As Mayor Zohran Mamdani pushes a transit agenda centered on rushing the nation’s slowest buses, he has lower than a month to fill a pair of longstanding vacancies on the MTA board.
The mayor has simply 4 seats on the panel that units fares, working and capital budgets for a regional transportation authority that’s largely beneath the management of Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Mamdani’s suggestions should be submitted to Hochul, who appoints the pinnacle of the MTA and has six board members of her personal, after which permitted by the State Senate earlier than the Albany legislative session ends June 4.
The brand new mayor has already tapped a new “bus czar” to steer his pro-bus agenda at Metropolis Corridor. Now, he has to make his first appointments to the MTA board.
“Having somebody who’s reflective of his values and including one other member of his administration to voice his pursuits and his issues goes to be useful to the numerous people who find themselves relying on buses,” stated Lisa Daglian, govt director of the Everlasting Residents Advisory Committee to the MTA.
The 23-member board additionally consists of members chosen by every of the county executives from the seven suburban counties served by the MTA’s commuter railroads, in addition to six non-voting representatives from labor unions and commuter councils.
Polly Trottenberg, who was on the MTA board from 2014 to 2019 whereas she led town’s Transportation Division, stated the mayoral appointments play an important function even when they’re outnumbered.
“Who the mayor picks is necessary,” Trottenberg stated. “What I discovered in my time is that you simply don’t all the time have the votes, however you all the time have the bully pulpit.”
As soon as confirmed, Mamdani’s suggestions would fill spots which were vacant for months. Meera Joshi, a former deputy mayor beneath Eric Adams, left final June, whereas one other Adams decide, Midori Valdivia, resigned in March, after Mamdani appointed her as commissioner and chair of the New York Metropolis Taxi & Limousine Fee.
Even with the competing pursuits on the board, Mamdani’s picks are seen as key to advancing his high transportation priorities, together with transit affordability and the acceleration of slow-moving buses, which plodded alongside at a citywide common of 8.3 mph in March, in line with MTA knowledge.
The brand new board members would be a part of mayoral holdovers David Jones, who has been on the board for the reason that de Blasio administration, and Dan Garodnick, the previous director of the Division of Metropolis Planning who was beneficial for the MTA board in 2024 by then-Mayor Adams.
Jones, chief govt of the nonprofit Neighborhood Service Society, started pushing greater than a decade in the past for the creation of Honest Fares, the city-run program that launched in 2019 providing half-off fares to low-income New Yorkers. Jones additionally often makes use of his spot on the MTA board to talk out towards alleged racial disparities within the NYPD’s policing of fare evasion within the transit system.
However even with the deadline quick approaching, Mamdani isn’t tipping his hand on his personal picks or the positive print of his transit plans, whilst town’s Division of Transportation has launched a collection of bus- and bike-lane expansions that had been languishing beneath the earlier mayor.
“New Yorkers deserve a public transit system that’s reasonably priced, dependable and accountable to the individuals who rely on it on daily basis,” Mamdani spokesperson Jeremy Edwards stated in a press release. “Dan Garodnick and David Jones have been necessary companions in advancing that work alongside town and we’re grateful for his or her service to the MTA board.”
“We’ll have extra to share quickly about the way forward for these appointments and our broader imaginative and prescient for public transit in New York,” he added.
Advocates and former MTA board members stated there’s a important function for the mayoral picks, particularly when town’s priorities conflict with these of the governor.
“It clearly is a spot the place the mayor could make the case for what he desires to do and argue forcefully and be capable of have interaction in a dialogue over how the transit needs to be delivered within the metropolis,” stated Bob Linn, former commissioner of town’s Workplace of Labor Relations, who was on the MTA board from 2019 by means of 2022.
Veronica Vanterpool, who served on the MTA board from 2016 to 2019, stated that the elected officers who decide potential MTA board members should give attention to “choosing the fitting people” to be “vocal advocates” for no matter transit points they want to champion.
“It’s not helpful if whomever is placed on the board shouldn’t be a vocal advocate for the priorities,” Vanterpool stated.
The latter half of Mamdani’s transit priorities — to finally eradicate bus fares — has been met with resistance from Hochul in addition to MTA Chairperson and Chief Govt Janno Lieber, even because the transit chief has praised Mamdani for being a “really pro-transit mayor.” Some Metropolis Council members have additionally pushed to develop Honest Fares over the fare-free buses proposal.
However general, the dealings between the state and town on transportation issues are in distinction to these beneath earlier administrations in Albany and at Metropolis Corridor.
“It could possibly be contentious between the mayor and the governor,” Trottenberg stated, recalling the frequent clashes between former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and de Blasio. “It’s a way more collaborative relationship now between town and the state and that, I feel, is mirrored within the MTA board.”
When Cuomo was governor and a forceful presence on the MTA, de Blasio’s board members often pushed again towards a few of his priorities. That included criticism of the prices for a Cuomo plan to overtake Penn Station and a number of other subway station renovations that didn’t embrace the set up of elevators.
“None of us had been shy about taking a troublesome stance or place on an motion,” Vanterpool stated. “None of us had been shy about asking questions that had been difficult. None of us had been shy about indicating what the priorities of New York Metropolis had been.”
Andrew Albert, who has sat on the MTA board since 2002 as a non-voting consultant for the New York Metropolis Transit Riders Council, stated that even occasional flare-ups between board members may be helpful for the transit community and its riders.
“Everybody desires to see one of the best system that we presumably can,” he stated. “And everybody desires to have it financed one of the best that it may be.”
