Riders Alliance Annual Gala

Through our annual fall gala, we raise critical resources to support rider advocacy all year long. The gala features all of our favorite traditions: live music, delicious cocktails and bites, transit-themed games and swag, and lots more. The best party for public transit celebrates elected officials, members of the media, and our powerful community of public transit riders and advocates.

Stay tuned for information about the 2025 event!

Thank you to all who made the 2024 Riders Alliance Gala a huge success!

Our 2024 Honorees

Congestion Pricing Champions

We were thrilled to honor the riders who sprung to action in the wake of Governor Kathy Hochul’s illegal pause of congestion pricing, just days before it was scheduled to go into effect.

Riders fought for and won this transformative policy in 2019 and continued to show up during years of studies, reviews, and implementation waiting on the promised funds to finally fix the subway. The moment the governor announced she was pulling the plug on congestion pricing riders took to the streets: rallying, marching the halls of Albany, testifying before the MTA Board, and flooding inboxes and phone lines nonstop.

These amazing Congestion Pricing Champions have shown that riders have the power to say no to a leader canceling new elevators, signal upgrades, and so much more. They fought hard until finally, in January 2025, Hochul flipped the switch!

Adrienne E. Adams
Speaker of the New York City Council

Adrienne Adams is the Speaker of the New York City Council, leading the most diverse and first women-majority Council in city history as the body’s first African American Speaker. She is also the first woman to represent Council District 28 in Southeast Queens.

Under the leadership of Speaker Adams, the Council has been tackling long-standing inequities, advancing women’s health, confronting racial disparities in maternal health, supporting underserved crime victims, expanding access to economic and educational opportunities, and more.

Speaker Adams and the Council have prioritized addressing inequities in the city’s workforce, passing legislative packages to confront the historic lack of diversity in the FDNY and gender- and race-based pay disparities that impact municipal workers. Speaker Adams also helped establish the CUNY Reconnect program that has helped tens of thousands of working-age New Yorkers to return to college in pursuit of a degree after leaving school.

Prior to elected office, Speaker Adams worked as a Corporate Trainer and a Child Development Associate Instructor. Speaker Adams is an active member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, and is a longstanding member of the NAACP and the National Action Network.

Liz Krueger
New York State Senator

First elected to the New York State Senate in a special election in February 2002, Liz Krueger is currently the Chair of the Senate Finance Committee and a member of the Budget and Revenues and Rules Committees. Senator Krueger has made reforming and modernizing New York State government and elections central goals of her legislative agenda.

Since she began her work as an elected official, Senator Krueger has been a voice in favor of adequately funding our public transit system and has supported congestion pricing for over a decade.

As the most senior champion of congestion pricing in state government, Senator Krueger is a beacon to colleagues and leaders across New York at a moment of crisis.

Senator Krueger has the persistent vision of a more reliable, accessible, resilient, and fiscally sound transit system that congestion pricing will help bring about, and she has played a pivotal role in defending this transformative policy and everything that hinges on it.

Senator Krueger received her Bachelor’s degree in Social Policy and Human Development from Northwestern University and also holds a Master’s degree from the University of Chicago’s Harris Graduate School of Public Policy.