The passageways between New York City’s Port Authority bus terminal and the bustling subway station at Times Square are frequently monitored by patrolling law enforcement officers. An escalating conflict has emerged with the Trump administration, which is now threatening to strip funding from the metropolitan transit system unless proposals are made to tackle criminal activity. Revelations of this threat came despite the city’s transit authority pointing to their openly accessible crime data, which clearly shows a year-on-year downward trend in major offense figures within the subway network.
Sean Duffy, U.S. Secretary for Transportation, seemed to downplay these crime statistics. In a correspondence addressed to the leading official of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority, he highlighted a few conspicuous episodes associated with transit safety. Furthermore, Secretary Duffy warned that Chicago and Washington, D.C.’s transit networks may similarly forfeit crucial federal funds without clear plans of action for crime reduction.
The New York transit authority officials, however, welcomed the opportunity for dialogue, expressing readiness to discuss the ongoing efforts being executed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and the NYPD to combat criminal activity and fare-dodging. A reassuring note of the discussion would be that criminal offenses have registered a drop of a commanding 40% compared to the same duration in the previous year before the outbreak of the global pandemic.
In analyzing the figures for 2025, the daily count of serious crimes occurring within the transit system is smaller than any number recorded in a year without pandemic disruption. This highlights that acts of violent crime within New York’s subway network, a system utilized by millions of commuters daily, has been a rarity.
The overall safety level of train carriages and stations is typically comparable to most other public entities within the city. However, the recent surge in high-profile, violent incidents has induced a noticeable sense of unease among its regular users. Over the past few years, while the rate of severe felonies has followed a decreasing curve, the count of assaults has notably escalated, from 373 in 2019 to 579 over the course of 2024.
In a bid to curb fare evasion and other illicit activities, authorities have enhanced the visibility of their initiatives by deploying a larger police presence within the subway environment. Secretary Duffy’s communiqué calls for comprehensive action plans from New York officials to counter the growing intimidation acts against transit workers, fare-dodging, as well as other forms of criminal deed, which also cover incidents of assault and harm to passengers.
In specifying a response deadline of March 31, the letter underscores the urgency with which corrective measures are being sought. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, besides overseeing operations of the bus service and wider regional rail network within the city, also has to make do with an amalgamation of funding from local, state-wide, and national sources.
The entity’s five-year capital plan running through 2029, with an outlay of $68 billion, incorporates anticipated federal grants and funding valued at $14 billion. An additional predicament for New York is the looming deadline to meet the Trump administration’s mandate of discontinuing the freshly implemented congestion pricing system in Manhattan.
Despite the federal instruction, New York State officials have committed to upholding the tolling scheme. This program is intended to achieve a twofold objective: to manage the volume of vehicular traffic and bring in new revenue for the operation of the country’s most heavily utilized transit system.