The Federal Transit Administration on Tuesday excoriated NYC’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority for failing, yet again, to submit a safety risk assessment that aims to protect Transport Workers Union members.
The FTA pledged to withhold up to 25 percent of federal transit funds to the MTA, compel the MTA to use federal funds to correct safety deficiencies, and issue “restrictions or prohibitions as necessary and appropriate” to create a safer workplace for New York City transit workers.
The MTA’s failure was highlighted in a letter from the FTA’s Chief Safety Officer sent Tuesday to MTA leadership. The letter comes a year after the FTA ruled that the MTA’s first safety assessment was inadequate – meaning that two presidential administrations have called out the MTA for failing to protect workers.
“The FTA rightfully rejected the MTA’s flawed safety risk assessment for a second time. This is an epic failure from MTA leadership,” said TWU International President John Samuelsen. “The FTA, in a letter to the MTA, said the MTA’s safety assessment ‘fail[s] to accurately reflect actual safety risks to workers.’ MTA CEO Janno Lieber could care less about safety.”
In August of 2024, the FTA called out the MTA for 260 near-miss events involving transit workers, transit riders, and property in 2023. The FTA at the time called on the MTA to submit an updated safety assessment. Today’s letter states that the MTA’s resubmitted safety assessment “continues to ignore the concerns raised in FTA’s initial rejection letter.” The full letter is available here.
Within 30 days, the MTA must revise their safety assessment to include an incorporation of recent risk trends, application of appropriate exposure measures, and align the probability classification of safety-related incidents with operational reality. The MTA must submit an adequate safety assessment or face enforcement actions.
In the past, the FTA has intervened in Boston and Philadelphia to raise the level of safety in those systems. In the extreme, the FTA is empowered to take over management of a transit system, as happened to Washington, DC’s Washington Area Metropolitan Transit Authority in 2015 after a series of fatal incidents.
Workers and all New Yorkers deserve a safe subway system and an MTA that actually cares about near misses instead of ignoring bipartisan safety concerns raised by federal officials across two different administrations,” Samuelsen said. “FTA Administrator Marc Molinaro and his agency are holding New York’s MTA accountable.”
The TWU, founded in New York City in 1934, represents tens of thousands of transit workers employed by the MTA.