Question: I'm a FedEx employee. Every day we go to work with less subway cars. The trains are full.
Mayor: We have different ways that we can address that and I want to figure out, because obviously they are essential employees and we have to make sure that they can get around. I'm perplexed by this because the MTA has something like only 10 percent of the ridership it had a couple of months ago. I don't understand why we have these persistent reports of trains being crowded. I do know they've lost a lot of staff obviously, and they've lost a lot of money, but I don't understand what the MTA is doing in terms of their planning that they can't put out the trains where they're needed to handle such a small number of people without crowding. We've also asked the NYPD to intervene to go to the places that appear to be hotspots and literally direct people to spread out across the train or keep people from getting on the train if it is too crowded.
I would say that to all New Yorkers, if you're waiting for a train or bus and it is crowded, don't get on it. If you're worried about what's going to happen at your job, that's fair. But you can't be in harm's way. It's not right to have anyone get into a situation like a crowded subway car or bus at this point. I'm asking the MTA to give us a better answer on why they can't adjust for this, so that those essential workers can have the assurance, that they get on a train, they're going to be safe.
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