Today's headline: City of Yes meets subway reality in NYC’s reform test. Welcome to New York City Politics and Urbanism Daily. New York City Planning, with Daniel R. Garodnick:
New York City is facing a severe housing shortage that makes homes scarce and expensive. Outdated, restrictive, and complicated zoning laws limit opportunities to build new homes and make those that do get built more expensive. The rental vacancy rate is 1.41% – the lowest since 1968 – and more than half of renters spend over a third of their income on rent.
Let's be precise about what this is. This illustrated guide is an April 2024 planning document — Town Center zoning, ADUs, transit-oriented development, all laid out with pictures. It's context, not a new policy move. The recent action was Albany signing SEQRA reform on May 27th. This guide is the explainer that resurfaces when people want to understand the framework. Don't let anyone sell it as today's news. Sarah, here's what gets me — this thing's been out two years. If the city still needs a picture book in 2026 to explain accessory dwelling units, that tells you how much of City of Yes is happening on the ground versus living in a PDF. A rezoning that requires an illustrated guide is still fighting 300,000 regulations on the books in this state. The artwork's nice. The vacancy rate's still 1.41 percent. And that 1.41 number connects to Rosenbaum's City Limits piece we talked about Tuesday — 85,000 people in shelter. The zoning supply loop feeds right into the shelter population. Right. Mamdani's executing fast where execution is cheap. ADUs and district fixes in low-density neighborhoods still run through DOB — and if that agency can't catch a landlord lying on a single permit, the accelerated pipeline is built on sand. The MTA keeps putting out headlines about record on-time performance, but anyone who rides the subway knows that doesn't always match what they're feeling on the platform. So what is the MTA actually measuring when it says a train is “on time”? Great question, because the MTA's on-time performance metric — OTP — is measuring the train, not you. It tracks whether a train finishes its scheduled run without building up too much delay along the route. That's very different from whether you personally got where you were going on time. Last year, the MTA ran 2.7 million scheduled subway trips, and about 486,000 of them arrived late — so the agency can truthfully say more than 82 percent ran on time, which, per the state comptroller's report, is slightly better than 2019's 81.1 percent rate. And this past August, OTP topped 85 percent on weekdays, which the MTA called the best August in a decade outside the pandemic years. Those numbers are real. They just don't capture what happens when you're crowded off a platform because three trains in a row ran express, or when bunching means two trains show up together after a long gap. The metric also doesn't register the experience of a rider on, say, the R train, which, per NY1, was running just under 80 percent on time even in that strong August. So the system-wide average can hide real line-by-line gaps. And the comptroller's report specifically called on the MTA to be more transparent about how it's targeting Subway Action Plan spending at the causes of those delays — including planned maintenance, police and medical incidents, and aging equipment. You mentioned aging equipment — how bad is that problem? And is it actually getting worse underneath those improving headline numbers? It's a real and growing tension. The comptroller's report found that more than a quarter of subway cars are past their 40-year lifespan. Infrastructure and equipment failures made up 31 percent of all delays in 2024 — up from 24 percent just a year earlier — and major service disruptions tied to car issues nearly tripled. So the headline OTP number can improve while the underlying infrastructure risk quietly gets worse. That's exactly why riders and policymakers have to look closely at what's actually being measured. Jay Dao, writing in PIX11 News:
The fix remains a work in progress. According to Mayor Eric Adams, who on Friday pledged the public will soon see results from stepped up law enforcement efforts along with the work of new outreach teams. We're moving into um a real execution. You're going to see a visible change in the subway.
So this PIX11 package lands in a week when the crime stats showed subway crime down more than six percent. And the segment opens with Kevin from Queens saying he just wants to get home safe. One man attacking a stranger on a Bronx platform — genuinely awful — ends up defining the whole safety debate. The data says one thing; the platform feels like another. Right, and look at the timestamps. Adams and Hochul announce a new safety plan, the MTA tests platform barriers, surfing warnings — every one of those is a press conference. The Citizens Budget Commission had fewer than half of New Yorkers feeling safe in daytime, down from eighty-six percent. Who's tracking where that number sits now? Nobody. Because measuring fear doesn't make a good ribbon-cutting. And buried at 13:54 — a thirty-four million dollar federal funding cut that Hochul says threatens subway safety. That's the lever, and it's the line people skip past to get to the barrier video. Of course. Hardware above the train cars makes for great B-roll. A federal money fight becomes a footnote at minute fourteen. And while we're on fear-versus-data — Northern Manhattan hate crimes are up forty-eight percent, and the Office of Community Safety still hasn't consulted NYPD three months in. That dissonance doesn't get a platform barrier. the source writes:
This perception reflects a worrying reality. Between 2019 and 2024, felony assaults in the subways have increased by 112% and misdemeanor assaults have increased by 59%. The nature of subway crime has fundamentally changed: while traditional property crimes have experienced a much slower rate of growth, subway assaults have soared and calls about disorderly behavior have doubled since 2019.
Cuomo's plan leads with the Citizens Budget Commission number: under half of New Yorkers feel safe on the subway in daylight, down from 86 percent in 2008. At night, it's 22 percent. That's the baseline he's building on. And that 2023 survey lands in a week when subway crime is actually down more than six percent. So we've got the felony-assault figure climbing 112 percent since 2019, and a fear number that doesn't move in lockstep with this year's data. Right — the assaults are real, the 112 percent is real. But notice what the plan measures and what it skips. Adams held the press conferences, Hochul held the press conferences, and nobody's told us where that 22-percent-feel-safe number sits now. Who's even tracking it? Let's be precise: this is a Cuomo document, and the framing is political. The perception gap is genuine, but a campaign PDF citing a two-year-old survey is making an argument, not reporting a trend. Got a tip, a correction, or a story idea about New York City politics or urban life? Send it our way at nydailyfix at lantern podcasts dot com. We read your notes, and they help shape the show.
You’ll find links to all of today’s stories in the show notes, so if one caught your ear, you can follow it from there and read a bit deeper.
That’s New York City Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.