MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber
Marc A. Hermann / MTA
Typically it’s finest to maintain your ideas to your self. The MTA’s Spring Prospects Rely survey shouldn’t be a kind of instances.
Beginning Monday, we need to hear from riders about their commutes – the great, the dangerous, and the ugly – to assist us make enhancements to the system everyone knows and (largely) love.
It’s essential to grasp who our clients are and what they care about, and the way their perceptions change over time. Honesty is crucial — not that I’m anxious about New Yorkers holding again.
Over time, candid responses to those surveys have helped result in actual modifications like higher lighting in subway stations, improved transfers at Jamaica Station, and new Faucet and Trip options to assist clients higher handle journeys.
The MTA didn’t all the time do that work ourselves, as an alternative counting on exterior companies to conduct market analysis. However during the last 5 years, we’ve assembled a top-notch crew of in-house consultants with the know-how to design and administer a variety of surveys – not simply the bigger Prospects Rely polls, which go reside twice a yr, but in addition smaller month-to-month Pulse surveys and extra focused research and focus teams on particular public-facing initiatives.
These aren’t the chilly calls and paper surveys of yester-year. In 2026, we use digital instruments to hurry knowledge assortment and processing, serving to to increase our attain whereas lowering total prices and workers time. In consequence, participation has grown with each cycle – the Fall 2025 Prospects Rely Survey received greater than 92,000 responses, an 18- fold enhance over previous research, the place 2,000-5,000 responses have been the norm.
The bigger pattern populations enable us to zero in on tendencies at particular geographies, like sure stations or particular person bus routes.
The purpose is to listen to from as many riders as we are able to. Our community serves an enormous and various inhabitants – greater than 15 million folks name the metropolitan area house. And each response strengthens our decision-making. Make your voice heard this spring within the Prospects Rely survey.
Janno Lieber is MTA chair and CEO.
