The Trump administration’s new demand that the MTA fork over publicly available data on transit crime amounts to little more than “shadowboxing and bluster” in its latest battle against the transit agency, critics said Wednesday.
In a Tuesday night letter to the head of the MTA, U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy set a March 31 deadline for New York City Transit to detail what is being done to combat crime within the system — including assaults on employees and riders, fare evasion and subway surfing.
Duffy warned that a failure to do so would carry heavy financial consequences for an agency that’s seeking $14 billion in federal funding for its next capital plan. Even with that money, MTA officials have previously said that the $68.4 billion, five-year blueprint for system upkeep already faces a funding shortfall of more than $30 billion.
Duffy trashed the subway as dangerous and dirty during a Wednesday morning appearance on “Fox & Friends.”
“If they don’t get on board to change their ways, we’re pulling cash,” he said.
MTA officials said the feds will get what they want before the deadline, but pointed out that much of that information is already publicly available.
“That information that the federal government is asking for — little secret, it’s already out there in the public,” John McCarthy, the MTA’s chief of policy and external relations, testified Wednesday at a previously scheduled City Council transportation committee oversight hearing. “So we’ll put it together for them and make sure that they have it in a handy way so that they can learn it.”
The MTA publishes a monthly report on crime within the subway system, listing NYPD statistics for felonies as well as numbers on hate crimes, fare evasion and more. Officials on Wednesday pointed to a 29% drop in crime from last year, which has come as the NYPD has beefed up its police presence in stations and on trains.
“These results are a step in the right direction, but there is more work to be done,” Demetrius Crichlow, president of New York City Transit, testified before the Council transportation committee.
Updated numbers on assaults against transit workers are available on the state’s Open Data portal. The transit agency also publicly charts vandalism within the transit system, including graffiti, broken glass in stations and on trains. The NYPD also tracks subway surfing numbers and transit officials said Wednesday that arrest numbers for riding outside of trains are up.
“We have really become the gold standard of public information — we get that from advocate groups that have in the recent past been critical of the MTA,” said McCarthy. “Now we’re sort of leading the league in getting information up on websites and available to the public so they can scrutinize it.”
The latest pressure from the USDOT comes just two days before another deadline the feds have given the MTA: In February, Duffy sent a letter to MTA officials saying he was revoking the authorization for congestion pricing. The Trump administration has given the MTA until this Friday, March 21, to terminate the Manhattan vehicle tolling plan.
But the state and MTA officials have vowed that the vehicle-tolling system is staying on while its legal challenge to the federal government’s shutdown order winds its way through court.
MTA Chief of Policy and External Relations John McCarthy (right) testifies at City Council budget hearing, March 19, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
The aggression by the feds has left watchdogs and advocates confused as to whether any of it is about actually making the system better.
“This feels like shadowboxing and bluster,” added Ben Furnas, executive director of Transportation Alternatives. “I don’t fully understand the thinking behind it, except that they’re trying to make some kind of political point.”
The USDOT did not respond to a request for comment.
But transit advocates said the Trump administration’s demands for more data on transit crime is little more than noise while the MTA aims to invest billions to speed service within the 110-year-old subway system.
“They’re doing it in a way to make an example of New York City,” said Jaqi Cohen, director of climate and equity policy for Tri-State Transportation Campaign. “If the federal government is so concerned with the way New York operates, it would be doing all it could to fund transit and frequency of transit, which we know keeps people safe.”
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