Federal Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy briefly rode the New York City subway on Friday to slam congestion pricing and demean the four million daily riders who he claims are "forced" to use the country's largest public transit system — as if it's not the best way to get around the city.
Standing with a compliant Mayor Adams, Duffy revealed to a tiny crew of pre-alerted reporters the real purpose of his two-stop ride: to complain about congestion pricing ... which helps fund a subway system that he recently called "a shithole."
"It's fundamentally unfair, it's classist, it's elitist," Duffy said of congestion pricing toll, as first reported on X by Daily News reporter Josie Stratman.
Duffy turned craven when asked if he still considers the subways a "shithole."
"Some would say," he responded, as if the "some" in this specific case was not him, though it literally is.
Video posted on social media by the mayor's office showed Adams assisting Duffy, who once worked for the New York City-based Fox Business Channel, how to swipe his MetroCard.
Fox 5 New York shared footage of Duffy "offering" to send Elon Musk and DOGE to "take a look at what MTA is doing, how they're spending their money, and can they be more efficient for the taxpayers in the state of New York."
Duffy has recently stepped up his attack on subway crime while threatening to revoke transit funding unless the MTA and Gov. Hochul "ensure a safe and clean environment, reduce crime and fare evasion, and maintain a safe operating system."
But Mayor Adams, not Hochul, bears the primary responsibility for subway safety, as the NYPD's Transit Bureau patrols most of the system. That fact seemed out-of-sight, out-of-mind during Friday's Duffy-Adams photo op.
In an interview later in the day with on Fox News with Laura Ingraham, Duffy called his safety concerns "really a failure of the governor of New York" and suggested that "even big men don't want to ride the subway."
"The truth is, transit across America is dangerous," Duffy told Ingraham. "And these liberals, liberal mayors, they want everybody out of cars and into trains — but they made the trains unsafe so nobody really wants to ride them."
MTA and state officials have responded to Duffy's threats by touting the work they and the city have undertaken to address the post-pandemic spike in underground crime. Felony assault underground is above 2019 levels, that and other crimes like fare evasion have trended down in recent months and years, according to the NYPD's own crime statistics.
"New Yorkers deserve to hear the facts: Crime is down on our subways," Gov. Hochul posted on X amid Duffy's subway ride stunt. "But we're never going to spike the football. Cops on every overnight train, cameras in every single car, and more — I'm doubling down to make sure everyone can feel safe on the subway."
Subway ridership hit a seven-day ridership average above four million riders per day for the first time in the post-pandemic era. Hochul's spokesman Avi Small went far further than the boss in attacking Duffy.
"Secretary Duffy has literally no idea what he's talking about," Small said. "As Mayor Adams and most New Yorkers know, Gov. Hochul stepped up to add NYPD officers and security resources on public transit. Now, subway crime has declined by double digits and ridership continues to grow. We hope the Secretary enjoyed his field trip to Manhattan and we encourage him to come back soon and ride a train or bus — like 90 percent of commuters to the Central Business District do every single day."
Duffy's appearance at the Broadway-Lafayette Street station was the fruit of a media and press clown show that began late on Thursday night when the mayor’s press office released his public schedule. It included a reference to a 10 a.m. meeting with Duffy, but no location. “Closed press,” it said.
The mayor spent the 8-9 a.m. hour doing TV interviews with Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, prompting concerns that he would meet with Duffy at his residence.
Few people in city government seemed to know where Hizzoner and the secretary would go, so the rumors started flying: Duffy would start at City Hall and then ride the train with the mayor. No, Duffy would look at the crumbling Brooklyn-Queens Expressway triple cantilever (a key city infrastructure need) and then go to Clark Street. Check that, Duffy would go to Borough Hall. (Streetsblog saw both Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro and MTA SCOUT social services teams at Clark Street.)
In fact, Duffy did visit Gracie Mansion and then the BQE in Brooklyn Heights, according to the New York Times. He then took a car to nearby DeKalb Avenue for the two-stop express train ride to Broadway-Lafayette, where he held that brief presser with a slack-jawed mayor, whose Department of Transportation is suing the federal government to stop Duffy's bid to kill congestion pricing. Nonetheless, Adams took Duffy's concerns at face value rather than addressing his substantial lies — namely that lower-income New Yorkers mostly drive into the congestion relief zone (in fact, virtually all of them take transit).
Instead, Adams, who got a reprieve from corruption charges when President Trump dropped the case, said he wanted to work with the state to address the president's concerns about the toll.
"We don't have to agree on all aspects of it, but we're going to agree that New Yorkers should have a fair and safe way to move around of the city," Adams said, according to Stratman's video. "Now it's the job of the governor, my job, to sit down with the administration and say, 'This is how we're going [inaudible] our system.'"
One city source told Streetsblog that the pair were “definitely” going to tour the crumbling BQE — a visit that officials hastily arranged after Thursday’s positive news reports on the drop in subway crime made it unlikely that Duffy would want to ride the subway to flog his “shithole” message.
Following their BQE visit, Duffy and the mayor were rumored to be headed to Borough Hall station, where several news outlets including Fox News were on hand expecting them to ride one stop to Clark Street (or vice-versa). MTA CEO Janno Lieber was at Borough Hall as well.
Lieber said the MTA was playing "a 'Where's Waldo?' game" trying to get face-to-face with the Secretary of Transportation.
"We were trying to figure out where he was going so he would get a proper briefing, that's very important to us," Lieber told reporters. "He's been making a lot of statements which are not factually accurate about subway safety and about other factors, so we wanted to make sure he got good information.
"When we didn't get a briefing, we just followed the internet information about where he was gonna go so that we could hopefully meet up with him and brief him properly."
Lieber said he hoped to tell Duffy he's "not being well-briefed" on the state of crime and safety on the underground.
"You're talking about a transit system that carries six million people a day, that's as many people as the whole U.S. aviation system," he said. "We're working hard to make progress, we expect that then feds will be a partner and not a hinderance."
Duffy's decision to appear with the mayor and possible even change his plans to avoid Lieber betrayed his lack of sincerity, Riders Alliance spokesman Danny Pearlstein said. The subway ride lasted all of 10 minutes, the Times reported.
"He was running scared. He was arriving in a car, riding the subway in SOHO instead of in Brooklyn as he intended," said Pearlstein. "[He] offered the MTA the services of DOGE while standing next to the mayor who doesn't run the MTA. He's on the wrong train — and he wishes he was stuck in gridlock, that's the irony."
Reporting by Gersh Kuntzman, Emily Lipstein and Ilan Cardenas-Silverstein
Editor's note: A previous version of this story referred to rumors that Duffy and Adams would visit the BQE triple-cantilever as "a false flag." Subsequent reported by the New York Times revealed Duffy did in fact visit the highway.
