Archive for March, 2011
Mar
03
Meet the Assembly’s new Authorities Oversight boss
Posted by: | CommentsFor much of the past decade, Richard Brodsky had been in charge of a legislative check on the MTA. As head of the Assembly Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions, the Westchester Democrat had oversight power over the MTA and made sure to use his bully pulpit to push the authority toward improvement. He was, however, anti-congestion pricing, and while his good government initiatives should be applauded, he didn’t have a great grip on the financial picture. He stepped down to run an unsuccessful campaign for Attorney General, and James Brennan, a 27-year committee vet from Brooklyn, took his place.
This week, The Bond Buyer sat down for an interview with Brennan, and he talked about his oversight philosophy. So far, he’s saying all the right things when it comes to transit. “I’m a devoted supporter of mass transit because it’s the backbone of the metropolitan area,” he said. “The MTA’s got major capital budget shortfalls going forward which we’re probably not going to deal with right now.”
Recognizing that the MTA’s current financial model which relies heavily on real estate tax revenue cannot support something as necessary as the subways, Brennan is willing to look outside of the box. In fact, he was a congestion pricing supporter a few years back but didn’t mention specifics in the interview. “Real estate transactions have proven to be too volatile a financing source for them and they’re going to need something going forward that’s more stable,” he said. Brennan certainly does, as one member of the Citizens Budget Commission said have “big shoes to fill,” but for now, it sounds as though he’s up to the task. That’s welcome news indeed from Albany.
Mar
03
34th Street: The life and death of a Great Idea
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Project opponents believe the 34th St. Transitway will blight the area. (Image via NYC DOT)
Once upon a time, the Department of Transportation had a Great Idea for 34th St. The Department recognized that this oft-choked road could go for some reengineering in order to deliver cars to where they want to go and better service the tens of thousands of commuters who use 34th Street-bound buses while allowing the pedestrians that drive the businesses to flourish. Thus, a Transitway was born.
Conceptually, the ideas seemed simple enough. Most traffic west of 5th Ave. is heading to the Lincoln Tunnel and most traffic east of 5th Ave. is bound for the Midtown Tunnel. The street, therefore, would go one way in its respectively direction while 34th St. from 5th to 6th — an area bound by Macy’s, the Manhattan Mall and the Empire State Building — would be closed to most traffic. A two-way, two-lane bus-only lane would span the length of the island.
For the people who ride and the people who walk, this would have been a grand experiment in restoring the streets to the people who make them thrive. But the residents, for selfish reasons, and business owners with some practical concerns that could have been addressed, did not like it. Coop and community boards played the senior citizen card. How could old ladies to get to their door steps behind bus lanes if taxis couldn’t reach them? What happens with deliveries? Won’t a wall of buses lead to constant blight?
I’ve sparred with these claims in the past. Basically, they amount to glorified NIMBYism. New Yorkers hate change, and they particularly hate being told that the streets belong primarily to people and to modes of transportation that carry more people and not to cars. The battle has grown fierce over the last few weeks as Steve Cuozzo issued an insanely wrong critique of the Transitway that Streetsblog quickly dispatched. But the opponents had the Post on their side, and as Janette Sadik-Khan and DOT took heat over the Prospect Park bike lanes, the Transitway came under fire.
Today, we learn dismayingly that DOT is starting to cave. As Michael Grynbaum reported, the Department has eliminated the pedestrian-only space between 5th and 6th Avenues, and it is reassessing the plan to usher in the city’s first physically separated bus lanes. “The design has evolved as we continue to work with the community,” Sadik-Khan said to The Times. “We want the public process to play itself out.”
For now, the city is mum on the fate of the Transitway. They will present revised design of the Transitway at a March 14th forum, and the plans will be finalized by the end of the year, four years after DOT first announced the 34th St. concept. Progress is slow in New York, and it’s hard to call it forward-looking by now.
Beneath the name-calling and the bitter debate, I wonder what’s really going on here. This project has been met with an obscene of community resistance from what many contend is the wrong or incomplete community, and the minority — a vocal and well-connected minority at that — is asserted its voice over the greater good of the city.
First, DOT does deserve a tip of the cap, in a sense, for listening to the concerns of those whose opinions it solicited. It hasn’t been a very movable participant in the redesign of New York’s streets lately, and to heed the public will lead to better cooperation.
That said, they’re not asking everyone they should. As Cap’n Transit has been pointing out for six weeks now, DOT has failed to consider how Queens and Staten Island commuters should have a say in this project. Over 33,000 people a day from Staten Island and Queens take buses that lead to 34th St. in order to get to work, and the opinions of those folks who would benefit most from improved transit aren’t actively courted by DOT.
As the Cap’n wrote, “Why did they limit the “community” to people living right near 34th Street? Why concede the frame that the only “community” that matters is the tiny group of people who really care about curbside car access? And once they did, why did they then let [Corey] Bearak in? They wound up with a bunch of entitled NIMBYs screaming about not being able to get bottled water delivered by truck, and a guy who seems to be paid to attack the Bloomberg Administration – and no express bus riders to balance them out!”
People and buses are being shunted aside by drivers along 34th Street.
Meanwhile, if any project demands a hard line from DOT, it’s this one. As the Cap’n noted last week, 34th Street could be a bellwether for the city. From personal safety to faster commute times to cleaner air and a nicer environment for pedestrians, this project matters. From a modeshare perspective, it’s a no-brainer. Cars are vastly outnumbered by pedestrians and buses, and cars, which are trying to escape 34th St., do not contribute to the area’s economy.
Right now, this project sits in the balance. If DOT unveils a new version without physically separated bus lanes, the city might as well throw in the towel on Select Bus Service. A loss here simply means the people who cry the most and scream the loudest win even when their arguments shouldn’t carry the day, and it means that buses — used by over two million New Yorkers daily — won’t get the upgrades they need to become more viable. The long-term ramifications of that decision will echo well beyond the hallowed curbs of 34th Street.
Mar
02
MTA planning steep cuts to Long Island Bus
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Nassau County has not invested in its own bus system. (Graph via TSTC)
The game of chicken between the cash-strapped MTA and Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano is about to leave approximately 16,000 residents of Nassau County without bus service. As Newsday reported this morning, the authority has failed to reach a funding agreement with the delinquent county and will cut 25 of Long Island Bus’ 48 routes.
According to Alfonso Castillo’s report, Bethpage, Elmont and Lindenhurst will be left without bus service and two other lines will enjoy weekday-only buses. “I can’t tell you that people will not be hurt by this. People will be hurt by this,” MTA CEO and Chair Jay Walder said to Newsday. “We can only provide the services that are being funded.”
Castillo has more on the long-standing conflict between Mangano and the MTA:
Walder said the bare-bones bus services are all the MTA can afford to run, given that Nassau County contributes only $9.1 million to the bus system’s $141-million annual budget. By comparison, Suffolk pays about $24 million toward its bus system’s $48.6 million budget.
MTA officials say the service cuts will save $12.2 million a year, including salaries of more than 200 LI Bus employees who will be laid off. Walder said the cuts target lines with the fewest passengers. Service for about 85 percent of riders will be kept. Because Nassau ‘s paratransit bus service – Able-Ride – mirrors fixed bus routes, about 18 percent of disabled bus riders also face losing their transportation.
Walder said the decision follows several failed attempts for more than a year to convince County Executive Edward Mangano that Nassau must give LI Bus the same support other counties give their bus services. “The reality is in this case the county has a mismatch. It has put in the funding for one level of service, but it expects a level of service that is much larger than that,” Walder said.
Once upon a time, Nassau County vowed to cover the difference between fare revenue and operating costs for the LI Bus routes, but lately, the suburban county has scaled back its contributions. Mangano’s office claims it cannot find the $24 million necessary to support bus service, and it continues to look toward private operators as a potential way out of this problem. As of early November, three companies had submitted bids.
Meanwhile, the MTA is defending this action and has highlighted how the county has failed to compromise. The agency has cut administrative costs by 33 percent and has been attempted to eke every last dollar out of the Long Island Bus holdings. “At the end of the day, even at the lowest possible costs, it’s costing more than the county is providing,” Walder said.
The people who stand to lose the most also spoke out against the cuts. As one Nassau County resident spoke of her decision to move to Forest Hills for the sake of her commute, another expressed his dismay. “I think it’s the most ridiculous thing people have ever thought of,” a Levittown bus rider said. “This is like crippling you from getting to work.”
The MTA will hold a hearing on the cuts on March 23. It’s still not too late for legislative action, but timing is slowly running short as the MTA plans to vote on the cuts in April. “It’s devastating,” Kate Slevin of the Tri-State Transprotation Campaign said. “These are people who are struggling as it is – a lot of the working poor, lots of students, lots of senior citizens who can no longer drive.”
Mar
02
MTA’s fiberoptics network already obsolete
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Transit's new countdown clocks are a welcome addition to the system, but the technology infrastructure behind them is already out of date. (Photo via New York City Transit)
The MTA’s not-so-new fibers optics-based communications infrastructure is already out of date even before the system is fully operative, the Daily News reports today. Work on the network, which cost $370 million is $76 million overbudget, first started in 2000 — eons ago in technology years — and will be completed later this year.
The countdown clocks are its public face, but behind the scenes, as it improves internal communications and emergency response preparedness, the system already needs an upgrade. “Due to technology evolution and other factors, many components in this network are at or nearing their end of life,” one authority document obtained by the News says.
Donohue has more:
In the document, a request for information, the agency asked technology companies for advice on designing a “next-generation” communications network and fixing shortcomings with the existing one, which is up and running in much of the subway system.
The MTA on Tuesday stressed the existing network – called ATM/SONET and designed by Siemens Transit Technologies – is functioning and carrying beneficial data, like next-train arrival times, at more than 100 stations…
MTA documents say existing problems include:
- Some of the equipment no longer is being made, which could make it more difficult and costly to maintain or upgrade.
- The network may not have enough capacity for remote viewing of the growing amount of video from surveillance cameras.
“This will put a large strain on [NYC Transit's] current network, which was not originally designed to support the video capacity needs,” the October document states.
The numbers on the cost overruns are both staggering and unsurprising. The first phase of the project is four years behind schedule and $36 million over budget. The second part will cost $40 million more than expected and isn’t delivering the same public benefits — in the form of countdown clocks — that Phase 1 provided.
James Vacca, the chair of the City Council’s Transportation Committee, had some words to share. “Delays don’t just add millions of dollars to projects. They also lead to products that are obsolete even before anyone hits the ‘on’ switch,” he said. “That’s unacceptable.”
The problem with any technology project is that the product is often obsolete before anyone hits the “on” switch, but in this case, the delays have led to litigation and headlines for years. Now, as Donohue notes, the promised safety benefits of this project may go unrealized without further investment. It is, in every sense of the word, one giant snafu.
It’s worth noting too Vacca’s point. The MTA must get its capital house in order if it wants to find a way to fund the rest of the current five-year plan and close the $10 billion gap. When this project was first contracted out, Virgil Conway was the MTA Chair, and sense then, Peter Kalikow and Dale Hemmerdinger have come and gone. It’s tough to provide oversight with so much change at the top.
This is exactly the situation though for which Jay Walder was brought to New York. The countdown clocks are a welcome addition to the system, but the technology behind it with its behind-the-scenes uses will have to be maintained and brought in line with current technology standards. That is so small task indeed.
Mar
02
After delays, Metro-North’s M8 finally debut
Posted by: | CommentsRelief is coming to the New Haven Line.
Nearly a month to the day since Metro-North announced it would have to scale back service amidst a rough winter and a maintenance crunch, the MTA yesterday unveiled the first set of M8s to enter service. With the debut of the new rolling stock, the MTA also announced that full rush hour service would return to the New Haven Line beginning on Monday.
The new cars, though, long billed as the MTA’s commuter fleet’s next-generation rolling stock, received top billing yesterday. They deserved too after extensive delays in both funding and testing had them on blocks for months. “These cars have successfully completed extensive, systematic tests. The many challenges that were revealed during intensive, real-world operations of the most complex rail car in North America on the continent’s busiest rail corridor, have been resolved,” Metro-North President Howard Permut said. “This testing took over one year to ensure that the M-8 will provide quality service for its 30 year life. We plan to put more of these cars into service as soon as they complete individual quality assurance testing.”
The new cars, says the authority, make for a nice ride. In a press release, the agency described the upgrades:
Inside the cars, customers will notice are roomier, high-back, contoured seats with individual headrests, curved arm rests anchored at both ends in the upholstery. They will see larger windows and better lighting, especially in the vestibules for improved safety. Other features include LED displays that show the next stop and automated audio announcements. Each seat is outfitted with electrical outlets, grab bars, coat hooks and curvaceous luggage racks. The cars also are equipped with an intercom system that customers can use to contact the crew in emergencies.
Outside, customers will see prominent electronic destination signs and hear external public address speakers. Single leaf doors provide high reliability and less susceptibility to snow intrusion. The color scheme is a vibrant red, the historical color of the New Haven Railroad, predecessor to Metro-North…
In the M-8, critical, solid-state, computer-controlled electrical components are protected within the car body rather than exposed under the car so that inclement weather will not interfere with their operation.
Redundancies are built into the cars to ensure continued operation if a system malfunctions. For example, as in the M-7s, each car has two, modular air conditioning units so that if one fails, the other will continue to cool the car until the broken one can be removed and replaced with a spare. Older cars such as the M-2s have one AC unit that was integral to the car so that the entire car had to be taken out of service while repairs were made.
The cars, which cost $2.23 million each, were first ordered back in August of 2006 when the MTA and Kawasaki executed a 300-car, $761-million deal. Last month, the authority exercised two options — one for 42 more cars and another for 38 — that will bring the total to 380 cars. The authority expects to have 26 cars in service this spring with 80 total by the end of 2011. All 380 will be in service by the fall of 2013.
“I am thrilled to be able to introduce a new era of comfort and reliability for New Haven Line riders,” said Jeff Parker, Connecticut’s Transportation Commissioner. “Even a single eight-car train set will help alleviate crowding and bring hope to our beleaguered New Haven Line customers. These cars are the first of the new breed of technologically advanced trains that will serve us for decades to come.”
It’s been a long trip for the M-8s, and New Haven riders have borne the brunt of the delay. Now that these cars are in place and hitting the rails, though, Metro-North, the nation’s most popular commuter rail system, should enjoy smoother sailing in the years ahead.
Mar
01
Supreme Court torpedoes NYC’s hybrid taxi plan
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A hybrid taxi roams the streets of New York City in 2007. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)
My first true exposure to the politics and economics of transportation came during my junior year in college when I took a course on the automobile. For my final project, I wrote a detailed treatment of New York City’s taxicab industry and explored why it should be an aggressive first-mover in the environmental space by hybridizing its entire fleet. If you care to read it, it’s right here as a Word Document.
The city obliged my early transportation whims when it became to implement such a policy, but as with any change, cab drivers threw a few. The hybrids didn’t have enough trunk space; they were too expensive to maintain; they can’t withstand the abuse of daily work on the pothole-laden streets of New York. Yadda yadda yadda.
Eventually, a lawyer figured out a way to challenge the city’s move by highlighting a preemption argument under the Clean Air Act. The city, said a federal judge, was precluded from enforcing gas mileage standards because Congress had preempted the field via federal legislation. It seems crazy to think that a federal court would find the Clean Air Act a preemption of New York City’s efforts at regulating the taxi industry, but there go.
The city tried to enforce a different policy — offering cab drivers financial incentives to switch to hybrids. That effort too was deemed a “de facto mandate” in violation of the city’s inability to regulate vehicle emissions standards, and while New York could license hybrid taxis and include them on the allowable list of vehicles, the city could not mandate them. Of course, an appeal to the Supreme Court followed.
Yesterday, the high court declined to hear the case, thus ending an important environmental effort for now. City officials were upset. “I am bitterly disappointed,” Taxi and Limousine Commission Chair David S. Yassky said. “New York City is trying to reduce literally millions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions, and the Supreme Court has told us we can’t do it. I cannot imagine when Congress wrote the Clean Air Act that they intended to handcuff states and cities trying to clean their own air.”
Michael Bloomberg too expressed his displeasure with the ruling, and he appealed, off-handedly, to a theory of federalism in which states server as laboratories for federal policy in a democracy. The cities are those that are addressing real-world problems like climate change and energy policy,” the Mayor said. “The federal government seems unable to address those issues.”
So what’s next? Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is on the case. Via Twitter, she said she would again pursue an effort to gain Congressional approval of her Green Taxis Act. She attempted to usher in this piece of legislation in 2009, but the Senate did not act on it. The bill would “authorize States or political subdivisions thereof to regulate fuel economy and emissions standards for taxicabs,” and the full text is available online. Hopefully, this measure can gain approval in DC.
Meanwhile, the city is moving forward with its plans for the Taxi of Tomorrow. The Karsan design has been chosen as the people’s favorite, and the city will soon make its determination from one of the finalists. If the winner is fuel efficient and offers a more sustainable ride, perhaps all of this litigation will have been for naught. Still, the city should be able to mandate its own fuel standards for its taxi fleet, and this non-decision by the Supreme Court is both unsurprising and dismaying.
The Karsan taxi, designed specifically for the Taxi of Tomorrow project, won the support of the public.
Mar
01
Walder: To save $100M, layoffs may loom
Posted by: | CommentsIn my overview of Jay Walder’s trip to Albany, I mentioned briefly the MTA CEO and Chair’s statement on the MTA’s $100 million gap. Because the state reappropriated dedicated transit revenue, the authority is going to have to scramble to save money, and for now, fares and service levels will remain constant.
“We will not look to service cuts and we will not look to fare increases. We will look, as we have been doing, for ways that we can continue to reduce our cost structure,” Walder said. “Well we’ve said and I’ll continue to say is that we’re working on a plan right now to be able to deal with that.”
As the Daily News wrote, TWU head John Samuelsen took that as a shot across the union’s bow. Samuelsen called Walder’s comments “blackmail” and claimed that by cutting personnel, service would suffer. “The only place that they can get that money from is the maintenance side of the house,” he said. “The fleet is already in pretty bad shape.”
Two points in reply: First, the fleet itself isn’t in that bad a shape. With the new rolling stock, mean distances between failures have dropped precipitously, and the MTA is still spending on car maintenance. The rest of the infrastructure, though, is suffering. Station cleanliness is nearly non-existent, and while the component-based repair program has started, it’s slow going. Without an infusion of capital cash or the manpower to fulfill demand, the system will degrade.
The second point is one Isaac left in this comment yesterday. Noting how the TWU, Transportation Alternatives and the Straphangers are all a part of the Rider Rebellion, he spoke of the tension amongst the three groups. The latter two support riders while the TWU is — and should be — protecting the workers. MTA innovation often leads to fewer expenditures on personel, and the TWU has rightly protested there.
Here, if the trade-off is between jobs and service or fare levels, the MTA should do what it can to protect the transportation services the riders need. If that means layoffs until the economy recovers, that is a trade-off we must be willing to take as long as service levels do not suffer. The rider and the need to travel should remain of paramount importance right now.
Mar
01
Mr. Walder goes to Albany
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When Jay Walder spoke to reporters following the December 2010 MTA Board meeting, he discussed the MTA’s looming capital problem. The authority’s five-year construction plan that works to both maintain and expand the existing system has been funded only through the end of 2011, and it still suffers from a $10 billion gap. Without action from Albany well before the end of the year, the MTA will have a crisis on its hands.
“We would need, in going forward with any contracts, to ensure that we have any money not just to start a contract but to complete a contract,” he said. “I do not believe we have the capacity to bond out further off of our existing revenue sources.”
Walder added that by the latter part of the year, the authority will need funding commitments from the state. If not, as Michael Horodniceanu, president of MTA Capital Construction reiterated last week, the authority will have to begin slowing down its projects. They won’t cease work entirely, but things will not move ahead on schedule.
Yesterday, the MTA CEO and Chairman went to Albany for what seems like his monthly grilling session. Apparently, our state senators don’t get tired of repeating themselves because the hearing quickly devolved into familiar territory. Suburban representatives went after the payroll tax that their own legislative body approved while city reps rightly expressed concern over the future of the MTA’s capital funding problems.
As the Wall Street Journal reported, Sen. Marty Golden, a new representative on the state’s capital oversight board, asked Walder if the MTA had begun to talk with Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s team. While I’ve given Golden a tough time in the past for his unwillingness to support revenue-generating measures, he understand the importance of the capital project and recognizes that it will both keep our subways running and lead to jobs for city construction workers.
Walder said he has broached the topic with Cuomo’s team, but funding solutions are not yet on the horizon. “I have not had conversations as to avenues of funding for the capital program,” he said. The ever-present panacea of congestion pricing or East River bridge tolls would generate enough revenue to bond out the capital plan. Will the state follow through?
As the MTA head though spoke about the funding challenges on the operating side as well, he again vowed to keep service levels and fares constant. “We will not look to service cuts and we will not look to fare increases. We will look, as we have been doing, for ways that we can continue to reduce our cost structure,” he said. “Well we’ve said and I’ll continue to say is that we’re working on a plan right now to be able to deal with that.”
But suburban politicians again grilled him on the payroll tax as though it were a creature of Walder’s creation. In fact, the MTA CEO wasn’t in the country when the state legislature approved the controversial plan. But this is a point oft repeated that Albany doesn’t seem to understand. Three weeks after the Senate performed a similar farce, the Assembly went at it. “We are paying greater freight in the suburbs for the services that are basically New York City services,” Assembly rep Nancy Calhoun said.
The Rockland County representative wasn’t the only one raising a stink. “It’s killing businesses and it’s making Long Island harder and harder to afford to live there,” Al Graf, an assembly rep from Long Island, said.
Walder though laid out the case for the payroll tax. It isn’t that New Yorkers enjoy the tax; we don’t. But the MTA has been left by Albany with no choice. The Senate and Assembly could have pushed for a more equitable congestion pricing plan, but they opted to close a budget hole that isn’t going away with something far more controversial. “I do not believe that you can take that resource out of the MTA without having a devastating impact upon the region and regional economy,” Walder stressed.
The solution is almost too simple: In exchange for lowering or even eliminating the tax in suburban counties, the city should implement some form of tolling across the East River and into Manhattan’s so-called Central Business District. That money could be used to offset the gap in the operations budget created by a reduced tax revenue.
Of course, then we arrive at the problem of congestion pricing. The MTA needs money for both the capital budget and its operations ledger. The same dollars can’t go to both. Which side will give out first?
