I love it when the MTA’s efforts at painting make the news. Last July, we saw the MTA paralyzed by indecision because they couldn’t figure out which stations to paint. Seven months later, in February, the MTA finally announce plans for an absurdly slow plan to paint every station. Today’s news is just as entertaining but fairly alarming as well.
According to a report in The Brooklyn Paper, three stations in Bay Ridge may be getting skipped over for paint jobs because they are in such a bad state of repair that a paint job wouldn’t do anything for them. Some of this report seems to be conjecture by Gersh Kuntzman’s paper, but I think they may be on to something.
Ben Muessig reports:
While the peeling and flaking 77th Street R train station is about to get a new paint job, The Brooklyn Paper has learned that Bay Ridge’s other grimy stations may not get one because they suffer from such serious infrastructure problems that a paint job would offer only an inconsequential uplift.
The MTA says it’s including 77th Street in a $52-million project that will put a fresh coat of paint on stairways, platforms and mezzanines throughout the city — but the gritty Bay Ridge Avenue, 86th Street and 95th Street stations will not be included in the job.
In choosing which stations to repaint, the MTA did not consider stops that suffered from larger problems — like water leaks, transit spokeswoman Deidre Parker said. “It depends on when they were last painted, or if they were rehabbed recently,” she said. “If they need other extensive work, they’re not going to paint over existing problems.”
While Parker had, according to The Brooklyn Paper, no further information about the decision to omit the Bay Ridge stations from the painting plans, it seems as though deeper questions surrounding the infrastructure and state of the stations may be in play.
The story in The Brooklyn Paper comes out one day after Thomas Friedman urged the nation to invest in transportation infrastructure, and the timing couldn’t have been better. For the MTA and for this city, this news is one more alarming sign that we need some serious levels of investment in the subway system. It’s state is precarious, and as more stations fall into disrepair, the system will suffer.
The trains may be new; the tracks may be in good shape; but the stations are starting to fall apart. How far this will go is up to the politicians holding the purse strings. Sadly, they don’t seem to be in a rush to do much of anything about it.
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An excerpt from Tom Friedman’s column:
No, it was the culmination of seven years of national investment, planning, concentrated state power, national mobilization and hard work.
Friedman (and you) are being naive here. Here are some helpful reminders:
Concentrated state power in China = repressive dictatorship.
National mobilization/hardwork = builldozing the homes of 1.5 million people toi make way for the Olympics and rounding up gangs of peasants for backbreaking labor.
Remember the earthquake in China a few months ago? Substandard school buildings collapsed on top children all over the country. But construction continued on shiny new sports venues meant to impress Western elites.
By comparison, it sounds like the MTA actually has its priorities in order.
Tom Friedman needs a clue and you should be a little more careful with the grand generalizations.
You can’t really compare the Chinese government and the MTA. China’s state power is concentrated, while the MTA is a nearly independent entity largely forgotten by the federal government. Both China and the MTA have their priorities in order; it’s the feds and MTA who disagree.
It’s an illusion that our local semi-government entities are free to do what they want, to have their own priorities. Bush has managed to hurt public enterprises thought to be well shielded from elected-politician vagaries. It’s just that he chose to oppress the Iraqis, instead of his own citizens. And money was misappropriated in America too, as can be seen in the effects of Katrina.
Friedman points out these shortcomings of the current Administration. The governments of both America and China make tradeoffs, generally in favor of the rich and well-connected. We just happen to already have a higher average standard of living.
As someone who lives off the 95th Street station I really want my station and the ones the trains ride through to be safe, however, at the same time can someone at the MTA please wait for a couple of trains at 45th Road on the 7 line and tell me that the 45th Road Station even feels safe?
That 45th Road station sways violently way back and forth while the 4th Avenue R & West Farm Road 5 stations are both solid as a rock.
Why not just hire people who need community service or who have nothing to do? After hearing Barack Obama’s call for greater involvement within the community, adjacent residents of stations could help paint and do simple work to help revitalize stations at little cost to the MTA but with a renewed sense of community pride.
I’m all for volunteering to help clean things up, but I’m fairly sure the unions would shut that down real quick like.
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