New York City subway crime surge puts ridership and economic recovery at risk

Are New York progressives just determined to turn the city into a post-apocalyptic wasteland?

Subway crime just spiked nearly 20%, but our leaders are focused on making it more expensive — via congestion pricing — to come into Manhattan’s business districts.

Shoplifting and organized grab-and-run gangs are killing city retail, high-end and low-, but state lawmakers won’t toughen the laws so such perps can be jailed.

We guess they won’t be happy until the only places open for business are ATM vestibules (most doubling as unofficial homeless shelters) and illegal pot shops.

In the face of evidence showing Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang members embedded among migrants in the Big Apple, the pols won’t repeal sanctuary laws that ban collaboration between the NYPD and its federal immigration counterparts.

Rather than work with City Hall to add police officers, the City Council just dumped new productivity-killing paperwork on every beat cop.

And it’s not just what they do, but what they say. Consider the takes on subway crime from three of the city’s leading progressives:

• Public Advocate Jumaane Williams: “We need holistic” subway-safety measures.

• Comptroller Brad Lander: “The subway overpolicing we’ve been watching … shows how corrosive criminalizing poverty is.”

• City Councilwoman Tiffany Caban: “Subway violence is a one-in-a-million event.”

Meanwhile, as shoplifting sucks the life out of merchants in her Bronx/Queens district, prog superstar Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes just took the time to attack the NYPD’s female dance squad — plainly because, well, they’re cops.

“Alternative facts” is one thing; it’s obvious that New York progressives inhabit an entire alternative reality where New Yorkers don’t care about crime, public safety in general or any quality-of-life issues.

Apparently, they think the 1981 NYC-nightmare classic “Escape From New York” is a how-to manual.