Jai Patel

And so our customers are telling us that by taking the subway, but also providing

Our customer surveys, right, tell us that customers are satisfied with the service that we're providing.

You know, Tim, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that back in 2023, we were the first transit agency to solve our fiscal cliff.

Thanks to Governor Hochul, Chair Lieber and the legislature, we were able to come out of a deficit unlike any other transit agency today.

You've heard SEPTA is facing deep cuts.

Chicago but we were the first to say we need state federal and local aid and we got our state federal funding for us we also as the MTA contributing to our solving our deficit right the MTA contributes 500 million to its operating efficiencies and those deficits that we have in 27 and 28 and 29 are very small compared to our operating budget and we are committed to doing our part

in saving money to help ensure that we can balance our budget in the out years.

Correct.

So our fares help our operating budget.

Right.

So they 70 percent of MTA's cost are labor and fringe.

And so that pays for 70,000 employees.

And then the small fraction is for the non-labor contract.

So every fare contributes to operating cost.

So it's not optional, right, to pay the fare.

We are encouraging every customer to pay their fare share.

So there's a couple of things that we're doing for fare evasion.

And our chair has been tackling this first when he became chair.

So on the subways, you've heard of us talking about we're doing fins, sleeves, gate guards, enforcing the exit gate, which is the

the fare evasion highway.