Gov. Hochul touts improved NYC subway safety amid new funding for beefed-up patrols

Evan Simko-Bednarski, New York Daily News on May 1, 2025

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NEW YORK — Gov. Kathy Hochul pledged at Grand Central Terminal on Thursday to work toward driving down crime in the New York City subway system as her proposed blitz of subway safety spending made it through budget negotiations in Albany unscathed.

The funds include $77 million to keep up NYPD overtime for overnight train patrols — funding which Hochul said Thursday she would work to replenish beyond the end of the fiscal year. The budget also includes $45 million to keep National Guard troops deployed to the subway as part of “Empire Shield,” a 9/11-era counterterror operation the governor has recently employed to deter more ordinary crimes.

“What was the world like before the pandemic, when people were not so anxious about going on the subway?” Hochul said, flanked by National Guard troops, New York State Troopers and MTA chairman Janno Lieber at Grand Central. “We are now down 16% compared to 2019.”

“We’re 11% lower than last year at this time,” she said.

Hochul’s presser came as lawmakers in Albany are putting the finishing touches on the state budget—which contains funding for both the MTA’s large scale capital projects and its day-to-day operating budget.

Hochul also touted last year’s efforts to install surveillance cameras aboard every subway train, as well as programs meant to coordinate the state and city’s subway-based mental health outreach programs.

The funding victory-lap comes as subway crime continues to be a flashpoint in the showdown between New York State and a federal government that has threatened to stop funding transit projects over both policy differences — specifically congestion pricing — and a perception of rising subway crime.

“I more than anyone know there’s still more to do,” Hochul said. “Just last week a man was stabbed to death on the No. 5 train, right in the middle of rush hour — a galling attack that shocked so many riders.”

The state budget also includes full funding to the MTA’s $68 billion five-year capital plan — dependent on the MTA finding a way to save $3 billion over 5 years across its capital and operating budgets.

That program also includes other expenditures Hochul said would make the subway safer — money for subway platform barriers and $1.1 billion toward new fare gates at 150 subway stations in the next five years.

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