MTA chair Janno Lieber spent Monday morning with the rats under Grand Central Terminal, working as a station cleaner in honor of National Transit Employee Appreciation day.
“I worked both as a cleaner and as a platform controller — briefly — with folks who together have 60 years at the MTA,” he said, naming station cleaners Shirley Zayas and Tim Dungee, as well as platform controller Kim Quail.
“They took a dopey chairman and they taught me how to empty out a garbage can and take the garbage up to the refuse room,” Lieber said. “I got to interact with some regular denizens of Grand Central — namely the rats.”
“It was all a little bit of a window into what our folks do every day,” he said.
For Rob Free, acting president of the Long Island Rail Road, it was muscle memory.
“I began my Long Island Rail Road career as a station cleaner, and today I went back to my roots,” he said.
“I did notice some differences from my younger days — it felt like the platforms got longer and the garbage bags got heavier,” he quipped.
“Thank you for the appreciation,” Courtney Williams, a conductor on the No. 7 train, said to a group of gathered transit leadership and reporters. “It means a lot to all of us that work down here in New York City Transit.”
Williams showed New York City Transit President Rich Davey the ropes inside the conductor’s cab of a No. 7 train Monday.
A 20-year veteran of the agency, Williams came to the profession after being homeless in the city.
“I slept on the train and in nightclubs,” he said of his time before the MTA.
“I always tell people that I train: Be respectful to the people that you see out here. You don’t know who they were yesterday — I was one of them.”
The nationally recognized transit worker day comes amid an uptick in violence against transit workers, including the brutal slashing of an A train conductor in Bedford-Stuyvesant last month.
Lieber acknowledged the violence Monday.
“Part of recognizing [transit workers] is also recognizing that there have been attacks on our workforce recently,” the MTA boss said.
Lieber said he has confidence in Gov. Hochul’s subway safety plan, which puts an additional $20 million into mental health outreach teams and mandates regular meetings among transit brass, law enforcement and district attorneys in an effort to bring justice to repeat offenders.
“Really despicable stuff that’s going on,” Lieber said of the attacks. “We just are not going to accept it.”
