I was just confirmed as the Chair and CEO by the State Senate on Thursday, as the Reverend said.  I wanted to visit the House of Justice to make it very clear that transportation equity is our priority. That is where we're coming from at the MTA. In good times and bad, we're going to serve the people who depend on mass transit, who don't have the opportunity to take an Uber, who don't have the opportunity to be driven somewhere. We're going to make sure that they have the opportunity to connect with everything in this city.

Public transportation is literally the express train to prosperity for many, many folks and during the pandemic, it has been a lifeline for the people that, as the Reverend said, didn't have the choice to sit at home and tap away at a computer and collect the paycheck remotely, but had to show up. We're proud of that and that is the centerpiece of our mission.

I’ve be in and out of government my whole career. I was in the city government. I was in the Clinton administration, I worked on the World Trade Center rebuilding for many years. I'm all about expanding access to this system into opportunity in transit deserts. Places like just nearby in East Harlem where 40, 50 years ago they promised when they knocked down the elevated trains, there's some people in this room who I bet remember that moment, they started knocking down the elevated trains and they said we're going to give you a subway, don't worry, subway is coming. Still waiting.

One of my central missions is to make that real. And by the way, that Second Avenue subway, which is going to come up from the more affluent precincts of the east side of Second Avenue is coming straight across 125th Street to the center of Harlem. That means that people in Central Harlem and the Bronx will have more access to all the job rich, education rich areas on the Upper East Side. We know those hospitals are the biggest employers in the city. Let's make sure that folks in Central Harlem and the Bronx can get there.

The Second Avenue subway, this is an amazing stat to me. The day that we open that new 125th street to 96^th Street connection, the Second Avenue subway, one line will have more riders than the entire city of Philadelphia. That's New York. We are the mass transit capital in the state and it's a long story. Let’s talk about justice. We have almost 50% of the riders nationally and we get about 15% of the money out of Washington. That's another story.

In the East Bronx and other transit deserts. We’ve got people living in Co-Op city. Everybody knows folks in Co-Op city, right? 75 minutes to get your job in Manhattan. Take a bus, right?

Well, there's a train line goes right by goes right by Co-Op city, Amtrak train line 25 trains a day, coming from Manhattan. Stops in New Haven, Boston. No stop in the Bronx. Well, we're taking that train line. And we're taking it from 25 trains a day to 175 trains a day. We're putting Metro North on it so people in Co-Op City, instead of going on a bus for an hour and a quarter, an hour and a half, can get to Manhattan if they want to work there, in 35 minutes. They can go north to Westchester and Connecticut, first time. Opportunity, jobs, education, health care, connectivity. That's what we're going to be about.

I'm also passionate about buses. Buses aren't sexy, but we know seniors, disadvantaged people, people in low income communities, disproportionately black and brown communities in our cities. That's where the bus, no subway in some of those neighborhoods, need the bus right? And the bus has got to be a little faster than walking. Can we agree on that?

We're working hard to not just get new buses, zero emissions buses, air quality improvements. We're saying, we love you our drivers. We love you our FedEx Delivery Men, we love you our UPS delivery men. Get out of the bus lane, we're going to give you a ticket so that the bus can get by, and folks who are going to senior citizens homes or to health care can move more quickly than walking. As we do all this, I am thrilled to be working. I work for Governor Hochul.  But I'm also thrilled to have the partnership of Mayor Adams, who is also passionate about buses and about transportation equity. He’s already talked about this in the early days of administration. So we're changing the title, there is a partnership between the state, Governor Hochul, and the new mayor Adams, and we're going to make that work, we're going to take new steps because that partnership exists.

As we make all these upgrades. We can't lose sight of affordability. It is insane to me the idea that we are down 50% of our customers, we're an $18 billion business that lost 50% of our customers. Can we agree it's not the right time to raise the price?

I have advocated for let’s not raise the fare. I understand our labor costs go up, other costs go up but now is not the time to raise the fare. Governor Hochul made that possible by sending more money to the MTA in her executive budget, so the fare is not going to move this year. It was scheduled to move last year, we put it off, and now we're putting it off again this year. But bigger than that. When we talk about fare evasion, we talk about all the things that make us concerned about how the subways are operating, the loss of revenue. I said I don't want anybody evading the fare but I want to make sure that folks who really can't afford have an opportunity to ride for less so we have pushed hard for the city to have the so called fair fares program that basically offers half price, mass transit to people in certain income levels.  I'm going to work with the city, because I want to double the enrollment, we have 7-800,000 people in the city who are eligible, we have about 200, 250,000 people enrolled. We need everybody who needs that advantage, that discount to be able to take advantage and we're going to work on that.

We want people to come back because as I said to the Reverend, when we got a chance to speak earlier, the city doesn't work without mass transit, people can't get to jobs. One of the things that makes New York great is you don't have to own a car. So we’ve got to make this thing work. But part of that is we’ve got to make people feel comfortable, right? We've got to kind of deal with this fear that the Reverend talked about so eloquently. I stood with Mayor Adams a week ago, talking about that tragic episode where that young woman Michelle Go was pushed in front of the subway. It's just heartbreaking. And it's every New Yorkers fear.

Essential workers have got to ride, they don't have a choice. If we protect people in the subway, we are protecting our essential workers, so we are looking for the state and the city to team up, to not just put more cops, we have enough cops in the system, we need them. What I've said is can I get more on the platforms where people feel vulnerable? Can I get more on the trains where a lot of stuff goes on to make people feel vulnerable, rather than standing on the mezzanines by the fare array? I've worked with the PD and I'm getting the right response now to that idea of using the police forces more to benefit the riders, to protect the riders. People have to feel safe, we're not going to stop. It is unacceptable that anybody should feel scared to ride the subway. So I am telling you that we are going to work our tails off, hopefully, on your behalf on everybody's behalf to provide a system that's safe, but also feels safe. And this is a partnership that I promise is going to continue not just with the city and the law enforcement forces but with the communities because at the end of the day, it's you and the community that needs to feel safe and to be able to use the subway and to come back and rebuild the city. Thank you for hearing me out. God Bless.