DOGE could be teaching the MTA new tricks.
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy offered the notoriously spendthrift transit agency the help of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team after taking a two-stop subway ride with Mayor Eric Adams in New York City Friday.
Duffy ripped the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for greenlighting $250 million in contracts for consultants on the next Second Avenue subway extension — which already carries a whopping price tag of $7.7 billion — or $4.3 billion a mile.
“Someone’s getting rich,” he said.
“I see how much MTA spends, right?” Duffy said. “I suspect there is waste… fraud, and so I’m going to make an offer at MTA.
“I know a few people in DC who are very successful at rooting out fraud, waste and abuse: DOGE,” he said, referring to the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency.
“So, I’m going to offer folks from DOGE to come down and take a look at what MTA is doing, how they’re spending their money, and can they be more efficient for the taxpayers in the state of New York?”
The transportation secretary’s visit and ride along with the increasingly MAGA-friendly Adams is his latest high-profile stunt targeting the MTA amid a spat with Gov. Kathy Hochul.
No one from the MTA was on the tour, an apparent snub that came after Duffy threatened to pull funding from the agency last month.
Adams also did not give Hochul a heads up about his meeting with Duffy, despite talking with her on the phone the previous night, a source familiar with the situation said.
Duffy first got the governor’s goat by announcing he’d pull federal approval for congestion pricing in Manhattan, prompting a lawsuit by Hochul and MTA to keep the first-in-the-nation tolling program alive.
He then demanded transit safety information from the MTA under threat of pulling federal funding — an ultimatum the former MTV “Real World” star repeated when he extended a deadline to end congestion pricing.
Duffy — who was shown how to use a MetroCard by Adams for their short ride from the DeKalb Avenue to Broadway-Lafayette stations — said he wanted to make sure the subway system is “safe.”
His desire came a day after NYPD officials touted subway crime levels finally falling to pre-pandemic levels — including no murders so far this year — amid a surge of police orchestrated by the city and Hochul.
“Secretary Duffy has literally no idea what he’s talking about,” a Hochul spokesperson said.
“As Mayor Adams and most New Yorkers know, Governor Hochul stepped up to add NYPD officers and security resources on public transit. Now, subway crime has declined by double digits and ridership continues to grow.”
MTA representatives referred The Post’s questions to remark made by the agency’s Chair and CEO Janno Lieber at an unrelated news conference.
“Don’t let the moment pass to remind people crime is down 40% from where it was before COVID,” he said. “The March numbers confirm the trajectory. The NYPD and all of our partners in trying to create a safer New York and a safer subway system have done a hell of a job. Fare evasion is also down 30% from last summer.”
Duffy also continued to lambast the $9 congestion pricing tolls for drivers entering Manhattan below 60th Street as creating a two-tier “class system” in which the wealthy drive on the streets while those who make less take the bus or subway.
He also spoke with Adams about the crumbling Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, which the mayor wants to rebuild.
“It took four years to build the Golden Gate Bridge, but we’re going to take probably eight years to repair the BQE,” Adams said. “And (Duffy) asked the question of, what is in the way? What can we do on the city level, on the federal level, to stop slowing down these important projects?
“And I’m excited about doing this, but also here in the subway system, the secretary has been clear over and over again that if the federal dollars that come into the city must have an excellent product, we must have a good product to make sure that passengers are moving safer, not only in the stats, but how they feel.”
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