When I took this job nearly a year ago, I had two priorities safety and service. As president of New York City Transit, I was going to do everything in my power to make the transit system safer, not only for our millions of daily riders, but also the tens of thousands of employees who keep this City moving. And I was going to do it while running the best possible service.
We were going to give Mayor Adams a pass after the city issued its annual Mayor's Management Report for fiscal year 2025 (also known as July 2024 through June 2025). We felt we didn't need to pile on because we've already reported so many measures of how badly Mayor Adams is building bike lanes, how slowly he's building bus lanes, how he decides on safety measures based on vibes, and how corruptly he is overseeing the public process of making the city safer.
New York City's buses are in crisis, and have been for a long time. In the year 2000, MTA buses carried 699 million passengers per year. Even as New York City has grown over the last quarter-century, gaining 470,000 new residents, bus ridership has dropped by 41 percent, to 409 million. Fare evasion is rampant. Over one-third of passengers refuse to pay, costing the MTA $568 million in 2024. Nearly one-third of buses run late.
Right now, Flatbush Avenue above Prospect Park doesn't work for anyone: almost 70,000 daily bus riders are stuck waiting too long for slow buses, drivers are caught in a mess of traffic and pedestrians are left crossing intersections clogged with vehicles.
