Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll find out about a survey from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority — and the M.T.A. executive who’s promoting it. We’ll also get details on why James Dolan, the owner of the Knicks, has gone from supporting Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2022 to backing her opponent as she runs for re-election.
Shanifah Rieara had an easy morning, handing out fliers in Grand Central Terminal. Nobody gave her an earful.
In New York, where everybody is an Olympic-level complainer, hearing them out is part of her job as the “chief customer officer” of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. There’s always something. The trains are filthy. The trains are crowded. The trains are filthy and crowded. Or they are late. Or the buses are. And then there are the stations. And the bus stops.
And, she said, there are “lots of opinions about the cleanliness of the restrooms.”
Rieara spent time in Grand Central on Tuesday promoting the latest Customers Count survey, a semiannual questionnaire that the M.T.A. says helps it identify “priority issues.” You can take the survey online through Nov. 1. The M.T.A. said it expects to release results in January. There are prizes: Survey respondents can enter a drawing for a $100 OMNY fare card. Fifty cards will be given away.
The surveys draw impressive numbers, but only a fraction of the M.T.A.’s daily ridership responds. More than 171,500 people completed the spring survey, including 92,000 who take subways and 45,000 who mainly ride buses.
“Every year the number of people responding has grown,” she said. “And, you know, we hear in a comprehensive way through this 10- or 15-minute survey — we hear the entire customer experience.” It lets respondents rate, on a scale of 1 to 10, such things as whether they feel “safe from crime or harassment” at bus stops or in subway stations and whether there are too few uniformed police officers in the subway, or too many.
“We do lots of analysis and figure out what are the trends and patterns,” she said, crediting past surveys with prompting the M.T.A. to upgrade lighting in the subway system, add platform-edge barriers and install cameras in subway cars.
Rieara took the job on an interim basis in 2022 with the departure of Sarah Meyer, the transit agency’s first chief customer officer. Meyer was exhausted after five years of what she called “the negativity.” She had been harassed as she made the rounds of community meetings: Once, a pair of residents likened her to Adolf Hitler because a bus stop had been moved 200 feet. Another time, she was pelted with rubber bands and subway tokens.
“I have not had that experience, fortunately,” Rieara said. “But with our customers, they’re all opinionated. You hear it all.”
She described herself as “a user of the system” who experiences what everyday riders experience. She commutes from home in the Morris Park section of the Bronx to the M.T.A.’s headquarters in Lower Manhattan — a trip that can take 90 minutes and involve a combination of bus, subway and Metro-North rides.
And she does not hesitate to take matters into her own hands. If she sees a bottle rolling around on the floor of a subway car, she has been known to pick it up. If she spots a malfunctioning “countdown clock” — a digital display that is supposed to tell how many minutes remain until the next train — she calls someone to get it fixed.
Rieara said that soon after she arrived at the M.T.A. in 2021, one of her close friends posted on social media about train delays. “I called her up and said, ‘Why did you use social media to get to the M.T.A.?’” she recalled. “Her response was, ‘I don’t know how else to get to anyone there.’”
That conversation told Rivera that the agency needed to do more to “connect with our customers where they are at,” which was the impulse behind the rollout of a new M.T.A. app. “We added a chat feature where they are being responded to by real human beings, real New Yorkers, at the other end,” she said.
The M.T.A. also now has customer service centers in all five boroughs. “When I started, we only had one,” she said. “We don’t want them to wait for these survey opportunities.”
Weather
Look for sunny skies as temperatures rise near 81. Tonight will be partly cloudy with a low around 59.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Nov. 1 (All Saints’ Day).
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“They fly really close, almost like they’re divebombing us. We definitely want to stay out of their way.” — Sam Williams, on a pair of barn owls that have taken up residence on a water tower on the Upper West Side.
The latest Metro news
-
Service disruptions: NJ Transit and Amtrak began the final phase of the Portal Bridge cutover that will cause detours and delays for the 200,000 daily train riders heading to and from Manhattan over the next five weeks. NJ Transit will cut the number of weekday train trips between Newark and Secaucus and divert most Manhattan-bound trips to Hoboken. Riders can complete their trips with a free transfer to the bus, a ferry or the PATH train.
-
Cornell bans fraternity parties: The university has banned parties at fraternity houses for the rest of the academic year and will add experienced sexual assault investigators to its police force. Cornell announced the changes as it tried to reassure students, faculty members and alumni that it is addressing the crisis set off by the lawsuit filed by a former undergraduate known as Jane Doe.
-
American woman accused of joining ISIS goes on trial: Halima Salman is believed to be the first woman accused of being a member of ISIS to go on trial in U.S. federal court. Her lawyers have argued that she was taken to Syria as a child and did not harbor the ideology of Islamic State. Salman’s trial is set to take place in Brooklyn.
-
Violating a court-ordered ban: Martin Shkreli, a disgraced pharmaceutical executive who was barred from working in the industry, was accused of “repeatedly and flagrantly” violating the lifetime ban by publicly trading the stocks of dozens of drug companies and discussing his opinions of the industry online.
-
Blakeman used graphic language about Mamdani: In his quest to beat Gov. Kathy Hochul, Bruce Blakeman, the Republican candidate for governor, has gone to considerable lengths to court Jewish voters across New York. While seeking support from Hasidic leaders, Blakeman said Mayor Zohran Mamdani would not act if riots hit their community.
Dolan, who backed Hochul in 2022, supports her opponent this time
James Dolan, the owner of the Knicks, is urging New York’s business establishment to abandon Gov. Kathy Hochul, spotlighting her support of Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Dolan has spent millions to back her opponent in next month’s election, Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, whom President Trump has endorsed. That’s a U-turn for Dolan: Four years ago, a super PAC controlled by his Madison Square Garden spent about $700,000 supporting Hochul. Dolan’s family also channeled financial support to Hochul’s campaign.
But on Monday, Dolan sent an email to a co-chairman of the Partnership for New York City, an influential business group, asking why it was sitting on the sidelines while Hochul supported “anti-business, economically harmful approaches.”
My colleagues Dana Rubinstein and Benjamin Oreskes write that Dolan did not mention Blakeman by name, but he didn’t need to. He did point out that “the mayor cannot raise taxes without Governor Hochul’s support.” He added, “Whoever serves as New York State’s next governor is our only defense against these harmful policies for the next three years.”
He also called on the Partnership to redirect some of the $30 million it had set aside for issue advocacy into an account that he controlled. He is scheduled to host a $10,000-a-person-and-up fund-raiser for Blakeman during a Knicks preseason game on Thursday.
METROPOLITAN diary
Mr. Zhang
Dear Diary:
The owner of my neighborhood Chinese restaurant in Harlem lit up excitedly once when I came in.
He came out from behind the counter, waving his checkbook and a piece of mail. His young children scampered past him into the kitchen.
We took a seat, and he showed me a credit card statement. His name was Mr. Zhang.
He had no English and I had no Chinese. I pointed to the amount due, and he nodded. I filled out a check, including his account number on the memo line, then the payment coupon and his return address on the envelope.
He seemed especially pleased when I reviewed it with him. I offered to help again any time, gave him my phone number and headed home across the street.
When I got out of the elevator on the sixth floor, a new voice mail was waiting. There was no message — just the sound of voices chattering in the background, and the clattering of pots and pans in a noisy kitchen.
— Paul Klenk
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
The post Have a Complaint About the M.T.A.? She’s Listening. appeared first on New York Times.
