An MTA security camera hangs above the BMT platform at 59th St. and Lexington Ave. (Photo by flickr user Vidiot)
Next week, the MTA Board will vote to approve a sweeping package of service cuts in an effort to close a budget gap hundreds of millions of dollars wide. Amongst those cuts are the planned elimination of 620 station agents. While layoff notices have already gone out to these employees and the cuts will leave stations with the fewest number of staffers in decades, politicians are voicing their concerns about the MTA’s willingness to sacrifice station security in a post-Sept. 11 era.
In fact, just last week, three high-ranking House representatives who overseen homeland security matters sent MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder a letter urging him to reconsider the station agent cuts. “Although our domestic transit systems have thus far been spared, deadly terrorist attacks in Spain, Great Britain, India and Russia over the last few years have emphasized the vulnerabilities of public transportation in large urban areas and demonstrated the security challenges unique to these open, passenger-heavy systems,” the letter said. It continued, “These cuts may create gaps in the layered infrastructure of local stations. A human presence is important for securing an open transit environment.”
The letter’s authors make it tough to ignore their message. It came from Bernie G. Thompson, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee and co-signed by Sheila Jackson Lee, chair of the transportation security subcommittee, and Brooklyn’s own Yvette Clark, chair of the subcommittee on emerging threats, and the three noted that the recent guilty plea by Najibullah Zazi thrust domestic terrorism concerns back into the spotlight, a point made last month on one of my recent appearances on the WCBS local news. “The case of Najibullah Zazi is a chilling reminder that our transit systems are targets of Al Qaeda and its affiliates,” they wrote.
For its part, the MTA defended both the planned cuts and the current state of subway security. “The subway system is the safest it’s been in years, thanks to the vigilance and dedication of the N.Y.P.D.,” agency spokesman Aaron Donovan said. “There will continue to be a strong presence of M.T.A. employees throughout the subway system.”
Yet, another story about the MTA’s security cameras betrays the authority’s assurances. According to a report in today’s amNew York, half of the subway system’s 4313 security cameras aren’t working properly. According to Heather Haddon, these cameras “are unable to power up or are suffering from software glitches.”
In the past decade, the MTA has installed cameras across the system at subway turnstiles, platforms and tunnels to combat crime and fare beating. But of the 2,000 cameras that only records footage and are placed around the turnstiles, nearly half aren’t working because they were never fully rigged, MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz said…
Another 1,100 cameras located throughout the system that would send live feeds and allow officials to monitor activity in real time are not working because of a software glitch, Ortiz said. The MTA is in a legal dispute with the contractor, Lockheed Martin, but the agency is working with another contractor to make them live. Ortiz couldn’t say when the work will be finished.
Considering that the MTA just added closed-circuit cameras to their new R160s, this is a dismaying development. One of the reasons for this security problem is the MTA’s on-going legal fight with Lockheed Martin, most recently highlighted by a state comptroller’s report on subway security. The truth remains, however, that if the MTA is going to get rid of station agents, they have to make sure something else is making the system secure and user friendly.
I’ve doubted the station agents’ ultimate impact as a deterrent because they don’t leave the booths and are under no legal obligation to stop a crime in progress, but people may be deterred just by their simple presence, and as the MTA urges people to say something if they see something, someone has to be there to receive the complaint. The intercoms don’t work; the cameras don’t work; and now the the MTA has politicians concerned with homeland security breathing down its back. For better or worse, the authority can’t sacrifice the safety of its system for the demands of its tenuous budget. The agency needs money, and if the feds are so concerned, they could start to funnel more security dollars to the MTA. It would be a start for sure.
For the last three months, the MTA has firmly insisted that they would not raise fares for 2010. When faced with an initial deficit of under $400 million, Board members said the authority would become a leaner one with more streamlined service options and fewer costly and underutilized runs. When the deficit ballooned to $751 million, they began to dance around the issue, but CEO and Chairman Jay Walder repeatedly said he preferred to stick with the scheduled 2011 fare hike. Well, the best laid plans…
I grew up at 91st St. and Broadway in Manhattan, and I remember learning from an early age of the subway stop that, one day, years before I or my parents lived there, had been open at our corner. The station was a local stop on the IRT from 1904 until February of 1959 when modernization and platform expansion rendered it useless. Today, it is a 
