MTA boss Janno Lieber celebrated the transit agency’s efforts to curb subway surfing Wednesday — but the annual death toll shows the deadly stunt is as big a problem as ever.
Five people have died from subway surfing incidents this year after six died in 2024 and five died in 2023 — with barely a change even despite public advertising campaigns from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority warning that the boneheaded stunt could be deadly.
Young people have taken to the dangerous game in desperate attempts to gain likes and followers on social media, with transit officials pointing the finger at companies like Meta for allowing videos of subway surfing to go viral without being taken down.
“We’ve done a ton of stuff that’s been really successful,” Lieber, the MTA’s chairman and CEO, said after an MTA board meeting Wednesday. “I’m very proud of what the MTA has done to try to educate everybody about the dangers of subway surfing.”
“We have millions of announcements and impressions, and we’ve worked with the NYPD who’ve instituted a lot of special operations in the areas where this seems to take place more often,” Lieber added, pointing to the NYPD’s use of drones to catch surfers in the act.
Lieber also claimed he urged Meta, parent company of Instagram, to do more to remove videos posted to social media that glamourize the deadly maneuver.
“I have sent that message to them a couple of times, most recently this week that we want them to get on the stick,” Lieber claimed. “They’ve been cooperative in discussions, but they haven’t been successful in stamping it out.”
“Instagram seems to be a place where still more subway surfing videos do get to live for too long,” Lieber went on.
“If it were child pornography they would figure out got to shut it down,” Lieber said, noting Tiktok has been successful in quickly removing the popular videos before they generate millions of views.
A spokesperson for the MTA did not respond when The Post asked to see the message that Lieber sent to the social media giant.
“So we’re calling on Meta, Instagram to do a little bit better,” Lieber said. “They’ve been cooperative in discussions, but they haven’t been successful in stamping it out.”
A spokesperson from Meta said the company removes subway surfing videos whenever officials are made aware of them.
“Videos encouraging subway surfing violate our policies, and we remove them when we become aware of them. We will continue to work with the MTA to address this issue.”
Lieber also noted the MTA is still piloting anti-subway surfing apparatus designed to block risky straphangers from climbing atop of the speeding trains.
“When we come to a conclusion about how they’re working, there’s an opportunity to expand them,” Lieber said.
The padded barriers have already been installed on a string of No. 7 trains and the MTA said it plans to expand the program to all of its cars that line – at a price tag of $10 million – by the end of 2026.
“It is unbelievably heartbreaking when the kids make this decision for a momentary thrill, for literally an infinitesimal moment of glory on social media that can end their lives or leave them permanently disfigured,” Lieber said.
