Federal transportation officials have sent a “final warning” to New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), threatening to withhold up to one-quarter of its funds if the agency fails to revise its risk assessment for subway track workers.
In an Aug. 19 letter, Joe DeLorenzo, chief safety officer at the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), accused the MTA of repeatedly using “flawed analytical approaches” to underestimate the safety risks that track workers face on the job.
Federal officials had ordered the MTA to draw up a new safety plan after a subway track worker was fatally struck by a train in November 2023 and another worker was seriously injured on the job in June 2024. Both victims were flaggers, responsible for warning oncoming train operators of maintenance crews working on the tracks.
DeLorenzo said the MTA’s New York City Transit, which runs the subway and bus system, “essentially [obfuscated] risks to workers and [downplayed] the necessity for updated worker protections” in its previous submissions. He gave the agency 30 days to submit its plan for a third time or face “prompt enforcement action … including withholding up to twenty-five percent of funds.”
FTA Administrator Marc Molinaro said in a statement: “We will not accept being jerked around on safety and security issues any longer. By anyone, anywhere.”
In August 2024, under the Biden administration, the FTA reported a spike in “near miss” incidents across New York City’s subways. The agency’s directive stated that there were more than 260 such events in 2023, including 38 cases involving track workers and 228 involving passengers and property.
The number of worker-related cases, according to the directive, increased by 58 percent from 2022 and by 65 percent from 2021.
Highlighting what it called a “substantial risk of death or personal injury” in the subway system, the FTA identified multiple suspected causes, including poor communication, lack of supervision, train operator inattention, and failures to disable automatic train control in sections with computerized signals.
The Biden FTA rejected the initial safety plan submitted by the MTA, saying it failed to adequately address concerns. Regulators under President Donald Trump later reached the same conclusion and rejected a second plan in January.
MTA leaders said the Aug. 19 warning was intended as retaliation for the agency’s refusal to scrap its congestion pricing program in line with demands from the U.S. Department of Transportation.
“These questions were answered seven months ago, but we are not surprised to receive this letter out of the blue now,” a spokesperson for the MTA said in a statement to The Epoch Times. “Clearly this was not urgent for Washington until it was decided it was time to fire off yet another letter and press release.”
The congestion pricing program, launched earlier in 2025 with Biden administration approval, imposes a $9 toll on most passenger cars entering the business district of the New York City borough of Manhattan south of 60th Street. The U.S. Department of Transportation had previously tried to withhold other federal transportation funding from New York City over the tolls, but a federal judge struck down that move.
DeLorenzo made no mention of the congestion pricing in his letter.
Meanwhile, the Transport Workers Union International, which represents about half of the MTA’s workforce, welcomed the FTA’s intervention.
John Samuelsen, president of the labor union, said criticism of subway safety was bipartisan.
“Workers and all New Yorkers deserve a safe subway system and an MTA that actually cares about near misses instead of ignoring bipartisan safety concerns raised by federal officials across two different administrations,” Samuelsen said in a statement. “FTA Administrator Marc Molinaro and his agency are holding New York’s MTA accountable.”
