MTA Chief Buyer Officer Shanifah Rieara with a subway rider.
Marc A. Hermann / MTA
For New Yorkers, no company straddles the road between love and hate fairly just like the MTA. As a Bronx native who commuted 90 minutes every method from Morris Park to Manhattan for years, I’ve felt the complete spectrum of feelings. And within the worst occasions, a ignorance was all the time the most important supply of frustration.
Communication is essential, and it goes each methods. I’m proud that MTA Buyer Communication brokers dealt with greater than 1.2 million interactions in 2025. That’s roughly 3,300 per day, spanning telephone calls, chat, written correspondence, and in-person outreach.
The excessive quantity is a pure final result once you make it simpler to get in contact. We’ve put in posters in each subway automotive informing riders the right way to attain our workforce, together with through the new MTA app chat service, which gives 24/7 real-time help to prospects experiencing subway or bus points.
For round the clock in-person help, our Buyer Service Facilities have now expanded to 30 areas throughout the subway system. This has been particularly vital throughout the transition to Faucet and Trip. We’re now at 97% adoption throughout all buyer teams due to some artistic promotions forward of MetroCard’s retirement on December 31.
We had free OMNY card giveaways, partnerships with New York icons like Zabar’s and Alidoro, and even PSAs from some well-known voices. Stars like Andy Cohen, Cardi B, Sabrina Carpenter, Trey Anastasio and Oscar the Grouch have all recorded messages within the final 12 months.
And for patrons with disabilities, we’ve expanded revolutionary options to extend accessibility. Convo Entry, which connects Deaf or Arduous of Listening to riders with an ASL interpreter on demand, launched in 16 areas throughout the system. And NaviLens, which offers audio or visible journey info through its app, has rolled out in dozens of stations and on trains systemwide.
These upgrades have translated into actual good points in buyer satisfaction, which reached an all-time excessive on the subways in our fall Clients Rely survey. The total outcomes will likely be printed on Monday.
However, our work is much from over. For so long as the transit system exists, New Yorkers can have one thing to say about it. It’s my job to verify the MTA listens.
Shanifah Rieara is the MTA’s chief buyer officer.
