Today, I am immensely proud to be writing you as the 12th President of NYC Transit. The magnitude of this moment, and its historic nature, is not lost on me.
As someone who has spent an entire career serving the riders of New York, I am psyched to get to work making transit better for the years ahead.
Transit is literally in my blood. My grandfather worked as a transit porter decades ago. My father spent his career inspecting and maintaining subway cars. I started out 27 years ago maintaining the signals that keep trains moving, digging ditches and climbing poles from the hottest summer days to the deepest winter freezes. I’ve walked in the shoes of our frontline workers and stood with them in the trenches.
My commitment to our riders is stability, and my mantra is simple: safety and service. That’s the name of the game for us at New York City Transit. For our employees and our customers, nothing is more important than getting to your destination safely and on time.
Moving into 2025 and beyond, our team will focus on modernizing how we run service. Being an operations guy at heart, I know that identifying and improving even the smallest critical issues can unlock real improvement to service. We will dig deep into data and implement best practices from across the transit world.
Let’s address one important thing head-on. Paying your fare is not just the right thing to do, it is essential for us to run high-quality service. I know that when riders see fare evasion, it violates their basic sense of fairness. It upsets them and it upsets me. We have made progress on our buses in recent months with our EAGLE inspection teams and will continue to take action to increase fare compliance across all our types of transportation.
Customer service is fundamental to our system. We made progress in recent years, bringing station agents out of the booth, opening customer service centers, and continuing to transition to OMNY contactless payments. But there is more to do. We can also improve our communication with riders at every step of their journey, especially during incidents or delays.
Getting that done requires a great team, and we have one at New York City Transit. Every day, nearly 50,000 transit employees move New York. Some of them work in roles you see every day – the bus operator who wishes you good morning, the station agent who greets you with a smile at the turnstiles, and some do work you will never see, but benefit from every time you ride.
Our employees do great work and keeping them safe and supported on the job is paramount. To that end, I was thrilled when our I Move NY campaign launched this month, sharing the stories of some of our team members. These employees will be highlighted in ads throughout the system and on our social media channels.
New York City Transit is a remarkable institution. Our subways and buses cross rivers, knitting communities together and building the greatest city in the world. Our paratransit services make the city more accessible and equitable. Without it here to move us, New York just wouldn’t be New York.
Demetrius Crichlow was named President of New York City’s transit system on Oct. 23.
