Who Will Represent Mamdani At The MTA? He Has Less Than A Month To Decide.

By Jose Martinez, The City

May 11, 2026, 5:00 a.m.

As Mayor Zohran Mamdani pushes a transit agenda centered on speeding the country’s slowest buses, he has less than a month to fill a pair of longstanding vacancies on the MTA board.

The mayor has just four seats on the panel that sets fares, operating and capital budgets for a regional transportation authority that is largely under the control of Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Mamdani’s recommendations must be submitted to Hochul, who appoints the head of the MTA and has six board members of her own, and then approved by the State Senate before the Albany legislative session ends June 4.

The new mayor has already tapped a new “bus czar” to lead his pro-bus agenda at City Hall. Now, he has to make his first appointments to the MTA board.

“Having someone who is reflective of his values and adding another member of his administration to voice his interests and his concerns is going to be helpful to the many people who are depending on buses,” said Lisa Daglian, executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA.

The 23-member board also includes members selected by each of the county executives from the seven suburban counties served by the MTA’s commuter railroads, as well as six non-voting representatives from labor unions and commuter councils.

Polly Trottenberg, who was on the MTA board from 2014 to 2019 while she led the city’s Transportation Department, said the mayoral appointments play a vital role even if they are outnumbered.

“Who the mayor picks is important,” Trottenberg said. “What I found in my time is that you don’t always have the votes, but you always have the bully pulpit.”

Once confirmed, Mamdani’s recommendations would fill spots that have been vacant for months. Meera Joshi, a former deputy mayor under Eric Adams, left last June, while another Adams pick, Midori Valdivia, resigned in March, after Mamdani appointed her as commissioner and chair of the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission.

Even with the competing interests on the board, Mamdani’s picks are seen as key to advancing his top transportation priorities, including transit affordability and the acceleration of slow-moving buses, which plodded along at a citywide average of 8.3 mph in March, according to MTA data.

The MTA installed new turnstile guards at the City Hall-Brooklyn Bridge station, Feb. 12, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

The new board members would join mayoral holdovers David Jones, who has been on the board since the de Blasio administration, and Dan Garodnick, the former director of the Department of City Planning who was recommended for the MTA board in 2024 by then-Mayor Adams.

Jones, chief executive of the nonprofit Community Service Society, began pushing more than a decade ago for the creation of Fair Fares, the city-run program that launched in 2019 offering half-off fares to low-income New Yorkers. Jones also frequently uses his spot on the MTA board to speak out against alleged racial disparities in the NYPD’s policing of fare evasion in the transit system.

But even with the deadline fast approaching, Mamdani isn’t tipping his hand on his own picks or the fine print of his transit plans, even as the city’s Department of Transportation has launched a series of bus- and bike-lane expansions that had been languishing under the previous mayor.

“New Yorkers deserve a public transit system that is affordable, reliable and accountable to the people who depend on it every day,” Mamdani spokesperson Jeremy Edwards said in a statement. “Dan Garodnick and David Jones have been important partners in advancing that work alongside the city and we’re grateful for their service to the MTA board.”

“We’ll have more to share soon about the future of these appointments and our broader vision for public transit in New York,” he added.

Advocates and former MTA board members said there is a vital role for the mayoral picks, especially when the city’s priorities clash with those of the governor.

“It clearly is a place where the mayor can make the case for what he wants to do and argue forcefully and be able to engage in a discussion over how the transit should be delivered in the city,” said Bob Linn, former commissioner of the city’s Office of Labor Relations, who was on the MTA board from 2019 through 2022.

Veronica Vanterpool, who served on the MTA board from 2016 to 2019, said that the elected officials who pick prospective MTA board members must focus on “selecting the right individuals” to be “vocal advocates” for whatever transit issues they wish to champion.

“It’s not useful if whomever is put on the board is not a vocal advocate for the priorities,” Vanterpool said.

The latter half of Mamdani’s transit priorities — to eventually eliminate bus fares — has been met with resistance from Hochul as well as MTA Chairperson and Chief Executive Janno Lieber, even as the transit chief has praised Mamdani for being a “truly pro-transit mayor.” Some City Council members have also pushed to expand Fair Fares over the fare-free buses proposal.

But overall, the dealings between the state and the city on transportation matters are in contrast to those under previous administrations in Albany and at City Hall.

“It could be contentious between the mayor and the governor,” Trottenberg said, recalling the frequent clashes between former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and de Blasio. “It’s a much more collaborative relationship now between the city and the state and that, I think, is reflected in the MTA board.”

When Cuomo was governor and a forceful presence at the MTA, de Blasio’s board members frequently pushed back against some of his priorities. That included criticism of the costs for a Cuomo plan to overhaul Penn Station and several subway station renovations that did not include the installation of elevators.

“None of us were shy about taking a difficult stance or position on an action,” Vanterpool said. “None of us were shy about asking questions that were challenging. None of us were shy about indicating what the priorities of New York City were.”

Andrew Albert, who has sat on the MTA board since 2002 as a non-voting representative for the New York City Transit Riders Council, said that even occasional flare-ups between board members can be useful for the transit network and its riders.

“Everyone wants to see the best system that we possibly can,” he said. “And everyone wants to have it financed the best that it can be.”

This press release was produced by The City. The views expressed here are the author’s own.