Archive for March, 2009
Mar
05
Backtracking on permanent weekend service cuts
Posted by: | CommentsAt the end of February, New York City Transit announced that, due to construction and budgetary concerns, weekend service would be slashed no matter what. The cost savings for this move was set at around $4 million a year, and New York City Transit President Howard Roberts explained that the decision was spurred on by the MTA’s ambitious state-of-good-repair plan.
Yesterday, amidst the rancorous politicking over the MTA’s potential rescue plan, NYC Transit apparently reconsidered those potentially permanent cuts. NY1 News reports:
The MTA now says a plan to cut back weekend subway service can be avoided, if Albany lawmakers act on a plan to shore up the agency’s $1.2 billion budget gap.
Last week, the MTA said it was moving forward with plans to reduce the scheduled frequency of weekend subway service on most of the lettered lines, beginning in June. But the agency has since reversed course and now says it will drop the plan, if lawmakers come through with a rescue plan for the cash-strapped agency.
Maybe the MTA reevaluated its need to drop weekend service cuts. Maybe this is just sloppy politics. If it’s the latter, this move won’t help the MTA respond to State Senator Malcolm Smith’s claims that the agency has no control over its finances. It sure is an odd political carrot, but as a frequent weekend rider, who am I to complain?
Mar
05
State Dems accept tolls as GOP protests taxes
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After another day of MTA politicking, clear battle lines are being drawn in the fight over the transit agency’s future. In a surprising turn of events, State Democrats are opening up to the reality of tolls while State Republicans are preparing to fight the payroll tax proposals.
Most welcome is the news about the Democrats. Based on reporting by Glenn Blain and Pete Donohue, reality is finally setting in, and New York’s elected representatives have finally realized that service cuts and fare hikes would impact far more people than bridge tolls. The due of Daily News reporters write:
MTA and state officials made “significant progress” toward a plan that could avert the shutdown of some subway and bus routes, authorities said Wednesday.
Sen. Martin Dilan, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, said Democratic opposition to tolls on East River bridges as part of solution to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s fiscal crisis appears to be softening.
“Members are starting to find that a majority of their constituents use the subway to Manhattan and more of their constituents will be impacted” if the MTA’s doomsday budget, including whopping fare hikes and service cuts goes, into effect.
Referring to Sen. Majority Leader Malcolm Smith (D-Queens), Dilan said, “I think the leader has confidence that he can probably get most members on board if we get some sort of givebacks from the MTA in terms of more accountability, transparency, greater fiscal transparency.”
While I’m happy to applaud this news, Sen. Dilan talks as though his co-Senators are just getting around to realizing this point now. I know New York politics has never carried with it a very good reputation, but are State Senators really that clueless? Do they not realize that their constituents have long used the subway in far greater volume than the city’s roads? Can they not do simple math? As long as they save the MTA, the ineptitude of our State Senators doesn’t matter.
Meanwhile, Sheldon Silver believes he now has enough votes in the Assembly to pass his $2 toll plan. Republicans, however, are planning to vote against any MTA bailout with taxes, and City Council members — whose constituents are the same transit users as the State Senators’ — may block transfer of the bridges to the MTA on some sort of quasi-home rule/anti-toll basis.
“A real property transfer is subject to our land use review procedure,” Councilman Lew Fidler, D-Brooklyn, said to Crain’s New York. “I surely would object on that basis and join any lawsuit brought if it were done without our consent..I realize that two bucks is not a burdensome amount, but if you think that amount will remain so low, I have a bridge to sell you.”
If the State Senators can embrace reality, why can’t Fidler? The MTA doesn’t have time for politicians to learn that the subways are truly where populist sentiments lie. That is a lesson that must be embraced now and not after everyone is mad over bad, expensive subway service. This Great Transit Awakening better speed up. It has three weeks.
Mar
04
Wrapping up Wednesday’s MTA bailout news
Posted by: | CommentsHot on the heels of Albany’s appeals to populist anger at the MTA comes more news about the state of the proposed Ravitch plan to save transit. It sounds like there will be some backroom politicking over the next few weeks as the MTA Board’s self-imposed March 25 deadline draws near.
In a somewhat surprising about-face, the New York Post urges Malcolm Smith to see Sheldon Silver’s $2 toll plan through the Senate. The Post has mostly protested taxes and tolls, but this latest missive believes that, because Richard Ravitch is a trustworthy source, the MTA really does have this budget problem. Another audit just months after Ravitch conducted his own thorough investigation would be an unnecessary and costly political diversion.
“Smith doesn’t seem to have the foggiest idea of how to save the system. And if he doesn’t know, how will he convince defiant members?” writes the paper’s editorial board. ” If he thinks the Senate’s constituents will be unhappy with tolls, what will they say about massive fare hikes? Or, in the not-too-distant future, a crippled mass transit system? It’s that serious.”
The Daily News’ editorial board takes a similar tone with Smith. Blame him, they say, when the MTA is in shambles.
Business leaders who recognize what an underfunded MTA means to the economy are calling upon State GOP representatives to support a bailout. New York’s partisan lines are thickly drawn, but if the business community starts pushing this proposal, state Republicans may just rally behind the tolls.
Finally, the Post notes the MTA bailout may get stuck in Albany for months. Senator Smith has indicted that he wants to tie the MTA’s money into the state budget, and any deal on the state budget is still months away. Smith’s office publicly denied this allegation and has stressed a desire for a speedy resolution to this problem.
That sound you hear is the Doomsday clock ticking ever closer to midnight.
Mar
04
Albany trying to exploit a six-year-old scandal
Posted by: | CommentsIn 2003, the MTA was no better off in the eyes of the public than it is now. That year, the agency was accused of cooking up two sets of books in order to justify a fare hike. One set showed the agency operating a deficit; the other showed a historic surplus.
At the time, Alan Hevesi unleashed a scathing report about the MTA’s behavior, and the agency was judged permanently guilty in the eyes of public opinion. It would be a watershed moment in the history of government — or quasi-government — agency corruption.
Fast forward to 2009. None of the MTA officials or board members responsible for the “two sets of books” scandal is still in power. Instead, the MTA Board is headed up by people with bona fide transit credentials, and the agency has attempted to be more transparent. Still, after years of governmental neglect, the MTA’s finances are in legitimate disarray, and if to close what may be nearly a $2 billion budget gap, the MTA will have to implement a Doomsday budget on March 25 if the state doesn’t act.
For its part, the State Senate can’t get over a scandal six years in the past. Glenn Blain and Pete Donohue tell of state Democrats questioning the MTA’s credibility:
Majority Leader Malcolm Smith (D-Queens) said the Metropolitan Transportation Authority “does not have a history of being forthright in terms of their budget. You know, they kept two books at a time.”
Senate Dems planned a “full vetting of MTA finances” and want to strengthen the state controller’s oversight of the authority, Smith said in a statement last night. Senate action on any bailout plan wouldn’t happen this week, a Smith spokesman said.
The “two sets of books” phrase was popularized in a legal challenge of MTA fare hikes in 2003. A suit based on reports by the state and city controllers claimed the MTA misled the public by exaggerating its financial situation. Two trial judges agreed, but an appeals panel overruled them. It unanimously declared “the record does not support the lower court rulings that the 2003 and 2004 deficit was ‘fictional.’”
Smith, it seems, is willing to penalize the MTA — and by extension, all New Yorkers — for a story that broke six years ago and was resolved by the state courts half a decade ago. At what point does this fishing expedition become simply that? Smith doesn’t want to confront the hard truth of Senate inaction and would rather pawn off these problems on the good old public scapegoat version of the MTA.
Ignore the fact that 22 of 62 State Senators weren’t even in the legislative body when this scandal broke. Ignore the fact that we should vote out any who don’t support the MTA. Just think about that time when bad MTA leaders cooked the books. Clearly, the only logical result is another audit, and by golly, that’s just what the Senate Dems are getting three weeks before doomsday.
Elliot Sander, the current MTA head who actually knows what he’s doing, had the best response to the Albany inanities: “The time for excuses is over. Albany needs to act.” Hear, hear.
Mar
03
DC to enjoy full Metro cell coverage by 2012
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Cell service in the New York City subway has become something of a afterthought around town. Every two years or so, the story pops up in the news, and the MTA claims cell service underground is “coming soon.”
In fact, 18 months ago, the MTA signed a contract to start rolling out cellular service to every underground station. The pilot program was originally supposed to be ready two years after that. I wonder if we’ll actually see cell service in six months or so. Anyone want to bet on it?
Meanwhile, down in DC, where the cavernous Metro is, at some places, hundreds of feet deeper than the New York City subways, cell service for Verizon customers has been a fact of life for DC riders since the WMATA and Verizon started developing a system back in 1993. This collaborative effort between the transit agency and a cell carrier led to a Verizon-built and -owned network, and the WMATA got a free underground radio system out of the deal.
Yesterday, Metro announced that the entire system would be covered by all major U.S. cell carriers and Wi-Fi service by 2012. New York will have to play catch-up soon. Dr. Gridlock of The Washington Post reports:
Twenty of the busiest underground stations will have expanded cell phone service by the end of this year, and the entire rail system will be equipped by 2012, Metro said in an announcement this afternoon…
Four companies — Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, AT&T and T-Mobile — will build a new wireless infrastructure in the underground rail system during the next four years, the announcement said. The companies will design, build, operate, maintain and own one wireless network. They also will build a second wireless network, which Metro will own, operate and maintain for its operational and public safety communications…
The wireless contract will generate a minimum of nearly $25 million during the initial 15-year term and an additional $27 million during the five, two-year renewal terms, Metro said. Other FCC licensed and unlicensed carriers can gain access to the networks either through entering into agreements with Metro or the group of carriers, all of which will produce additional revenue for the transit agency.
Thus, the obvious question: If the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority can enter into such a favorable deal, why can’t the Metropolitan Transportation Authority?
I understand that New York City’s system is far more extensive and significantly older than D.C.’s Metro. It’s also much closer to the surface and, to my amateur eye, would seem to be far more conducive to underground cellular service than a system that features stations 160 feet below ground.
While the MTA struggles to find money to cover operating expenses, the transit agency has to keep an eye out to the future. It has to be able to maintain New York’s competitive edge in a cutthroat global economy. Inevitably, that means equipping the city with a state-of-the-art transportation system. If DC can do it, so could New York.
Mar
03
A fight for the fiscal future of the MTA
Posted by: | Comments Twenty two days isn’t a very long time, but that’s all the state legislature has left if they want to save the MTA — and New Yorkers — from massive MTA fare hikes and service cuts. Meanwhile, storm clouds are gathering in Albany for an epic fight over the fiscal future of transit in the New York City Metropolitan Area.
On one side is Sheldon Silver and his version of the Ravitch Commission recommendations. He supports the payroll tax and East River crossing tolls, but instead of the $5 fee Richard Ravitch proposed, Silver wants to start things off with a $2 fare, even with the current subway rate. It won’t stave off the inevitable cuts and hikes, but it’s better than inaction.
On the other side is, well, everyone else. Some of Silver’s fellow Assembly representatives and some State Senators are decrying the toll plan on the same old populist line. These tolls will somehow hurt middle class New Yorkers. Those are, by the way, the same middle class New Yorkers who don’t own cars, don’t drive back and forth to work each day and do rely on the subways, buses and commuter rails to get around the region. When someone in the media will tell representatives such as Adriano Espaillat, Rory Lancman and Jose Peralta that, I do not know.
Also on the agin’ side is Comptroller William C. Thompson. The New York City official and potential mayoral candidate voiced his strident opposition to tolls and again called attention to his plan to drastically increase driver licensing fees. Again, this is a perfect example of a politician putting forward a plan that would have a disproportionate impact on those who can least afford it without creating a true distribution of responsibility for the MTA’s financial picture based on use of bridges, roads and rails.
Finally, we have State Senator Malcolm Smith. The Senate Majority Leader is wavering on the toll plan. He doesn’t understand how the MTA, behind Richard Ravitch’s suggestions, could go from needing a $5 toll to suddenly being satisfied with a $2 toll. As a result, he has called for and gotten the go ahead to conduct at MTA audit. It’s doubtful that the MTA audit will be completed in three weeks and a day, and the answer to his quandary is simple really. The MTA knows that its best hope politically is a $2 toll. Some of the money they need is again far more preferable to none.
In the middle of this imperfect storm is Richard Ravitch. He is the subject of a sympathetic profile by Sam Roberts in The Times today. Everyone loves him; everyone — from Silver on down — trusts him; and yet politicians are still hung up a six-year-old bookkeeping scandal that was perpetrated by a bunch of people no longer in charge. Old stereotypes and prejudices die hard, and while the battle lines are drawn, Ravitch will have to help guide the proper pieces into position. New York City is depending on it.
Mar
02
MoMA cuts ties with Poster Boy supporter
Posted by: | CommentsWhen Poster Boy attacked the MoMA installation in the Atlantic Ave.-Pacific St. station last week, an interesting tidbit emerged: One of the marketing executives behind the ad helped the Poster Boy crew access and vandalize the ads. The Museum of Modern Art has since cut all ties with Doug Jaeger and The Happy Corp. I wonder if anyone will pursue a civil or criminal complaint as well. (Hat tip to NY Mag’s Vulture blog.)
Mar
02
South Ferry opening day still unknown
Posted by: | CommentsThe oft-delayed opening of the new South Ferry terminal on the 1 has been postponed again. After a construction problem rendered the station non-ADA compliant, it seemed as though the station would open at the end of February. Now that February has come and gone, the station remains in MTA construction limbo.
Last week, amNew York reported that the station would be completed in May and open before then. I checked in with the MTA, and Deputy Press Secretary Aaron Donovan told me that the station will be completed in April. Right now, the crews are fixing the ADA issue while continuing work on aspects of the station — the air-tempering system and canopy — that won’t be completed until after the ribbon-cutting. When that will be though is anyone’s guess as the MTA has, in the words of Donovan, “not yet determined the opening date for the new station.”
Mar
02
An elegy for the bus-tracking project
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One day, our GPS bus locator system will come.
In a way, the MTA’s on-going, never-fulfilled plan to equip the city’s bus system with a GPS-based locator system is the Second Ave. Subway of our generation. For 13 years now, the MTA has tried to get this system off the ground, and for 13 years, the agency has run up against a series of institutional and technological roadblocks. This plan — active in cities around the world — remains an elusive dream to New Yorkers who look for the next bus by walking through two lanes of traffic and peering down an avenue block.
The latest effort to implement a system that would alert riders of the time until the next bus came to a crashing halt at the end of January. At the time, MTA officials told the City Council that the tracking times for bus arrivals were inaccurate, and they were pulling the plug on the project yet again.
Yesterday, The City Section in Sunday’s Times eulogized the latest GPS attempt. Writes Sophia Hollander:
A blank electronic board at the M15 bus shelter was intended to avert just this situation by providing real-time updates to riders. Instead, it has become the latest failure in the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s longstanding attempt to use GPS tracking to manage buses more efficiently and offer riders information about arrival times. Other cities, including Chicago and London, have successfully implemented the technology.
The M.T.A. issued its first contract for the system in 1996. Several companies and more than a decade later, there are no official plans on what to try next. James Anyansi, an M.T.A. spokesman, said the current project had been scuttled by technical problems, and in a dispiriting sign of its demise, all 15 electronic boards are to be dismantled by the end of next month.
Predictably, the reaction among bus riders and those who support the devices has been one of unhappiness. “The public is very unsympathetic to the saga that’s been bus tracking,” said Gene Russianoff, chief spokesman for the Straphangers Campaign, a rider advocacy group.
Anyansi told Hollander the MTA is “committed to developing a reliable system,” but when that will come online is anyone’s guess.
At this point, we don’t really know why this system failed. MTA officials have blamed the tall buildings for interfering with GPS-based technology. However, Google’s Latitude, a mobile phone-based locator program, seems to work fine in New York City. Others have suggested that bus officials are to blame. Still others wonder why a cellular-based system that uses each bus to transmit its location to receivers at stations further on down the land can’t be developed.
If Roosevelt Island can sustain a GPS-based tracking system, the rest of New York City should have one too. This is a funeral for an MTA technology that we just shouldn’t be having.
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A Note on the Weather: Supposedly, New York City is in for up to a foot of snow by the time the morning rush hour kicks off on Monday. New York City Transit is well aware of the impending snow, and Paul Fleuranges, the corporate communications V.P. at Transit, sent out an e-mail this evening detailing the agency’s plans.
In a nutshell, NYCT is preparing for a full fleet of subways and buses right now, but they recognize that travel could be significantly slower than usual in the morning. They are station emergency crews near problem areas and plan to keep the above-ground switches as clear as possible. Keep your eye on the MTA’s website for weather-related service advisories.
