Archive for September, 2007
Sep
13
Free paper distributors sue Tribune over low wages, annoying subway litter
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Only half of my headline for this post is true. Guess which half.
In a move that comes as a shock to no one, the people tasked with shoving a free copy of amNew York in your face every morning have sued The Tribune Company for paying them less than minimum wage. The New York Sun had more on the story a few weeks ago:
[Lawyer Daniel] Kirschenbaum said the promoters are paid a flat rate of $20 a day, regardless of the number of hours they work.
The promoters work as many as four hours a day, meaning that they are often paid below the New York State minimum wage of $7.15 an hour, Mr. Kirschenbaum said. “The facts of it are so simple that it’s almost sad that this is what’s happening,” Mr. Kirschenbaum said.
Simple math would tell you that those workers handing out papers for four hours a day are getting a measly $5 an hour. Reality would make you question whether anyone handing out amNew York really stands there handing out papers for a whopping four hours each day. I never see these folks after 9:30 or 10 a.m. across the city. Are you telling me they start work at 5:30 or 6 a.m. to pass out crappy papers to people who don’t really want them?
Now, when it comes to the free New York papers, I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m something of an elitist. It seems to me that a lot of commuters rely on Metro and amNew York as their primary news sources in the morning. While these papers serve something of a purpose — advertising revenue for their parent companies chief among those — they don’t do a good job of covering the news as Chris has tirelessly documented.
But my personal feelings and skepticism aside, The Tribune Company should pay these people minimum wage. It’s the least they could do while contributing to a marked rise in the number of track fires and clogged drains due to the growing volume of free papers that mysteriously end as as litter on the tracks.
Sep
13
Hanging ten atop the subway cars
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This is really just a terrible idea. (Photo courtesy of flickr user tombo PRS)
So yesterday morning, I had the sheer pleasure of an early-morning physical therapy appointment. Thus, my train crossed the Manhattan Bridge at around 8:35 — or thirty minutes earlier than I generally pass over the East River. Lucky for me, it seems.
On Wednesday morning, at a approximately 8:40 a.m., New York City Transit halted service over the Manhattan Bridge, north of DeKalb St., when an operator of an oncoming train spied a train surfer a top a Manhattan-bound Q train. amNew York reports that NYCT held the train for 40 minutes while workers attempted to get the moron rider off the top of the train car.
Now, what, you might be wondering, is train surfing? It is only the single dumbest thing a person can do in the subways. Train surfing is the extreme activity of riding atop a train in motion. Generally, as Jinx Magazine tells us, it involves “ducking low overpasses, dodging 3,300-volt electrical wires, and maintaining one’s balance, all while atop a subway train moving.”
In New York, train surfing is particularly challenging. While our third-rail voltage doesn’t approach the 3,300 figure of other countries’, our subway system’s tunnels offer low or no clearance in most places. Beams, signals and wires provide hazards for everyone to enjoy. It’s no surprise, then, that NYCT Spokesman Charles Seaton issued a fairly morbid comment on the incident: “It’s happened before, and usually when it happens, the person gets killed.”
Train surfing is, by many accounts, a 30-year pastime for bored teenagers looking for a heart-racing thrill. Seven years ago, in a fascinating and terrifying piece, The Village Voice delved into the underground of train surfing. The story, with descriptions vivid enough to make the reader’s heart race, details the deaths and injuries of train surfers in New York: a teenager dead after striking a signal light, two drunk revelers who were struck in a Jackson Heights tunnel. The injuries and stories are horrific.
So now that school in the city is back in session, kids are laying claim to — and wreaking havoc on — the subways. As SUBWAYblogger noted, at least three teens resorted to knives at 110th St. on the West Side to settle a dispute just a few hours after this subway-surfing incident. Fun times.
Meanwhile, even though these train surfing incidents are few and far between, nothing strikes me as being quite so ripe for a Darwin Award as someone who tries to ride on top of a subway train in New York City. It may be a thrill, but you almost have to pine for the good old days of sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll instead of train surfing.
Sep
12
If MTA falls behind schedule, F trains could run express in ’08
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The Culver train, shown here at Bergen St., ran express in 1972. (Photo by Steve Zabel. Courtesy of Joe Testagrose/NYCSubway.org.)
When last we checked in on the F Express Plan at the end of August, we had assumed things were at a standstill. The MTA had finally explained the Culver Viaduct rehabilitation project in a way that highlighted exactly why Brooklyn wouldn’t be able to enjoy express service along the Culver line until 2012 at the earliest.
But yesterday, The Gowanus Lounge broke the news that now the MTA has changed its stance on this express service. According to Andrew Inglesby, assistant director of government and community relations at the MTA, who spoke on Monday the Carroll Gardens Neighborhood Association meeting, the MTA could grant express service to the F line next year if the rehabilitation project falls behind schedule. If the plan is on time, F express service is off the table until 2012 or early 2013.
The Gowanus Lounge has more:
Mr. Inglesby reiterated that work on the Culver Viaduct, which runs above-ground between the Carroll Street Station and the Fourth Avenue Station, is a critical capital project and that work must be completed before an F Express can be put in place… “F Express service just can’t happen until the end of that period.” He said the work will result in “an automatic elimination of any F Express.”
The transit official did offer possibility that if work on the viaduct project is “significantly delayed” by a year or more, then the Transit Authority “will go ahead and examine the possibility of putting in an F Express.” Express service would depend on the availability of cars and funding. So, an F Express could make an appearance for a year or 18 months, if there is a delay in the big repair project.
Wouldn’t that be a tantalizing tease from the Transportation Authority? Knowing their track record on major construction projects — Times Square BMT corridor or that Cortlandt St. project, anyone? — we have every reason to believe that they could fall behind. So for a few months, Brooklyn could end up with our coveted express service. But only for a short time before it has to be shut down again.
Inglesby also verified information about the express plans we had already assumed. The F trains running express would probably stop at Jay Street, 7th Avenue and Church Avenue. These trains would bypass the Bergen St. station (destroyed express tracks notwithstanding), Carroll St., Smith-9th Sts., 4th Ave.-9th St., 15th St., and Fort Hamilton Parkway.
At The Gowanus Lounge, one of the commenters was dismayed at the lack of express service in the Windsor Terrace and Carroll Gardens areas. Simply put, the express trains can stop only where there are express platforms, and those stops listed by Inglesby are the ones on the Culver Line with that option.
For those of us pushing the F Express Plan, this news comes as a pleasant surprise. While I doubt the MTA would fall an entire year behind on the F train, at least they are dangling this carrot. They know we want express service on the Culver Line; they want to give it to us. As soon as that service can become a reality, we’ll have express service on the F line. If that’s not a resounding victory, I don’t know what is.
Update (10:54 a.m.): Metro chimes in this morning with an article on the F express meetings. Of note are two statements from city officials. Councilman Bill de Blasio noted that the MTA wouldn’t acknowledge these plans if they didn’t have the resources to devote to express service on the F line.
But more vital is a quote from MTA spokesperson Jeremy Soffin: “You can’t operate express service while work on the F express is ongoing. But should that be delayed, on an interim basis, we would look at the express. This project was brought forward and supported at the grassroots level and we’ve responded.”
I have to praise Soffin. He’s been very responsive in dealing with and addressing those of us heading up this grassroots movement. It’s good to see the MTA listens when its riders raise their concerns. It gives us hope that the MTA will respond to issues in the rider report cards as well.
Sep
11
The View from Underground: 9/11 services changes
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Last week, I introduced the View from Underground, a weekly posting of a photo or scene from the subway. This Tuesday’s View is, in honor of Sept. 11, a look back at impact that tragic day had on the subway.
On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, as events at the World Trade Center unfolded, the subways were thrown into disarray. As Randy Kennedy in The Times detailed on the 12th of September, subway service was suspended throughout the city indefinitely, and no one knew what the future would hold in Lower Manhattan.
The MTA would be up and running after a few days, but service had to be radically altered. The Cortlandt Street station on the West Side IRT was utterly destroyed as these dramatic pictures at NYCSubway.org illustrate. Nearly every line running into and out of Lower Manhattan had to be rerouted, and to address these changes, the MTA released the map excerpted above on Sept. 19, 2001, eight days later.
The service changes were extensive, and a capsule summary from the NYCSubway.org page of the various MTA map iterations succinctly shows the rerouting. The following description combines the details from the emergency black and white map released on Sept. 17 and the map shown above released two days later:
2 & 3 local and 1 express on West Side IRT; many other lower Manhattan diversions; no West Side IRT below Franklin St. and no Broadway BMT below Canal St; no 8th Ave. IND below Canal St.; Wall St. closed on East Side IRT; N and R to Brooklyn replaced by M and J respectively via Nassau Loop; W local only in Queens; 9 and Z skip-stop service suspended… [Sept. 19:] Revision of 1&2 local to Brooklyn and 3 express to 14th Street
Even today, things aren’t quite yet back to normal. As I mentioned, Cortlandt St. remains closed; the work on the Fulton St. transportation hub, spurred on by the events of 9/11, has led to numerous service changes. The reconstruction of the South Ferry station also came out of the 9/11 recovery initiatives.
It’s taken a long time, but the subways have nearly emerged from the tragic and destructive events of Sept. 11. This map can remind us of the chaos and confusion that reigned in New York six years ago.
Sep
11
MTA finally addressing that whole ‘It’s too hot in the subways’ issue
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The new South Ferry Terminal will address the inadequacies of the current station while providing a transfer point to the Whitehall Street station. (Courtesy of MTA Capital Construction)
Two capital construction stories from the weekend; two examples of the MTA’s apparent decision to address the issue of overwhelmingly oppressive heat in the subway systems. Finally.
The first was this so-called NY1 Bobby Cuza “exclusive” on the 7 line extension. In the story, aptly covered here by SUBWAYblogger, Cuza writes about the plans to enclose the new 7 line platforms in glass doors.
I’ve written about these glass doors before, and I’ll maintain my position. Those doors will not be worth the cost. While the MTA hopes to air condition these train platforms on the Far West Side, the doors will break or be broken by unruly riders. They will malfunction; they will be a general nuisance.
The good folks on Subchat have engaged in an epic discussion on these doors, and this post seems to summarize everyone’s feelings. “Utter waste of public money. Wait until they all break down and nobody can get into or out of the train,” board contributor Olog-Hai said.
The other story, also from Cuza, focused on the new South Ferry station. I’ve written little about this capital construction project simply because it’s fairly unremarkable. The $500 million station is funded through federal 9/11 funds; it’s on time; and it’s a much-needed upgrade. Of note is the news about the potential for the station to be climate controlled:
The new terminal will not only save riders an estimated two to five minutes on their trips, it will also be fully accessible, provide a connection to the R/W station at Whitehall Street, and pump cool air onto the platforms in the summer.
“It’s not 100 percent air-conditioned, but the temperature in the station will be at least about 10 to 15 degrees below the outside temperature,” [Mysore Nagaraja, head of MTA Capital Construction,] said.
In July, I noted that the MTA had opted to ignore the heat issue on these line report cards. But today, I’m glad to hear that the MTA is starting to address this issue. It’s always oppressively hot in the subway stations during the summer. While I think the glass doors represent poor solutions to this problem, I have to applaud the MTA for taking the initiative to address a problem that will only get worse as the temperature outside climbs.
Sep
10
Seventy-five years later, IND opening shows the SAS real estate effect
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The Times’ coverage of the opening of the IND subway lines on Sept. 10, 1932, included diagrams of the entrances to the Times Square station.
Today, we celebrate the birthday of the Independent Subway. Seventy-five years ago, at midnight on the morning of September 10, 1932, the turnstiles opened, and the first IND trains started the trip from Chambers St. to 207th St. along Eighth Ave. Ah, subway growth.
When the AA made its first trip uptown, it rode through New York of a different era. This was New York as a growing city. Running parallel to the west of the new subway line was the West Side Highway, Robert Moses’ pet project. Large swaths of the city were still undeveloped, and the new subway lines would bring about development.
At the same time, the things we love about New York — multiculturalism, diversity, ease of access — were hallmarks of the city in the 1930s. Today, The New York Times commemorates the subway line immortalized by Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington with an excellent article reflecting upon the opening of the new line. The MTA is following suite today, as the Authority has plans to run a special six-car train of original cars from 208th St. in Inwood to Chambers St. Catch it if you can. These folks say it’s set to leave between 10 and 11 a.m.
Nostalgia aside, The Times’ archives are chock full of interesting articles about the celebratory opening, political machinations and first successful rush hour run of the new subway. The one I found most interesting, however, is one piece from September 11, 1932, with the headline “Opening of Subway Called Realty Aid.”
In a sense, we in 2007, awaiting the arrival of the Second Ave. Subway, can glimpse the effect a new subway line had on real estate prices and development in Manhattan. The Times wrote:
The civic interests hailed [the Eighth Avenue subway] as likely to foster improvement in leasing and building on the west side…The subway will have the effect in the Forty-second Street area of relieving congestion on other lines and linking the midtown district more closely to uptown and downtown Manhattan, and should bring commercial gains in the whole section between Seventh and Ninth Avenues…
Improved transit facilities will help to accelerate the recovery of real estate values in the apartment districts of Chelsea, Central Park West, the Dyckman section and Washington Heights.
Now, while the Second Ave. subway won’t help bring New York out of a Great Depression-influenced housing recession, the lessons today are the same. And you can be sure real estate agents are finely attuned to them. The IND, operating a few avenue blocks away, from the IRT, led to development; the Second Ave. subway, operating a few avenue blocks away from the Lexington Ave. lines will bring service to an under-served areas of the city. This subway will spur on economic development and lead to price increases and demand in the area’s real estate.
This is not a groundbreaking argument, but for many living on the far East Side, this eventual reality may come as a shock. Rents will rise; apartment prices will skyrocket. Storefront space, particularly around entrances and exist, will be in high demand as well. In other words, the commercial and residential landscape along the East Side will change dramatically when the Q (and eventually the T) begins its trips up Second Ave.
A few months ago, we saw these lessons in action in Beijing. Seventy-five years ago, we saw them along the West Side when the new Eighth Avenue subway lines opened. And, in five years if everything goes according to plan, we’ll see it again along Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
Sep
07
I’ve seen weekends much worse than this one
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With the Official End of Summer in the rear view mirror, my weekly Friday afternoon recaps of the MTA’s weekend service alerts return. But first, some housekeeping.
Starting this week, this site has a new domain name attached to it. Since the site is ostensibly called Second Ave. Sagas, I decided it was time to acquire the domain name SecondAveSagas.com. It was simply too confusing with “Avenue” spelled out in the URL but not the name of the site.
So from now on, when you point your browser toward www.secondavesagas.com, you’ll land here. Good stuff.
With that out of the way, let’s look at the weekend service advisories. All in all, it’s not a terrible weekend for subway travel. For this weekend – and, sadly, this weekend only – 2 and 3 trains are running express up the West Side. But with the Yankees out of town, Bronx-bound 4 trains are running express from 125th St. to Burnside Ave., stopping only at 149th St.-Grand Concourse.
Similarly, D trains are skipping 167th, 161st, and 155th Streets as well. Road trips are a good time for track work in the Bronx.
The biggest news comes to us courtesy of the BMT Broadway lines. All trains Brooklyn-bound trains are bypassing Lower Manhattan and running over the Manhattan Bridge. For service to those stations, take a Manhattan-bound train at DeKalb or find one of many alternate trains that service Lower Manhattan. On a side note, the MTA no longer says the Cortlandt Street station is closed until July of 2007. That station is, obviously, closed indefinitely.
The full weekend service alerts can be found here and after the jump.
Sep
07
Lights at the end of the MTA’s tunnels getting brighter, greener
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The MTA will soon be replacing all of the signals in the subway system. (Photo courtesy of flickr user larryosan)
So let’s talk signals. You, the daily subway rider, know them more as an annoyance than as anything else. Earlier this week, those pesky signals at 59th Street caused massive delays up and down the IND lines.
Like much of the subway system, the signals are aging, and the MTA is looking to replace them while jumping on the ever-popular green bandwagon. After six years of development working along side Dialight, the worldwide leader in LED technology, the MTA is ready to get moving on this project. This week, the MTA awarded Dialight a $1.8 million contract to retrofit the subway signals. LEDs Magazine – seriously, they have industry publications for everything — has more:
Dialight Corporation has been awarded a $1.8 million contract to provide LED trackside signals for the New York City subway system. The contract calls for retrofitting 13,400 incandescent units with LED modules, thereby completing conversion of all of the system’s more than 50,000 signals.
The LED signals are saving the city nearly $1 million a year in utility bills and maintenance. They are designed to retrofit two 16-watt incandescent bulbs with a robust module based on the latest high-flux LED and driver technology. With a projected service life of 10 years, the LED modules provide energy savings of 85 percent.
So the MTA is saving money and contributing to the drive toward an energy-efficient society. Is everyone at MTAHQ feeling ok? (Just kidding, guys.)
The Dialight folks praised themselves for the new LED lights. “The new signals are being well received by the city’s transit workers, who have indicated they are performing extremely well, and that the saturated colors of the LEDs are much more visible, resulting in greater safety on the tracks,” Business Development Manager Laura Hoffmann said.
While I like what I’m hearing — lights that are easier to see, greater track safety, saving money through energy efficiency — I can’t help but wonder how the city plans on replaces 13,400 lightbulbs. I’m going to have to go with weekend service delays and more irate passengers. But it will all pay off in the long run. The lights at the end of the tunnel will be brighter.
Sep
06
Animated travels through subway history on a map
Posted by: | CommentsFor the straphanger in 2007, the subway system is one of those parts in New York City that’s Always Been There. We’ve always had the 1 train running up the West Side, the F, N, Q and D trains heading to Coney Island and the B, D and 4 trains going past the House that Ruth Built. The subways are such an ingrained part of city life that it’s nearly impossible to imagine the city without them.
But of course, New York survived without subways and thrived as the subways were constructed in the snaking pattern that we now recognize as the subway map. But much like the subways, the current subway map is a very concrete object. Every line is displayed in seemingly the same level of permanence with no thought to which tracks, stations or lines came first.
But some enterprising soul on the Internet has reconstructed the subway map to show just that information. On the site for Appealing Industries, someone’s personal design Website, I found the incredibly informative (and nifty) animated gif of the subway map pictured below. Through a time-delayed animation, it shows the chronological construction of the New York City subway system.
Starting with the Franklin Ave. Shuttle, remnants of the original Brooklyn El system, and the far reaches of the J line which contain the oldest surviving transit structures still in use in the city, the map moves on to the original IRT lines before extending through time. The subways and the city literally come to life as the map unfolds its stations and tunnels.
So here it is, courtesy of Appealing Industries. Click the image for a bigger version. It’ll hold your interest for a while (and keep in mind that it runs through 2005 so it may not be 100 percent up-to-date as of Sept. 6, 2007 accurate).
Sep
05
New Meadowlands renderings show rail options
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The new Meadowlands facility and a new NJ Transit station will sit in a verdant paradise of North Jersey.
The Yankees aren’t the only team in town getting a new stadium with a new commuter rail station attached to the project. Great news came today that the Giants’ and Jets’ new Meadowlands complex will finally, mercifully, be New Jersey Transit-accessible.
The new Meadowlands facility had its grand unveiling today. The various pictures of the 82,000-seat make it look like another state-of-the-art sports stadium for the New York metropolitan area, but do we at Second Ave. Sagas really care about the look of the stadium? Of course not. We want the juicy transit information.
The Times comes through in today’s article detailing the project:
Just outside the stadium is the location for a railway station — which connects the Meadowlands to the Pascack Valley Line of New Jersey Transit — that is expected to be completed in 2009. The addition of the rail station is similar to the plan to bring a Metro-North stop to the new Yankee Stadium.
Hallelujah! No more endless waits at the Lincoln Tunnel trying to get to New Jersey in time for kick-off. No more mad dashes through the stadium in an effort to beat the traffic back to New York.
For thousands of Jets and Giants fans who live in New York and points east, we are saved from our cars. We’re finally getting New Jersey Transit access to our football teams. When this station is completed, all of the city’s big sports arenas — the Meadowlands, Yankee Stadium, Shea Stadium, Madison Square Garden — will sit next to commuter rail stations. As Gary of Brooklyn Streets noted, some good will come out of a stadium plan. And that is great news for us rail fans.
