ALBANY — Gov. Kathy Hochul announced during Tuesday’s State of the State speech that she’d boost subway safety funding by $77 million as she gave a big gift to transit advocates in the war on drivers — backing a plan to allow cities to slam “super speeders.”
Hochul said she’d back a pilot program that could force drivers who rack up multiple speed camera violations to install car tech that’ll keep them under the speed limit. It was one of several transit-focused pitches, including an expanded Second Avenue subway and a $50 million to revamp the Jamaica Avenue station.
The Democratic governor said she will use the $77 million to maintain heightened police patrols in the subway, she said. She also vowed to install platform barriers at 85 additional stations and expand SCOUT, the program that pairs mental health teams with police officers to move people in crisis out of the subway system and into care.
Hochul also bragged about her congestion pricing toll for lower Manhattan and taunted President Trump’s efforts to cancel it.
“Mr. President the message is still the same. We will not bow to a wannabe king and the congestion pricing is staying on,” Hochul said during her speech in Albany.
Hochul’s “super speeder” legislation would have New York City pilot a program where repeat offenders have to install “Intelligent Speed Assistance” systems that block them from breaking posted limits.
Separately, she pledged state funding for design and preliminary engineering to extend the Second Avenue Subway west along 125th Street in Harlem, adding three new stations at Lenox Avenue, St. Nicholas Avenue and Broadway. That crosstown leg would connect riders to seven north–south subway lines across Manhattan.
A state-funded feasibility study found that continuing tunnel-boring work west from the current East Harlem project, rather than stopping and restarting later, would save both time and money by keeping tunnel equipment and crews in continuous use.
In Queens, Hochul committed $50 million toward modernizing Jamaica Station, one of the region’s busiest hubs, where the Long Island Rail Road, the E and J/Z subway lines and the JFK AirTrain intersect.
More than 1,000 trains and roughly 200,000 passengers pass through the complex on a typical weekday, but the station has not seen a major upgrade in 23 years, according to the governor’s office. The redesign is intended to make transfers smoother by knitting the rail, subway and AirTrain facilities into a more seamless regional gateway.
