Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Ahead Of World Cup, Governor Hochul and Mayor Mamdani Update New Yorkers on Transportation and Safety Preparations

Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani today updated New Yorkers on regionwide transportation and safety preparations in advance of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. With the first match at the NYNJ Stadium set just over a week away, New York is fully prepared to welcome over one million visitors to the city and to ensure they can travel safely to matches and throughout the region. Working across government, transportation and public safety, planning efforts have been underway for over a year. The MTA is fully prepared to handle additional transit needs throughout the tournament for matchgoing fans and New Yorkers alike, with extra subway service planned on strategic lines and a full deployment of customer ambassadors to assist fans making connections to the matches via shuttle bus or train.

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor's Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Oh, how sweet it is. How sweet it is. Let's keep it going, Knicks. I was just reflecting on the crack of dawn, literally crack of dawn, when the skies are orange and blue early this morning when I took my walk, and you know what I noticed? New Yorkers are making eye contact again. It was shocking. People looking up and have an extra lift in their step and wearing their Knicks gear as I was trying to go incognito. But everybody seemed to know there's just something magical in the air. It's a very special day. Go Knicks, make us all so proud. Make us all so proud.

I'm here by, standing here with our Mayor, who is aligned with me in our strong desire to keep this city safe, protected, accessible and fun during the next few months, or next month and a half of World Cup games, as well as many other activities over this summer. So I want to thank him and his incredible team of commissioners who are assembled here as well to make sure that we do have exactly all those accomplished by the end of the summer. So I'm excited to partner with the Mayor on this. Our MTA Chair and CEO, Janno Lieber, we've been through a lot of battles together, and I appreciate your strong, consistent leadership of this extraordinary organization. And as I mentioned, a number of commissioners that the Mayor will introduce, but also, Thomas Taffe from the MTA Police Chief, Demetrius Crichlow, the New York City Transit President, Justin Brannan, my State Director of Major Events and Operations, who's been very busy this summer, and all the officials who keep us on time. But there is incredible energy, as I mentioned, but it's not just the Knicks, but it's the Knicks Plus. Knicks Plus. What a year. What a year this is to also have the eyes of the world centered upon our city and our region for the World Cup games, which I was at a soccer field yesterday with children, and everybody's just so fired up about this. It's a wonderful feeling.

But we also want to make sure we're ready, not just for our residents, but for visitors from literally around the world. And that calls upon us, for people who are not as experienced with our subways and buses and trains, to be able to have a very safe, positive experience as well as they experience the world's largest sporting event. That's what we're going to be hosting. So when it comes to safeguarding our subways, we've been working hard to already build the foundation. It's something, when I first became Governor, we had an enormous spike in subway crimes, people were fearful of going on the subway. It was fairly desolate immediately after the pandemic. So we had a real challenge to build back the system as well as stop it from literally the train going off the financial cliff here. But we built a strong foundation, and we made over $150 million investments to deploy more law enforcement to areas of the transit system where they're needed most. I'm proud to do that. It's unprecedented for the state to do that for the city, but we're going to keep it going because we're seeing it pay off.

We also installed 33,000 cameras, one in every subway car. Remember when we first talked about this, Janno? I was told there's a number of years that has to go first. I said, "No, we're going to do it sooner than that," and you got it done. Absolutely. So thank you. Got it done in one year. 33,000 cars all have cameras. So we are watching. We know what is going on our subways at every moment, as we just toured the incredible nerve center of the MTA, where people are watching what is occurring as well. Platform barriers - a lot of anxiety about pushing on the tracks. We're going to continue this effort, but nearly 150 stations have platform barriers, so if someone who's feeling anxious or concerned about an individual, can literally stand behind them and feel safer. And every single station with bright LED lighting, it's the first thing I said when I went down there. I said, "Let's brighten this up. Let's have better lights. Let's paint the walls." Maybe paint the walls orange and blue. Maybe that's a good idea next. Would cover the Mets too, wouldn't it? Sorry, Yankees fans, I had to say that.

But as a result we're seeing incredible changes, not just in the psychology of the riders, as I'm riding and people like me - maybe it is the Knicks effect - but people are excited and happy and feeling more relaxed and not as stressed out in general. And subway crime is down to a 16-year low. Sixteen years. That's unbelievable, where people now don't have to have this as their number one concern when they leave their homes and head out to the subway. And also just in the last year, and I thank the Mayor and Commissioner Tisch and his entire team for the subway crime is down six percent, for what they do as well since last May. So that's - when you have a dramatic drop, you don't expect to see a drop anytime soon again, because how long can you keep a trend going? It went down, dropped another six percent since last year - extraordinary results, but we never say mission accomplished ever. We know we always have more work to do.

But now the World Cup. We know a surge of fans will be using mass transit to get to and from the stadium, or to their favorite soccer bar, or to the Fan Fest events that we announced we're doing - you're doing in every single borough, we're doing around the state as well. And this all requires additional resources. The personnel, the technology, what is going to be required - and we're going to go into more details - but not just from the MTA, but from law enforcement as well. But I want to say this: We can handle this. We've got this. This is what we do best. And for those who are saying, "Stay home from work," no. Come to the city, celebrate. Otherwise, you're missing the excitement and the energy.

So we've been planning for this for years, tabletopping this exercise as we're ramping up our police presence, more transit police, NYPD, State Police, our National Guard Joint Task Force Empire Shield to be fully activated, patrolling our major transit hubs and other special World Cup events. And again, we're used to this. We have the New York City Marathon, and we're always looking forward to UN week, right? Favorite week of the year. To Climate Week, there's also Clinton Global Initiative, and all kinds of activities, and the US Open, and a lot of things we handle, and sold-out concerts and sporting events at Madison Square Garden, including outside the Garden, where people are excited, gathering in the streets to watch the Knicks as they will be up until the fourth game, and then they'll be done. I didn't say that, I did not jinx anything, okay? Okay, just want to get it clear.

But, so I want, bottom line is we're used to this intensity. We're used to this traffic. Our police are the best. Our MTA team is the best. We know how to handle this, so I want to reassure New Yorkers that this is not something that's going to catch us by surprise. This has been something that we have tabletopped for a long time. And again, we just had one of the largest training exercises in the entire state at Moynihan Station to prepare for this. And all this relies on collaboration, breaking down agency silos that have existed in the past, not for this, and we work as a team with the city and share intelligence. We're also going to be deploying drones to safeguard critical locations across the transit system, including our bridges and tunnels, critically important, but also just managing the flow of people.

Now, as I mentioned, some states might be saying, "Stay home. It's going to be a hassle." That's your choice, your choice. But for those who want to be part of the financial, cultural, sports, entertainment capital of the world during this time when the world is watching us: We're ready for it, and that's the main object of explaining what we're doing here today. I know Janno's going to talk about we're running more subway trains into Penn Station on game days. There will be more 7 trains into Queens, so people have no trouble getting to our free Fan Fest, especially on World Cup match days that coincide with Mets home games. This is exciting. We're also suspending all construction work on match days. Yay. Good idea, right? Yes. It's a brilliant idea. I don't think I came up with that, but it's a good one, whoever did - and to prevent unnecessary backups.

And Janno's going to go into more detail, but I just want to say this: No city is better prepared than New York. No city knows how to handle crowds, extra riders, intercept criminals, online threats, and we will keep - no city is better prepared to keep its trains and buses running on time. And each match day, roughly 100,000 people will take our trains and buses out to World Cup events. But, 100,000 is nice, we handle six million riders a day, so this is something that is absolutely within our control because we know how to deal with the volume and the anticipated guests. We want to have, make sure they have an extraordinary experience coming to New York.

So we have the premier athletes on the field, the premier law enforcement teams right where they need to be, all them protecting us. And so, I'm fired up. I'm excited about this. I'm a huge sports fan. Whatever it is, if there's a ball involved, I love it. And so, we are excited New Yorkers, and I just want to say I feel so proud to be standing with this team behind me that knows how to handle this. And people are going to walk away from this experience saying, "Yes, New York got it right. New York is the World Cup." Let me introduce our next speaker, our Mayor, who has been joined at the hip with our teams to make sure that this is all so wildly successful, is a lifelong diehard soccer fan. Correct, Mayor?