Trump's transit chief has a personal reason for making public transportation safer and more accessible
A top Trump administration transportation official delivered a blunt message to public transit leaders from across the country in Boston this week: the federal government expects them to do more to keep their riders safe.
Speaking at a national public transit conference, Federal Transit Administrator Marc Molinaro pressured officials to crack down on fare evasion, harassment and assaults on public buses and trains — the type of behavior he said escalated into more serious and dangerous crime.
"If you don't feel safe, nothing else matters," Molinaro said.
His comments came as President Donald Trump and other Republicans call for ramped-up law enforcement, particularly in some Democratic-led cities.
In recent weeks, they have criticized local officials in Charlotte, N.C., for failing to prevent the fatal stabbing of Iryna Zarutska , a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee, on a public bus last month.
Her suspected killer had a history of mental illness and arrests, and attacked Zarutska without any apparent interaction or provocation, investigators said. As gruesome surveillance footage of the incident swept the internet, it prompted questions about why the man was released without bail after his latest run-in with the law.
"Assaults, robberies, open drug use, violent crimes on transit systems, fare evasion, all of it — none of it can be normalized," Molinaro said. "Families should not have to come to accept whether or not their child will be safe on their way to school, or whether a spouse will come home from work unscathed. We can't have it continue to happen."
Citing concerns over crime, Trump deployed National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., last month over the objections of local officials. He has signaled that the guard may be called up to patrol other cities as well, including Boston and Chicago.
Molinaro, a former mayor and Republican congressman from New York state, did not say precisely how the Trump administration intended to pressure public transit agencies to maintain safety.
However, he said the government would confront threats to transit riders' safety "boldly, bluntly and in some ways, unorthodoxly."
He told the assembled crowd of hundreds of transit officials from cities large and small that the government would be willing to "call out" agencies it thought were falling short of their responsibilities to the public.
Violent crimes — including homicides, sexual assaults and robberies — have fallen in the first half of this year to below levels recorded in 2019, according to the Council on Criminal Justice , a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C.
Molinaro did not cite data on crimes in cities or on public transit networks in his speech Monday afternoon, and instead suggested that some officials were manipulating crime figures to mask public safety threats.
He urged officials to prosecute minor and quality-of-life crimes to deter more serious offenses.
"I am keenly aware that not every fare evader is a violent criminal, but every violent criminal on a transit system is a fare evader," he said. "We cannot allow an environment that breeds lawlessness. Low-level offenses always escalate to higher-level offenses. And those higher-level offenses have horrific outcomes."
In Boston, the MBTA last week launched a new effort to crack down on fare evasion , committing to ticketing riders who avoided fare gates.
Molinaro also encouraged local leaders to organize crisis intervention and de-escalation training for their staff and establish mental health response teams to address people having mental health crises in public.
"It is not criminal to have a mental illness, but having a mental illness does not give you an excuse for committing a crime," he said.
Molinaro acknowledged that law enforcement policy is typically set by politicians and prosecutors, not the public transit executives and staff present for his remarks. But he said that when local officials reduce law enforcement, "public transit often becomes the platform at which crimes are committed."
"You are stuck with the consequences," he said.
Much of Molinaro's speech was met with a cool reception from the audience. However, he earned applause for some comments, including a response to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's recent pushback of U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's concerns about crime in New York City's subway system.
Duffy's department threatened in March to withhold transportation funding if the city did not provide a plan to address crime. After subway crime sank to historic lows this summer, Hochul said last week , "Tell Sean Duffy, we've got this."
"We'll take care of what's happening underground," she said. "You take care of what's happened in the skies."
"I've got news for every elected official," Molinaro shot back Monday. "The Department of Transportation is going to worry about every American, no matter what mode they happen to go to and from work on."
"Everybody is our responsibility — to provide for their safety and security," he said to applause.
Later on, responding to a question about how the federal government could help small transit agencies punish disruptive or combative passengers, Molinaro said he believes "that an assault on a transit worker should be a felony no matter where you live."
For that, he also earned the audience's support.
Molinaro also said his agency would make sure public transit is designed to be universally accessible, an issue he said was personal. One of his children is on the autism spectrum, according to the Democrat and Chronicle , a newspaper in upstate New York.
"When you design and develop and deploy projects that meet those with disabilities, you create accessibility for everyone," Molinaro said. "I know this firsthand."
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