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MTA Chair Janno Lieber will enter an exclusive club on Friday when he completes his fifth year in one of New York City’s toughest, most scrutinized jobs. Since the agency was formed in 1968, just four other MTA chairs have remained in the role for at least five years. Only Robert Kiley lasted longer than seven years, serving from late 1983 to early 1991.

MTA chairs are responsible for raising the fare. They’re required to manage a workforce of 70,000, a majority of which is represented by labor unions. They’re in charge of maintaining and repairing a subway system that is one of the only in the world that runs 24-seven.

The MTA chair is appointed by the governor. And when things inevitably go wrong at the MTA, it’s often the chair who falls on the sword. (Ask any of the four other MTA chairs who served during former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s decade in office).

Lieber has outlasted all of Cuomo’s MTA chairs. And over the last five years, he’s cemented himself as one of New York City’s most consequential public servants of the 21st century.

Four years before he became MTA chair, he joined the agency as its head of construction. He’d previously led the rebuild of the World Trade Center for Silverstein Properties following 9/11. He was tasked with turning around a beleaguered transit construction department that had become a laughingstock over 50 years.

Under Cuomo, Lieber consolidated the agency’s various construction jobs under one organization — a move that ultimately led former NYC Transit President Andy Byford to resign. He reformed the long-delayed project to bring the Long Island Rail Road into Grand Central, which was billions of dollars over budget. He pushed the Legislature to pass congestion pricing to fund long-overdue repairs to the city’s mass transit infrastructure, which was quite literally falling apart.

His lengthy tenure is all the more notable because of how it began. Lieber was appointed chair by Cuomo on July 31, 2021. Just 24 days later, Cuomo resigned after facing sexual harassment allegations. Gov. Kathy Hochul took over and kept Lieber on.

Lieber reeled off a list of accomplishments when asked about his legacy during a news conference Wednesday.

He said he helped drag the MTA out of COVID-19, when plummeting ridership imperiled the agency’s finances. He noted he implemented congestion pricing, expanding the MTA’s empire to include one of the largest urban tolling programs in the world. He said he streamlined transit construction, giving lawmakers faith that taxpayer dollars weren’t being wasted and helping to dispel MTA’s reputation for fiscal mismanagement.

“I think we've changed the narrative of what the MTA is from the summer of hell and an agency whose ability to execute capital projects was suspect, from an agency whose financial management was sometimes looked at suspiciously to… a world-class agency that's making New York able to not just recover, but continue to prosper,” Lieber said.

Still, Lieber carries scars.

Hochul undermined him in 2024 by pausing the start of the MTA’s congestion pricing program weeks before its scheduled launch. She allowed Lieber to restart the program only after Democrats got walloped in the election that November. He’s also become a punching bag for Transport Workers Union boss John Samuelsen, who’s called him “evil” and "narcissistic.” He’s dealt with several subway meltdowns — including a slew of breakdowns and multiple derailments. And he lost control of the rebuild of Penn Station last year when President Donald Trump took over the project.

But he’s earned the respect of the city’s preeminent transit rider group.

Danny Pearlstein, the chief spokesperson for the Riders Alliance, likened Lieber to Richard Ravitch, the MTA chair credited with rescuing the subway from catastrophe in the early 1980s.

“Since the 1970s fiscal crisis, the biggest crisis facing the city and the MTA was the pandemic,” said Pearlstein. “Here came Janno with a set of seasoned, competent, experienced hands to keep our transit system going. It’s here, warts and all, and it’s serving millions of people every day and you can’t deny it.”

MTA chairs serve six-year terms — and Lieber would either need to continue to serve on an expired one or be reappointed by Hochul to become the longest-serving boss in MTA history.

Pearlstein thinks Lieber will get that honor if he wants it.

“He has a very solid relationship with his governor,” he said. “I assume he gives her a comfort level with what he’s doing in New York City, where she’s an outsider [from Buffalo], that would be hard to find elsewhere.”

“I sort of see their tenures as tied together,” Pearlstein said.

NYC transportation news this week

The MTA bus routes that slowed down after cameras began ticketing double-parked drivers. A high-profile effort to speed up buses with automated enforcement of double parking has fallen flat on some routes, a Gothamist review of data shows. On at least nine routes where MTA buses are equipped with ticket-issuing cameras, speeds dropped by 2% or more, according to bus speed data analyzed by Gothamist.

While the exact cause is unclear, MTA data also shows a marked increase in unreadable plates on cars blocking bus routes citywide. One possible reason for the uneven effect of the automated crackdown: Illegally parked drivers obscuring their plates. The share of MTA images of vehicles marked as "unreadable" climbed steadily from about 7% of events in 2024, to 11% in 2025, to 17% in the first three months of 2026, according to MTA data.

Weekend disruptions on 1, 2 and 3 trains. Changes went into effect last week disrupting weekend and weeknight services on the 1, 2 and 3 trains as the MTA replaces aging switches on the Seventh Avenue Line.

Family of teen killed by runaway Central Park horse carriage plans to sue the city. Ali Najmi, the attorney representing the family, said the death was preventable and the city failed to make the park safe for horses or provide basic equine-oriented infrastructure like hitching posts.

Construction on the Bronx's first busway begins next month. The city transportation department announced it will begin construction on the Bronx’s first-ever “busway” along East Tremont Avenue, marking the first step in a push to make the street the borough’s premier thoroughfare for bus riders.

MTA to fix Brooklyn's worst subway bottlenecks. The MTA plans to fix two of the worst bottlenecks in the subway system — and identifies dozens of other pain points that cause daily headaches for millions of riders.

Prospect Heights pilot parking program. As part of a test program, officials are making car owners in Brooklyn's Prospect Heights an offer: Cooperate with alternate-side parking just once a week, and the change might become permanent.

Trump Station? U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy asked members of Congress to give Amtrak the green light to rename Penn Station, setting up the possibility the nation’s busiest train hub could be rechristened after President Donald Trump.

MTA settles suit to make subway elevators more reliable. Under the agreement, the MTA will be required to notify the public in advance of any elevator outages at subway stations with accessible entrances.

Teen on e-motorbike killed in crash near Brooklyn Bridge bike lane. A 17-year-old riding an electric motorbike was killed this week after he collided with an SUV while coming off the Brooklyn Bridge, police said.

Curious Commuter

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Question from Theo in Manhattan

At what point on its route does the MTA decide to run a 4 or 5 on the Seventh Avenue (1, 2 and 3) line? What conditions need to be met for this specific service change?

Answer

There are any number of reasons why transit managers divert 4 and 5 train service onto the Seventh Avenue tracks. But the two big ones are construction and disruption. During planned construction outages, the MTA often diverts some 4 or 5 trains onto the 1,2 and 3 tracks in Manhattan, before connecting them back to their proper tracks in Brooklyn and the Bronx. This is a relatively simple maneuver because the 4 and 5 trains separate from the 2 and 3 trains in Manhattan, but tie back together in the other boroughs. They also make this maneuver when a train breaks down, a signal fails or a passenger gets sick on the 4 or 5 train long enough to back up service. NYC Transit managers have one mandate: keep service moving. Redirecting 4 or 5 trains on the Seventh Avenue line helps make that happen during a major breakdown.