Update (12:25 p.m. Sunday): For many people, a managerial shake-up at New York City Transit won’t mean very much. It can be seen as some backroom wheelin’ and dealin’ by the MTA. But this announcement from the MTA about some personnel moves at Transit is intriguing for what it portends.
The news is this: Steve Feil, senior vice president of the Department of Subways, is out at that position. He will be the new Vice President and Chief Maintenance Office of the Subway division, responsible for maintenance and some technical functions of the subway system and is going to help Jay Walder realize his goal of bringing more technological innovation to the city’s transit system.
“Steve is a respected transit executive who has worked in many of these areas himself and has done so from the entry level up to the highest levels of senior management,” Transit President Tom Prendergast said. “He also has a keen appreciation for the need to embrace and utilize new technology with direct experience in its implementation at some of the older, more established agencies like Amtrak and NYCT.”
He will be replaced Carmen Bianco, formerly of the MTA and Amtrak. Bianco was Assistant Vice President for System Safety at Transit from 1991 to 1995 and held similar positions at NJ Transit and Amtrak. Tom Namako of The Post reports that this will be one in “a series” of changes, and although riders won’t notice the impact, the way the subways are run on a managerial level will change.
The MTA says that the biggest change will come through a restructuring of its maintenance procedures. For the last few years, the Group & Line General Managers had been overseeing maintenance on a decentralized level, but this scheme had left the line managers bogged down in maintenance calls. The line managers will remain in place for now but will focus more on transportation and customer service.
I’ve heard rumblings for weeks that the new Transit team may be doing away with the line managers, and Feil’s departure moves that one step closer to reality. Until today, the line managers had been reporting to Feil, and with Biacno assuming control and stripping the line managers of their maintenance oversight, the storm clouds are swirling.
In the grand scheme of Transit, this isn’t that big of a deal. Riders won’t notice the difference, and it’s hard to say if the line manager program has produced a net benefit for anyone. In light of the current fiscal climate, the MTA needs to trim its management structure anyway.
On an other note, all weekend service changes have been canceled due to the snow. Enjoy a shuttle bus-free weekend wherever your travels may take you.
Throughout the world, major transit systems operate with just one person in charge of each train. In London and Hong Kong, Moscow and Paris, one-person train operation has become the norm. Using CCTVs and modern-day technology, one person is in charge of driving the trains, opening and closing the doors, making announcements and generally overseeing the trains. These systems run smoothly and have realized significant cost savings by cutting out a generally unnecessary employee from every train. 
As the MTA’s finances have gone south, the authority has held the line on their preference for service cuts over fare hikes. Since the fares have gone up in each of the last two years and are scheduled to increase again in 2011, the agency is hesitant to use a fare increase as a fiscal band aid yet again this year.
With the winter games unfolding in Vancouver this weekend, I keep thinking about how, had the Mayor’s bid in 2005 to secure the Summer Olympics for New York City been successful, the next great gathering of international athletes would have been ours. And then I start thinking about how the 7 line project — one now destined to serve residents of a real estate complex not yet built or even paid for — got its start in Bloomberg’s desires to see the Olympics come to New York. It was that same desire and the subsequent loss of the games to London that has led to the downfall of the station at 41st and 10th Ave.