How safe is the New York City subway?
A Manhattan congressman, who has taken the train for years, and the U.S. secretary of transportation, who rode the subway a few stops in April, drew two starkly different conclusions at a tense public meeting on Wednesday. Each man called the other a liar.
The subway is, in fact, much safer than its critics have argued, according to police figures. But detractors have latched onto a recent surge in assaults and the shocking details of a handful of high-profile crimes to paint the subway as lawless and in need of intervention.
Wednesday’s heated exchange in Washington, part of an hourslong oversight hearing, was the latest skirmish between New York officials and the Trump administration over the state of the city’s transit system.
Representative Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat and a senior member of the House transportation committee, said that Sean Duffy, the head of the Transportation Department, had distorted statistics to make the subway seem more dangerous than it is.
Major crime in the subway — which includes murder, rape, assault and other felonies — was down 3 percent through June, compared with the same period last year. Since the first half of 2019, before the pandemic, major crime was down 8 percent.
In pointed questioning, Mr. Nadler asked if Mr. Duffy was aware of the trend.
“No, that’s wrong,” Mr. Duffy said, before adding that assaults, one of the most worrisome categories of crime in the subway, had risen sharply.
Mr. Nadler continued to press the overall decline of major crime. “Why do you continue to ignore this and lie about this in your public comments?” he asked.
Mr. Duffy snapped back, raising his voice: “Why do you continue to lie about people being lit on fire in the subway or people pushed in front of trains?” He was referring to a number of disturbing attacks in the subway that unsettled riders, including the killing of Debrina Kawam, a woman who was set on fire on a train in December.
It was a familiar argument among critics of the mass transit system, who note, correctly, that incidents of assault underground have climbed in recent years. Through May of this year, there were 262 felony assaults recorded in the subway, a nearly 66 percent increase from the same period in 2019, according to police figures.
In 2023, for the first time in nearly two decades, the number of felony assaults recorded in the subway outnumbered robberies, a shift that transit experts have pointed to as a reason for growing safety concerns.
But the trend does not reflect the fact that subway crime overall remains low, and is falling. Just 2 percent of crime in the city occurs in the subway, according to the police. Through May of this year, fewer than six felonies a day were recorded in the subway, one of the lowest rates since 1997, when nearly 16 were reported per day. The subway serves about four million daily passengers on weekdays.
In an effort not only to reduce crime but also make riders feel safer in the subway, Gov. Kathy Hochul late last year ordered 1,000 members of the National Guard to begin patrolling the subways, in addition to the existing police force. She also committed to paying for two uniformed officers per train on 150 subway trains during evening and overnight hours.
The argument between the two public officials came less than a week after Mr. Duffy claimed that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that runs the subway, had not sufficiently answered a long list of questions regarding its safety efforts.
Mr. Duffy voiced his concerns with crime on the subway after demanding in February that the transit authority end its congestion pricing policy, a road tolling program in Manhattan designed to reduce traffic and fund public transportation improvements.
The M.T.A. quickly filed a lawsuit to prevent the Trump administration from ending the program, and in May, a federal judge barred Mr. Duffy’s office from threatening to withhold federal funding from the state as a condition of compliance. The fate of the tolling program could be decided by early fall.
Mr. Nadler, who supports the program, used the remainder of his time to question Mr. Duffy’s attempts to rescind the program, even after it had been subjected to a long and detailed review process.
Cross talk ensued, with Mr. Duffy claiming that the road toll favors “the elitists” and hurts the working class.
In fact, households in New York City that own cars make roughly twice as much money as those that don’t own them, according to Kate Slevin, the executive vice president of the Regional Plan Association, a policy think tank. And only 4 percent of residents in the boroughs beyond Manhattan drive to work, according to an analysis by the Community Service Society of New York, an anti-poverty group.
Then, the gloves came off.
“Secretary Duffy, why do you continue to lie about New York City?” Mr. Nadler said.
Mr. Duffy shot back: “You’re lying! Don’t call me a liar here.”
After the hearing, a spokeswoman for Mr. Duffy said in a statement that he stood by his assessment of rising subway crime. “New York’s leftist leaders are woefully out of touch,” she said.
Mr. Nadler said in a phone interview that Mr. Duffy’s recent fixation on subway crime, after he had remained relatively quiet on the topic for several weeks, could have more to do with an imminent decision on the fate of the tolling program.
“It may be to punish the city for having the temerity to disagree with the administration on congestion pricing,” he said.
Maia Coleman contributed reporting.
Stefanos Chen is a Times reporter covering New York City’s transit system.
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