Bill de Blasio, the progressive-minded mayor of New York City, the city with the greatest mass transit ridership in North America, rode a train today.

To celebrate this occasion, he posted a short video to the social networking service Vine.

Last night, Bill de Blasio was so excited about his upcoming train trip that he posted a message to the social networking site Twitter urging his 182,000 followers consider taking a train trip of their own.

What Bill de Blasio may not know is that the majority of his followers, and the majority of his constituents, probably do not need to be encouraged to take the train to work, as a majority of New Yorkers already rely on mass transit for their commutes. In fact, a majority of New Yorkers do not even own cars, making transit use less of a political choice, as de Blasio seems to consider it, than a simple necessity. (Mayor de Blasio is a member of New York's car-owning minority.)

Before getting on the subway, de Blasio was driven in a town car from Gracie Mansion, on Manhattan's East Side, to a subway stop in Park Slope, Brooklyn. (Gracie Mansion is in one of Manhattan's least transit-accessible neighborhoods, at least until the opening of the long-overdue Second Avenue Subway, but assuming the mayor was up for a 15 minute walk, he also could have taken the 4 to the R.) According to the pool report, he then went to the gym, met U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer for coffee, and boarded a Manhattan-bound R train around 8 a.m.. Schumer and de Blasio handed riders leaflets and made small talk until the train reached City Hall. In other words, the mayor "[took] mass transit to work" by driving 12 miles from his home to his gym (near his former home) and then getting a train from there to his "workplace," in Lower Manhattan.

De Blasio's subway adventure was part of his campaign to encourage Congress to increase federal funding for transit infrastructure. In his newspaper editorial on the subject, and in his remarks today, he declined to mention the fact that the recently-passed New York state budget, drawn up in large part by Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo, leaves the MTA about $15 billion short of the money it needs to keep the subway system in working condition over the next few years, as ridership is projected to continue rising. Mayor de Blasio also declined to say how much his upcoming city budget proposal would provide in MTA funding.