Little more than two years ago, Andy Byford quit his New York City subway-chief job in frustration, unable to get then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo to let him manage the transit system without political interference. Now he’s hanging out with the queen of England in the London subway.  

The photos of the incongruous pair are amusing but point up a serious difference between the two cities as they recover from COVID. London, where the British-born Byford has run the transit system since London snapped up New York’s loss in mid-2020, has elected officials who take transit seriously — and New York doesn’t.  

Like New York, London is having trouble getting office workers to return to their desks: In both cities, only about one-third of people are back. Unlike New York, though, London has a new advantage to help it rebuild its central city, no matter what activities — work, play or live — people eventually choose to do there.  

Starting Tuesday, London will have a brand-new shiny subway line. The 96-year-old Queen Elizabeth II, who doesn’t get out much these days, made a special appearance last week to take in a sneak preview, guided by Byford.

Her namesake Elizabeth line is not just three stops, as our Second Avenue Subway is, or one dead-end stub stop, like Hudson Yards.

The new Elizabeth line, as it opens in phases over the next year, really is a whole new line: 10 new stops from west to east across all London, with new tunneling connecting 31 existing stations. The $24 billion line, after decades of planning and construction, increases London’s existing rail capacity by 10%.

That means service so frequent that people don’t have to worry about missing a train. Trains will run every five minutes and, by next year, every two and half minutes.  

And it means connecting London’s Heathrow Airport even more closely to downtown, when New York is still many years — if not decades — into bickering over how to connect people from LaGuardia Airport to Manhattan by rail. Even AirTrain JFK, while better than nothing, is expensive and inconvenient.  

But London’s line also offers something else: access to everyone. Every single new and refurbished station is handicap-accessible. By contrast, only one-quarter of New York’s subway stations are accessible.  

Accessibility for everyone should be the norm — especially since elevator-accessible stations aren’t “only” for people using wheelchairs. From people with baby carriages or suitcases to the elderly or asthmatic, many New Yorkers can’t go up and down multiple flights of stairs each day just to go from point A to point B.  

Then, too, London’s new trains are open and airy, giving passengers the ability to walk seamlessly between cars to find one with an open seat.

None of this is to say that London is without its mass-transit woes. New Elizabeth line aside, London’s system, like New York’s, has suffered multibillion-dollar shortfalls in fare revenues since the pandemic. It is reliant, just like New York, on multiple bailouts from the national government. 

But London — with Boris Johnson, now Britain’s prime minister but formerly the city’s mayor, helping to spearhead the Elizabeth line years ago — was way ahead of absorbing something New York is still just figuring out. When white-collar workers can work at home indefinitely, the government can’t consider public transit to be a bare-bones public utility.  

That is, people won’t cram themselves into uncomfortable, overcrowded subway (or Tube) cars for long, unwieldy commutes anymore. To get people back to the office — or to take public transit to see friends and enjoy entertainment — the city must offer a comfortable, reliable, convenient trip. 

And the city must offer a safe trip. Though a new subway line is great, passengers on London’s existing subways are also far safer from violent crime than are New Yorkers.  

Since March 2020, 18 people have been murdered on the New York City subway system, six times the pre-pandemic level, the latest just Sunday.

London’s last subway murder, by contrast, was in 2019. Relatedly, London doesn’t put up with farebeaters, aggressive panhandlers and vagrants living in public transportation.  

Transit is for getting from one place to another. 

There’s no magic formula to getting people to come back to work and play in central cities if they don’t have to. As London — even without New York’s public-safety and quality-of-life issues on the streets and the trains — illustrates, people aren’t deterred only by fear or discomfort. They just like working at home. 

But giving people a more convenient — and safer — commute is a good place to start to entice them back.  

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.