Riders Unite!

Frustrated by unreliable subway service, riders organized and formed Riders Alliance. Together, we demanded and won improvements to service in Brooklyn on the C, G, and R lines and station improvements in Astoria. These victories gave us the momentum we needed to keep pushing, and the confidence to set even more ambitious goals.

Holding Albany accountable

The governor ultimately controls the MTA, so our members got creative and launched two new tactics to get his attention. First, we collected hundreds of “Subway Horror Stories” into a book, then held a book launch outside Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office. When the governor ignored our invitation to ride the subway and see the deteriorating conditions firsthand, we took “Cardboard Cutout Cuomo” on a tour instead.

“Summer of Hell” meets “Worst Commute”

Riders survived a terrible summer as frustration with unreliable service boiled into outright rage. Multiple subway and commuter rail lines suffered derailments. Then, as subway delays reached an all-time peak over the winter, we organized a ‘Worst Commute of the Week’ contest and encouraged angry riders to share their story with Governor Cuomo and the State Legislature.

Fare hikes? Take a hike!

Instead of asking riders to pay more for worse subway service, we urged elected officials to do their job and pass a funding plan to #FixtheSubway, starting with congestion pricing. To make the point, Brooklyn riders led a literal ‘fare hike’ with backpacks and sleeping bags through Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

Introducing #FairFares

Riders Alliance members tirelessly organized, strategized, lobbied elected officials, called the mayor, recorded videos and spoke out courageously about their own struggles around transit affordability. And then, we won! Thanks to our fight for fair fares, the city passed a budget that included more than $100 million for half-price MetroCards for low-income New Yorkers.

Victory!

Governor Cuomo and the State Legislature announced a budget agreement to enact congestion pricing and other new revenue to form the cornerstone of the largest transit funding plan in a generation. When implemented, this will produce more than a billion dollars every year to modernize public transit in New York, and $15 billion in new funding for our transit system in the state budget.

Strength in numbers

As the fight for congestion pricing continued to heat up, Riders Alliance members collected over 10,000 petitions from across all five boroughs and delivered them to Governor Cuomo. To keep the pressure up, we developed a new “text-to-action” tool to allow riders to connect to their state legislators via text message. A few months later, along with our allies, we crashed a press conference organized by anti-transit politicians.

Riders win #BetterBuses

Since we launched our #BetterBuses campaign, Riders Alliance members have secured a number of significant commitments from elected leaders to improve bus speed and service. One of the most important commitments came from Mayor de Blasio in January 2019, when he promised to improve bus speeds by 25% by 2020.

Riders fight to #SaveTransit

As soon as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Riders Alliance leapt into action. We pulled our allies and members together to launch a campaign to win billions of dollars in federal aid funding for public transit. Working with elected leaders and public transit champions across the nation, we secured $15 billion in funding for the MTA - enough to stave off “doomsday cuts” and keep our system working for riders throughout the state of emergency.

Summer of organizing

We led a summer of rider outreach, where we talked to bus and subway riders across Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, ran bus shelter ads, and recruited thousands of new riders to join our movement. We quickly turned out hundreds to attend their first campaign actions, including a bus ride with Mayor Adams!

After an intense yearlong #6MinuteService campaign to win more frequent headways on buses and subways, riders won an historic increase in subway service frequency across the entire system, more than $1.1B in new revenue for transit operation, a reduction in the planned fare hike, and funding to kick off a five route fare-free bus pilot.