Archive for November, 2010
Nov
19
SBS bus lane camera enforcement to start Monday
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Starting on Monday, New York’s Select Bus Service will become even more select as the MTA and DOT are turning on five bus-lane enforcement cameras along the First and Second Ave. M15 SBS route. The city says the SBS route has sped up travel along the M15 corridor by 15 minutes, and with camera enforcement on tap, buses should move even smoother along the route.
“The City’s 2.8 million bus riders have been held hostage for far too long by motorists who routinely block bus lanes, and these cameras will send a clear message that bus lanes are for buses only,” MTA Chairman and CEO Jay Walder said in a statement. “We have already been able to speed up travel times along First and Second Avenues by more than 15 minutes on the M15 and these cameras will help to further improve service.”
The cameras were long a sticking point in the state legislature as upstate representatives objected on tenuous privacy grounds. Earlier this year, as part of a legislative compromise, Albany authorized the use of cameras along only Select Bus Service. Vehicles will be allowed to enter the dedicated bus lanes only to make the next available right turn or to “expeditiously” drop off and pick up passengers. Everyone else will be subject to a $115 fine.
Initially, five cameras will be turned on this Monday with more to come along the Manhattan SBS route and the Fordham Road corridor in the Bronx. DOT will be responsible for viewing the footage, and they will issue the summons — called here a Notice of Liability. The NYC Department of Finance will be responsible for adjudicated summons disputes.
“SBS is redefining East Side transit,” said Commissioner Sadik-Khan. “Dedicated lanes and paying before boarding are already speeding buses, and now camera enforcement will give M15 customers a VIP ride.”
These cameras will help beef up DOT’s initial video technology enforcement efforts that currently target only taxis. Until now, due to jurisdictional and home rule issues, DOT has been able to summons only taxi medallion owners who have been shown to violate bus lanes. Those disputes are heard by Taxi and Limousine Commission administrative law judges, but unfortunately, the number of summonses issued to taxi drivers has not been released to the public.
Ultimately, these cameras a much-delayed and welcome development as the city looks to speed up its bus service, but the plan isn’t perfect. Even if fewer cars are straying into the bus lane, those that are waiting to turn right or are discharging passengers have the potential to impact the SBS speeds. Ideally, the city would be building out dedicated bus lanes with physically separated rights-of-way as cities across the U.S. and Europe currently enjoy. Without it, SBS will be nothing more than a glorified version of the Limited service that falls short of a true bus rapid transit network.
Nov
19
NYCEDC urges reactivation of SI’s North Shore rail
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An overview of Staten Island's North Shore ROW. (Via the MTA's North Shore Alternatives Analysis)
For the past few days, the idea of building out the 7 line to Secaucus has caught our collective imaginations. While that plan certainly has its appeal from a regional perspective, within the five boroughs, certain areas still suffer from subpar rail access though, and if it’s possible to improve access without spending billions on a cross-Hudson tunnel, the city should do so.
Prime for development is Staten Island’s North Shore. This underdeveloped area features a rail right of way that has had a mixed history. It opened to customers 120 years ago and served passengers for 63 years. From 1953-1989, the ROW serviced freight trains from New Jersey, but it shut for 16 years. Since 2005, the North Shore rail line has seen limited freight service, and the ROW has been problematic for community development to say the least. The rail line is in poor shape, and the ROW has cut off access to Staten Island’s waterfront.
Late last year, Staten Island pols and the MTA started making noises about reactivating the North Shore rail line, and early this year, the authority unveiled an alternatives analysis at an Open House. At the behest of and with money from Staten Island’s borough president, the authority delved into the island’s subpar mass transit. During the open house session, the authority presented various alternatives for improving transit along Staten Island’s North Shore. These plans included a light or heavy rail option for the ROW, turning the ROW into a dedicated BRT bus lane, improving local bus routes and expanding ferry and/or water taxi service. (For more on these options, check out the MTA’s NSAA planning page.)
Currently the MTA is working to turn the long list of potential projects into a short list before selecting a locally preferred alternative by mid-2011, but if the New York City Economic Development Corp. has its way, the locally preferred alternative will involve reactivating passenger rail service on the North Shore right-of-way. The NYCEDC has released preliminary results of a two-year study entitled North Shore 2030, and NY1′s Amanda Farinacci detailed, the study calls for rail service along the North Shore.
Unfortunately, the NYCEDC’s position is more nuanced that a flat-out call for rail service. They’ve identified what it would take to turn Staten Island’s North Shore into a more economically viable community and seem to believe that the rail line is in the way. At various points, the one-track route has a right-of-way of upwards of 100 feet, and the at- and below-grade areas block direct access to the waterfront, a vital part of the rehabilitation plan.
In its most recent presentation (PDF), the NYCEDC has urged the MTA to relocate the at-grade portions of the right-of-way. By doing so, waterfront businesses will see their land-use conflicts fade away, and the city will be able to improve the pedestrian and bicycle corridor along the shore. No cost estimates for the work have been released yet.
For now, the planning work will continue on this not-so-ambitious project. It should be a priority, but the MTA isn’t spending significant chunks of money on anything other than its current megaprojects. As this deal doesn’t have the same obvious real estate benefits as the Subway to Secaucus, the city won’t embrace it as readily as it has that crazy plan for the 7 train. Still, a direct rail line to the ferry terminal along Staten Island’s North Shore would serve as a prime impetus to development.
Perhaps then we should be thinking small and ensuring projects such as this are realized before we start sending the subway to far-off lands across the Hudson River. Perhaps we should ponder a subway tunnel to Staten Island instead of Secaucus. After all, it’s been nearly 100 years in the making.
Nov
18
Cuomo: Transit money ‘fungible.’ Ravitch: Nuh-uh
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Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo has not yet pledged to protect transit dollars. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
Our Governor-elect is not starting things off on the right foot with transit. While speaking yesterday, he declined to pledge to protect transit funding, and in fact, spokes words that should send up the warning lights. Andrew Bernstein has the transcript:
Cuomo: “I understand the concern. Everyone — especially in a declining budget environment, where we are now, everyone — we just met with the environmental groups. They’re very concerned that nobody raids the funds that should be going to the environment. People who are involved in transit want to make sure nobody raids the funds that are involved in mass transit. I understand the concerns, and that’s the balance of putting together the budget.”
REPORTER: That means you’re not committed to allowing the money –
Cuomo: “You can’t say — money is fungible to a certain extent. There are a lot of needs the state has to fund and it’s the balancing of those needs that will be done through the budget process.”
As Streetsblog’s Ben Fried said, these are “scary words for transit riders.” New York must vow to stop taking revenue collected in the name of transit and using it instead to plug holes in the state’s general budget. The New York City Transit Riders Council said it will try to push for a measure in New York similar to California’s Prop 22, but this change must start at the top.
To drive home this reality, Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch released a report today on the state’s transportation network, and he urged New York to invest more in transit. “In this period of austerity, national economic uncertainty, unpredictability of federal funding, and rising social service costs there is an increasing risk that funding for infrastructure investments will be curbed to dangerous levels,” he said in a statement. “To preserve safety and prepare for economic recovery, the State must craft a multi-year transportation capital investment strategy that sets clear and attainable priorities, identifies reliable revenues, and balances competing regional demands.”
The report — embedded below — is a scary statement on the state of the transportation funding. New York, he says, “lacks the revenues necessary to maintain its transportation system in a state of good repair” and “has no credible strategy for meeting future needs.” He further warns:
Right now, neither the MTA nor DOT has adequate resources to cover both its operating expenses and the level of new borrowing demanded by its proposed capital program. New York, therefore, faces a choice: significantly higher taxes, fees, fares, and tolls or a drastically diminished transportation program that could jeopardize safety and economic well-being.
On the MTA, he discusses the authority’s debt problem. Essentially, the state must contributing more to the MTA’s coffers instead of relying upon bonded debt to maintain and build out the transit network. Says the report:
Today, debt service exerts pressure on the MTA program just as it does on the DOT program. A debt restructuring carried out between 2000 and 2002 took advantage of lower interest rates, which reduced debt service on the bonds outstanding at the time. Lower debt service payments in the short term allowed for additional borrowing for a new capital plan without new taxes and fees or higher fares; but the refinancing resulted in a dramatically larger debt burden and debt service payments in future years. Bonding, as a share of the 2000-2004 MTA capital plan, jumped to 55.7 percent from its traditional share of around 36 percent. Between 2000 and 2008, the MTA nearly doubled its debt burden from $13 billion to $24 billion. The restructuring also extended the maturity dates of the MTA’s outstanding debt. If the restructuring had not extended the maturity dates on MTA debt, a substantial part of the MTA bonds outstanding in 2000 would now be paid off, freeing up revenues to support new borrowing capacity. Instead, the maturity schedule for the more- than-$31 billion in outstanding MTA debt is back-loaded into the 2020’s and 2030’s; and the MTA is in acute need of new revenues to service its existing debt and finance new borrowing for capital purposes. Short-term fiscal and political relief came at a long-term cost.
This imbalance in the MTA’s budget was masked for a short time by the economic bubble of the mid-2000s, when the real estate taxes that support the MTA generated surpluses for the agency. Instead of reserving these surpluses, the agency was under pressure to use them to hold down fares; it even offered short-lived and short-sighted fare holidays amounting to $45 million. When economic conditions changed and dedicated tax revenues plummeted, the MTA found itself without enough revenues to meet both its operating costs and its debt service payments.
To solve these problems, Ravitch urges the state to search for new revenues sources. He doesn’t flat-out call for congestion pricing, but he has been a long-term advocate of a fee-based transit funding solution that involves traffic calming as well. He also calls upon the state to institute “special taxing districts” that capture revenues from “certain mega- projects that have the potential to dramatically increase economic activity and property values in an area.” In essence, developers would have to pay higher tax rates to ensure better transit — something the city should have instituted to secure funding for the 7 line stop at 10th Ave. and 41st St.
Ultimately, Ravitch says the ongoing capital projects such as the Second Ave. Subway are safe simply because the MTA would be on the hook for billions of dollars in penalties if work stopped now. But the state must figure out how to close the capital budget’s $10 billion gap. To do so through borrowing would require at least another $700 million in MTA revenues, and the bond payments would come due decades from now.
The state, as we know, is facing a crisis. Can the new governor begin to solve it? So far, he hasn’t sounded too willing to try.
After the jump, read Ravitch’s report. Read More→
Nov
18
Suit says Transit unprepared for mass evacuation
Posted by: | CommentsIn a 59-page whistle-blower lawsuit fired on Tuesday in federal court, a 25-year MTA employee alleges that the authority is not prepared for a mass evacuation and is violating safety standards. The Post, which first reported on the suit, summarizes Peter Nichik’s complaint:
He alleges that “anti-crime” gates — which make it possible to close off alternate entrances and exits to subway stations during certain times of the day — are not being padlocked while open meaning anyone can shut and lock them up with their own equipment.
“These conditions present a significant danger to the riding public and [MTA] employees in the event of a situation requiring rapid evacuation or emergency response and rescue,” said his lawyer, Clare Norins. “The defects continue to exist unabated in many NYC subway stations.”
..Nichik, a former superintendent in the Division of Station Operations, first brought the security break to the MTA’s attention in August 2007, when he warned his bosses that the gates weren’t secure for the usually rambunctious West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn. That meant someone could enter the station, close the gates, and lock them, creating “a very dangerous and potentially lethal event in an emergency situation,” like an explosion, bomb threat, or chemical or biological attack, the suit claims. He also claims the MTA provided him with too few chains and padlocks for the gates, and when transit bosses took a survey of how many were unsecured, “the actual safety conditions in the field were being underreported in the survey.”
In his suit, which I’ve embedded after the jump, Nichik claims his constant complaints about security also lead to “a hostile work environment.” He has requested that court order the MTA to both address these security concerns and refrain from taking action against him.
For its part, the MTA denied the allegations in the complaint and said that any security deficiencies have been addressed. “We have had a procedure in place since 2008 to survey all station entrances to make certain that 24-hour security gates are padlocked in the open position,” Transit spokesman Kevin Ortiz said. “As a result, we secured all entrances with new padlocks and chains and began a regular inspection cycle to insure compliance.”
The authority also said in a statement that the “there is no merit whatsoever to this individual’s claim that he has been retaliated against as a result of having raised safety-related concerns.”
After the jump, read the complaint in full. Read More→
Nov
18
Real estate lobby embraces 7 plans as feds do not
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A rough sketch of the proposed 7 line extension to Secaucus. (Via The Wall Street Journal)
In writing yesterday about the city’s nascent plan to extend the 7 train to Secaucus, New Jersey, I touched briefly on those who stand to benefit the most from the plan. As with the current iteration of the city-funded 7 line extension, real estate interests — in particular, those of Related who are in line to develop the Hudson Yards — have the most riding on this project. By connecting a new mixed-use center with both New Jersey and the popular 7 line, Related would be able to draw thousands of people to an area of the city that’s currently among the least transit-accessible in Manhattan.
In fact, on Monday night, before the story broke in The Times, Stephen M. Ross, the CEO of Related, endorsed this project in a conversation with Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. “I think it’s a great idea and it could save a ton of money,” Ross said to The Times.
The Real Estate Board of New York has also embraced the idea, and this influential group is now lobbying hard for fast action. “Every developer I’ve spoken to thinks it’s a terrific, simple idea,” REBNY President Steven Spinola said. “They all think it will be wonderful…“It sounds like a real solution [to the cross-Hudson capacity problems]. You’re able to provide the transportation needs, yet at a substantially lower cost.”
I’ve written before about the way transit advocates need real estate interests but need to be wary of them, and that certainly applies here. You won’t see REBNY advocating for a Nostrand Ave. subway or the Triboro RX plan which will lead to improvements but not of the same potential that we see here.You will see them advocating for a 7 line extension when the benefits to their interests are obvious. They have the political clout though to be heard in Washington, City Hall and Albany, something with which advocates have not been overly successful lately.
The real estate lobby isn’t the only one embracing this plan. Both the Daily News and New York Times editorial boards supported this project today. “The benefits,” says the News, “would include expanded bistate rail capacity, a potential easing in auto congestion and a spur to growth on the West Side and construction of a new No. 7 station at 42nd St. and 10th Ave.”
The Times highlighted how this seems to be a natural extension of the 7 line. “What makes the Bloomberg concept intriguing is that much of the drilling for this subway tunnel is already being done in Manhattan,” the Gray Lady says. “For the other tunnel that was scrapped by Governor Christie, known as ARC, the biggest cost would have been for a new corridor deep under Manhattan’s Far West Side. ARC’s total cost was edging up to $11 billion before it was canceled. ‘ARC-lite,’ as some city officials are calling the Bloomberg tunnel, has an estimated cost of about $5.3 billion.”
A rougher sketch of the proposed 7 line extension to Secaucus. (Via Subway to Secaucus)
Now, while Bloomberg’s proposal has garnered headlines, it’s not the first time the idea of a subway to Secaucus has been floated. A few years ago, Ralph Braskett and Steve Lanset put forward their Subway to Secaucus proposal, and it appears that Bloomberg has drawn from it. Questions remain concerning funding. Will the feds pay for this subway extension?
According to various transit advocates, if the feds do fund part of this project, it won’t be with ARC Tunnel money. “The $3 billion has disappeared,” the RPA’s Jeff Zupan said to the Daily News. “They’re not going to turn around and say, ‘okay, you have a better idea now, we’ll give you the money.’ It’s not going to happen.”
Federal officials believe that the FTA will not work too hard to keep this money in the northeast because of anger over Christie’s decision-making process. Rather, it will go to other New Starts projects, and one Daily News source said that the odds are “slim to none” that the Secaucus subway will get ARC money.
Mayor Bloomberg though remained hopefully that other money could find its way to this grand idea. “It’s very early,” he said, “but we’re certainly talking to Gov. Christie’s office, to Governor-elect Cuomo’s office, to the MTA, to Ray LaHood and his people.”
It’s going to take a lot of talking to get this ambitious plan off the ground.
Nov
18
The bugs take over as subway trash piles up
Posted by: | CommentsWhen I say no one wants to see this video, I sincerely mean that no one wants to see this video. First posted by the Village Voice’s Runnin’ Scared blog earlier this week, what you see here is a close-up of a bed bug on a seat on the R train. It was spotted by a group of commuters on a Bay Ridge-bound train near 36th St., and one varmint expert has confirmed that this brown insect does indeed resemble a bed bug.
“That looks pretty believable to me,” Maciej Ceglowski of the Bedbug Registry said. “I can’t make out what kind of bug it is from the video, but it’s the right size and moves in the right way to be a bedbug. And I do know there have been other confirmed subway sightings.”
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about bed bugs taking over the subway. In early 2008, a few intrepid reporters spotted infestations in various wooden subway benches, but the MTA has not, by and large, made a public stink about it. That could change soon.
On Tuesday evening, I went to the New York City Transit Riders Council President’s Forum with NYC Transit President Tom Prendergast and a variety of other Transit higher-ups. While the meeting featured mostly personal complaints and subway minutiae from the audience, Prendergast repeatedly levied a charge toward Albany. Without political and economic support, he said, the TA’s hands are tied. (For a little bit more on this aspect of the forum, check out John Mancini’s report at NY1.)
What struck home to me though was a conversation Prendergast had with Marvin Holland, the chair of the cleaners’ section at the TWU. Holland has been an outspoken organization for the union for years, and he opined on the cleanliness, or lack thereof, underground. Noting that bed bugs have been spotted throughout the system, he said, “We have to get more cleaners or it’s not going to work. hat is happening is cleaners are being overworked. And then they’re getting physically broken down. And then they can’t come to work.”
When cleaners don’t come to work, Transit doesn’t fill their shifts with workers accruing overtime. Rather, trains and stations just go uncleaned. The MTA has been up front with this approach to cleanliness. They’d prefer to invest their limited dollars in track and car maintenance to ensure that trains run frequently and smoothly, and if the environment underground suffers, well, said Prendergast, that’s the devil’s choice they have to make.
In response to Holland’s complaint, Prendergast acknowledged the lower staffing levels of cleaners and promised that Transit was doing what it can to bring back workers who can improve conditions underground. He stopped short though of drawing what I think is a logical inference. “Customers don’t like to hear that they’re part of the problem,” he said, “but we pull out 90 tons of trash a day from the subways.”
The inference is an obvious one, and another speaker whose name I didn’t catch let it all out. She has been a station monitor for years, and she says she routinely sees people disregard societal norms as they discard their trash everywhere but in the garbage cans. They drop papers and cups onto stations floors; they leave discarded chicken bones underneath seats; they spew sunflower seeds and spill drinks. It is, in other words, a human pig sty.
It’s true that Transit’s own approach will not help the situation. Cutting cleaners won’t ever improve cleanliness, and the way that some station cleaners drag garbage bags — and thus leave a trail of grimy litter water in their wakes — doesn’t help. But responsibility can start with the people who ride the rails. After all, we have as much an interest in keeping the system clean for ourselves as the MTA does, and I don’t know anyone who discards dinner on the floor of their dining room instead of in the trash.
Bed bugs and rat infestations are serious problems that require serious responses once they start to unfold. We the riders can’t do anything about it once the bugs are there, but our attitudes go a long way toward ensuring that bugs and rats don’t find the subway attractive in the first place. Until the garbage ends where it belongs, perhaps Prendergast and Holland should feel more comfortable telling riders that they are a part of the problem indeed.
Nov
17
MTA just as shocked as the rest of us by 7-to-Secaucus plan
Posted by: | CommentsWhen news broke late yesterday of the city’s very preliminary plans to extend the 7 train to Secaucus, New Jersey, everyone was taken by surprise including, it seems, MTA Chair and CEO Jay Walder. In remarks to the press after this morning’s MTA Board meeting, Walder said that Bloomberg officials told him of the plan only “hours” before The Times broke the story. For its part, the city said it had not yet involved MTA officials in its talks because, as Michael Grynbaum put it, “the idea remained in its infancy and that the discussions had not progressed to a point where other agencies would be consulted.”
For his part, though, Walder, speaking as a transit technocrat, embraced the idea. He called it “very exciting” and expressed his belief that the transit system for the New York Metropolitan region must transcend state borders. “One of the things that it really says to us is that the region continues to look at the importance of public transportation to further the economic growth and the prosperity that we want to see,” he said.
Still, we shouldn’t start counting down the days until the MTA readies a tunnel across the Hudson. In addition to the planning challenges, the authority stressed how the dollars for such a project just aren’t there, and the MTA won’t begin the process until other capital plans are realized first. “There is no money,” Walder said, “in our capital program for any megaprojects except the three we have under way.” Until the dollars materialize, this extension will remain a tantalizing idea on paper only.
Nov
17
Southern Brooklyn drivers bemoan SBS impact
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The Rogers Ave. Select Bus Service has faced community opposition in a car-heavy neighborhood.
As the New York City Department of Transportation and the MTA continue the painfully slow Select Bus Service rollout, the agencies are expanding the pilot to include areas of the outer boroughs underserved by the city’s subway service. In Brooklyn, the targeted corridors would bring the innovations of SBS to the Nostrand Avenue and Rogers Avenue corridors. But motorists and small business owners in the area are presenting a united front against the better bus service, and a DOT open house last night drove that point home.
Nostrand Ave. is one of the sad stories of the subway system. Long on the list for subway extension plans, the city never built a Nostrand Ave. line due first to the outspoken community opposition against a new elevated line and later concerns over cost. Over the years, then, the area is developed into a car-heavy one that views itself more as a suburban outpost within New York City than as part of the urban landscape.
Now that the MTA and DOT want to improve transit in the area, these motorists are having none of it. Alex Rush from the Courier-Life filed a report from the meeting last night:
All of these [SBS improvements] are meant to ease congestion on Nostrand Avenue, which is the fourth busiest bus route in the city with 13.6 million riders, according to MTA reports. However, local drivers say that the service will increase traffic, take away parking spaces and make turning dangerous for cars. “I think it’s a terrible idea,” said Jay Schneider, who drives down Nostrand Avenue to get to work. “The street is already congested and difficult to park on, and the extra bus lane will just make things worse.”
Schneider was one of dozens of people who attended the city’s presentation about the service on Nov. 15 at Brooklyn College. Nostrand Avenue business owners also expressed their concerns about the service. “Right now, it’s convenient for customers to park in front of our liquor store,” said John Tam, whose shop is between Lefferts Avenue and Sterling Street. “But if we lose parking spaces on that road, our business could decrease.”
Spokespeople for the city and the MTA spent most of the meeting telling residents that only a handful of parking spaces would be lost because the bus lane would likely replace a traffic lane, not a parking lane. But residents remain convinced that other aspects of the service, such as expanding the sidewalks for bus stations and running buses that are twice the length of current B44 buses, will make parking more difficult. They are also skeptical that an exclusive bus lane will reduce traffic. “The plan will definitely be a problem in Sheepshead Bay,” said Carl Romali. “Nostrand Avenue is already overcrowded with people trying to park and trying to drive around cars that are double-parked.”
This isn’t, of course, the first time that this area has expressed its displeasure with the plan. Community Board 15 voted against it in April for similar reasons. “The select bus service will steal away parking spaces,” Theresa Scavo, chair of CB 15, said. “And the service’s traffic signal priority system could lead to speeding buses, which would make the roads more dangerous for cars who are also trying to reach green lights.”
As much as I want to dismiss the windshield perspective out of hand as being wrong-handed and misguided, if the city and MTA are serious about bringing transit improvements, they’ll have to be responsive to the concerns of the community. How do you convince people so accustomed to driving that the bus improvements will truly be better for their lives and neighborhood? Paternalistically, it would be easy for the city to simply mandate the SBS routes for Nostrand and Rogers Avenues, but drivers must be willing to change their transit behavior and understand how and why the bus is preferable to streets that are “difficult to park on.”
Ultimately, the city needs to expand and improve its bus offerings, but if it is faced with communities that do not want Select Bus Service, the answer is easy: Award it somewhere else. If those along Nostrand Ave. and Rogers Ave. truly do not want better bus service, I’m sure the communities along Flatbush Ave. would gladly accept it instead. Only by showing instead of telling, the MTA and DOT can convert the driving skeptics.
Nov
17
Chart of the Day: Break-even points after the fare hike
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What the fare hike means for Unlimited ride MetroCards. (Via Capn Design)
I’ve touched briefly upon the new MetroCard math that will go into effect when the fares go up on December 30, but this chart does the job in an easy-to-understand form. Presented by Matt Jacobs at Capn Design, this chart shows how the change in pay-per-ride discount and the steep increase in the price of a 30-day card should change straphangers’ purchasing and riding patterns.
In essence, the change boils down as thus: Currently, pay-per-ride users enjoy a 15 percent bonus on purchases above $8. This led to a true cost per swipe of $1.96 instead of $2.25. In 2011, the bonus drops to seven percent on purchases above $10, and the cost per swipe rises to $2.10. Under these figures, the 30-day MetroCard currently pays for itself on the 46th swipe, but after the fare hike, riders will have to swipe in an additional four times before the card becomes a good value. On the 50th swipe, the cost-per-ride of a $104 MetroCard drops to $2.08.
Jacobs’ chart, available at this site, is a handy tool to help subway riders navigate this confusing math. The final line allows users to input any number to see the cost savings. For instance, I could easily see that those people who swipe 80 times a month now save $67.80 over a pay-per-ride plan and will still save $64 under the new fare scheme. As always, the 30-day card rewards frequent users even as the break-even point rises.
It’s also worth revisiting briefly a post from October that explores how many riders do not reach the break-even point on their unlimited MetroCards. Based on internal MTA numbers, it appeared as though 25 percent of monthly purchasers do not use their cards 46 times or more. The same chart showed that this figure jumps to 36 if we set the cut-off point at 50 swipes. Thus, as the fares go up, either fewer people will be buying cards or more will be wasting money on unlimited ride cards. I bet the truth will lie somewhere in the middle.
Nov
17
‘The next stop on this Secaucus-bound 7 is…’
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Could the 7 trains, seen here in Flushing, be bound for Secaucus, New Jersey? (7 trains galore by flickr user SpecialKRB)
Fantasy subway maps have long been a passion of Internet railfans. Beyond imagining a city with a Second Ave. Subway that reaches from the Bronx to Brooklyn or a fully-realized IND Second System, I’ve seen maps with the Triboro RX line, various cross- and inter-borough routes and service shot past terminals in Queens to airports and neighborhoods underserved by the subway. Every now and then, someone proposed building out the 7 line to a cross-Hudson terminus in New Jersey, but that idea is generally concerned too fanciful and far-fetched to be a reality. Until now, that is.
With the ARC Tunnel dead, federal dollars out there for the taking and the need to expand cross-Hudson River rail offerings still a pressing one, the city is working on a plan that would send the 7 line under the river to Secaucus, New Jersey, The Times reported this evening. This project would include money for a stop at West 41st St. and 10th Ave. and would extend the subway westward from 34th St. and 11th Ave. to Secaucus Junction in the Garden State where passengers could connect to and from New Jersey Transit. It would, as Charles Bagli and Nicholas Confessore wrote, “extend the New York City subway outside the city for the first time, giving New Jersey commuters direct access to Times Square, Grand Central Terminal and Queens, and to almost every line in the system.”
Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office acknowledged the idea but noted that it’s only a thought on paper. “Extending the 7 line to New Jersey could address many of the region’s transportation capacity issues at a fraction of the original tunnel’s cost, but the idea is still in its earliest stages,” spokesman Andrew Brent said “Like others, we’re looking at — and open to discussing — any creative, fiscally responsible alternatives.”
Bagli and Confessore offered up more on the details, which stem from an internal memo produced by the Hudson Yards Development Corporation:
Like the project scuttled by Mr. Christie, this proposed tunnel would expand a regional transportation system already operating at capacity and would double the number of trains traveling between the two states during peak hours. But it would do so at about half the cost, an estimated $5.3 billion, according to a closely guarded, four-page memorandum circulated by the city’s Hudson Yards Development Corporation.
Unlike the old project, the new plan does not require costly condemnation proceedings or extensive tunneling in Manhattan, because the city is already building a No. 7 station at 34th Street and 11th Avenue, roughly one block from the waterfront. In July, a massive 110-ton tunnel boring machine completed drilling for the city’s $2.1 billion extension of the No. 7 line from Times Square to the new station.
Still, the proposal faces a number of daunting political, financial and logistical hurdles in an era of diminishing public resources. Mr. Christie, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Governor-elect Andrew M. Cuomo of New York would have to agree to make the tunnel a high priority and work in lock step to obtain the city, state and federal funds needed to make it happen.
On a practical level, this project, which I’d almost label a pie in the sky, faces numerous hurdles. First is the matter of $5.3 billion. Bagli and Confessore note that it “no longer seems possible” for the city to secure the $3 billion in federal transportation money New Jersey sacrificed when Gov. Chris Christie canceled the ARC Tunnel. At the least, the city will have to compete with everyone else in American for the dollars.
For this project to work for the city, New Jersey would have to kick in some money as well, but Christie seems intent on using the $3 billion he pledged to the ARC Tunnel for other state transportation projects already on the table. “The issue again will come down to what will Governor Christie say,” Jeffrey Zupan of the RPA said to The Times.
Both New York and New Jersey would have to engage in an environmental impact study as well, but Bloomberg hopes to use those developed for the ARC project. Bloomberg has yet to present the plan to current Gov. David Paterson or Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo. Paterson is said to be “intrigued” by this idea, according to one aide. “Getting cars off the road, reducing congestion and providing another access point for commuters between New York and New Jersey is going to benefit the region from a job-creation and development standpoint,” Lawrence Schwartz said to The Times.
On a certain level, I’m wary about this plan. It’s definitely thinking big, and the city needs to be thinking big. As far as transit is concerned, we stopped thinking big seventy years ago, and a direct subway connection to New Jersey would be a boon for the city. But other than the increased capacity an additional tunnel would bring, the subway isn’t the modality best suited to achieve that goal. The four-mile distance isn’t prohibitive for a subway, and as PATH has shown, it’s certainly possible to maintain a cross-Hudson rail line. A subway connection via Secaucus Junction doesn’t add the same value commuter rail tunnels with a multi-track terminal would.
Cynically, I want to say that this project seems designed to further support the real estate interests working to develop the Hudson Yards. Already, New Jersey commuters have to take New Jersey Transit to reach the subway, and they can get the 7th or 8th Ave. lines at Penn Station. This plan would simply mean that they would still have to take NJ Transit to reach the subway and would have to suffer through additional stops and a potential transfer before reaching midtown. Without a true one-seat ride, the time-saving benefits of the ARC plan are lessened.
Ultimately, I’d rather see the city pledge $5.3 billion to subway improvements in underserved areas within the five boroughs before it starts to look outside for expansions. Staten Island as well as areas of Queens and Brooklyn need subway routes, and the non-Manhattan connections between the outer boroughs need to be beefed up. As far as fantasy subway maps go, looking toward New Jersey would be last on my wishlist even if it’s first on the city’s.
That said, I can’t discount the importance of thinking big. Plans like these just aren’t proposed any longer, and if the city can figure out a way to make it work economically while ensuring the feasibility of this plan from a transportation standpoint, by all means do it. Even if it the impact isn’t as deep as that of the ARC Tunnel would have been, a 7 line subway extension to Secaucus would do wonders for cross-Hudson travel.
New York’s politicians have recognized that reality, and if they can build support, this idea could being to move forward. “This is a bold idea that must be given serious and immediate consideration,” Sen. Chuck Schumer said. “Building the ARC tunnel and extending the 7 line for a second stop are both critical to growing the New York economy for the coming decades, and I will fight to deliver any available federal funds to make that happen.”
