Why is Janno Lieber Constantly Blaming Other People for Problems?
The Editorial Board posted an interview with MTA head Janno Lieber about sundry public transit-related issues. His answers for the most part aren’t bad until he gets to construction costs (and misgenders me), but alongside other recent news about Penn Station Access, they reveal a pattern: Lieber loves blaming other people for problems – nothing is ever the MTA’s fault, everything is someone else’s fault. Nor is he curious about acquiring expertise, to the point that everything is defensive, and everything is about reducing transparency and accountability. Someone like this should not be heading a public transit agency.
Penn Station Access
Penn Station Access, the project to run Metro-North trains from New Rochelle to Penn Station via the Hell Gate Line currently used only by Amtrak, was announced earlier this month to be delayed by a further two years, from 2028 to 2030. The MTA blames Amtrak, which owns most of the line, for not giving it enough work windows.
And, excuse me, but this is bullshit for two separate reasons. The first is that the opening date was said to be 2027 until this year and then 2028. Other people made plans based on MTA announcements; quite a lot of behind-the-scenes advocacy was designed specifically around this date. The state was among those other people: in March, it decided to buy new battery-powered locomotives, each costing $23.45 million (about the same as an eight-car EMU set), on the grounds that it would take too long to acquire new EMUs that were compatible with the different electrification systems used on the line. It’s not at all hard to get new EMUs compatible with both the 12 kV 60 Hz electrification used on most of the line and the 12 kV 25 Hz system used in the last few km into Penn Station based on current New York lead times if the project opens in 2030. But the state made a decision based on the assumption it would need this well before 2030.
In other words, the MTA only discovered that there would be Amtrak-induced delays around two and a half years before planned opening for a project that had been going on for three years and approved for six – and now it’s blaming it on Amtrak instead of on its own poor project management and lack of transparency.
The second reason it’s bullshit is that the relationship between Amtrak and the MTA is mutually abusive. Amtrak is not giving the MTA enough work windows on the Hell Gate Line; the MTA is slowing down Amtrak trains on the New Haven Line between New Rochelle and New Haven, where it owns the tracks, the only part of the Northeast Corridor that is both owned and dispatched by a commuter railroad and not Amtrak (in Massachusetts the MBTA owns the tracks but Amtrak controls dispatching). The maximum allowed cant deficiency on Metro-North territory is based on unmodernized Metro-North values and not based on the modern values that Amtrak rolling stock has been tested for, and there is no attempt to keep Amtrak and Metro-North trains separate east of Stamford, where there are four tracks and light enough traffic that it’s possible, that the top speeds can have a mismatch.
In other words, the MTA complains about being abused by Amtrak, and is likely correct, but refuses to stop abusing Amtrak where it does have control. It could manage this relationship better, but it doesn’t and Lieber isn’t competent enough to know how to do it better.
Fares
The conversation in The Editorial Board heavily features talking about fares, in context of fare evasion and mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani’s proposal for free buses. Lieber is suggesting that instead of free buses, buses can have all-door boarding without free fares, unlocking the speed benefits without forgoing the revenue. He’s right and I want to sympathize with his critique of free buses. But it was Lieber who scuttled plans by Andy Byford to install back-door OMNY card readers and enable all-door boarding without free fares. He calls for all-door boarding as an alternative to free buses now, but when all-door boarding was available as an internally developed plan, he killed it.
He speaks about Europe this and Europe that in the interview, but he’s too ignorant and incurious to understand how things go here and how we make all-door boarding work with proof-of-payment. And the best way to see that is his abominable line, “had a kid who did a semester abroad in Stockholm, and you see them all over in Europe.” That’s his only reference – his kid did a semester abroad. He didn’t ring up any transit agency to ask how to do it. It’s all superficial, almost tourist-level understanding of better-run systems.
This is especially bad in context of what he says about construction costs at the end. He says,
I don’t accept the Alon Levy theory, which, you know, you’re articulating — that somehow, if we just had like this massive in-house force, we would be building everything way, way cheaper. That’s like, hiring— you cannot compete with private-sector engineering. And we don’t have one project after another, like he loves, like Madrid, which built all these subways in a row.
Setting aside the fact that calling me “he” in New York, a city with better access to gender-neutral bathrooms than my own, is obnoxious, we didn’t do a report on Madrid, but did do one on Stockholm. He’s aware of the report (and of the points it makes about ridership per station, the excuse he uses farther down the line for bigger stations). And he still reduces Stockholm to where his kid did a one-semester study abroad to give a little anecdote on fare evasion, which boils down to Americans being so detached from internal national discourses in Europe (except maybe the UK) that they don’t know that we’ve had to deal with the same questions they did, we just have public agencies run by competent people who sometimes make the right decisions and not by people like Janno Lieber.
Pedestrian Observations 
The 2024 election and it’s consequences…
I doubt that the head of the MTA, a plum political appointee in NY, is a Trump supporter. It is more likely that he is just ignorant, doesn’t really know who Alon is, has never read this blog, etc.
Yes, sure, in context the MTA ought to do better, but is there reason to assume, as you did, the Amtrak is completely free of guilt in regards to causing this delay?
Amtrak is absolutely not free of guilt, but at the end of the day it’s the MTA’s project, not Amtrak’s.
Maybe this is a better question for the reverse branching post but I’m curious if, given the negative effects of the Grand Central Madison project if this one should be happening. On the plus side here you actually open up new stations in the Bronx and you actually have a realistic transfer at Penn compared to what happened at Grand Central. And maybe they won’t botch the scheduling as much as LIRR did.
On the other hand there isn’t a Jamaica-like transfer point that makes connections easier.
This feels like it will make some people’s commutes a lot easier but it will come at a cost of making a lot of people’s commutes a bit worse.
(Rescued from spamfilter.)
PSA should be happening; the service from the Bronx stations to Penn Station is valuable if ever Metro-North decides to leave the 1950s and join the 21st century with its fare and schedule norms.
If the people in the UK government had a tourist level understanding of the Shinkansen we would be in a much better place with HS2.
But of course agreed in general that yes they should actually be having meetings with these people.
The assumption seems to be that behind the delayed and costly projects underway in NYC and elsewhere are people who would want to learn from better run agencies. I am not convinced.
Inefficiency is the ecosystem in which a large number of administrators, consultants, lawyers, well-connected builders and trade unionists, and possibly politicians, thrive. No-one wants to learn how to get himself out of a job. CAHSR and HS2 might be some kind of national embarrassment but they represent decades of employment for the insiders. Lieber’s excuse of not having “one project after another like Madrid” is unconvincing. Subsequent projects are generally more expensive than the previous ones. In well run agencies it may be because they are built to a higher standard. In failing ones, insiders are just getting better at milking the system. As you pointed out, Crossrail and rail operating companies show that there are competent people in the industry in the UK. Rail freight companies demonstrate the same in the US but in failing projects efficiency is a dirty word, as exemplified by the 2nd Avenue subway stations studied by Alon.
I think Mamdani’s “Apply now” button to get people to apply for jobs is a very good start.
These political positions currently are so, so, narrow. Being on first name terms with a Labour MP isn’t enough in the UK.
But also it would benefit Starmer personally for these positions to be given to a wider group – even if some of his advisors had to go out into the cold – as he would do a better job almost by default.
They’ve had one project, sometimes two, somewhere in the progression, for decades. Grumblings about East Side Access started almost 30 years ago. Penn Station Access is a continuation of it. 30-ish years of ( late 90s to 2030 ) slinging paperwork isn’t enough experience?
And on the civil service how much has it really moved on since the Song or even Tang dynasty in China? Because that’s what the western civil service is based on – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination
The thing is if New York was building stuff as well as London despite all the problems then they would be delivering projects a lot better than they are. And Crossrail was delayed by 3.5 years, but that includes maybe 6 months for COVID and it’s a much more complex project than the one discussed here.
And Britain isn’t bad to learn from in terms of operations of existing infrastructure where I think we are pretty strong actually.
Digging tunnels under London is more complex than running trains over tracks that trains have been running over, all day, everyday, since 1917. If you want to take a one seat ride from Bridgeport Connecticut to Penn Station New York, tomorrow, you could do it. Have been able to since 1917. Doesn’t need anything to be built…. because trains have been running over the route all day, everyday, since 1917. The train can’t make stops in the Bronx, like they could in 1917, but they could run between existing, in use, stations on the New Haven line and Penn Station. Like they have been doing all day, everyday, since 1917.
Small note:
MTA local busses have had OMNY readers on all doors for several years, the MTA is just being slow on fully phasing out the Metrocard.
That said, farebeating has become rampant since COVID and the MTA’s half-assed attempts at enforcement have basically no effect because they’re both extremely infrequent and have basically no consequences. Which only encourages more farebeating because folk don’t like being suckers who pay while others do not. So eliminating bus fares and making up the difference in revenue from general taxes might be the path of least resistance, and also be cheaper overall because buses would move faster and we wouldn’t have to pay for enforcement or OMNY reader maintenance.
“And we don’t have one project after another”
But you could, if you weren’t spending a billion dollars a mile on subways.
For real. When there are so many low-hanging fruit subway projects around. As if there weren’t two official phases of the Second Avenue Subway on the books + westward under 125th. N/W to LGA Airport. 7 deeper into Queens. 41 Av/10 St on the 7. 7 Extension to New Jersey. 6 Extension to Co-op City. Utica Ave Subway. No urban rail projects planned after SAS Phase 2 and IBX should be an indictment of MTA Leadership.
I read this yesterday with a dreadful sense of resignation that Lieber would start complaining. I’ve been following the PSA saga since he’s been all over the press about it; Metro-North sending a midday Hudson Line train north to Albany and Amtrak putting an additional Empire Service train on is, to me, a clear horse-trade that MTA/NYSDOT and Amtrak worked out to settle some of the bad blood between the organizations as a result of this PSA nonsense, despite the fact that a Hudson Line train making all local stops south of Poughkeepsie and then continuing north is a head-scratcher. And the reporting about that nonsense, where Hochul was also in the mix, specifically referenced East River Tunnels renovation as a causal factor of Empire Service reductions, despite the fact that the service, you know, doesn’t go under the East River. If anyone can explain that whopper to me, I’m all ears.
The other galling thing about this so-called interview is that none of these panelists, consisting of the former editor-in-chief of such venerable journalism as Buzzfeed News and Nicole Gelinas, who is hit-or-miss and commits the cardinal sin of being employed by a think tank that also sees fit to employ lecturing, reactionary, dangerous charlatans like Chris Rufo, asked decent questions or called him on his BS. This is par for the course for the New York press: NYT also has no clue how to cover transit. Their reporting on high-speed rail, Amtrak, NJT, the MTA, and the Port Authority is atrocious. But they’re great at publishing 10,000 words every month on IBX, with lots of art and interviews.
Not for nothing did Robert Caro title his chapter on the press finally waking up to the abuses of Robert Moses “Late Arrival.”
Of course Mr Janno Lieber likes to blame other for his blunders and then you all wonder The MTA is often called Money Thrown Away, or Money Taking Assholes, and or More trouble Ahead !!!
This Penn Station Access should have been done a very long time ago, and the existing IRT Pelham Bay Line could not have a short extension into Co-op City.
And the ill sighted 2 Av line to 125 & Lexington Av does absolutely nothing to relieve the severe overcrowding on the existing Lexington Ave IRT lines either.
Maybe Mr Janno Lieber ate too much CAT FRIED RICE recently !!!
On the plus side, the fact that the head of the largest transit agency in the Western Hemisphere* is referring to an “Alon Levy theory” means that your work over the past few years has had an impact, and you have made the idea that it’s possible to build transit at reasonable costs widely enough known for it to be referred to via shorthand in a forum like this.
*Probably largest. It’s not immediately clear if Sao Paolo or Mexico City have higher total ridership across all modes combined (bus, metro, rail, etc.)
Very good point.
There’s a quote, often misattributed to Gandhi, but from what I read is likely a paraphrase of labor activist Nicholas Klein, that goes “First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.” (It’s usually rendered as ignore-laugh-fight-win)
Is Alon at the “ridicule” or “attack” stage? Lieber’s word pattern was so dismissive. It’s demoralizing, the allergy to new ideas. Even engaging respectfully and refuting with some facts – it’s clear he got a summary from a staffer and considers it beneath his time. One wonders what isn’t beneath his time.
They can’t on one hand be grossly incompetent and engaged in nefarious complicated internecine conflicts. Except in the fevered swamps of railroad.net and subchat.com.
Someone is confused. According to Wikipedia they extended third rail so the M8s they bought for the service could run to Penn Station. There are alternatives to batteries. ALP45s come to mind. ACS64s run from Boston to New York all day everyday. ALP46s have done it in the past. They could … make arrangements with NJTransit….
https://www.alstom.com/press-releases-news/2025/9/alstom-supply-nj-transit-additional-200-multilevel-iii-commuter-rail-cars-and-12-alp-45-dual-power-locomotives-modernize-fleet
But all the kewl kidz are oohing and ahhing over batteries so…
Before the pandemic, Metro North wasn’t able to run to Penn Station during rush hour because there was no capacity. A competent agency would have arranged to start service, even if it was without the Bronx stations, soon after East SIde Access opened. There’s no reason why they aren’t running service now. With ACS64s or ALP46s or Multilevel EMUs or the M8s they apparently bought. Someone is confused.
There is no third rail on the Hell Gate line between New Rochelle and Sunnyside.
Underrunning third rail starts after Shell Interlocking on the New Haven Line, just before the junction with the Harlem Line, which is where the M8s change from catenary to third rail power.
The M8s can run on underrunning third rail, 12.5 kV 60 Hz, and 25 kV 60 Hz catenary, which allows services north of New Haven into GCT and through the Hell Gate but stops shy of Sunnyside where the catenary changes from 12.5 kV 60 Hz to 12.5 kV 25 Hz. The LIRR’s third rail is overrunning, not underrunning, and is not compatible with the M8’s current contact shoes. Therefore they cannot enter Penn. They were never able to enter Penn.
ALP-45DPs and MultiLevel EMUs cannot run on the 12.5 kV 60 Hz catenary used on the New Haven Line, nor can they use third rail. Therefore, they cannot be used in Connecticut. Penn Station Access is exclusively for New Haven Line and its branch services (Danbury and Waterbury) and potentially the Hartford Line to access Penn.
ACS-64s can use all three electrification types, but they cannot run on the Danbury Branch, Waterbury Branch, and Hartford Line. They are electric locomotives and those lines are not electrified. They have also ended their production run, they are nearing end of life, and Siemens’ order book is full with Venture and Charger for Amtrak, state orders, and VIA Rail. They will not restart production. A changeover from diesel to electric power takes 20-25 minutes, which is prohibitive for commuter or regional services.
The MTA and NJT are not the same organization and do not share rolling stock.
In short, you’re mistaken about pretty much everything.
You should read this to educate yourself:
https://www.etany.org/baffling-battery-blunder
https://www.etany.org/baffling-battery-blunder
I did, it yammers on about how the bobble headed governor thinks batteries are kewl. Bobble headed politicians say lots of things.
When trains are going to Grand Central and occasionally Yankee Stadium. I do hope this isn’t a revelation. Trains for Penn Station Access won’t be going to Grand Central or Yankee Stadium.
The shoes the commuter trains have can use either kind of third rail. Mount Vernon is really really far away from Sunnyside. The shoes will have plenty of time to transition to a neutral position between a run to Grand Central and run to Penn Station. Which is why the MTA extended LIRR third rail a bit so the trains can lower their pantographs in Queens and start using third rail. Which is mentioned in https://www.etany.org/baffling-battery-blunder. Which you suggested I read. Perhaps you should.
It says “The M7s and M8s can run under either kind of third rail, but can only be changed from one to another in the shop, not on the fly.” Without a source. That would be very very silly going all the way back to the state takeover of the LIRR in the 60s. Even if it was true that it is a shop-job they could send them to the shop to do it. And paint them yellow so they aren’t used on third rail Metro North lines.
It’s not 1907 anymore or not even 1995, when ALP46s were the solution for 25Hz versus 60Hz.
The ALP45s regularly go to Sunnyside. If they can go to Sunnyside but can’t go to the New Haven line because railfans like to imagine electricity is complicated, they can fire up their diesel engines and go all the way to Vermont if they were inclined. The Mulitlevels can run along the Morris and Essex lines which use 25kV. It’s very likely they can cope with 12.5 kV. Likely with a software upgrade if it’s not already possible because they run under 12.5 kV into Penn Station. And to Trenton. And could go allllllllllll the way to Harrisburg or Washington D.C. if they were inclined to do that. The magic software could probably be used on ALP45s too. It’s not 1907 anymore or not even 1995
No they aren’t. Yet without asking you they run the Train-to-the-Game. I don’t know or care if they will be running it this season. The NJTransit train leaves New Haven with a…. crew qualified to run over the New Haven line… gets to Penn Station where the train automagically turns into the train to Trenton and the wily wily New Haven Line passengers get off is Secaucus to, I know this is really really scary, change trains to the stadium. And do the reverse to get home. Both agencies have sophisticated legal departments that could work out a leasing agreement. Or sale. Its a pity that doesn’t feed into the the epic legends of inter agency struggles on railroad.net. Oh well.
Siemens order book is too full to build plain electric locomotive yet they have enough capacity to build cockamamie battery electric locomotive. Odd. I didn’t say they would buy new ones either. If Amtrak doesn’t want them anymore CDOT could buy them and have them rehabbed. Or they could buy something ALP46ish from Alstom. Or perhaps someone else. That’s not as much fun as finding every reason everything is …. I don’t know what you want them to do other than nothing at all. Since apparently nobody can do nothing nowhere anyway.
You seem to think that you’re the audience for what I wrote. You’re not. My audience is anyone who thinks you have a point (you don’t).
You seem to think you were replying to me. And edumucating people about your railfannery.
I’m gonna go with your best point being that Siemens cannot build anything for the MTA because they are too too tooooo busy building something for the MTA.
Go with whatever you want. I don’t care what you think.
…. Silverliners. They could order up some Silverliners. Which are running using 25Hz 12.5 kV at the moment but are supposedly capable of 60Hz operation. Future proofing for when Amtrak gets around to converting to 60Hz. Or retro proofing because SEPTA may not convert at the same time. That’s not as much fun as putting the kibosh on any alternative.
…. Stadler, the railfans favorite-est magician. I’m sure they could whip up something with Amtrak loading gauge and 60Hz/25Hz operation. Or third rail. Again that’s not as much fun as putting the kibosh on any alternative. It does solve the conundrum of Siemens being too busy to build locomotives for the MTA because they are busy building locomotives for the MTA.
How about CAF? Or one of the other Japanese companies. Hmm.
I read this line as stating there isn’t constant flow of projects to make competing with the private sector to build significant in-house talent worth it/feasible. I’d imagine you’d need a decade of consistent projects at least to start with.
I remember closely following the development of one of LAs light rail lines. Every month, a public report would be released that basically said:
August 2010:
Progress planned: 0.5%
Progress completed: 0.01%
Original completion: May 15.
New completion: June 15.
September 2010:
Progress planned: 0.5%
Progress completed: 0.01%
Original completion: June 15.
New completion: July 15.
October 2010:
Progress planned: 0.5%
Progress completed: 0.01%
Original completion: July 15.
New completion: August 15.
As infuriating as it was, at least the delivery date was updated monthly, and not dropped like a surprise bomb.