The former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg established his everyman credentials by riding the subway. No matter that he’s worth an estimated $36.7bn, and cheated a bit by also using a chauffeured SUV. The many pictures of the mayor on the train said it all. Michael Bloomberg: he’s one of us.
Now the current mayor, Bill de Blasio, has done Bloomberg one better. He not only rides the subway – he gripes about the delays. It doesn’t get any more New York than that.
In the minds of many city folk, De Blasio’s relatability rating spiked after the New York Times this week published a complaint De Blasio wrote to aides about a particularly painful subway experience.
“We waited 20 mins for an express only to hear there were major delays,” De Blasio wrote in an email, in a line any scriptwriter would nix as too pat. “This was knowable info. Had we had it, we would have avoided a lot of hassles.”
As subway harangues go – less than 50% expletives and you aren’t even trying – this is extremely polite stuff. Which is lucky for the mayor, because when he sent the email, he accidentally cc’d a reporter at the New York Times.
So it happened that the details of the mayor’s transportation misadventures have become a matter of public record. And anyone who has ever enjoyed a friend’s description of a flight delay or a luggage mishap will want to know precisely what happened.
The mayor was trying to get from City Hall, downtown, to Penn Station in midtown. He got dropped off at the subway by a security detail which then left. He went downstairs and there was no train, and then after an interminable wait there was still no train, and then a presumably inaudible announcement was made over the public intercom assuring would-be passengers that, indeed, there would be no train, as far as anyone knew. The mayor went back upstairs, only to discover that his security detail, thinking him safely en route, had ditched him.
“The detail drove away when we went into the subway rather than waiting to confirm we got on a train,” De Blasio wrote. “We need a better system.”
By “system”, De Blasio appeared to be referring to the way his staff manages his movements – but he could just as well have been referring to the regional transit system itself. The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), which includes city subways and buses and regional rail lines, has just undertaken a five-year upgrade projected to cost $32bn.
The funds are to be raised through a combination of fares, tolls, taxes and subsidies. The 2014 MTA budget anticipates revenue of almost $14bn. The city, with the knowledge and one imagines increasing blessing of the mayor, has committed $125m annually toward the upgrade.
The Times said that the mayor’s office had made no attempt to discourage the paper from writing about the episode.
“The mayor holds himself to a high standard and always wants to improve his work, and the same is true of his staff,” Phil Walzak, a De Blasio adviser, said.
