A Roving Reporter on New York City Transit

Stefanos Chen, 39, covers New York City’s mass transit on the Metro desk and says transit has been part of his life since childhood. He grew up in Corona, Queens, where his father worked as a chauffeur, rode the Q88 to high school and remembers the No. 7 as his gateway to Manhattan’s neighborhoods and culture.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Vassar College and spent five years covering housing at The Wall Street Journal before joining the Real Estate desk in 2017. There he reported on million-dollar floods, broken elevators and disputes at a supertall condo.

In 2023 he moved to the Metro desk, and last year began focusing on buses, subways and other modes of transit, writing about the subway’s aging signal system, the proposed Interborough Express and the room where MetroCards were encoded. Chen’s own commute is from Ditmars Boulevard in Astoria to Times Square, a roughly 40-minute trip door to door on the N or W line.

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