About this episode
In this episode of Capital for Good we speak with Janno Lieber, the chairman and CEO of New York's MTA, one of the world's oldest, largest, and most complex public transit systems. "New York is my passion," Lieber says, and the throughline of his career. Lieber, a lifelong New Yorker, business leader and transit veteran — he was a transportation advisor to Mayor Koch, an Assistant Secretary of Transportation in the Clinton Administration, and led the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site after September 11 attacks — talks about the complexity of overseeing a public transportation system that spans a 12-county, 25-million person region: 6,400 subway cars, 472 stations, 5,700 buses, and two major commuter rails. Lieber notes that the success of the region — it is the economic powerhouse of the local state and much of the national economy — rests on density and mobility. "The ability to get around New York only works if you have great mass transit," he says; the MTA moves more than six million people per day. For users, trains, buses and subways are 15 percent the cost of owning an automobile. "The magic of transit," Lieber explains, "is it is one of the very few things that makes living in New York City and the region affordable." We discuss congestion pricing, the decades in making the policy to charge automobiles $9 a day to enter the most congested part of the city to reduce traffic, improve emissions, air quality, health and safety, and help finance maintenance and upgrades to the 100 year old transit system. The program launched January 5 and early data is very promising: a 10 to 20 percent reduction in traffic; significantly reduced travel times for drivers from New Jersey, Long Island, Queens and the Bronx, and along some of the city's most crowded thoroughfares (i.e., Canal Street, 34th Street, 42nd Street and 57th); increased transit ridership; and revenue generated for critical improvements: elevators and ramps to make all subway stations accessible and ADA compliant, new train cars and electric buses, new tracks, signals and power systems, mitigation efforts in areas that may see spillover traffic. Lieber notes that the economic benefits are already observable in the zone itself: increased pedestrian traffic, an uptick in retail, restaurant and Broadway sales, and promising indices in commercial leasing — "a vote of confidence" in the program. For all these reasons the business community has long supported the policy. The MTA is equally pleased to see high rates of customer satisfaction coming from drivers with reduced commute times, which Lieber believes will also be important to counter the recent political opposition from Washington. Lieber reminds us that congestion pricing has been successfully tested in the courts, and there is nothing in the federal law or program design that would allow for its rollback
