MTA Chairman and CEO Patrick J. Foye appeared live today on NY1 News All Morning with Pat Kiernan to discuss the agencies return to full service as the city enters Phase 1 reopening today. 

A transcript of the interview appears below. 

Pat Kiernan:  With this phase 1 reopening the MTA is resuming regular daytime service.  Joining me to discuss what commuters can expect, the Chairman of the MTA, Pat Foye is with me.  Chairman, good to have you with me here.  It has been a period of three months of incredible change at the MTA.  Here we are back again to more or less regular weekday frequency. 

Patrick J. Foye:  Pat thanks for having me.  Today is an important day obviously it's the first day of phase 1 in New York City and for the MTA, a return to full-service on the subways and full-service on buses, in the four boroughs except for Manhattan.  Regular service assuming schools are closed.  Express bus service is returning as well.  Importantly, we did a survey of about 50,000 customers in the last week.  And mask compliance was 92%.  I just left Grand Central Terminal and anecdotally, and we're going continue to track this empirically.  Anecdotally it looked like everybody in the terminal getting on or off the subway had a mask on.  The single most important thing our customers can do to ensure their health and the health of their co-commuters and our employees, is to wear masks.  In cities around the world Seoul, Tokyo, Berlin for example, which run big transit systems and carriers as ours does, millions and millions of riders a day, the return of public transit service without able to maintain social distance which will be the case here in New York, high levels of mask compliance resulted in no spike of COVID cases in Berlin, Seoul, and Tokyo.  That's incredibly important.  What our customers are going to see this morning as they get on, is customers and employees with masks, cars that have, whether it's a subway car, or a bus, Metro-North or Long Island Railroad commuter rail car, cars that have been disinfected in the case of subway cars multiple times in the last 24 hours.  Every station will have been disinfected twice in the last 24 hours.  They will see decals on platforms indicating social distance.  There are sanitizers on every station.  And this week we are distributing thanks to the State and the City, two million masks for riders who are returning may not have a mask at hand.  But the 92% mask compliance is extraordinarily important.  The other thing we polled our customers on, surveyed our customers on, was cleanliness to the stations, and as a result of the 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. closure which we began about three or four weeks ago, 70% of customers said that their cars were cleaner.  They looked cleaner, they smelled cleaner, and that's a good thing and as a consequence of that 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. closing Pat.

Kiernan:  Pat that’s going to become an issue.  With the city shut down and everyone was told to stay at home, the overnight closing was feasible.  At what point do you return overnight service? 

Foye:  Well, as we said and as the governor said, when we announced the 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. closure, that will continue as long as the pandemic continues.  That’s a decision that will be made by Governor Cuomo, of course.  But I ought say that we're also looking at innovative subway, and bus and station cleaning.  We announced a couple of weeks ago, three weeks ago I guess with Dr. David Brenner from Columbia University Urban Medical Center, that ultraviolet-c light kills the COVID-19 virus.  We're piloting that right now on subways and buses.  That'll be rolled out to Metro-North.  We're also encouraged by progress on anti microbials, which are solutions that can kill the COVID-19 virus.  It is believed that a couple of important labs around the world have confirmed that.  And we are doing research as to whether the claim that the anti microbials can kill the viruses for weeks and months after application, and continue to eradicate the virus.  That is incredibly important, we'll be reporting progress on that to our customers and the media as we as we go forward.

Kiernan:  Pat ultimately the economy of New York City depends on confidence in public transit to get people to where they need to get to.  Are you confident that people can step onto transit feel like they're clean and that they're safe?

Foye:  I think when customers get on this morning if they're returning after not having ridden the subways in weeks or a couple months, they're gonna see, feel, and smell cars that are cleaner, that have been disinfected.  They're gonna see that 92%, we hope the drive that number higher, of their co-commuters are wearing masks.  They'll see that every one of our employees is wearing a mask.  It is state law.  As a result of Governor Cuomo’s executive order that everybody in public transit wear masks.  They will see floor decals at platforms.  They will see sanitizer in every station, and they will see volunteers distributing 2,000,000 masks that have been donated by the State and the City.  In this first important week for people who haven’t rode, haven’t ridden mass transit, public transit in the last weeks or months, we'll be supplying lots of masks this week as a result of the contributions by the State and the City.  We also have a new data dashboard that will better enable customers to plan their trip and we'll be reporting on crowding as well.

Kiernan:  MTA Chairman Pat Foye.  Thanks for being with us this morning. 

Foye:  Thank you, Pat.