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    Subway Death in NYC Gives Insight Into the City’s Challenges

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    The man charged with shoving a man from a subway platform had a violent history, according to officials. The man who died was recovering from his own troubled past, his family said.Before the paths of Jason Volz and Carlton McPherson collided in a terrible moment on a Harlem subway platform on Monday, their lives had seemed to be heading in opposite directions.Mr. McPherson had been hospitalized at least half a dozen times since last year for mental health treatment, according to someone who has seen some of his medical records. A neighbor in the Bronx said he sometimes slept in a hallway closet in his grandmother’s building because she would not let him into her apartment. Last October, a man whom prosecutors believe to be Mr. McPherson — he had the same name and birth year — was charged with beating a Brooklyn homeless shelter employee with a cane.Mr. Volz, 54, was recovering from addiction and had also endured homelessness, but had gotten sober two years ago and had just moved into a new apartment, his ex-wife said.On Monday night, the police say, Mr. McPherson, 24, walked up to Mr. Volz on the uptown platform of the 125th Street station on Lexington Avenue and shoved him in front of an oncoming No. 4 train.Responding police officers, who had been on another part of the platform, found him lifeless beneath the train. His death was a recurrence of the ultimate New York City nightmare, and another example of the difficulty of preventing violence on the subway despite years of efforts by state and city authorities to keep people struggling with severe mental illness out of the transit system.Mayor Eric Adams, who has watched crime in the subway largely defy his attempts to rein it in, sounded a note of defeat on Tuesday, acknowledging that the presence of police officers had not been enough to stop Monday’s attack.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      After Another Subway Shooting, NYC Wrestles With Question of Safety

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      Even with the National Guard patrolling the system, some New Yorkers say they don’t feel secure, particularly after the subway shooting in Brooklyn on Thursday. Others remain unfazed.The subway crime that Jimmy Sumampow had been hearing about in recent years — as well as his own experience — had already led him to make plans to leave New York City. Then, on Friday, he saw a video online of the shooting on an A train this week.“I’m scared,” said Mr. Sumampow, 46, after seeing the video. Mr. Sumampow lives in Elmhurst, Queens, but plans to board an Amtrak train on Monday for Florida, where he has a new job and an apartment lined up. “I feel I should move out for a while and see if New York takes action and gets better,” he said.For Elise Anderson, however, the shooting did not raise her level of concern.“I wouldn’t say I’m any more scared,” Ms. Anderson, a 27-year-old Brooklyn resident, said as she waited at the Port Authority Bus Terminal subway station on Friday for a downtown A train. “I think we’re in one of the safest cities in the world.”In interviews across the city this week, New Yorkers wrestled with a question that cut to the core of the city’s identity: Is the subway system safe? Subway crime data in recent years shows a muddled picture, and just as they have in surveys of riders and polls of residents, New Yorkers’ opinions diverge.But barely more than a week after Gov. Kathy Hochul sent the National Guard and State Police into the subway to increase security and help ease New Yorkers’ fears, the shooting seemed to underscore the limits of law enforcement’s ability to improve safety underground.The episode took place at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station, where the Police Department maintains an outpost, Transit District 30, that is regularly staffed by officers. Moments before the shooting, two additional officers entered the station to inspect the platforms and train cars, Kaz Daughtry, the Police Department’s deputy commissioner of operations, said at a news conference on Friday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      National Guard Can’t Carry Long Guns While Checking Bags in Subway

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul issued an order forbidding the weapons at bag-check stations on Wednesday, directly after her announcement that soldiers would be deployed to New York City’s subways.Shortly after Gov. Kathy Hochul announced on Wednesday that hundreds of National Guard soldiers would be deployed to patrol the New York City subway system and check riders’ bags, her office made an adjustment: Soldiers searching bags would not carry long guns.The change, which was first reported by The Daily News, was ordered by Ms. Hochul on Wednesday for implementation on Thursday, according to a spokesman for the governor. Ms. Hochul issued a directive that National Guard members would be prohibited from carrying long guns at bag-check stations, he said. Soldiers not working at the stations would presumably be allowed to carry them.Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, called the ban on long guns at bag-checking stations a “relief,” but said the Guard’s presence underground remained “an unnecessary overreaction based on fear, not facts.”“Deploying military personnel to the subways will not make New Yorkers feel safe,” Ms. Lieberman said. “It will, unfortunately, create a perfect storm for tension, escalation and further criminalization of Black and brown New Yorkers.”Early images of the National Guard’s deployment showed soldiers standing near turnstiles in the subterranean system, wearing camouflage and military gear and holding long guns.Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, said the move to flood the system with reinforcements — 750 members of the New York National Guard, and an additional 250 personnel from the State Police and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority — would help commuters and visitors feel safe.Subway safety, a perpetual concern for New Yorkers, has been a challenging issue for public officials, who can be as sensitive to the perception that mass transit is dangerous as they are to an actual rise in crime.In February, following a 45 percent spike in major crimes in the first month of the year compared with the same period last year, Mayor Eric Adams ordered an additional 1,000 police officers into the subway system. Reported crime rates in the system declined that month, according to city data, and the overall rise in major crimes for the year as of March 3 was 13 percent, Police Department data shows.Ms. Hochul’s announcement this week drew criticism from public officials and from some members of her own party.Jumaane N. Williams, the city’s public advocate, warned that the plan would “criminalize the public on public transit.” Emily Gallagher, an assemblywoman and democratic socialist from Brooklyn, said that Ms. Hochul’s move was a “ham-fisted and authoritarian response” that validated “G.O.P. propaganda about urban lawlessness in an election year.”John Chell, the Police Department’s chief of patrol, cited recent statistics suggesting that transit crime had dropped.“Our transit system is not a ‘war’ zone!” he wrote on X. More

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      Subway Cameras Led to Arrests in Bronx D Train Shooting, NYPD Says

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      Investigators say that an early morning argument on a D train last week ended with the fatal shooting of William Alvarez, 45.The police on Monday said footage from a surveillance camera in a subway car helped lead to the arrests of three people in connection with the fatal shooting of a 45-year-old man last week.Justin Herde, 24, Alfredo Trinidad, 42, and Betty Cotto, 38, were in custody in connection with the killing of William Alvarez, 45, of the Bronx, according to the New York Police Department.Mr. Alvarez was riding a southbound D train around 5 a.m. on Friday morning when the three suspects boarded at the Fordham Road station and got into an argument with him, the police said. Mr. Alvarez was shot in the chest, Michael M. Kemper, the Police Department’s chief of transit, said at a Monday news conference. Chief Kemper added that Mr. Alvarez’s attackers fled the train at the 182nd-183rd Streets station.About 1,000 of the system’s roughly 6,500 cars are equipped with cameras, part of a broader effort begun in 2022 by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which plans to install cameras in the rest of the cars by the end of this year.Killings on the subway are rare, but attract intense public attention. This year there have been two other fatal incidents in the system. Earlier this month, a 35-year-old man was killed and five other people were wounded in a shooting at the Mount Eden Avenue station in the Bronx during the evening rush hour. And in January, a 45-year-old father of three was shot on a No. 3 train in Brooklyn after intervening in an argument.Transit leaders are under intense pressure to bring ridership back to prepandemic levels, and making the system feel safe is critical to that mission. Ridership rose by about 3 percent in January, hovering on average at about 3 million daily passengers. In 2019, daily ridership was about 5 million.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Man Is Shot Dead on Subway Train in the Bronx

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      The 45-year-old man was shot in the chest on a southbound D train early Friday morning. The police said his assailants fled, and it was unclear what set off the violence.A 45-year-old man was fatally shot inside a subway car early Friday morning in the Bronx, the police said.The man was hit in the chest aboard a southbound D train near the 182nd-183rd Streets station just after 5 a.m., the police said. He was taken to St. Barnabas Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.The police identified three men who were wearing all black as potential suspects, and said they fled the train after the shooting.It is not clear what led to the shooting or whether the victim knew his assailants. No arrests have been made, the police said.Shortly after the shooting, more than a dozen bystanders remained on the station platform and on the stalled trained. They watched quietly as three emergency medical workers tried to save the victim’s life. With medical equipment strewed across the concrete floor around them, the workers performed CPR for several minutes, but the man did not respond.Outside the station, a police officer monitored the entrance, which was cordoned off. A police cruiser and an ambulance with its lights flashing were parked outside.Northbound and southbound B and D trains were bypassing the station as the police continued their investigation, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.Shootings on subways in New York are rare and make up a fraction of the gun crimes in the city. But the trains have been the setting for several outbreaks of violence this year.Earlier this month, a 35-year-old man was killed and five other people were wounded in a shooting at the Mount Eden Avenue station in the Bronx during the evening rush hour. And in January, a 45-year-old father of three was fatally shot aboard a No. 3 train in Brooklyn after intervening in an argument.This is a developing story and will be updated.Dakota Santiago More

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      The M.T.A.’s Money Woes

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      The New York area transportation authority is contending with reduced ridership, debt and inefficiency.Good morning. It’s Wednesday. We’ll look at what the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s looming budget deficit might mean for riders — and drivers. And, with an eye to next week’s primary, we’ll recap a key congressional race in Manhattan.Timothy Mulcare for The New York TimesThe Metropolitan Transportation Authority is facing a $2.5 billion budget deficit for 2025, 12 percent of its operating budget. That has New Yorkers who remember past financial emergencies worried about service cuts. I asked Ana Ley, a Metro reporter who covers transit in New York, to explain.The chairman of the M.T.A. told you that transit in New York City “is like air and water — we cannot exist without it.” But the M.T.A. cannot exist without revenue. Is that one reason the authority is talking about charging drivers as much as $23 to drive into Midtown Manhattan under a congestion pricing program?Congestion pricing is one way the M.T.A. can generate new sources of revenue, but that money is only supposed to be used for infrastructure upgrades, like building new platform barriers or elevators. The way congestion pricing works right now, it can’t be used for operating expenses, which are the dollars the M.T.A. uses for day-to-day costs to run the subways, buses and trains. A lot is used to pay employees. That’s the type of money it desperately needs right now.Some lawmakers have urged the M.T.A. to dip into money it has reserved for system improvements to pay for those everyday operating expenses. But government watchdogs warn that it could push the M.T.A.’s huge debt load even higher because the authority relies heavily on bonds for capital improvement projects.Transit advocates have said the state should move money from the federal government’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill from highway and road upgrades to pay for transit.And many experts agree that the M.T.A. — which has a reputation for huge overspending and labor redundancies — could address part of its problem by simply being more efficient.How bad is the M.T.A.’s financial picture?It has been bad for a long time. The pandemic just made it get a lot worse very quickly.The state let the M.T.A. issue bonds in the early 1980s to save it from economic decline at the time, and the authority’s debt load ballooned. Expenses have since outpaced income, and the authority has borrowed heavily to keep up.More troublingly, the M.T.A. relies more on fares than most other transit systems in the nation, and it lost a huge number of riders through the pandemic. The federal government offered a one-time bailout of more than $14 billion to keep it afloat, but that money will run out in two years. That’s why transit leaders are scrambling for a fix.How far from prepandemic ridership is the M.T.A. right now? What about earlier forecasts that said the M.T.A. by next year would carry 86 percent of the passengers it had before Covid hit?Ridership has struggled to rebound and hovers at about 60 percent of prepandemic levels. Forecasters predict they will reach only 80 percent of prepandemic levels by 2026, which is way down from earlier expectations of 86 percent by next year. As a result of that drop, the latest projections from the authority’s consultant, McKinsey & Company, estimate that the M.T.A. will bring in $7.9 billion in revenue in 2026, down considerably from a previous estimate of $8.4 billion. Before the pandemic, it had expected to make $9.6 billion that year.Those early pandemic estimates now seem too rosy because at the time that McKinsey made them, it didn’t expect the coronavirus to evolve so much and stifle the city’s recovery. We also didn’t know remote work would become so popular, or that riders would avoid transit after several high-profile violent incidents amplified the perception that the system has become more dangerous.So what can the M.T.A. do?Without help from the state, not much that would make riders or transit workers happy.It could cut service, raise fares or lay off employees. But its potential budget gap is huge, and those things alone would probably not fix it.Cuts would be especially devastating, because they could plunge the system into a so-called transit death spiral, where reduced service and delayed upgrades make public transit a less convenient option, which would reduce ridership and further shrink revenue until the network collapsed. The M.T.A. got a glimpse of that in 2010, when transit leaders cut their way out of a fiscal crisis triggered by the Great Recession, inconveniencing 15 percent of its transit riders and driving some away altogether.Today, any new service reductions risk deepening work force inequities that were laid bare by the pandemic. White-collar workers have had the option to stay home, but many lower-wage workers, who tend to be people of color with longer commutes, still need to travel to their jobs.WeatherExpect of chance of showers in the morning. The rest of the day is mostly sunny, with temperatures near 80. At night, temps will drop to around the high 60s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Sept. 5 (Labor Day).The latest Metro newsJefferson Siegel for The New York TimesCrimeProsecutor, advocate and now defendant: Adam Foss (above), a former Boston prosecutor who became a criminal justice reform advocate, pleaded not guilty to charges of rape and sexual abuse in Manhattan.Mafia clans charged: Nine members and associates of the Genovese and Bonanno families were charged with racketeering in a case that centered on money laundering and secret gambling parlors.HousingReduce emissions or face fines: Building owners are on high alert about upgrades needed to comply with city regulations to fight climate change.Apartment hunting tips: An investigative reporter gives backgrounding tips for your next apartment search, ProPublica reports.More local newsSocial services chief scrutinized: The city’s social services commissioner is being investigated after homeless families had to spend the night at a Bronx intake office.Digging deep at an amusement park: At Diggerland U.S.A., children can experience the thrill of operating real construction machinery. (Adults like it, too.)In Manhattan, congressional musical chairsFrom left: Drew Angerer/Getty Images; Dave Sanders for The New York TimesWith the Democratic congressional primary six days away, it’s time for a recap of a key race.It’s unusual for two incumbents to face off in a primary for the same seat. But that is what is happening in Manhattan, where a redistricting plan joined the East and West Sides above 14th Street in one district for the first time since before World War II.Representative Jerrold Nadler, from the West Side, and Representative Carolyn Maloney, from the East Side, are the players in this game of congressional musical chairs. The music will stop when the votes are counted next week.Both have served in Congress since the 1990s. Both have accumulated enough seniority to be committee chairs, he of Judiciary, she of Oversight. Also in the race is Suraj Patel, a 38-year-old lawyer who says it is time for a generational change.Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, is supporting Nadler. Many politicians and political operatives had expected him to sit out the primary, as nearly every other House Democrat from New York has done. So has Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. As might be expected, there’s some history between all of them: Maloney endorsed Gillibrand’s campaign for president in 2020. The first time Schumer ran for the Senate, in 1998, Nadler endorsed him.For Maloney and her allies, the race has increasingly focused on women. With the Supreme Court and Republican-led states rolling back reproductive rights, her supporters see this as a moment to rally behind a woman in Congress. Maloney has spent a sizable portion of the $900,000 she has lent the campaign reinforcing the message “you cannot send a man to do a woman’s job.”My colleague Nicholas Fandos writes that few women have ever had more influence in Washington or used it with such intense focus — pressing for the Equal Rights Amendment, paid family leave, protections against gender-based violence and a national women’s history museum. Maloney has support from the feminist Gloria Steinem, who called her “the most needed, the most trusted and the experienced.”The primary fight has been increasingly vicious. Nadler has cast himself as the progressive and has highlighted his status as the city’s last Jewish congressman. Maloney told Nicholas Fandos flatly that Nadler did not work as hard as she did, particularly on local issues.She also said that residents of one of the nation’s wealthiest and most liberal districts needed her, not Nadler or Patel. But Nadler’s team put together a Nadler women’s group led by two former Manhattan borough presidents, Gale Brewer and Ruth Messinger. Senator Elizabeth Warren appears in a Nadler television commercial, and he also has the backing of the actor Cynthia Nixon, who ran for governor of New York four years ago.METROPOLITAN diary(Central Park, 9 a.m.)Dear Diary:I had not breathedin yearsbut oneeveningpickeda windthe stringsof my sinewedthroatan old man-dolinand a melodymoved throughme— Rolli AndersonIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Melissa Guerrero More

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      How the Candidates for N.Y.C. Mayor Plan to Improve Transit

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      Eight leading mayoral candidates share their ideas and plans for public transit.When the pandemic engulfed New York, it highlighted the vital role public transit plays in a city where essential workers — many of whom are poor and people of color — count on the subway and buses to get around.Although the subway is the city’s lifeblood, the mayor of New York has little say over the subway because it is operated by an agency controlled by the governor. But as the city slowly recovers, public transit is central to its efforts to bring back daily life and has become a key focus in the race to become the next mayor. And New York’s next leader does have far more influence over buses by virtue of controlling the streets they run on. Buses are a key cog of the vast public transit system, even if they are often overshadowed by the subway. Carrying well over two million riders daily before the outbreak, the city’s bus network by itself is bigger than many of the country’s largest urban transit systems. The sprawling bus network links many neighborhoods, especially outside Manhattan, that are not well served by the subway and transports a ridership that is more diverse and makes less money than commuters who use the trains. Bus riders tend to be service workers, from hourly employees at fast food restaurants and clothing stores to a vast army of home health aides, many of whom travel across different boroughs and do not need to be taken to Manhattan, which is the subway’s main purpose. “By far the mayor’s most significant power over transit is the control of the streets,” said Ben Fried, a spokesman for TransitCenter, a nonprofit research and advocacy group. “There’s a huge opportunity awaiting the next mayor to improve the bus system.”Mayor Bill de Blasio, who did little to significantly enhance bus service until late in his eight-year tenure, has accelerated projects during the pandemic. The city built 16 miles of new bus lanes last year, and expanded a successful busway that cleared cars off a major crosstown street in Manhattan to three other streets around the city. Another three busways are planned by year’s end for a total of seven.But before the pandemic, clogged streets had reduced bus speeds to a crawl and New York lagged far behind other cities in building dedicated bus lanes. Now, the eight leading Democratic candidates for mayor have pledged to make buses a centerpiece of their transportation agendas.Their plans, shared in response to written questions from The New York Times, range from more bus lanes to a rapid transit network that would operate more like a subway.The proposals could make New York a national model — but would also require reclaiming vast chunks of the city’s limited street space and exacerbating an already pitched battle with drivers and some community leaders. “For a truly equitable New York City, we must improve our bus system, with a focus on improving speed, reliability and safety,” said Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mr. de Blasio, who wants to expand a city program that provides half-price fares to low-income riders by reallocating funds from policing for fare evasion.Scott Stringer, the city comptroller, said he would be the city’s “bus mayor.” “I’m going to harness the power of our streets to revolutionize our transportation system for all New Yorkers and be the streets and bus mayor we need,” he said.Kathryn Garcia, a former city sanitation commissioner, added, “Public transportation is a driver of economic growth that will, in turn, generate new housing and new jobs.” The biggest hurdle for any mayor, of course, is that day-to-day bus and subway service is operated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate, wants to take control of the buses and subways from the M.T.A. But experts say a municipal takeover is unlikely because of the bureaucratic and financial hurdles of restructuring a mammoth state agency. “The politics of wrestling something of enormous value from Governor Cuomo don’t look very good,” said Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. “There’s almost no practical chance of it happening.”Even before the pandemic, the bus system had steadily lost riders as buses trapped in traffic became unreliable. Average weekday bus ridership fell to under 2.2 million riders in 2019 from nearly 2.5 million in 2015. Though ridership on buses plunged less than on the subway during the pandemic, it remains about half of what it was before, with 1.1 million bus riders on a recent weekday.Bus speeds, which rose at the height of the pandemic as traffic disappeared, dropped to 8.2 miles per hour in April as cars returned.Though New York has significantly expanded bus lanes in recent years to 138 miles, that is still lower than in other major cities, including London, which has about 180 miles of bus lanes.Here is what the candidates said they would do to improve bus service:Lanes just for buses is a key step. The city’s sprawling bus network links many neighborhoods, especially outside Manhattan, that are not well served by the subway.Juan Arredondo for The New York TimesAll the candidates said they would build more bus lanes. Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, said he would add 150 miles of new bus lanes and busways in four years, while Mr. Stringer said he would build 35 miles of new bus lanes and busways every year and Ms. Wiley 30 miles every year. Dianne Morales said she supported a call by a coalition of community, environmental and business groups to create 500 miles of new protected bus lanes by 2025 to ensure every New Yorker lives within a quarter-mile of a bus lane. Ms. Morales, a former nonprofit executive, said she would start with more bus lanes in underserved neighborhoods outside Manhattan.“When you look at transportation investments and where transit deserts are in New York City, the patterns are all designed to benefit wealthy neighborhoods,” Ms. Morales said. “The reality is that Black and brown communities have less access to transit.”Use cameras and tech to speed up service. To help keep bus lanes clear, the city has installed 372 enforcement cameras to catch drivers who travel in the lanes, with fines starting at $50. The M.T.A. also has 123 buses with cameras that help ticket drivers for blocking bus lanes. Ms. Wiley, Mr. Stringer and Shaun Donovan, a former federal housing secretary, said they would install more bus lane cameras, with Mr. Stringer also calling for heavier fines. “But in a way that is fair and does not unjustly target any one particular community,” Mr. Donovan added.Five candidates — Mr. Donovan, Mr. Stringer, Ms. Wiley, Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia — said they would also expand signal technology that gives buses priority at traffic lights. .css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Currently, there are 1,569 intersections with signal priority for buses, or about 19 percent of such intersections where buses cross.Make the fleet more green. New York has 138 miles of bus lanes, far less than other major cities across the world. All the leading mayoral candidates pledged to vastly increase the number of lanes. Jonah Markowitz for The New York TimesThe M.T.A. has more than 5,700 buses, including 25 all-electric buses, with plans to buy another 500 and build charging stations. The agency has committed to a zero-emission fleet by 2040.Four candidates — Mr. Yang, Mr. Adams, Ms. Garcia and Raymond McGuire, a former Wall Street executive — said they would push the agency to get more electric buses on the roads faster to reduce pollution. Mr. Yang wants to see an all-electric bus fleet by 2030.Ms. Garcia has also proposed converting 10,000 city school buses to electric “to protect our youngest lungs.”Mr. Adams, who would prioritize communities facing environmental health risks, added that electric buses were also “an investment that will save the city money on fuel and maintenance.” Increase service to improve commutes. Though M.T.A. officials oversee bus routes and service, four candidates — Ms. Garcia, Mr. Adams, Ms. Morales and Mr. McGuire — said they would push to expand express and select bus service. Express bus service carries commuters from the city’s edges to Manhattan with limited stops and higher fares. Select bus service speeds up buses in congested areas with bus lanes, curbside ticket machines and boarding through all doors. Mr. McGuire said he would work with the M.T.A. to add 20 more select bus service routes and dedicated bus lanes to accelerate travel times, as well as to eliminate transit deserts and reduce reliance on cars.Ms. Wiley and Mr. Stringer have called for increasing off-peak and weekend bus service, particularly outside Manhattan. Mr. Yang would count on gaining control of the bus system from the M.T.A. to increase bus service in transit deserts as part of his plan to build more affordable housing. “I will be expanding bus routes to these neighborhoods so we can support denser housing without further exacerbating car traffic,” he said.Build a rapid system for buses.Some candidates said they would expand signal technology that gives buses priority to proceed first at traffic lights.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesFour candidates — Mr. Adams, Mr. Donovan, Ms. Wiley and Ms. Morales — envision creating a full-fledged Bus Rapid Transit network, in which buses go faster because they travel in full-time, protected bus lanes often set off by barriers. In New York, some bus lanes only operate during certain hours.Ms. Morales and Mr. Donovan said they would prioritize rapid transit in key corridors, and Ms. Wiley said it would especially benefit underserved areas with poor subway connections such as Fordham Road in the Bronx.Mr. Adams said rapid transit would “help revolutionize how New York City residents move around” on arteries like Linden Boulevard and Third Avenue in Brooklyn and support economic development around transit hubs.“B.R.T. is cost-effective, high quality, and will do the most in the shortest amount of time to build out our transit network without depending solely on New York State,” he said. Some advocates said they welcomed the candidates’ ambitions to improve service since it is easier, quicker and cheaper to expand and speed up buses than it is to lay down subway tracks and build new stations. “We like to see the acknowledgment that there are certain routes in the city that could take advantage of wider streets and bring in much faster transit service for communities that lack good subway access,” said Danny Pearlstein, a spokesman for Riders Alliance, an advocacy group. More

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      N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidates Keep Focus on Crime After a Feisty Debate

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      Back on the campaign trail, the leading Democrats traded barbs over their competing visions for public safety.On the day after the leading Democratic candidates for mayor faced off in the first major debate of the election season, Andrew Yang attended a conference on the future of the waterfront. Scott M. Stringer went to a vacant lot in Brooklyn to talk about affordable housing. Maya Wiley toured a Puerto Rican cultural center on the Lower East Side. Eric Adams attended fund-raisers, and Raymond J. McGuire greeted business owners on Staten Island.But whatever the candidates’ ostensible agendas, public safety — which spurred some of the hottest exchanges during the debate — remained the topic of the day, after yet another rash of attacks in the subway kept the city’s focus on its shaken sense of order.And so there was Mr. Adams, a retired police captain, reminding New Yorkers in a statement Friday morning that he stood with transit workers in their demands for more officers in the subway. There was Mr. Yang on “Good Morning New York,” opining that the police “are going to drive our ability to improve what’s going on our streets, in the subway.”There, on the other side of the divide, was Ms. Wiley, at the Clemente Cultural and Educational Center in Manhattan, urging that more social service workers for people with mental illness, not more police officers, be sent underground.And there was Mr. Stringer, the city comptroller, sounding a similar note in front of the vacant lot in Brownsville, saying that without a comprehensive prescription that included social services and supportive housing, “We will be cycling people from the subways to Rikers,” the city’s jail complex, “back and forth and at a tremendous financial cost.”With less than six weeks left before the June 22 primary and a crowded field of contenders struggling to define themselves to a distracted electorate, crime, and how to stop it, has emerged as both a dominant public concern and a way for the candidates to score points against each other.Each day seems to bring a fresh cause for alarm. On Friday, a group of men slashed or punched commuters aboard a moving subway train. The attacks came at the end of a one-week stretch that included the shooting of three bystanders in Times Square, a police officer being shot three times while responding to another shooting and at least a half-dozen other seemingly random subway attacks.The candidates have clearly felt pressure to address the violence. After the Times Square shooting last Saturday, Mr. Yang, Mr. Adams and Mr. McGuire held news conferences there, even as the current mayor, Bill de Blasio, stayed away.At the debate, Mr. Adams took Mr. Yang, a former presidential candidate, to task for holding a news conference “blocks from your home” in Times Square but not responding to recent shootings in neighborhoods with large Black populations, like Brownsville. Two other candidates, Shaun Donovan and Kathryn Garcia, responded to the Times Square shooting with plans to get guns off the streets.In many ways, the campaigning on Friday was a continuation of the previous night’s debate, where the candidates leaned into their sharply different approaches to law enforcement and to the question of whether the city can police its way out of a spike in gun violence.Ms. Wiley, a former counsel to Mr. de Blasio and civil-rights lawyer, said at the debate that she would take $1 billion from the Police Department and use the money “to create trauma-informed care in our schools, because when we do that violence goes down and graduation rates go up.”Another candidate, Dianne Morales, who has called for cutting the $6 billion police budget in half, said that “safety is not synonymous with police.” Mr. Stringer and Mr. Donovan have also called for shifting at least $1 billion from the police budget to social services.Ms. Garcia, a former sanitation commissioner, staked out a middle ground on Thursday, saying, “We do need to respond when the M.T.A. says we need more cops in the subway. That does not mean we’re not sending mental health professionals into the subway as well.”Mr. Adams and Mr. Yang have opposed “defunding” the police, and on Thursday night Mr. Adams repeated his call for a reinstituted unit of plainclothes police officers to target gang activity in the city.“​We have to deal with intervention,” he said, “and stop the flow of guns into the city,” adding, “We have to deal with this real, pervasive handgun problem.”In one of the debate’s fiercer exchanges, Ms. Wiley called Mr. Adams an apologist for stop-and-frisk policing. That prompted him to counter that he was actually a “leading voice against the abuse of stop-and-frisk” and that Ms. Wiley had showed a “failure of understanding law enforcement.”Ms. Wiley retorted that as the former head of the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, “I certainly understand misconduct.” Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, hit back, saying that under her, the board was “a failure.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Ms. Wiley picked up the thread on Friday, reminding a reporter at her tour outside the Clemente Center that Mr. Adams had called stop-and-frisk a “great tool” just last year. (She called the policy “lazy,” “ineffective” and “traumatizing.”)Mr. Adams also took flak from Mr. Donovan at the debate for having said that as mayor he would carry a gun.“As a New Yorker but also as a parent, I’m deeply concerned about the idea of a mayor who carries a gun at a time where gun violence is spiking,” Mr. Donovan, a former city and federal housing official, said.Mr. Adams replied that he would do so only if the police’s threat assessment unit found that he was the target of “a credible threat.”On Friday, Ms. Wiley spoke about there being a “false choice between either being safe from crime and being safe from police violence” and promised, “We can have both.”In an ad released on Friday by a political action committee that supports Mr. Adams, Strong Leadership NYC, Mr. Adams used similar words.“We can have justice and public safety at the same time,” he says in the ad, adding that after being assaulted by the police as a young man, he became an officer with the goal of reforming the department from within. In his statement on Friday, Mr. Adams called not only for more officers in the subway but for “serious mental health resources.”Still, there was no question where his emphasis lay: He also called for better monitoring of security cameras and closer coordination between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the subway, and the police.“Progress cannot be derailed by crime,” Mr. Adams wrote. “If New Yorkers themselves cannot rely on our public transportation to keep them safe, then tourists will not return and not the businesses that depend on them.” More

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      Rash of MTA Subway Attacks Raise Worries With Service Set to Return

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      Hours after mayoral candidates clashed over how to address crime in the transit system, the police reported a series of early-morning assaults.In the span of 12 minutes early Friday, the police said, a group of men attacked commuters aboard a moving subway train, increasing concerns about public safety in New York City’s transit system just as 24-hour subway service is set to resume on Monday.The attackers, striking together on a southbound Lexington Avenue express train as it passed through several stations starting at around 4:30 a.m., slashed three riders, two in the face and one in the back of the head, the police said. A fourth person was punched. The attackers took a phone and a wallet from one of the victims.The three slashing victims, all men in their 40s, were hospitalized and in stable condition, according to the police. One of the attackers, they said, slashed at the three men as another urged him on. The attacks came amid rising concern about crime in New York. Much of that concern has focused on the subway, which is about to resume nonstop service after it was curtailed last May for the first time in the system’s history because of the pandemic.Despite the flurry of reported attacks, the overall trend in subway violence is less clear. Data suggests that crime per rider may be lower so far this year than in 2020, when ridership plunged amid a citywide lockdown, but up from 2019.And now, even as the system gears up for a full return, at least a dozen attacks and other violent episodes have taken place on train cars or at stations this month alone.The police initially said that two men in their 20s were responsible for the three early morning attacks. But at a news conference later on Friday, officials said the assaults were the work of a larger group that was involved in a fourth attack around the same time. In that incident, the police said, a 48-year-old man was stabbed in the eye with a knife. Like the other victims, he was taken to a hospital, where he was undergoing surgery, the police said.Jason Wilcox, an assistant police chief, said at the news conference that the investigation was continuing but that it appeared that the victims had been attacked by a group of men who were coordinating their actions and occasionally splitting into smaller groups. “It looks like they were pairing off, mixing off, as the train was moving down along the 4 line this morning,” Chief Wilcox said.Four men were subsequently taken into custody in connection with the attacks, the police said. They had not been formally charged as of Friday afternoon, the police said. The spate of assaults prompted transit officials to renew their call for more police officers in the subway. An additional 500 officers were deployed to the system in February after a homeless man was accused of stabbing four people in the subway.The issue of subway crime was among the issues discussed at a mayoral debate on Thursday. The eight leading Democratic candidates in the race all used the occasion to express concern about the system’s safety, but they were split over whether more officers were needed. Andrew Yang, Eric Adams, Kathryn Garcia, Shaun Donovan and Ray McGuire said they would expand the police presence in the system. Scott Stringer, Dianne Morales and Maya Wiley said they would not.On Friday Sarah Feinberg — who, as the New York City Transit Authority’s interim president, has consistently raised concerns about the system becoming a de facto shelter for homeless people — lashed out at Mayor Bill de Blasio over the attacks.“The mayor is risking New York’s recovery every time he lets these incidents go by without meaningful action,” Ms. Feinberg said in a statement.In a background note appended to Ms. Feinberg’s statement, the authority pointed out which of the mayoral candidates had expressed support for assigning more officers to the subway. Ms. Feinberg was appointed to the authority’s board by Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, who has frequently clashed with Mr. de Blasio, a fellow Democrat, on policies related to the transit system, and to the pandemic and its impact more broadly.Last week, Mr. Cuomo compared the current condition of the subway to what it was like in the 1970s, and he blamed city officials for failing to address the system’s problem.A spokesman for Mr. De Blasio, Bill Neidhardt, responded to Ms. Feinberg, saying that the city had diverted officers from desk duty to subway platforms and trains.“We’re going to keep putting massive resources into this fight to keep our subways safe,” Mr. Neidhardt said in a statement. “Meanwhile, the M.T.A. sends out statements that point fingers and talk about mayoral politics.”Danny Pearlstein, the policy and communications director for the Riders Alliance, a public transit advocacy group, said in a statement that the subway remained overwhelmingly safe, and he urged Mr. Cuomo not to spread fear about the state of the system.“The reality is that the governor’s fear-mongering may be scaring people away from public transit and making riders who need to travel less safe,” Mr. Pearlstein said in the statement.The victims of the dozen subway attacks this month include: a 60-year-old woman stabbed in the back; two men slashed in the face on separate days; a woman hit in the face with a skateboard; a man visiting from Ecuador attacked with a screwdriver; a transit worker punched in the face, and a subway conductor chased off a train by a razor-wielding man.Several of those episodes resulted in service being shut down, as did other incidents that did not involve attacks on people.On May 5, a man shouting incoherently about Covid-19 vaccines broke into an operator’s compartment on a train car and holed up there for 90 minutes, and hours later another man pulled the emergency brakes on a train, smashed the windows and fled. More