Archive for July, 2010
Jul
06
No tickets for parking at 570 former bus stops
Posted by: | CommentsWhen the MTA had to shutter 570 bus stops last week due to service cuts, the move created an odd occurrence of empty space on New York’s streets. Because NYC DOT maintains the bus shelters, no one knew what to make of the out-of-service bus stops all marked with prominent No Standing signs. Following the MTA’s signage, some brave folks tried to park in these spaces only to find a $115 ticket awaiting their return. DOT had a bunch of disgruntled New Yorkers on their hands.
This past weekend, to clear up the confusion, the NYPD has told its parking enforcement agents not to issue parking tickets for those cars parked at bus stops the MTA has designated out of service. This move is an unofficial one as DOT is still trying to determine the future for the 30,000 feet of unused curb space it now has at its disposal. I’m holding out hope for some combination of bike storage areas, mini green spaces and market-rate on-street parking spots.
Jul
06
Peralta joins the MTA Deniers Club in Albany
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Meet Jose Peralta. If his name sounds familiar, it’s because one of the newest State Senators made headlines when he won the special election of fill Hiram Monserrate’s seat earlier this year. He represents the 13th District which consists of East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights and Corona, three neighborhoods very dependent upon public transportation, but he now joins a growing list of elected officials who won’t fess up to the truth about transit.
Peralta has attracted my ire with an open letter to Jay Walder that the Queens Village Times printed late last week. Peralta attempts to blame the MTA for Albany’s failures and does so in spectacular fashion. Let’s break it down.
I am writing to express my concerns with the MTA’s latest plan to balance its budget on the backs of my constituents. I am not surprised the MTA is facing another crisis…
Peralta starts out on a typically populist note. Someone must teach politicians to blame the MTA for balancing the budget on the back of constituents as part of an Albany orientation package. After all, the authority isn’t about to balance its budget on the backs of State Senators or Assembly representatives. But Peralta ends on an optimistic note here: He isn’t surprised that the MTA is facing another crisis. Could it be that he’s going to admit that Albany stole money from the beleaguered authority?
— given the history of fiscal incompetency, fare hikes and services cuts this agency has imposed on riders. Rather than addressing the real problem, which is the MTA’s long history of mismanagement and overspending, you are once again expecting the public to pay the price for your mistakes.
Nope. Of course not. Ignoring history and the fact that fare hikes come about to either keep up with inflation or keep the subways running, Peralta pinpoints “fiscal incompetency,” a great catch-all that doesn’t catch anything. I wonder why Peralta doesn’t talk about the long history of Albany’s inability to fund transit or create a lockbox for revenues that are supposed to be dedicated to the MTA so that the legislature can’t later remove those to the general fund.
Common sense dictates you cannot cut an entire subway line or slash express service like the latest No. 7 train cut proposal and not expect these measures to negatively affect New Yorkers. You do not cut services to a borough like Queens, where the population is growing.
Of course, Peralta ignores the fact that even though two subway lines were cut, rush hour train service in Queens has remained the same with the Q taking over for the W and the M covering the V’s stops. The MTA doesn’t want to cut services to growing areas of the city, but when facing an $800 million budget gap, what choices does it have? Peralta, though, really gets rolling with the next paragraph.
The MTA is once again facing an astounding budget deficit. The MTA deficit will continue to grow unless the systemic problems that have plagued this agency, including mismanagement, overspending and duplication of services, are finally addressed. And while the state Senate is working to restore public transportation cuts, the MTA has chosen to distort this fact in an effort to conceal its own budgetary failures. This is deceptive and counterproductive in seeking a solution to the growing deficit.
Here, Peralta ignores how Walder himself has engaged in an effort to make every dollar count and to trim the fat. He discounts the millions in internal savings the authority has already identified and the ways in which the new MTA management is streamlining operations while eliminating overspending and duplications of services (such as media relations and communications staffs). Meanwhile, Peralta who, in December while still in the Assembly, voted for the bill that took $143 million in dedicated MTA revenue away from the authority, claims the MTA is using this to “distort the fact” that it has budget problems. In reality, that misappropriation is one of the main drivers behind the need to implement service cuts and the budget deficit. It isn’t deceptive or counterproductive; it’s just honesty.
I don’t expect anything less or anything more from Peralta. He openly extols his opposition to congestion pricing and has shown no knowledge of transit issues. Despite his attempts at phrasing his critique of the MTA as some sort of constituent fight against the Big Bad Wolf, he’s not doing those he purports to represent any favors. Welcome to the club, Senator Peralta.
Jul
02
The people that you meet each day
Posted by: | CommentsI’m talking off early this afternoon for the July 4th weekend, and I’ll be away until Monday. You can find the weekend service advisories at the bottom of this post or click here to jump to them.
Last night, on my way back from dinner in Manhattan, an elderly lady got on the train at Borough Hall and didn’t realize she was going the wrong way. When we pulled into Hoyt St., she asked me if she was on a Brooklyn-bound train, and then she wanted to know the best way to switch to train back to Manhattan. At Nevins St. and Atlantic Ave., she had the choice of navigating a few flights of stairs, but she preferred to transfer across the platform at Grand Army Plaza. I helped her with these directions, and she thanked me as I left.
While getting her on the way, I didn’t have a chance to talk to her about anything else, but now and then, if the opportunity arises, I’ll find myself in conversation with strangers on the trains. I’ve seen celebrities and friends; I’ve met strangers on the train. Mostly, I ride in silence, reading a book or relaxing, but the trains provide us with that space to meet someone. We’re all in it together after all.
A handful of recent stories about connections on a train struck me as amusing. Michael Grynbaum in his Off the Rails column for City Room found that most of the Craigs List Missed Connections that mention the subway take place along the L train. I can’t wait for the “Hipsters in Love” movie to come out. A few years ago, I wondered why people don’t find more romance on the subways and concluded that we mostly distrust strangers we find talking to us on the subways.
There is, it seems a cure for that. Enter Submate, the subway social networking site. Still in its infancy, the site is designed to connect people who share all or parts of the same commute. WPIX profiled Submate a few weeks ago. I wonder if that could take off. Who wouldn’t want a little companionship on a sluggish morning commute?
Finally, Good Magazine asked its Twitter and Facebook followers a very simple question: Who’s the most interesting person you’ve met on public transportation? Yesterday, they published some answers, and I enjoyed reading about riders who meet and befriend strangers. From the crazies to the friendlies, all types of riders are represented. You never know who — or what — you might find on the train.
After the jump, this week’s service advisories. Read More→
Jul
02
A $10 million communications consolidation plan
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As part of its never-ending mission to both close a $400 million deficit and make every dollar count, the MTA has announced a new initiative that will restructure the agency’s internal communications departments and save $10 million annually. Although the savings all small, the restructuring will lead to better organizational efficiencies across its various subagencies.
“By operating the MTA as one company instead of a loose collection of agencies we can provide the most efficient and effective service to the 8.5 million New Yorkers who rely on our transportation system every day,” Jay Walder, chair and CEO, said. “Consolidating these functions is a part of our effort to overhaul how the MTA does business to make sure that we are using every dollar as wisely as possible. These actions will pool resources, streamline operations and create savings.”
The first phase of this reorganization is very much inside baseball, and it will see the MTA overhaul its call centers, media relations and communications departments. The MTA made headlines when the New York tabloids revealed that the authority had more than 100 phone numbers and five customer service call centers. A “virtual consolidation” with a voice-recognition system will reduce the number of phone numbers and allow the authority to cut back on call centers.
On the media relations front, each sub-agency has its own fully-staffed press office. The authority will now maintain a “single, centralized press office” and cut back on the staffing levels. The same holds true for the communications departments. Diana Jones Ritter, a government executive for 26 years, will oversee this restructuring.
This is certainly a praise-worthy move by the MTA, but it’s also one that shouldn’t have been borne out of a financial crisis. The various agencies — Transit, Metro-North, LIRR — had independent press offices and communications departments because they were folded into the MTA over time. Never had any head tried as Walder has to reorganize internally, and it’s a move that any independent business consultant would recommend.
Jul
02
The maps remain the same
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While the new routes are in effect, many stations still feature old maps.
New York City Transit has a map problem. It’s not that the new subway map is bad. In fact, the redesign with fewer bus boxes and less unnecessary information makes the map more useful as a system navigation tool. The devil, however, is in the stations as five days after the service changes went into effect, the maps present throughout the system are still in the process of being updated.
To illustrate, a story: Every morning, I ride the train from Grand Army Plaza to Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall. I exit the stop in Manhattan at the northern end and pass through the unstaffed entrance that leads into Foley Square. The subway maps at both stations have been updated, but every other piece of supporting navigational materials has not. The “Neighorhood” maps at both Grand Army Plaza and City Hall still show the brown M train and its route into Brooklyn via the Montague St. tunnel. The Manhattan bus map at City Hall displays the routes as of last week and not this past Monday.
These aren’t isolated incidents. I’ve ridden more than a few trains that still display the old maps, and today, my Brooklyn-bound 2 train announced that customers could transfer to the J and M trains at Fulton St. The M hasn’t stopped there since last Friday. The Fulton St. complex is the tenth busiest station in the system, and if Transit’s pre-recorded announcements are telling people wrong information, that’s a problem.
Meanwhile, at other stations, the situation remains the same. Last night, I made the trip from Chambers St. to Christopher St. The latter is a reasonably popular destination stop. In 2009, an average of 10,000 people passed through it every weekday, and it serves as the gateway to Greenwich Village for many tourists visiting the city. The former serves around 20,000 per day. In both of those stations, featured prominently at the Customer Information Center, were subway maps that hadn’t yet been updated to reflect the new routing. Now, I’m not talking about far-off stations in the Rockaways that see a few hundred people a day; I’m talking about the 65th and 128th busiest stations in the system.
Eventually, Transit workers will get around to fixing these problems. The new maps will go up; life will go on. Yet, this situation reminds me of the post I wrote earlier this week about the MTA’s customer service woes. For weeks, Transit has been planning for the new service cuts and rerouted subway lines. The authority made a big show of putting up new subway bullets and fixed an obscene meme in two days when the Internet uproar began. Yet, five days after the cuts, they still haven’t replaced the maps hanging in at least a few stations, and the Neighborhood and Bus maps might remain outdated for some time.
This delay in updating the maps — arguably as important as hanging up some subway bullets at oft-deserted ends of platforms — isn’t a grave oversight by the MTA. It just shows how the authority doesn’t consider its customers. If anything, the maps should be the first things in a station changed because they are what allows people unfamiliar with the system to get around. A tourist unfamiliar with the subway system and bound for, say, MoMA would be left waiting for a V train that won’t arrive and would find at Christopher St. no station agent able to provide them with directions. The customer, it seems, is an afterthought.
Jul
01
DiNapoli: MTA could beef up real estate dollars
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For years, critics of the MTA have accused the authority of underselling its real estate offerings and not maximizing potential profits from its property holdings. In a report issued today, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli accused the MTA of doing just that. The authority, he says, doesn’t need to rent some spaces it does and hasn’t made all of its potential spaces available to rent.
Although DiNapoli used this platform to bash the MTA on service cuts, his report lacks a knockout punch.“Millions of New Yorkers rely on the MTA,” DiNapoli said. “Those New Yorkers can’t afford to pay more while the MTA ignores potential cost savings. But that’s exactly what has happened here. Before making drastic service cuts and talking about fare hikes, the MTA has to maximize the value of its real estate holdings by advertising their availability and ensuring that it’s receiving market-rate rents for prime properties. The MTA should also publish a full list of its real estate holdings as required by law and let New Yorkers know how it’s going to capitalize on these assets.”
The Comptroller’s audit (PDF), which covers a four-year period beginning in 2005, found that the MTA generates nearly $200 million in real estate revenues per year but could do more. It accused the agency of leaving its properties, such as 370 Jay St. in Brooklyn, vacant while allowing not charging interest or late fees on missed rent payments. He bulleted his findings:
- Non-government tenants owed the MTA a total of $9 million in rent during the audit period;
- The MTA did not effectively market the space above certain properties (known as ‘air rights’), despite estimates that the rights could generate more than $12 million in revenue;
- Six large rental units in the 42nd Street/Sixth Avenue subway station at Bryant Park had been vacant since 2004;
- The MTA does not ensure its rents are competitive with market values and does not charge interest and late fees when appropriate;
- Two of the agency’s buildings—one vacant and one nearly-vacant—cost more than $6 million to maintain; and
- More than one-quarter of the MTA’s occupied rental units sampled were not rented through the required competitive rental processes.
As far as recommendations go, DiNapoli’s were fairly tame. He wants the MTA to streamline its real estate databases and portfolio management system; he wants to see a “strategic marketing plan” to make sure empty spaces are being promoted; and he would like the MTA to collect interest and late fees on missed rent payments. Considering the field day The Post had with this report, nothing DiNapoli said or recommended came as a big surprise. Left unsaid by DiNapoli as well were any details as to the city as the ultimate landlord in many cases hamstrings the MTA’s ability to administer its property with any flexibility.
For its part, the MTA acknowledged DiNapoli’s conclusions. “While MTA real estate generates nearly $200 million each year to support the transit system, our ongoing financial issues demand that we think creatively and do more,” the authority said in a statement. “We are trying new technology to increase advertising revenues, working to change regulations that limit our ability to develop our assets, and better utilizing space as we downsize. No stone can be left unturned to maximize revenues and reduce costs, and we are actively pursuing each of these initiatives.”
Jul
01
Dispatches from the M: Sixth Ave. Sagas
Posted by: | CommentsThe MTA reactivated the Chystie St. Cut earlier this week when service changes forced the M up Sixth Ave. to replace the V train. While commuters along 4th Ave. in Brooklyn have found R trains more crowded, others in north Brooklyn and parts of Queens are enjoying an easier trip to Midtown. Today, I have a guest post from Jowy Romano of the Subway Art Blog about the way the service changes are impacting his ride to work for the better. It hasn’t been the smoothest of sailing yet this week, but for many in fast-growing areas of Brooklyn, this service change is a welcome one.
When the MTA announced its doomsday service cuts, unlike most straphangers, I was actually excited about them. The revamped M train was to replace the V train in Manhattan. This would affect my commute significantly, since I normally take the J train into Manhattan and transfer to the F train at Essex Street / Delancey Street. The changes would create a new line that I could take all the way to work at 23rd Street and would give me time to sit and read on my commute rather than having to worry about transferring halfway through.
Naturally, I decided to experiment with the M train for the first time on D-Day. When my usual J train pulled through Myrtle Avenue – Broadway, I let it pass and hopped on the M train that arrived on the adjacent track. I knew that this would be a bit of a risk, considering the M train is local in Brooklyn and might get me to work late. Of course, the first thing it did was spend the next five minutes idling in the station.
The rest of the ride in Brooklyn was relatively smooth until it got to the Williamsburg Bridge, where it crawled into the Essex Street station and took another few minutes waiting for the track switch into the Chrystie Street cut. It stopped again at the track switch onto the Sixth Avenue line before pulling into Broadway – Lafayette. I finally arrived at work with one minute to spare (the J and F train combination gets me to work 10 minutes early).
At the end of the day, I decided to give the M another chance. I waited at 23rd Street station and watched four F trains pass by before the M came. It was crowded when I got on, but at the next stop it cleared out enough for me to get a seat. I would have pulled out a book, but I was too busy watching people’s reactions to the new train route. I would have expected to see a few people curse and walk off the train at Broadway – Lafayette due to the announcement the train would not stop at Second Avenue, but no one did—the MTA did a pretty good job of posting advisories about the change.
At Essex, the M pulled into the second Brooklyn-bound track, which was unexpected because that track is normally only used when there are service changes. This solves the problem of the track switch-related delays that I experienced on my way to work that morning, but in that direction only (there is only one Manhattan-bound track at Essex). The rest of the ride was fairly smooth, so I decided I would get up a little earlier the next day and give the M another shot.
I figured I wouldn’t learn much more about the new line on my third trip, but I was wrong. My old pal the J train got rerouted back towards Queens after getting to Myrtle Avenue due to some delays, giving me more reason to take the M again. Five minutes later, I hopped on and was feeling pretty good until the train reached the Williamsburg Bridge. The conductor announced that a smoke condition at Broadway – Lafayette was causing the delays. We were stuck on the bridge for about 25 minutes. It was with all this time to think that I realized a potential problem with the new M—the JMZ line will now be affected when the Sixth Avenue line is delayed.
We finally reached Essex Street, which was in a state of utter chaos. The platforms were packed with confused people and at least 15 MTA employees in vests were directing people, some of them giving misinformation. Ironically, the M train I was on ended up being rerouted back onto its old route, which loops back to Brooklyn towards Bay Parkway. Yes, that’s right—it missed its old line and could not be without it for more than two days.
So I switched to the F train, which very slowly made its way to 23rd Street. I was 25 minutes late to work.
The new M clearly has a lot of problems, some of which will be easy to iron out over time, others that will probably never be addressed. Barring any more unforeseen “smoke conditions,” I think I will continue to take it. Being able to avoid the Essex / Delancey transfer is priceless and, with any luck, I’ll even get some extra time to sit and read during my commute.
Jowy Romano is the editor of the Subway Art Blog, a site that focuses on sign manipulation and other forms of subversive art found underground.
Jul
01
The fare remains the same, at least for 2010
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Twenty ten has been very unkind for the MTA. The year started out with Albany robbing the authority of over $143 million, and it’s been one bad piece of economic news after another. The payroll tax has fallen around $300 million short of expectations. The MTA has to go through the charade of public hearings to cut station agents. Now, Albany might outlaw OPTO and station agent reductions until 2013 all without providing much-needed funds for these unnecessary positions.
Through it all, the MTA has implemented a sweeping series of service cuts that has left bus commuters reeling and has restructured subway service patterns throughout parts of three boroughs. The agency won’t, however, seek to raise the fares until 2011 when it has legal permission to do so. In speaking with John Gambling on WOR radio yesterday morning, Jay Walder reiterated that position. “It will not come earlier,” Walder said. “We’re going to hold to the schedule.”
That’s the good news. The bad news, says Walder, is that the fare hikes will be far greater than the 7.5 percent increase the agency’s four-year plan had stipulated in 2009. “We’re grappling with an exceptionally difficult financial times and that requires tough decisions,” the authority’s chairman and CEO said. “It requires things that are painful for our employees and our customers, and we have to recognize there’s no easy way out.”
I can’t even begin to speculate on the size of the next fare hike. The agency still has, by most accounts, to fill a budget hole of nearly $300 million and will propose its solution later this month when it unveils its financial plan. We could see an increase of 15 percent or more. I wonder if this is the right approach.
I’ve long espoused the theory that the MTA should raise fares as much as it can before cutting service. It boils down the simplicity of the authority’s mission: It is supposed to be supplying a service to the public in the form of efficient, fast and frequent mass transit to meet rider demands. As Section 1264 of New York’s Public Authorities Law says, the MTA’s purpose is to provide for the “continuance, further development and improvement of commuter transportation.” Service cuts seem anathema to that goal.
One of the problems lies in the MTA’s approach to the fares. The authority isn’t required to hold down fares or artificially deflate them, and yet it has. With unlimited-ride MetroCard programs and pay-per-ride discounts, we are paying less per ride on average in real dollars than we did in 1996. As deficits grow, that the fares haven’t kept pace with inflation is just a bad business practice.
Another problem is one of priorities. Perhaps I’m unique in this sense, but I’d rather pay more for the same service today than pay the same for less service today or pay more for less service tomorrow. We know the MTA won’t restore the service cuts when they raise fares in January, but had they chosen to raise fares by five percent this year, the increase in revenue would have been more than enough to stave off the cuts. If that’s the price for a public transit network that doesn’t shudder under the weight of demand, then so be it. My 30-day MetroCard costs me approximately $1 per ride as it is; I can withstand a fare increase.
In the end, this discussion is one of policy. Would the MTA rather incur the wrath of riders and politicians over the third fare increase in as many years or through service cuts? For now, the answer is service cuts, but the authority should make sure that their customers know the service cuts — and the eventual fare hikes — were brought about through inaction in Albany. The state has refused to provide adequate funds for Student MetroCards; the state has refused to enact congestion pricing or East River bridge tolls. Instead, the state has stolen money earmarked for the MTA, and then the same representatives who voted for that measure slam the MTA for its budget gap.
A pawn because of its status as a creature of the state, the MTA can’t speak out against Albany as those who fight for better transit in the city do. What the MTA should do though is raise the fares before it begins to cut service. Without providing ample service, what role does the agency serve anyway?
