Archive for November, 2011
Nov
02
The trouble with assessing bus satisfaction
Posted by: | CommentsWhen the MTA released its subway satisfaction survey last week, it also published a similar one concerning the buses, and I didn’t pay it much attention. As with the subway survey, the bus examination used a similarly flawed scale and still found 70 percent of riders satisfied with local bus service. In one sense, that’s a shockingly high number considering how unreliable and slow local bus service can be.
This week, Allan Rosen at Sheepshead Bites drilled down on both the results of and the process behind the MTA’s bus service, and he too is less than impressed. As bus service varies wildly across routes and boroughs, Rosen, a former bus planner with the MTA, is critical of the sample size, the rankings and the way the survey ignores customer feedback on proper bus routing. His conclusion on the survey: “They first draw their conclusions, then pick and choose the data they want to show to back up those conclusions. In this case the MTA wanted to show that a majority of riders are content with the service they provide.”
That, in a nutshell, is why the bus surveys don’t tell us much. But there’s a bigger issue at work here: The bus surveys targeted only those who ride the bus. If the MTA wanted to find out why people aren’t satisfied with bus service, the agency needs to find people who don’t or no longer ride the bus and ask them why. In such a survey, one would find routing issues, speed (or lack thereof) and an unreliable schedule to be the prime disincentives and a clear reason why bus ridership is on the decline. That’s a survey worth doing.
Nov
02
MTA silent but Mica, feds hint at SAS Phase 2
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Over the past few years, as the MTA has showed off progress underneath Second Ave., authority officials have made it a point to downplay anything more than Phase 1 of the subway. Although the environmental study for a full-length Second Ave. Subway came out in 2004, funding for only a northern extension of the BMT line from 57th St. and Broadway to 96th St. and Second Ave. is in place, and the future of the remaining phases is hazy at best.
On the record, MTA officials have never spoken about the possibilities for future phases. When I interviewed Jay Walder last year, he talked about firming up Phase 1 funding commitments and looking for ways to reduce construction costs. On future phases, he hedged.
“If you look at the Second Ave. Subway piece, to their credit, the planners…are achieving a very usable segment of a railway so that when it opens in 2016, you will have something that will connect into the rest of the system.” Walder said to me. “If we don’t stop there, where do we go from here? The intent is that it goes south from there, and funding-available, that is exactly what everyone’s objective will be. We also have pieces of preexisting tunnel north so you may well have the opportunity to pick up both ends of that.”
Yesterday, though, a very faint glimmer of a Phase 2 future emerged when Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), Chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) toured the Second Ave. construction site. The federal government has been a very active funding partner for Phase 1. Their investment and pledge of $1.4 billion pushed the MTA to realize a subway line eight decades in the works, and without the federal dollars, the Second Ave. Subway would still just be a dream on paper.
Lately, though, with the feds on an austerity kick despite the need to create jobs, funding for the Second Ave. Subway had come under fire. The House had voted to take away $40 million funding, but after their tour on Tuesday, Mica and Maloney promised to restore those dollars. “The Second Avenue Subway is a great example of what can be done when we invest in our infrastructure, and I thank Chairman Mica for committing to help ensure that the federal government meets its responsibility to fund the subway’s first phase,” Maloney said in a statement.
Mica meanwhile was more expansive in his views. Noting how the Second Ave. Subway is a major infrastructure project with the ability to create a substantial number of jobs, Mica spoke of the future. “For the benefit of other major transportation and infrastructure projects like the Second Avenue Subway, and the stability needed to undertake these kinds of projects around the country, it is essential that Congress complete a six-year transportation bill as soon as possible,” he said.
Speaking with reporters after their tour, Mica stressed how he would lobby for continuous federal funding to maintain the pace of this project, and in those words, I can find that glimmer of hope for the future. If the feds can continue supporting this project, they will put pressure on New York to find the money to go forward. Phase 2 — the northern extension up Second Ave. to the IRT stop at 125th St. and Lexington — would ensure that those working on Phase 1 aren’t unemployed when the construction project ramps down, and the transportation benefits would be tremendous.
I’ve long held out hope for Phase 2 to start as Phase 1 winds down. As Chapter 3 of the FEIS explains, due to preexisting tunnels, the MTA would use cut-and-cover construction methods to build Phase 2. It would likely cost far less than Phase 1 and shouldn’t take nearly as long to finish. In a sense, it is likely to be the easiest segment of the Second Ave. Subway.
Still, I’m getting ahead of myself. The MTA has to make sure Phase 1 is set to finish on time and on budget before it can launch into Phase 2 planning. But I want to believe the project will keep going. I want to believe the MTA won’t cease construction entirely and then ramp it back up to build Phase 2. It’s going to take the perfect alignment of political stars and funding fates, but maybe, just maybe, this little subway 82 years in the making has legs that extend a bit further north than 96th St.
Nov
01
New GCT entrance delayed until 2012
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An entrance into Grand Central along 47th Street was supposed to open in September, but the MTA is now targeting early 2012.
In January of 2010, MTA Capital Construction announced an incremental benefit of East Side Access construction. Although at the time the project was not set to open until 2016, the MTA planned to debut a new entrance this September on 47th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues. It is not yet meant to be.
Many frequent Metro-North commuters had noted that the entrance hadn’t opened in September as planned, and I recently reached out to the MTA for an official statement on the delay. While the completion date for East Side Access has been delayed with a report on a new estimated date due out later this year, the entrance could have opened as planned. It was not meant to be, and now the MTA expects to ready this entry point early next year.
“We expect the entrance will open in the first quarter of 2012,” MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan said. “Metro-North has shifted to a more sophisticated security system for Grand Central, and the entrance needs to be made compatible with the new system.”
The new entrance, when it opens, will feature an escalator from the street to the 47th St. cross passageway and a staircase from the street to the platform shared by Tracks 11 and 13. Meanwhile, we’re stilling waiting for the bad news from MTA Capital Construction President Michael Horodniceanu concerning the estimated revenue service date for ESA. My money is on 2018.
Nov
01
In hearing, TWU raises issue of assaults on MTA employees
Posted by: | CommentsTWU officials and MTA employees went before the City Council yesterday to highlight threats to their personal safety. As both The Daily News and amNew York recount, the numbers are incomplete — police reports 96 felonies up from 82 last year while the union claims 170 reported attacks up from 134 last year — but union brass want the MTA and NYPD to do more to protect bus drivers and subway personnel. “If there were two sanitation workers, or police officers or City Council members being assaulted every week in New York City, they’d call in the National Guard to stop those assaults from happening.” Samuelsen said.
At the hearings yesterday, politicians tried to find a potential scapegoat. TWU officials pinpointed rider frustration over service cuts and general “economic hopelessness” as reasons for the increase but also warned of a general laissez faire attitude toward these attacks. Despite warnings that assaults on MTA employees carry a possible seven-year prison sentence, the MTA and NYPD are not proactive in protecting employees. A bus driver partition program is slowly coming to high-crime bus routes, but beyond that, police presence has remained stagnant.
To combat this problem, the MTA and NYPD have to strike a balance between proper enforcement and targeted patrol. While the increase of nearly 20 percent is shocking, 96 reported assaults out of a few billion total riders is a shocking low number and one hard to decrease. Is this ultimately a hazard of the job or one which deserves more attention and resources? After all, as James Vacca, head of the Council’s transit committee, said, “These people are not just a threat to drivers. They’re a threat to people like myself who are on the train and depend on transit every day.”
Nov
01
On the allure of Manhattan-centric transit growth
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The Triboro RX line would improve transit access in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx but skips over powerful Manhattan.
Historically, the New York City Subway system has always focused on delivering people into the heart of Manhattan. It grew out of the need to bring people from the north, south and east to Wall St. and spread it tentacles through midtown, upper Manhattan and the Outer Boroughs always shuttling people to what we now know as the Manhattan Central Business District. The alluring draw of Manhattan still dictates the city’s expansionist transit policies, but should it?
The MTA likes to tout its megaprojects, and since the start of the century, they have embarked on a rather ambitious expansion plan to grow the transit network. The Second Ave. Subway will alleviate congestion on the Lexington Ave. IRT while better providing transit access from the Upper East Side to Midtown and Lower Manhattan. The 7 line extension will open up a new frontier of development along Manhattan’s Far West Side while East Side Access will bring LIRR to Manhattan’s East Side. The Fulton St. Transit Center and the new South Ferry station are all a part of the comprehensive effort to develop Lower Manhattan.
Take a deep breath because that’s a lot of Manhattan. At a time when areas in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens are undergoing rapid transformation as residential neighborhoods, job centers and desirable places for growth, the New York City subway system remains singularly focused on bringing people into Manhattan, its own job since the early 1900s. On the one hand, it should be concerned with Manhattan because most commuters want to get to and from Manhattan every day, and since Manhattan is an island, it has only so many entry points.
On the other, the Manhattan-centric nature of the subway system makes interborough and some intra-borough travel quite complicated or convoluted. It’s nigh impossible to travel from Bay Ridge to JFK Airport on the subway without a considerable investment in time, and many of the job centers focused around health care remain frustratingly out of the way for straphangers. Yet, the only non-Manhattan projects involve some Select Bus Service corridors that take forever to go from planning to reality.
Meanwhile, city officials starting at the top are making noises about another Manhattan-centric subway project. Mayor Bloomberg, as we know, wants to build an extension of the 7 train to Secaucus. Doing so would funnel more workers from Hudson County, New Jersey, into Midtown via the Hudson Yards development. It’s a developer’s dream and one that would improve both mobility and desirability west of the Hudson.
That said, I don’t blame Staten Island politicians who feel slighted over the rumored plans. The city would rather build the subway to New Jersey than ponder Outer Borough expansion plans. After all, those expansion plans wouldn’t have the same impact as a subway that funnels commuters straight into midtown would. Still, as Bloomberg draws responses to his proposal for a new high tech campus somewhere in the city, the push to add jobs outside of Manhattan will inevitably lead to demand for better transit options.
The short wishlist of Outer Borough transit projects is centered around the Triboro RX line. Last mentioned by the MTA in 2008 as part of Lee Sander’s 40-year plan, the Triboro RX line would use preexising rights-of-way and tracks to connect Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx while staying clear of Manhattan. It would pass through job hubs and offer connections to at least 17 other subway lines. It could be amended to cross the Narrows to Staten Island and would extend somewhere into the Bronx.
Beyond that, the city could use better transit access to LaGuardia, a Nostrand and/or Utica Ave. subway extension and service past Flushing/Main St. on the 7 line. None of these projects offer the sexy political allure of Manhattan, but they would do wonders for mobility in and around the region. The dollars and the will though just aren’t there, and we’ll watch as Manhattan remains, for better or worse, the center of attention.
Addendum: As the good Cap’n just reminded me, he offered up his take on Manhattan recently. Check out this piece for a different view on why Manhattan has all the fun.
