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The MTA has finally hired a replacement for former Transit President Andy Byford, after 25 months without a permanent leader at the helm of New York’s massive bus and subway system.
Richard Davey, the former Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation from 2011 to 2014, will take over on May 2 as president of the 55,000-person New York City Transit Authority, managing the day-to-day operations of subways, buses and paratransit within the city, MTA Chairman Janno Lieber said in an announcement on Wednesday.
Davey, 48, also previously served in leadership roles at Boston’s Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, as well as in the private sector. He lived in New York during the Sept. 11 attacks and has not owned a car “in 12 years,” the MTA said.
“Living in New York during 9/11 was a seminal moment in my life,” Davey said in a statement. “My experience being a New Yorker that day at that time is why I am coming back, because public service and more importantly public transportation is so important to me.”
Current Interim Transit President Craig Cipriano, who took over the role in August, will serve as New York City Transit Chief Operating Officer under Davey, the statement said.
Cipriano took the interim role from Sarah Feinberg, a former Obama administration official who led the agency during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Feinberg herself succeeded Byford — whose media-savvy approach to the role earned him the adoration of the riding public and scorn of then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Under Byford’s leadership, the subways hit their highest on-time performance in six years. He also set in motion the MTA modernization plan currently being pursued by his successors. But Cuomo reviled sharing the spotlight and sent him packing.
Cuomo made the job “intolerable,” Byford said in an interview with WCBS-TV shortly before returning home to the United Kingdom in March of 2020.
He accused the governor’s team of going behind his back and reducing his role after Byford called for an “independent review” of Cuomo’s plan to avert the L train shutdown.
“I found myself excluded from meetings that were absolutely about the day-to-day running of New York City Transit,” Byford said at the time. “The governor is the boss, the governor runs the MTA. But at the end of the day, I needed to be left to run the system.”
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