Archive for May, 2011
May
03
Nissan’s least popular model to be Taxi of Tomorrow
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The Nissan NV200 is reported to be the Taxi of Tomorrow.
The Nissan NV200, the least popular model of the three finalists, will be the city’s Taxi of Tomorrow, Mayor Bloomberg is set to announce today. After a lengthy RFP process and a public comment period, the city chose to ignore the popular vote to go with a car that seems to be practical, cheap and ugly to replace the Crown Victoria. On the bright side, the Nissan NV200, with a fuel economy of around 35 miles per gallon and the option to go electric, is far more fuel efficient than the current fleet, but the design is lacking in both creativity and accessibility.
The city’s decision to award Nissan with an exclusive ten-year deal to provide the city with bulky, ugly taxi vans that will enter service in 2014 is not without controversy. In terms of popular support, Nissan’s vehicle not only finished third out of three among voters but did so by a significantly large margin. Only 236 out of more than 19,000 voters supported the design. Meanwhile, city officials are already alleging a conflict of interest in the decision.
This news, though, comes as little surprise as in recent days it seemed clear that the city was leaning toward an established manufacturer of taxis for this contract. As The Times reported yesterday, the city had rejected the Turkey-based Karsan’s design, complete with see-through moon roof, over viability concerns. Karsan has yet to make a car for an American market, and despite promises of a factory in Brooklyn, the company reportedly would likely not be able to meet the demands of the Taxi of Tomorrow program.
Meanwhile, the Nissan car, in use in Asia and Europe, is far from perfect. From a design perspective, it’s bulky and ugly, and it’s tough to say this is an “iconic design that will identify the new taxi with New York City,” as the original project guideline requested. It takes up a lot of space on the road — not necessarily a bad thing as its sliding doors should eliminate potential “doorings” in accidents with cyclists. But the car is not ADA-compliant, and advocates for disabled riders are not happy with it. In fact, because this is a comprehensive city-based scheme, it could be vulnerable to a legal challenge.
Back in November, Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke guardedly about the competition. “Each is promising, but none is perfect,” he said. “We are not obliged to go with anything if it does not meet our needs.” It appears as though the city has decided to go forward with a vehicle, albeit one I find uninspiring, boring and flawed. For a project that’s supposed to be forward-looking, the design is decidedly and rather bulky. The taxi fleet deserves better.
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Update (4:10 p.m.): Reuters has a story up with the official announcement. Nothing too exciting, but the Mayor spoke highly of Nissan’s offerings. “It’s going to be the safest, most comfortable, and most convenient cab the City has ever had,” he said. “We started this process to leverage our taxi industry’s purchasing power to get the highest quality taxi. The new taxis will be custom-designed to meet the specific demands of carrying 600,000 passengers a day.”
May
03
New placards promote MTA improvements
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When the MTA introduced its new “Improving, Non-Stop” house ad campaign earlier this year, they did so, as I wrote at the time, with an eye toward Albany. The authority knew it had a an unfunded capital program with a $10-$13 billion gap, and officials knew they had to convince those who control the purse strings that the MTA is both moving forward and badly in need of that money. The PR campaign is going haltingly.
On the one hand, straphangers have taken to vandalizing the posters. They aren’t going unnoticed, but the message has been met with skepticism. After all, no matter how many improvements the MTA makes, people always want more. They want more frequent trains, better technology, cleaner stations, the works. On the other hand, the MTA still needs its money.
And so, the authority is upping the message. New placards have gone up in trains throughout the system with the tagline “What’s New?” They promote the real-time bus-tracking pilot along the B63 in Brooklyn, the cashless tolling system on the Henry Hudson Bridge, the Select Bus Service routes and consolidated agency phone numbers, to name but a few. Of course, riders are taking just as kindly to the new campaign as they did the old.
As Michael Grynbaum wrote last week, a few intrepid editors have determined that the answer to “What’s new?” is higher fares. He writes of the disconnect between the message, the medium and those reading it:
The graffiti points to the vast public relations difficulties of an agency whose very nature — operating a system that virtually every New Yorker depends on — makes it a lightning rod for all manner of criticism, deserved and not.
The agency, increasingly wary of politicians’ criticism and less than flattering news coverage, has been trying a direct-marketing approach in making riders aware of the work it is doing to improve the transportation experience.
The new slate of promotional posters, to be displayed in subways, buses and commuter rails and on some station walls, is a complement to the agency’s “Improving, Nonstop” campaign, started earlier this year. The idea was to remove outdated slogans — “Going Your Way” is now gone — and create a more streamlined, simpler aesthetic for the agency to inform its clientele.
“There was a feeling that the M.T.A. hadn’t been as effective as we could be in communicating things that are going on to our customers,” said Jeremy Soffin, a spokesman for the transportation authority. “This is a way of trying to improve that.”
Some of this conflict stems from years of underinvestment. Because the MTA had a huge infrastructure deficit in the 1980s, it couldn’t keep up with the technological advances of the day. Thus, when the money started to flow, the capital investments were made primarily to save a decrepit system. Now that the system is halfway between decrepit and Good Repair, riders want more.
Meanwhile, Albany isn’t too willing to give more. The city and state have reduced their fiscal commitments to the MTA over the past 15 years, and with money tight across the state, that trend isn’t stopping any time soon. But without a capital plan and funding, the transit system will slide. Hopefully, the answer to “What’s New?” will soon be “a fully funded five-year capital plan.” We can’t afford to go forward without one.
May
02
Queens commuters growing impatient over Court Sq. transfer
Posted by: | CommentsThe new transfer between the E, M, G and 7 trains at Court Square was supposed to open in February. In March, the MTA renamed the 23rd St.-Ely Ave. station in anticipation of an April opening. Now, as May 2 is upon us, the transfer remains completed but closed as Citi Corp., the owner of the building through which the new transfer runs, and the MTA have failed to come to terms on a Memorandum of Understanding that would dictate the use of the space. It is a bureaucratic mess.
In the Queens Chronicle this week, Elizabeth Daly delves into the conflict over the transfer. She speaks with antsy commuters who have waited years for an enclosed escalator transfer and rehashes the vague details surrounding the conflict between Citi and the MTA. While the authority claims the entrance will open this spring, local politicians are annoyed. “It’s already a year late,” State Sen. Michael Gianaris said. “We shouldn’t let bureaucratic inertia slow down infrastructure improvement.”
Ultimately, this is a tale of the conflict between the MTA’s work and private interests at its finest. Citi is apparently hesitant to agree to certain obligations over entrance maintenance to which the MTA asks all of its real estate developers to adhere. One day, a transfer will open. One day.
May
02
FTA: NJ owes ARC millions and interest
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A schematic of the ARC Tunnel's Manhattan terminal. (Click to enlarge)
In a 52-page decision released on Friday, the Federal Transit Administration has determined that New Jersey must repay all of the $271 million the state had spent on the ARC Tunnel project before Gov. Chris Christie canceled the project this fall. Furthermore, if the state fails to pay the money soon, the FTA will begin to charge interest on amounts due at a steep rate. To fight this ruling, Gov. Christie, who has already spent close to $1 million on legal fees, could appeal the ruling in federal court.
Both The Record and The Times reported on the ruling this past weekend, and I’ve embedded the document along with a letter from Ray LaHood, the Secretary of Transportation, below. The ruling explores why New Jersey is legally obligated to return the funds and is appealable. The federal courts would have jurisdiction over the matter. Essentially, though, this move raises the stakes in the fight over what was to be the country’s largest public works project.
Patrick McGeehan from The Times had more:
In a letter to New Jersey’s senators and representatives in Congress, Ray LaHood, the transportation secretary, warned that his department had “many tools under the Debt Collection Act to recoup the lost federal taxpayer funds, including withholding future state funding from a wide variety of sources.” But “in consideration of the current economic challenges burdening New Jersey,” Mr. LaHood added, he hoped to “develop a workable payment schedule” and avoid having to resort to those collection methods.
Mr. LaHood should not expect to find a check in the mail any time soon. Mr. Christie, who was in Massachusetts on Friday to speak at Harvard University, declared in January that “we are not paying the money back.” Kevin Roberts, a spokesman for Mr. Christie, said the governor’s staff would “review the decision before determining next steps moving forward.” One option is to sue the department to try to stop it from seeking to collect, but Mr. Roberts would not say if a lawsuit was being considered.
In the meantime, interest on the debt will pile up quickly. The federal government currently charges interest at a rate of 1 percent a year, which in this case amounts to more than $50,000 a week.
According to LaHood’s letter to Senator Frank Lautenberg, the crux of the matter concerns Christie’s representations to the FTA in previous years. Despite rising cost estimates in early 2010, the Governor pledged full support for the ARC Tunnel in meetings with LaHood in February, March and April of last year. Six months later, the project was off, and LaHood could not convince Christie to change his mind, and LaHood took a hard line against Christie in the letter.
“Any notion that the potential for cost growth constituted new and emergent information when the Governor made his decision is simply not accurate,” he wrote.
For now, the FTA is still willing to work with New Jersey to make the repayment process as painless as possible, but Washington’s patience is limited. “In consideration of the current economic challenges burdening New Jersey and all other states, I am not pursuing these collection methods at this time in the hope that we and the state of New Jersey can develop a workable payment schedule,” the secretary said.
Despite taking a hard line, LaHood bemoaned the fate of the ARC Tunnel, and right now, its legacy is one of a legal fight that isn’t over yet. “The purpose of my efforts,” LaHood said of his meetings this past fall, “was to avoid the very circumstances in which we now find ourselves: no jobs, no congestion relief, and an enduring debt whereby New Jersey must return $271 million to the Nation’s taxpayers.”
After the jump, read the letter and FTA decision. Read More→
