Amid political fights over tolls, funding, and public trust, Concetta Benvicenga wants to keep one thing clear: New York doesn’t work without public transportation.
“You experience New York the way you do because of mass transit,” said Bencivenga, director of the New York Transit Museum. “You just don’t know it.”
Since taking the helm in 2017, Bencivenga has described herself as both the museum’s “cheerleader in chief” and its “chief business person.”
Housed in a decommissioned subway station in Downtown Brooklyn, the museum was established on July 4, 1976 by transit workers, originally as a temporary exhibition looking to mark the U.S. Bicentennial. It became permanent shortly after, now exhibiting trains from as early as 1907 and showcasing the transit system’s changing design and technology.
The museum attracts over half a million visitors annually and draws a wide cross-section of New Yorkers and tourists alike, including a passionate neurodivergent community that has long been connected to transit.
Bencivenga keeps the organization apolitical by design. “The museum, as a cultural institution, holds no opinion on contemporaneous activities at the MTA,” she said about the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which manages the New York City subway and bus systems, and the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North.
Still, she believes deeply in the importance of public transportation. “This region is this region because of mass transit,” she said.
Today’s challenges, she noted, are similar to age-old debates around funding and fairness.
One of the most divisive debates at the moment is congestion pricing. With the goal of raising much-needed funds for the MTA, the program charges drivers entering Manhattan below 60th Street.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat, filed a lawsuit against it in January, and the Trump administration is demanding that New York State kill the plan.
Bencivenga declined to comment on the politics, but suggested looking at London and Stockholm as possible examples of how the program could work.
“It’ll be interesting to see how it is going,” she said.
Bencivenga is familiar with apprehension about mass transit. She grew up on Long Island and attests to the difficulty of convincing people about the importance of public transportation.
“People can be parochial” almost everywhere, but she has a rebuttal ready for when the need arises. When someone tells her they don’t take the train, she points out just how congested the roads would be if everyone decided to drive.
“They’re just statements of fact,” Bencivenga said. “That can expand the appreciation for why mass transit matters.” Every day, about 200,000 people take the Long Island Railroad, she adds.
As the museum nears its 50th anniversary, Bencivenga is looking forward to “telling more, better, fuller stories.” She highlights the story of Marion McAllister, the first woman to pass the motormen’s test in the 1970’s.
“If you look at the history of the work of doing transit in this region, you see how incredibly transformative it has been,” Bencivenga said. “It has been a vehicle to the middle class and beyond for large swaths of Black, Latino, and Asian New York populations.”
Racquel Miller is a journalist covering housing for City Newsroom. She’s passionate about broadcast journalism and hopes to become a news producer.
Eric Santomauro-Stenzel is a reporter from Long Island, NY and covers politics for City Newsroom. His prior coverage has included social movements, discrimination, education, and more. He is a recent graduate of Hamilton College outside of Utica, NY.
Cate Zanardi is a local politics reporter for City Newsroom. Previously, they covered environmental risk, housing, and activism for radio and print. They hail from Bologna, Italy.
