He’s only 34 and has boundless energy to prove it. He was a member of the State Assembly from Queens who came out of nowhere to become New York City’s 112th mayor. He’s a Muslim of Indian heritage. He’s an immigrant, who originally came from Uganda, in East Africa. He smiles, seemingly all the time. He alights from the back door of a city bus to arrive at campaign rallies. He was a rapper when he was younger. He’s a Democratic Socialist who says he will govern the City that way. He’s Zohran Kwame Mamdani, the man who is now leading the nation’s largest city, which also happens to have the nation’s biggest transit system.
To say that Mamdani is “different” would perhaps constitute an understatement on the magnitude of saying that the transit system in the city is merely “big”; much like the outsized cultural influence that they city once had and could conceivably recapture under Mamdani’s leadership. He is controversial, which does not surprise anybody. Republicans denounce him (although POTUS 47 was polite to him) and wait avariciously for him to fail. “Establishment” Democrats are not sure about him, and some appear unwilling to trust him, while members of the “progressive” side of the party and throngs of enthusiastic New Yorkers greet him as a breath of fresh air. What nobody does is ignore him; they’re all waiting to find out what he’ll do next.
There has already been plenty of coverage about him in the popular media, both in New York City and elsewhere. We’ll mention some of the same topics briefly to set the scene, and we will then concentrate on the intersection between our area of concern and his: transit in the City. In the meantime, we’ll take a quick look at the city’s environment, now that a new leader has burst onto the scene.
At a time when POTUS 47 is condemning diversity and doing what he can to erase the fact of it, New Yorkers celebrate it; none more enthusiastically than Zohran and his circle. His running mates embody that diversity, even though there are only two of them. Public Advocate (an office established in 1993, replacing “President of the City Council”) Jumaane D. Williams is a Brooklynite of Caribbean heritage (from Grenada) and a Baptist. He has held the office since 2019 and was re-elected last November. The new Comptroller, Mark D. Levine, previously served as Manhattan Borough President. As part of his inaugural address, he greeted his listeners in Spanish, Hebrew, and Greek, before his speech in English.
New York has been a diversified city for hundreds of years, with immigrants coming from many lands throughout most of its history, and many of their descendants making the city a more interesting place than it would have been without them. Mamdani’s support appears consistent among most population groups in the City, and even the two religious groups who could reasonably be expected to stand at odds with him, Jews and Hindus, are divided.
Today, the Forward is a website that reports a wide range of news for the Jewish community. It started as the Jewish Daily Forward, a Yiddish-language newspaper that was founded in 1897 and later added an English edition. Jacob Kornbluh reported on Mamdani’s inauguration on New Years Day: “Zohran Mamdani’s swearing-in at City Hall on Thursday afternoon highlighted the full diversity of New York City and included a striking display of Jewish presence and pride during a historic change in leadership. In a scene rich with symbolism, Sen. Bernie Sanders, who once ran to become the nation’s first Jewish president, administered the oath of office to the city’s first Muslim mayor as Mamdani placed his hand on a Quran.” Kornbluh also reported: “Looking on from the dais was Sen. Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking elected Jewish official in the United States” and “A bagel and lox schmear even got a mention during Mamdani’s inaugural remarks.” (Author’s note: I had one the next day at Barney Greengrass on the Upper West Side). Some Jews are concerned about Mamdani’s status as a Muslim and his own concern about Israel’s policy regarding Gaza, but the community is divided. The same goes for New York’s Hindu community, where some are concerned about his religion (Hindus are at odds with Muslims in India, especially under the current government there), but others want unity in their city. How many of his detractors will Mamdani win over? Time will tell.
The new mayor’s inauguration ceremony felt like a flashback from the 1960s, or maybe the start of a return to better and more-compassionate times, depending on your point of view. Vermont senator and elder statesman of the Progressive Movement Bernie Sanders rocked the audience, as did Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (“AOC”), who is now 36 and won her Congressional seat in Queens and the Bronx by defeating a longtime “establishment” Democrat in the primary election in 2018.
Mamdani himself defeated an “establishment Democrat” figure: former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent after Mamdani scored an upset victory over him in the primary. Mamdani promised repeatedly throughout his campaign to govern for all the people of New York, and to help them as best he could. Toward that end, he formed a new Office of Mass Engagement on his second day in office. A City press release said: “Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani today signed an Executive Order establishing the Mayor’s Office of Mass Engagement (OME), a new City Hall office designed to transform how New Yorkers engage with their government. The office will work within City Hall and across City agencies to strategize, coordinate, and execute on engagement that reaches the masses of everyday New Yorkers.” The new Commissioner will be Tascha Van Auken who, according to the City, mobilized 100,000 volunteers during Mamdani’s campaign.
He made “affordability” the central theme of his campaign, specifically pledging increasing the number of “affordable” housing units, city-owned grocery stores, a higher minimum wage, universal childcare, and increasing taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers and corporations to help pay for it all.
Buses: Maybe Faster, Not Free
Mamdani also called for “free and faster” buses in the city. The question before us now is how much he can do toward achieving that goal. If there is one city in the United States where non-motorists who depend on local transit are plentiful, that city is New York. The transit system reflects that reality, with a comprehensive subway/elevated network that runs all night and bus routes all over the City’s five boroughs to take New Yorkers to local destinations and connect them into the part of the system that runs on rails. His first appointment, immediately taking office shortly after the year turned at midnight, was Michael Flynn as the new Transportation Commissioner.
Flynn has experience that qualifies him to help speed up the buses, along with the benefit that buses run faster south of 60th Street, on account of the Congestion Pricing toll that was implemented at this time last year. A City press release said: “Tonight, as his very first move as Mayor, Zohran Mamdani announced the appointment of transportation leader Mike Flynn as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation immediately following his swearing in during a midnight ceremony in the old City Hall subway station. The appointment underscores his administration’s commitment to delivering an affordability agenda through safer streets, faster buses, and transportation systems that work for working New Yorkers.” The release also mentioned that Flynn had previously spent a decade with the department, including as Director of Capital Programs and Project Initiation, and had also worked for TYLin City Solutions, formerly Sam Schwartz Engineering, founded by the man known as “Gridlock Sam”; a legand in the field of urban planning. So, to the extent that Mamdani can help speed up the flow of buses along the city’s streets, Flynn should be able to help that effort.
The “free” part won’t be so easy. While such cities as Kansas City, Richmond, and Tucson (along with several “college towns” with campus-oriented bus systems) have introduced fare-free buses, no city anywhere near the size of New York has taken such a step. Politically, it does not seem feasible that New York City could implement a fare-free plan for its buses. New York City Transit, which includes the subway/elevated lines and city buses, is a component of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which has been a State, not City, agency since 1968. Of the 13 voting Board members, the mayor nominates only four, while the governor nominates five, Westchester, Nassau, and Suffolk Counties each nominate one, while four more outlying counties together have one vote (those persons are sometimes called “quarter pounders”). Board members must be confirmed by the State Senate. So, a mayor, even with the best intentions, does not have the power to exert strong influence at the MTA.
Then there is the issue of money. Whatever benefits free bus rides can deliver, they do not bring in any farebox revenue. Like most transit agencies, the MTA needs all the money it can get. It is one of the few agencies that is in decent financial shape for the next few years and, although many agencies are doing worse, none can be sure of their financial positions more than a few years from now. In short, it seems highly unlikely that State authorities, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, would recommend that the MTA take the financial risk of going fare-free on City buses. One mitigating factor is that Mamdani has not suggested that the subway/elevated system go fare-free, so there would not be any sacrifice of revenue for linked trips from bus to subway or the first bus on a linked trip from the subway system. The revenue loss would come from riders who take the bus and do not transfer to or from the rail side.
One of the often-touted benefits of fare-free buses is that there is no time wasted collecting fares. That argument is no longer pertinent to New York, because of a change that the MTA implemented only three days after Mamdani took office. The base fare in the city has increased from $2.90 to $3.00 (half fare for seniors and persons with disabilities who have pre-registered), but the MTA’s public information campaign did not mention that taking the bus is now far less convenient for occasional riders than it had been previously. Cash fares are no longer accepted on buses. All fares must now be paid through a stored-value-card system called OMNY. Riders have three choices. They can 1) have the system connected to their smart phone and charge fares by tapping the phone on the unit at the front of the bus (or the turnstile to get into the rail system); 2) get an OMNY card, load value onto it, and tap the card at the front of the bus (or the turnstile to get into the rail system) to have the fare for that ride deducted; and 3) do the same tapping procedure with their credit card (which of course can be stored in a “wallet” app on their smartphone) to charge fares. Visitors from New Jersey can add fare at a machine at a subway entrance near Penn Station, while visitors arriving on Metro-North can do so near Grand Central Terminal, as can some Long Islanders near the Brooklyn or Jamaica LIRR stations. Still, city residents who live far from a subway or elevated station, including many places in the “outer boroughs,” must go to a station or find a local retailer who can add stored value to their card.
Historic But Off Limits
Mamdani chose an unusual venue to take office: the magnificent 1904-vintage City Hall subway station, built as part of the “City Beautiful” movement that set the style for the time, and is historically preserved. A special party of invited guests watched the ceremony take place under an arch bearing the station marking of “City Hall.” He stood with his wife Rama at his left and State Attorney General Letitia Ann “Tish” James at his right, who administered the oath of office at the exact turn of the year.
The station is a magnificent monument to the meeting of architecture and art, with its series of semicircular arches running the width of the platform and track along the platform’s entire arc, ornate skylights with stained glass, brass chandeliers and tan bricks arranged in a herringbone pattern along the ceiling arches and leading downward to small arches along the platform wall. It was built by the Interborough Rapid Transit Co. (IRT), as part of the city’s first subway line when service began on October 27, 1904. It is preserved in all its historic beauty today and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. To the uninitiated, the city’s new leader demonstrated his dedication to better transit by choosing the most beautiful transit venue in the city to start his term.
But now you haven’t heard “the rest of the story” as famed radio commentator Paul Harvey used to say. Eighty years to the day before Mamdani took office there, on Dec. 31, 1945, the station was closed to the public, and the entire preservation effort was performed so only a few people could ever see it. It is now visible only to a few visitors for a high price, or for the “political elite” who were among the fortunate few to be invited to the midnight ceremony.
There are tours of the old station, and they are only offered through the New York Transit Museum, a unique establishment that thoroughly describes the transit experience in New York. It includes a type collection of cars going back to the 1890s and is located in an abandoned subway station in downtown Brooklyn, with a small gallery at Grand Central Terminal. Only museum members (membership costs $65.00 base fee, or $45.00 for seniors) can take the tours, and there is a tour fee of $50.00, so it costs most people $115.00 to see a magnificent transit palace that the IRT allowed folks to visit for a nickel. Tickets go on sale every few months as a seasonal block and they sell out quickly, so it is very difficult and expensive for a member of the “non-elite” to see a palace built for ordinary folks 121 years ago.
The old station is now on the loop that the 6 Train uses to turn from southbound to northbound, south of the current Brooklyn Bridge station. When there are tours or other special events, a train stops to let people off, and another stops there to pick them up. Almost 20 years ago, I had the experience of seeing the station on a tour sponsored by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), and I have never forgotten it. I join many New Yorkers in wishing the new mayor well and hoping that he can help the city’s transit system. I also wish he would use his influence to bring even limited service back to the old City Hall station, so more of us can see its spectacular beauty and what transit meant a century ago.
