Can a former governor accused of slashing transit funding — and triggering the “summer of hell” — rebrand himself as a mayor who innovates and invests on transportation issues?
His critics are skeptical.
“Andrew Cuomo doesn’t wanna run on his record,” Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a candidate for Mayor, said Friday. “He wants to run on mine.”
Mamdani proposed the free bus pilot that led to five fare-free routes in the five boroughs from the fall of 2023 to the end of summer 2024. He said the pilot led to an increase in ridership and a decrease in assaults on bus operators.
But the pilot ended when state funding ran out.
Cuomo’s newly introduced mayoral policy paper on affordable transportation includes the key bullet points: “Expand Fair Fares” — the half-priced MetroCard for low-income New Yorkers — and “Evaluate the Expansion of Fare-Free Bus Pilot.”
Mamdani called that quite a shift from a governor who famously clashed with NYC Transit Authority President Andy Byford before the pandemic.
“[Cuomo] led us to what was described as the summer of hell, all but chasing out one of the most talented executives in the MTA,” said Mamdani.
A spokesman for Cuomo brushed off the criticism.
“Governor Cuomo oversaw the largest MTA capital plan in history and built the 2nd Ave subway and the Moynihan Train Hall and fixed the L train without the long-term closures that the experts swore we needed,” said spokesman Rich Azzopardi. “These nameless faceless politicians — all of whom have been in office for years who have been in office since the 1990s — are trying to rewrite history because they have no record to speak of. “
But another mayoral candidate, City Comptroller Brad Lander, pushed back on Cuomo's record.
"Andrew Cuomo's transit legacy for NYC is running the subways into the ground so bad we had 70,000 delays a month, people getting their heads stuck in trains, rampant signal malfunctions, and incessant crowding. Cuomo cut millions in funding to the MTA year after year, and a renowned subway expert quit his job because Cuomo's insufferable ego was impossible to deal with,” said Lander.
Azzopardi said Cuomo will release a more extensive mass transit plan in the coming weeks. His emphasis is affordability.
On Thursday, at his first question-and-answer session with reporters since entering the race, Cuomo reminded critics he led the passage of the first-in-the-nation congestion pricing program. Although in recent months, he’s called for a delay in the tolls.
“There’s no doubt it’s the right policy,” said Cuomo. “My question was: is it the right time for the policy?”
