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Transit & Streets

Transit & Streets in New York

The MTA, congestion pricing, the redesigns, and the daily war over who owns the street. We follow the capital plans and the service cuts so you know whether the commute actually gets better.

Desks we analyze here: Streetsblog NYC, amNewYork (Transit), NY State DOT.

The coverage, newest first

26 stories
  1. August 19, 2026 LIRR's Sandy-damaged tunnel reopens The tunnel that has squeezed LIRR riders for fifteen months just got its lane back. Citywide
  2. August 18, 2026 Amtrak reopens the East River Tunnel tube Sandy wrecked The tunnel that flooded with 14 million gallons of saltwater in 2012 finally works again, and Amtrak and the MTA are still fighting about how long it... Manhattan
  3. August 17, 2026 A year of congestion pricing, and the air barely moved The toll didn't dirty the outer boroughs the way critics warned, and it didn't clean Manhattan's air the way boosters hoped, either. Citywide
  4. August 11, 2026 Liberty Island Boat Capsize Deaths A birthday cruise turned fatal because the man at the wheel had no license, no inspection, and four more people aboard than his boat was rated for. Manhattan
  5. August 7, 2026 The E-Bike Crackdown Splits City Hall A teenager's death near City Hall turned e-bikes into the fight both the mayor and the Council speaker want to be seen winning. Citywide
  6. August 6, 2026 Mamdani's e-bike and e-moto retailer crackdown The city just told Amazon it has two weeks to stop selling the vehicles that keep killing New York teenagers. Citywide
  7. August 5, 2026 The Council's 17-bill e-bike crackdown Seventeen bills, one Sept. 30 hearing, and a mayor who says his focus is only on what's already illegal. Citywide
  8. July 31, 2026 A third e-moto death, and the manufacturer that rewrote its own website Hours after a 17-year-old died on an illegal e-moto, the company that sold it just edited the specs and hoped nobody would notice. Citywide
  9. July 20, 2026 The World Cup Made New York Car-Free. Mamdani Wants to Keep It That Way. For six weeks, pedestrians beat cars in New York. Whether that outlasts the confetti is now Mamdani's call. Citywide
  10. July 17, 2026 The Council Gives Itself a Raise Forty-nine council members just voted a $10,000 bonus for the city's lowest-paid school aides. Forty-two of them also just voted themselves an 18%... The Bronx
  11. July 17, 2026 Rikers Gets a Deadline A federal judge once wrote that Rikers "would shock the conscience of any citizen who knew of them." Fifty-two years later, the man now in charge... The Bronx
  12. July 16, 2026 The Carriage Horse Hearing Central Park's carriage horses may have pulled their last ride: a dead teenager and a City Council speaker's reversal did in one month what three... Citywide
  13. July 16, 2026 The Legionnaires' Cluster Hits 63 A month-old bacterial outbreak just found its 63rd victim, and this week's heat is exactly the fuel it needs to keep spreading. Manhattan
  14. July 13, 2026 The Legionnaires' Outbreak Crosses Central Park An Upper West Side co-op just found the same bacteria in its own pipes, and most city landlords still haven't run the test the law requires. Manhattan
  15. July 11, 2026 A Bronx Commander's Rape Indictment The commanding officer accused of assaulting his own subordinate allegedly warned her that accusers don't fare well against him, then kept his... The Bronx
  16. July 10, 2026 Next Stop, Fast Buses, Better Service Six minutes back on your commute, and the free part of "fast and free" pushed to some other day. Brooklyn
  17. July 10, 2026 The Upper East Side Legionnaires' Cluster Thirty-six cases in three ZIP codes, and the city still can't say which cooling tower did it. Manhattan
  18. July 8, 2026 The Bus Plan For 2 million daily riders on some of the slowest bus routes in America, Wednesday's city-state plan is the first detailed commitment to fix the... Citywide
  19. July 4, 2026 The Queens Blackout The Bronx
  20. June 30, 2026 Independent Commission Recommends 18.2% Pay Raise for NYC Elected Officials Officials who said they did not want a raise got larger numbers than they had asked for, published on election day.
  21. June 27, 2026 Fare Evasion Arrests Hit New High Under Mamdani The NYPD made more fare evasion arrests in the first three months of 2026 than any quarter under Adams, 94% of them people of color, and Mamdani's...
  22. June 25, 2026 Mamdani's Congressional Sweep A year after taking City Hall, the mayor's machine ousted two sitting members of Congress and a borough president from his own party, and the general...
  23. June 25, 2026 DSA Reshuffles Albany's Assembly Down-Ballot A dozen state legislative seats flipped in Brooklyn and Queens, clearing the path for housing and transit bills that Albany has blocked for years.
  24. June 25, 2026 MTA vs. the Trump Penn Station Plan Janno Lieber says signing the Memorandum of Agreement would make the MTA a tenant at will in its own station. Andy Byford says they will proceed...
  25. June 23, 2026 A teenager dies in Central Park, and a banned bill comes back An 18-year-old came to see New York, the horse bolted, and a fight the Council buried in November is suddenly alive.
  26. Saturday, June 20, 2026 MTA confirms a full weekend L-train shutdown for signal work The line that rebuilt Williamsburg goes dark again, and the shuttle-bus map nobody loved is back.

Start here

Explainer How alternate side parking actually works The sign with the broom, the rule almost everyone gets wrong, and the two ways the whole thing gets called off. What the city's own pages actually say about ASP. Explainer How the MTA is funded Your swipe covers less than half the ride. The rest is a stack of taxes, tolls, and Albany deals, and the MTA's own budget documents lay it out plainly. Explainer How to fight a NYC parking ticket You have 30 days, the city says showing up in person will not help you, and the photos it wants are more specific than you think. What the Department of Finance actually tells you to do. Explainer How the subway decides service By the MTA's own guidelines, a train is supposed to show up at least every 10 minutes at rush hour and every 20 minutes overnight. Here is who sets that number, and what it takes to change it, from the documents. Explainer Who runs the subway, the buses, and the LIRR Not the mayor. One state public benefit corporation sits over the subway, the buses, and both commuter railroads, and the city runs the ferry. Here is the org chart, from the law itself. Explainer How congestion pricing actually works now Nine dollars to bring a car into Manhattan below 60th Street at peak, a quarter of that overnight, cameras instead of booths, and a schedule that ratchets to $15 by 2031. The toll, from the MTA's own page. Explainer The NYC bus speed plan, explained A 20 percent speed target on 50 slow corridors, five of them rebuilt as bus rapid transit, all-door boarding in 2027, and the campaign promise of free fares it leaves for later.

Transit & Streets, explained

The questions New Yorkers actually ask.

Who actually runs the subway, the city or the state?

The state. The MTA is a New York State authority, so a fare hike, a service cut, or the congestion-pricing fight runs through Albany and the Governor, not just City Hall. It is the single biggest reason a city problem keeps turning into an Albany fight.

What is congestion pricing, and who actually pays it?

It is a toll on most vehicles entering Manhattan below 60th Street, meant to cut traffic and fund the MTA’s capital plan. Drivers into the core pay it; subway and bus riders are the intended winners, but only if the money actually reaches the trains. We follow whether it does.

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