Good morning, I’m Colin Wright with TransitCenter.

Transit riders' number one priority is to quickly and reliably get where they need to go.

But by hiring 500 new MTA officers, Governor Cuomo and this board are diverting money that’s desperately needed to operate the system.

We know there are better ways to spend $250 million to improve subway and service.

One area of urgent need, for example, is and reliability.

Before I get into specifics, I want to acknowledge the commitment to accessibility in the new capital plan.

Replacing several dozen and will increase reliability. As will new maintenance hires.

But elevator and escalator reliability still falls short of your own goals and is nowhere near where riders need it to be.

According to agency data, half of your escalators fail at least twice a week.

Escalator availability is a full 7 percentage points below your own goal.

Half of your elevators fail at least every other week.

You’re falling a percentage point short of your already low elevator availability goal.

For people with disabilities and older New Yorkers who regularly use the system, this means routinely encountering outages multiple times per week that force time- consuming detours.

We know better elevator reliability is possible. Boston maintains nearly 99% elevator availability because it has dedicated the necessary staff and resources to maintain its physical assets.

Accessible subway stations are already too scarce. It is urgent that Governor Cuomo and this board take every opportunity to ensure accessible stations are reliably available to people with disabilities.

We ask this board to please reconsider spending $250 million on new transit police officers, and instead use that money to provide the fundamentals of good transit service for all New Yorkers.

And finally, I would like to congratulate Veronica on your new position and to say thank you for your service.

We hope Mayor de Blasio honors your commitment to riders and to disabled riders in particular by nominating a diverse candidate with a disability to fill your seat.