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Three months and change from a city election, the issue on most New Yorkers’ minds isn’t crime or housing or schools but transit—an essential part of local life that is largely outside the control of city officials. That hasn’t stopped candidates for municipal office from campaigning on the transit issue. A Brooklyn City Council candidate has called for a city-run transit system. Mayor de Blasio is pointing to his administration’s support for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s capital plan, as his likely Republican rival faults him for not appointing better people to the MTA board—which, of course, is actually controlled by the mayor’s rival, Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Kate Slevin, the Regional Plan Association’s vice president for state programs and advocacy, joined me on this week’s Max & Murphy to talk about how serious the transit crisis is, what’s driving it, ways the state and MTA can start to solve it and the role that city officials, from the mayor to the Council, can play. (Ben Max is on vacation.)