Running a marathon is hard. You can learn that from doing just one (or two, as I have). The 26.2-mile race takes months of preparation, including hundreds of miles of training. Race day brings other challenges: getting to the start line on time, having the right gear. And then there’s the race itself. Even the best runners can hit the infamous “wall” before it’s over. As racers’ bodies rebel at what is being done to them, they have to force their way through pain and exhaustion by sheer will.
This week, participants and organizers of the New York City Marathon worried about an additional, unexpected obstacle: the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. In a revealing display of misplaced priorities, the NYC transit agency attempted a shakedown of New York Road Runners, the group that administers the marathon. Fortunately, Governor Kathy Hochul (unusually, for her) sensibly intervened to override the MTA, per the New York Post.
The agency was demanding NYRR pay $750,000 for toll revenue lost by race-day closure of the Verrazzano Bridge, used as a staging area for the race since 1988. The MTA’s treatment of NYRRs dripped with condescension. “Taxpayers cannot be expected to subsidize a wealthy non-government organization like the New York Road Runners to the tune of $750,000,” the president of MTA Bridges and Tunnels, Catherine Sheridan, told the New York Post in a statement.
But NYRR is no fat cat. The marathon is the organization’s marquee event, with registration to match. Yet thousands enjoy it, as well as other NYRR activities, many of them free. The marathon itself is also a boon to the city. One of the most famous races of its kind in the world, it attracts thousands of participants and spectators, generating an economic impact of more than $427 million, according to one assessment.
Even the local transit system, whose suffering from the marathon is the supposed motivation for the MTA’s shakedown, benefits. Last year on race day, the subway system hit a record 2.3 million entries. (A New York Post analysis found that the marathon generated far more subway fare than it lost in tolls.) Hochul celebrated the ridership milestone by rightly calling the marathon an “institution.”
The MTA shakedown put that institution at risk in several ways. If made to pay $750,000 annually, the race would have had to increase its registration fees, possibly putting it out of financial reach for some. If, instead, it lost access to some of or even all of the bridge, it would have had to decrease the number of runners allowed each year, or change the course so that it no longer went through all five boroughs. Any possibility would have destroyed something essential about the marathon and its connection to the city.
Targeting the marathon like this was especially ridiculous when the MTA has far more obvious and pressing problems. In 2022, fare and toll evasion cost the agency $690 million. Tougher enforcement of existing laws is a better way to gain lost revenue than playing tough-guy with an economic and cultural touchstone of NYC. But such mistreatment would have been consistent with other aspects of NYC governance. The city has indulged lawbreakers while ordinary New Yorkers trying to live their lives are at best ignored or, at worst, actively harmed by government actions (or inactions) and their injurious consequences.
Hochul’s decision makes clear that NYRR was the reasonable one here. The group already agreed to past demands to pay for bridge closure, forking over $150,000 in 2021, according to the New York Times. But this is evidence of the group’s good faith, not proof that it should absorb even more costs. Despite the unreasonableness of the MTA’s demands, and its unwillingness to back up its $750,000 figure, NYRR remained willing to negotiate with the agency. However, “any resolution should reflect the significant value the M.T.A. derives from the marathon, including the increased ridership over marathon weekend,” the group said in a statement. Hochul’s decision to override the MTA appropriately honors this condition.
It also accounts for the good that comes from things like marathons, especially amid all the challenges we face from rising obesity, fraying civil society, declining mental health, and more. The false allure of digital life is becoming ever more tempting to a sedentary population. Events such as the New York City Marathon don’t just help the city economically. They supply a visceral, shared experience for thousands of people. They motivate people to enter the physical world and improve themselves in a community setting. We need more activities like that and should encourage them, not antagonize them. Marathons are hard enough as it is. People like me who choose to do them shouldn’t have to deal with the government making them harder.