What did they say? They defended themselves. They said, we got money during COVID. We've gotten projects done since COVID. We've kept the system afloat. They seem confident that they're going to be able to make this maneuver happen. Okay. Something more solemn now. On Sunday, police officer shot a man at the Sutter Avenue L-Train station. They say he was brandishing a knife. Three other people were struck by gunfire, including a police officer. The NYPD says the confrontation started when the man didn't pay the fare. Ramsey, can you tell us about the station and the neighborhood where this has? happen? Yeah, the shooting happened at an elevated train station in Brownsville. So for context here, this is statistically the poorest neighborhood in New York City. Census status shows that that's 39% of people who live there who are in poverty. People I spoke with were honestly shaken up by what had happened. But they also say that fair evasion at that station is pretty rampant. Here's 65-year-old Margarita Pino. She was dropping off her husband at the station on Monday morning.

Everybody do. Everybody. I see it every day. Every day. every day. The doors open, they walk right through. And the booth people are not going to come out. They're not going to come out of here. So what can they do? Just watch the people go through the doors. What they need to do is change this, the way it is,

making more convenient for people to pay their fare. But when I was at the station at the day after the shooting, police officers were now standing guard in front of the emergency gates. That's where a lot of the fare evasion happens. Yeah. I saw dozens of people approaching the station, seeing the police officers and quickly turning away. They looked frustrated and angry.

I even witnessed an altercation between police officers and a man who had hopped the turnstiles. Police, you know, they grabbed him by the arm, they told him to leave, he started cursing, and he really got up in their face. Everyone was visibly tense because just the day before, there was a shooting at that station. The man eventually left.

But now MTA officials have repeatedly said that the shooting didn't happen because of ferretion. They're saying that this is because of a man with a knife, threatening the police. The suspect is now recovering from gunshot wounds to the chest and is charged with attempted assault and criminal possession. I'd just like to remind folks, you know, this isn't happening in a vacuum. The MTA has complained for a while about fare evasion. They say it costs $300 million a year. And in the last two years, as we've seen, there have been an increase in those

private security guards that stand near Exe Gates. That's to deter fair evasion. This March, the NYPD surged 800 officers to crack down specifically on fair evasion. So it's a fair question to ask. Has it worked? And I think the answer is maybe no. Despite issuing, you know, way more fare evasion tickets in the last couple in the last year, fair revision's gone up. It's 14% of riders are skipping out on the fair, which is an increase from 12.5% for the same time last year. You know, experts and the MTA themselves say, and as Ramsey's woman on the, he interviewed said, the best thing to do is to make it harder for people to enter without paying, like building new turnstiles, which the MTA does want to do.

as part of its capital plan. New Turnstiles at 150 stations. Okay. In our last 30 seconds here, I want to get a curious commuter question in. Every week in our on the way newsletter, we answer a question from a curious commuter this week. Jerry from Manhattan asks, has anyone ever tried to calculate the replacement cost of the New York City subway system? Well, Jerry, it's funny they do. Not just a subway system, but their whole infrastructure from the Verrazano Bridge to individual plug sockets at a bus depot.

The value is $1.5 trillion. with a T that includes the whole kit and caboodle. The MTA did a study saying looking at private sector infrastructure, saying assets this size would take $23 billion a year to maintain. They're investing about $13. They say they don't have enough. Wow. Well, thanks to Jerry from Manhattan for that question.

That's a GDP bigger than some countries. That's wild. No doubt. Thanks to W&EJ editor Clayton Goosa, Transportation Reporter Stephen Nesson and Ramsey-Kulife. You can stay in the know on all things transit or ask a question over here on by signing up for our weekly newsletter at gotthmus.com slash on the way transit brain trust. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Sean. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. See you this afternoon.