Archive for December, 2010
Dec
04
Queens, Brooklyn to enjoy long-awaited subway connections
Posted by: | CommentsAs far as minor subway construction projects go, none generate more interest among riders than the long-awaited transfer between the 7 at Court House Square and G at Court Square. The project was supposed to be completed in early 2010, and it has stretched ever onward. Today, though, NY1′s John Mancini brings word that the connection will finally open in February. Riders will now have an in-system transfer between the E, M, G and 7 and will no longer have to cross Jackson Ave. or pay two fares.
Meanwhile, Mancini tells us that another new subway connection — the pedestrian tunnel between Jay St. and Lawrence St. in Downtown Brooklyn — will open on December 10, ahead of schedule. This new transfer point between the A/C/F and R trains is part of a $108 million rehab of the Lawrence St.-MetroTech and Jay St.-Borough Hall Stations. When the project is completed, the new station complex will be called Jay St.-MetroTech. For a video on the new transfer point, check out this July post. Now if only Transit would connect the L and 3 trains at Junius and Livonia.
Dec
03
Wrapping up the week, previewing the weekend
Posted by: | CommentsAs the week draws to a close, I wanted to take the opportunity to once again plug my Jay Walder interview. You can find the various pieces here:
- Part 1: On the MTA’s fiscal state
- Part 2: On labor relations and advertising revenues
- Part 3: On the Second Ave. Subway and weekend work
- Part 4: On the death of the MetroCard
As Friday evening dawns, New Yorkers can look forward to a rare weekend of few service changes. In fact, Transit has increased service beginning this weekend and extending through December 19. That’s a nice holiday present for harried commuters and weekend travelers.
Still, there are a handful of changes, and they are below. As always, these come to me from New York City Transit and are subject to change without notice. Check signs in your local station and listen to on-board announcements. Subway Weekender has the map, and the Nostalgia Train runs on Sunday.
From 4 a.m. Saturday, December 4 to 10 p.m. Sunday, December 5, uptown trains operate express from East 180th Street to Gun Hill Road, skipping Bronx Park East, Pelham Parkway, Allerton Avenue and Burke Avenue stations due to track panel and tie installation north of Allerton Avenue. For service to these stations, customers may take the uptown 2 to Gun Hill Road and transfer to a downtown 2.
From 4 a.m. Saturday, December 4 to 11 p.m. Sunday, December 5, Flushing-bound 7 trains skip 82nd, 90th, 103rd, and 111th Streets due to switch renewal work at 111th Street. Customers traveling to these stations may take a Flushing-bound 7 to Junction Blvd. or Mets-Willets Point and transfer to a Manhattan-bound 7.
From 10:30 p.m. Friday, December 3 to 5 a.m. Monday, December 6, free shuttle buses replace A train service between Far Rockaway and Beach 98th Street due to station rehabilitations. A trains replace the S shuttle train between Broad Channel and Rockaway Park.
From 11 p.m. Friday, December 3 to 5 a.m. Monday, December 6, D trains run local between DeKalb Avenue and 36th Street, Brooklyn due to switch renewal north of Pacific Street and track work south of DeKalb Avenue.
From 4 a.m. Saturday, December 4 to 7 p.m. Sunday, December 5, J trains run every 20 minutes between Jamaica Center and 111th Street due to work at the fan plant north of 121st Street. The last stop for some Jamaica Center-bound J trains is 111th Street.
From 12:01 a.m. to 5 a.m. on Saturday, December 4, Sunday, December 5 and Monday, December 6, Manhattan-bound N trains are rerouted over the Manhattan Bridge from DeKalb Avenue to Canal Street due to Lawrence Street station rehabilitation. (No Manhattan-bound trains at Lawrence Street, Court Street, Whitehall Street, Rector Street, Cortlandt Street or City Hall. Customers may take the 4 train at nearby stations.)
From 11 p.m. Friday, December 3 to 5 a.m. Monday, December 6, N trains run local between DeKalb Avenue and 59th Street, Brooklyn due to switch work north of Pacific Street and track work south of DeKalb Avenue.
(Franklin Avenue Shuttle)
From 7 a.m. Saturday, December 4 to 7 p.m. Sunday, December 5, free shuttle buses replace the Franklin Avenue Shuttle between Franklin Avenue and Prospect Park, making all station stops. This is due to ground work on the track bed.
(Rockaway Park Shuttle)
From 10:30 p.m. Friday, December 3 to 5 a.m. Monday, December 6, A trains replace the Rockaway Park Shuttle (S) between Broad Channel and Rockaway Park due to station rehabilitations. Free shuttle buses replace A trains between Far Rockaway and Beach 98th Street.
Dec
03
Video of the Day: A platform glides by
Posted by: | CommentsVia Sarah Kaufman on Twitter comes this mesmerizing video. Shot on high-speed aboard a train at Bath Spa in Britain, this video captures the essence of a platform as a train slides by. The train was moving at around 35 miles per hour as the video was shot, and the people are frozen in time, watching and waiting to begin their commutes. For more on the video, check out the videographer’s explanation. I’d love to see this reproduced on board a New York City subway car. Imagine the looks on people’s faces as a 2 train slides into Times Square.
Dec
03
Covertly terror-proofing subway tunnels
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While you were sleeping, the MTA has terror-proofed its subway tunnels and bridges, according to a report in The Post. Transit reporter Tom Namako spills the beans on a $250-million plan to shore up the ten subway tunnels that pass under the East River.
Since 2004, agency contractors have been lining subway tubes — especially the 10 that run under the East River — with high-impact-bearing metal that would prevent collapse or massive flooding in the case of a terrorist attack, multiple sources said. And in the more shallow tunnels that aren’t fully dug into rock, like the F line that connects 63rd Street to Roosevelt Island, workers dropped massive slabs of rock and concrete on the riverbed to prevent disaster, the sources said.
The MTA’s security makeover isn’t limited to tunnels. The agency’s seven bridges are being “hardened” with plates and “collars” on cables that can resist a blast, sources said. The agency originally planned to use a lightweight, blast-resistant material to ring the tunnels — but sources said that various types of materials have been used.
One of more complicated tasks was determining which parts of the aged tunnels were bored deep into rock and which parts come close to the surface. “That presents several issues. With some tunnels, there’s a point where they come out to the surface and there’s different vulnerability there than with tunnels in bedrock,” one source said.
The work, was deemed 93 percent completed in January, has come in at $22 million over budget. “A lot has been done in regards to hardening, and that work continues to move forward,” MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz said to The Post.
Namako’s report follows an earlier revelation that the Port Authority has spent $600 million to to ring PATH tunnels in steel. Reported The Post, “Defense contractors — toiling in the cloak of darkness — are installing reinforced metal plates along the interior walls of the tunnels, and massive flood-prevention gates are being erected at either end of the two main lines that run from the World Trade Center and the West Village to Jersey City, sources said. The flood gates are designed to close off one or more tubes should water come surging in. That would protect other parts of the PATH system and its riders, which number about 250,000 a day.”
The PATH project, funded in part by the Department of Homeland Security and some stimulus dollars, carries a higher price tag than the MTA’s own security initiatives, but it has come in at nearly $300 million under budget. “The safety of our customers is the Port Authority’s highest priority, which is why we have spent over $5 billion since 9/11 upgrading the security systems at our facilities,” PATH COO Ernesto Butcher said. “Hardening our PATH rail tunnels is one example of that effort.”
Dec
03
Some thoughts on the direction of the MTA
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Jay Walder is the center of attention during an April ribbon-cutting ceremony. (Benjamin Kabak/Second Ave. Sagas)
Now that I’ve had an opportunity to run my complete interview with MTA CEO and Chair Jay Walder, I wanted to wrap up the series with my thoughts on the leadership at the MTA. The authority, routinely under fire by straphangers, politicians and everyone in between, has faced some rocky times, and the next legislative session could, as Streetsblog’s Noah Kazis detailed today, lead to more reappropriated and stolen transit funds. It’s not been an easy few years for the MTA.
Yet, despite tough economic times, the agency is currently growing its transit network. Within the next six to eight years, we’ll see part of a new subway line open along Second Ave. We’ll see Long Island Rail Road service into and out of Grand Central. We’ll see the 7 line reach the Far West Side and the Javits Center.
Beyond the expansion of service, we’ve also seen new customer-focused initiatives. Countdown clocks now tell riders exactly how long they must wait for trains, and commutes are less stressful because of it. A better website delivers real-time information about bus locations and service outages. New York City Transit even has its own Twitter account to amuse and inform its 10,000 followers. This is an MTA that has, sometimes kicking and screaming, entered a better era.
That isn’t to say that the authority is problem-free. As funds are tight, services have been eliminated even as capital spending is steady. We lost the V and W trains earlier this year and saw countless bus lines eliminated. We wait longer for off-hours trains and suffer through dirtier platforms that are in desperate need of rehab and renovation. For all of this, we’re getting a fare hike in four weeks. To make matters worse, even the major capital projects are hundreds of millions — if not billions — of dollars overbudget and years behind schedule.
All of which leads to two questions: How has Jay Walder performed as the first leader to act as both Chair and CEO of the MTA? Is he the right person for the job?
By and large, Walder has worked well with what he has, and what he has is not much. Walder came back from London with the promise of a fully funded MTA and a request or even a mandate to modernize the system. Only half of that vision has come to fruition, and his tenure is very much a work in progress. He is still, for instance, amidst an effort to overhaul and discard the MetroCard.
What drives many of Walder’s recent initiatives, even as service is scaled back and fares go up, is the need to, as he puts, make every dollar count. It’s important to replace the MetroCard with something more efficient because those are easy cost savings. By improving fare collection by just a few cents on the dollar, the MTA can generate upwards of a $100 million in added revenue every year. It shouldn’t take an economic crisis to address such an easily solvable problem, but change does not come easy to the MTA’s bureaucracy.
Where Walder has fallen short has been with labor. Right now, labor relations between the MTA and its workers are at a low point. The authority begrudgingly assented to an arbitration award for the TWU that required 11 percent in raises over three years, and Walder has overseen a drastic reduction in the number of personnel staffing stations. Even as modern technology can create a safer environment than a lone agent in his or her station, the appearance of a person can be a strong deterrent.
Soon the labor battle will rear its head again as the TWU’s contract comes due after 2011. Management at the MTA is expected to take a tough stance. It is there goal to maintain the labor spending levels, and that either means far fewer employees or no raises. No matter which path the authority chooses, Walder will have to convince a reluctant union to sacrifice, and if he cannot do that, then costs will continue to climb and climb and climb. Making friends with the workers will be of paramount importance.
Today, we know Walder, as we knew his predecessor Lee Sander, as a politically responsible choice to head a transit agency. His expertise lies in running a transit system and not in operating a real estate empire. He’s learned a lot during his first 14 months on the job, and he’ll be the first to tell you that. As we near the reign of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Walder’s job could be in danger, but if Cuomo were an astute politician, he would keep Walder on. Flaws and all, he’s one of the stronger allies the MTA has right now.
Dec
02
Nearly one-third of ARC money heading to roads
Posted by: | CommentsWhen Gov. Chris Christie canceled the ARC Tunnel over what he said were cost overrun concerns, many transit advocates believed he had an ulterior motive for canceling the project. Today, we learn that the conspiracy theories just might be true. As Bloomberg News’ Dustan McNichol reported, New Jersey will take $1.25 billion in money originally intended for the ARC Tunnel and use it on roads instead.
On the one hand, this development isn’t as outrageous as it could be. The $1.25 billion is coming from bonds issued by the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, and had ARC gone forward, this bond issue would have been one of the few in which highway funds were bonded for rail projects. “Historically, only turnpike projects have been funded with turnpike tolls,” Martin Robins of the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center said. “[ARC] was one of a few exceptions to the rule — by far the largest exception.”
On the other, well, investing in roads — and in particular, road expansion plans — without adding rail capacity will hinder the New York/New Jersey region. By improving and widening roads, New Jersey will be encouraging more cars to hit the roads, and as these cars head to the region’s center of commerce, congestion under the Hudson River will continue to gross worse. Sustainability and economic efficiency will take a significant hit. It’s true that the ARC Tunnel had design flaws, but spending on roads without increasing rail capacity will be disastrous for the region.
Dec
02
For Long Island Bus, a one-year reprieve?
Posted by: | CommentsAs Nassau County and the MTA continue their standoff over the funding future of Long Island Bus, the authority has made a peace offering. As Newsday reports today, the MTA has offered to run Long Island Bus through 2011 as long as Nassau County works to up its funding contributions. The MTA also wants Nassau County to that it is “solely responsible for funding its bus system, that it increase its subsidy in 2011, and that it meet its obligation to fully fund LI Bus during Mangano’s current term in office.”
The funding subsides have, of course, been at the heart of this dispute. While Nassau County owns the Long Island Bus system, it contributes just $9 million to its operating costs, and the MTA has to dole out over $25 million to cover the difference. Nassau County has, reports Alfonso Castillo, volunteered to raise its subsidy by $5 million beginning in 2012, but the MTA wants the county to fulfill its terms of the deal and fully fund the system. County leaders, no longer calling for Jay Walder’s resignation, said only that they “are continuing our discussions with the MTA as well as exploring a public-private partnership.”
Ultimately, the MTA won’t cut off Long Island Bus service. It has to give 60 days’ notice if it does, and the authority is working to maintain service levels. Will Nassau County take responsibility for a bus system will a daily weekday ridership of over 100,000? They should.
Dec
02
Walder on the death of the MetroCard
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A swipeless, credit card-based fare payment system could be in our subway-riding future.
Since taking his spot atop the MTA hierarchy, Jay Walder has overseen a push to bring 21st Century transit technology into a system that has long been resistant to modernization. It was that drive that led Gov. David Paterson to appoint Walder to the authority’s top spot, and while many headline-generating projects — the MetroCard replacement program, the countdown clocks — have been in the works for a few years, Walder has seen them move from concept to reality.
In a few years, we could be mourning the death of the MetroCard as transit agencies around the world look to move toward an international fare payment standard. For the past six months ending on Tuesday, the MTA conducted a pilot program with Mastercard’s PayPass and Visa’s payWave technologies. In the final segment of my interview with him, Walder discussed the future of fare payment technologies and the eventual end of the swipe.
Second Ave. Sagas: Improving the fare technology has been a major push of yours over the last year. Where do things stand now? People ask me all the time about improving bus loading times, getting rid of MetroCards, what the next-generation fare payments are going to look like. How soon do you see that technology coming online and what will it look like?
It may well be that the single most demonstrative benefit of a new fare collection system would be on the buses.
Jay Walder: I’m glad you raised bus loading times because it may well be that the single most demonstrative benefit of a new fare collection system would be on the buses. The loading times are horrific on buses, and it’s due, in a large extent, to the fare collection system. The difference is that a MetroCard can take several seconds to dip and an Oyster Card in London is 200 miliseconds. We’re talking about a fundamental shift if we’re able to do it.
The good news out of the pilot program that we’ve had running along the Lexington Ave. line and eight connecting bus routes and express buses is that the system has technologically proven to be satisfactory and has met the objectives that we set out to achieve. It operates off of a standard payments technological platform which I think is beneficial to us going forward. There are some wrinkles that are exactly the sort of thing you would get in a pilot process so better to be doing it in a pilot than otherwise.
The pilot will end at the end of this month, and that’s important because the history of some of the technology pieces is that we did a pilot to get to the next pilot and then we did the next pilot to get to the pilot after that. The point of the pilot ending is that we are concentrating on moving out into the production phase of getting this done, and I think you will see contracts early-to-mid next year that will be moving this forward for the subway and bus system. They will be done in a way that can and should work with the Port Authority and New Jersey Transit. So we can potentially break down the barrier of the Hudson River that way. Also, we’re moving forward with some tests on how we can incorporate some of this into the commuter rail environment as well so that we might think of changing our fare collection process there.
Second Ave. Sagas: Do you anticipate that it will look pretty similar to the Pay Pass system as it’s been set up for the trial?
Walder: There are two parts of it. The actual technology of how this looks will be pretty similar. It might be slightly different, but again we’re trying to stay with standard technology. We’re not trying to build something that’s a custom fit. The second part is that there are elements of what we need to do that are not the norm of what Pay Pass does and we need to find ways to be able to do that as well.
You’ve also seen, if you look at some of what we’re doing on bridges and tunnels right now, we’ve entered into a pilot program there with Visa at a number of stores across the metropolitan region that may well be a model for how we might use the retail environment to refill cards as well. We’re looking at a whole range of things that are involved in that. I think you’ll see us moving to production phase next year.
One of the things we have to work out is the degree to which we do this to a parallel, sort of a side-by-side to the MetroCard or do the degree to which we really do this and have it implemented in a wider range of places but don’t really look to turn it on until we know we can take away the MetroCard. We’re trying to figure that out right now.
Second Ave. Sagas: When will this come online? Is there a year?
Walder: I’m staying away from giving you a year for the moment because we really need to take all of the results of the pilot into account. We need to develop firm plans for the way we’re going to roll this out, and I’m a little worried about being a hostage to fortune unless I give our people time to look at that.
But the direction of travel is very clear, the benefits are very clear. It will be something that is simpler for customers and provides more flexibility in the way we utilize our fare structures. I expect a lot more flexibility in the way that you may be able to get cards, reload cards, and do anything like that, including using the Internet in much different ways in which we do right now. We’ll be using the retail environment in much better ways than we’re able to do it right now. We’ll be potentially moving much more of the payments process away from the MTA and into the payments industry which may be a beneficial thing for us to do. Finally, I think it provides a degree of service, customer service, that people will appreciate. I think anybody who uses a cross-town bus will immediately appreciate it.
This wraps up my interview with Jay Walder. In only 30 minutes, he and I discussed many topics, and hopefully, I’ll be able to sit down with him again in the near future to probe some issues that wasn’t able to cover. In case you missed it, in Part I, I looked at the MTA’s fiscal state; in Part II, we talked about labor relations and alternate revenue sources; and in Part III, I quizzed Walder on the Second Ave. Subway and various other construction plans.
Dec
01
Residents on 86th St. file suit over SAS entrances
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These proposed entrances for the Second Ave. Subway on 86th St. are the subject of a federal lawsuit.
Tenants and owners of an Upper East Side building that will one day have two entrances to the Second Ave. Subway in front of it have filed suit against the Federal Transit Authority and the MTA over what it claims are deficient responses to Freedom of Information requests. The suit stems from a two-year dispute over the MTA’s updated plan to build entrances along 86th St. instead of alone Second Ave., and while the legal issue itself — a FOIL appeal — is fairly straightforward, the underlying complaints are not.
The story begins in front of Yorkshire Towers, the building that spans the northeast side of Second Ave. between East 86th and 87th Streets. The building’s main entrances are on 86th St., and it features a U-shaped driveway as well as two other automobile access points to a subterranean parking garage. Originally, the 86th St. entrance would have been within the Food Emporium at the northeast corner.
A few concerns drove the MTA’s design changes. First, the authority scaled back the SAS from three tracks to two, thus necessitating a new technical examination of the station layouts. Second, the authority had determined that a combination of temporary construction easements and physical plant demands would have resulted in the shuttering of the supermarket and extensive structural work on the building. (For more, check out my 2007 coverage.)
After conducting a Supplemental Environmental Assessment, the authority determined that the proposed changes would have no adverse impact, and the feds signed off on the study. Despite community opposition to the plan, the MTA put forth the design seen above at the top of this post.
For the last few years, the Yorkshire Towers Tenants Association has tried to FOIL the documents that underlie the assumptions in the SEA study, and the MTA has, they allege, not obliged. Alleging that they’ve been “stonewalled,” the plaintiffs are requesting the documents because they believe the findings are fault.
Therein lies the rub. While the MTA is required to respond to the FOIL request, the tenants’ association is searching for a bigger fish to fry. “The RMA” — the Residential Midblock Alternative — says the filing, “would create unprecedented and substantial impacts to an area with a completely different residential character than the normal commercial intersections where most subway entrances are located.” Furthermore, the RMA would impact “four active driveways,” the Yorkshire plaintiffs allege.
Claiming that the MTA’s decision to eschew an RMA at 72nd St. is inconsistent with their proposal to go forward with one on 86th St., the Yorkshire plaintiffs believe the MTA’s FOIL responses to be inadequate. The Yorkshire requests are lengthy. You can read their full correspondence right here (PDF). They supplied only the MTA’s table of contents as evidence of a deficient FOIL response (PDF).
It seems to me though that the residents are by and large concerned about the sidewalks in front of their buildings and the driveway access. As the schematics show, the entrances will point away from the building entrances but will block the driveway’s sightlines, something the plaintiffs say will have a “serious[] impact[]” on “parents with children, older people and safety concerns.” It strikes me though as NIMBYism. They don’t want the subway access points in front of the building even if people won’t be walking past the building’s entrance.
I’ve included the lawsuit after the jump. Legitimate gripes or a typical “not on my sidewalk-and-driveway” complaint? You decide. Read More→
Dec
01
Transit to increase weekend service for December
Posted by: | CommentsYou wouldn’t know it from the warm, rainy day that has descended upon New York, but the calendar flipped to December today. With the final month of the year comes the holiday shopping and tourism season. Tourism spikes, and as track work slows down, subway travel climbs as more people fill the city. To meet demand and make travel more pleasant for everyone, Transit announced today that it will be increasing weekend subway service this month.
The services increases start this weekend and will last for the next three weekend through December 19th. During this stretch, headways on the IRT local routes — the 1 and 6 trains — will see wait times drop from eight to six minutes. The 2 and 3 trains will operate every five minutes instead of six, and the 4 and 5 trains will arrive every four minutes instead of every five. On the lettered lines, E service will increase from every ten minutes on Saturday evening and Sunday to every 7.5 minutes throughout the weekend. F and Q train riders will see also see waits shortened from 10 minutes to 7.5 minutes.
The MTA says ridership increases in December are driven largely by those out for holiday shopping. “This is an extremely busy time of year for weekend travel and we are increasing our scheduled weekend service in areas of historically high ridership,” NYC Transit President Thomas Prendergast said. “By adding extra trains we are able to increase capacity and also shorten the wait time for riders.”
