After assuring citizens of NYC that he rides the subway to City Hall regularly, Mayor Eric Adams has now said that using the mass transit system is not “realistic” for him to do every day.
Previously, the Mayor has often claimed that he rides the subway to work and surveys the transit system overnight, though he has still carried out precautions by ordering more bag checks and police officers in stations as an effort to ease widespread concerns of safety by the public.
“Not only do I do it during the daytime, I’m out there 1 am, 2 am, 3 a.m. And not a lot mayors do that,” he said during a press conference on Tuesday.
Yet during that same press conference, Mayor Adams also said his packed schedule makes riding the subway every day challenging compared to being chauffeured by his police detail.
“I gotta be realistic, not only idealistic,” he said during during the conference.
His recent statements are making some skeptical about whether or not he is attempting to empathize with citizens who take the subway all the time, given they have few other options.
“You want to be as much of a New Yorker as your constituents are,” said George Arzt, a political consultant and former press secretary to Mayor Ed Koch. “And to do that, you have to take the subways.”
Arzt emphasized the importance of mayors riding the subway, as it allows them to connect more with the working class people they’re serving.
Both Ed Koch and another former Mayor Mike Bloomberg, were seen taking public transportation on a regular basis in their attempts to be able to relate to the public, though they would still be chauffeured to the train station
Former Mayor Bill de Blasio, on the other hand, is one who was often criticized for insisting on being driven from the Gracie Mansion on the Upper East Side to his gym in Park Slope while he was in office.
Just last week, Adams went on an early morning tour of the subways with the NYPD, in addition to riding overnight with WABC-TV in February.
Regardless of whether or not the Mayor is going to keep riding the subway, transportation advocates are still waiting for him to fulfill his promise of opening more bus lines and creating bike lane projects across the city.
