Comments on: One year later, Report Card grades up a tick

By: Alon Levy

Alon Levy — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:00:19 +0000

Not all criteria are weighted the same. The one that gets the highest weight is scheduled service, which is weighted at 30%, and is the most severely affected by track-sharing. Scheduled service is also one of the least random factors. Cleanliness and service regularity are essentially random; they’re not why the top scorers are always the 1, 6, 7, and L.

By: rhywun

rhywun — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:23:08 +0000

Well, trains with shared tracks can be penalized in 2 or 3 out of their 6 criteria (scheduled amount of service, service regularity, and maybe crowding). Seems fair to me. My R is shared with, what, 3 other lines? And it shows.

By: Alon Levy

Alon Levy — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:52:17 +0000

The Straphanger rankings aren’t that reliable, either. They really penalize trains that share tracks. For everyone living on the IRT mainlines, the express trains are faster than the locals and come more often, but because there are two expresses and one local, the locals get higher rankings.

By: rhywun

rhywun — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:07:33 +0000

I’m thinking mainly of the Straphanger rankings* and how the 7 and N went up when they got new cars, while the R remains at or near the bottom every year.

*I find their rankings more believable than what the public reports to the MTA.

By: Mr. Eric

Mr. Eric — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:18:16 +0000

Adding 16 high paid managers in the IRT and 33 more in the IND/BMT on top of the huge amount of upper management already in place is a savings of money???

I don’t see it that way. This program is very expensive.

By: Ariel

Ariel — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:22:50 +0000

The line management system would save the MTA money by streamlining the bureaucracy. Although the report cards (which should be taken with a big grain of salt) only show minimal improvement, restructuring the bureaucracy with the line management system would ultimately help out the MTA’s budget.

I think eventually the line management system would bring more improvements to the system, but it’s going to take time. After years of listening to subway riders and implementing the new ideas that arise from it, everything will start to add up.

If the MTA switches to the line management system it should do so for the money it saves it and wait several years to reap the rewards of improved service.

By: David

David — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:17:20 +0000

As previously mentioned, the grades are backwards. The L showed a slight improvement although I questioned the legitimacy of that when you breakdown the actual grades. The 7 remained status quo.

I have to respectfully disagree on the impact that the line manager program has brought to the table so far. These lines unlike others got significant changes after last year’s results. So for the grades to either just improve (falsely imo) or stay the same does not equal the program being an early success. However I am willing to give it time as changes do not happen overnight.

By: Mr. Eric

Mr. Eric — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:26:00 +0000

I don’t agree. The perfect test of that theory will be when the M line gets graded. It uses all new R160 trains but I doubt if it gets an improved grade it’s a poorly managed line in the customers point of view.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:07:03 +0000

They also changed the terminating patterns of trains in the AM to try and reduce bottlenecks.

By: rhywun

rhywun — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:40:02 +0000

The biggest factor in a line’s performance seems (to me) to be the age of the vehicles traveling on it.