Archive for December, 2011
Dec
08
MTA IG: Privately-owned escalators not monitored properly
Posted by: | Comments
In Washington, DC, escalators that bring passengers up from the depths of the Metro caverns are seemingly a necessity. No one wants to hike up the 204 feet from the platform at Woodley Park to Connecticut Ave. at street level. Yet, these escalators are often plagued by outages as one or another break down frequently. In New York, it’s much the same story.
Over the years, the MTA has had a love-hate relationship with their escalators (and elevators too). They love to build them and tote their usefulness, but they hate to oversee the repair process. Creaky elevators get stuck; escalators — never broken because they just become stairs — wind up in the purgatory of the repair process; and even staircases are somehow out of service for longer than they should be.
Even worse, according to a report published today, are the escalators and elevators that lead into MTA areas but are controlled by private owners. Throughout the system, there are 23 privately-owned escalators and 10 elevators that serve 13 stations throughout Manhattan and Queens, and although the owners are contractually obligated to maintain these access points, according to the MTA Inspector General, the MTA often fails to notify owners of outages and does not enforce these obligations. In one case, in fact, the MTA waited nearly three years to notify a property owner of an escalator outage.
According to Barry Kluger’s report, the problem is one that often plagues large bureaucracies. “No one individual or department within the MTA or NYC Transit has overall responsibility for ensuring compliance with easement agreements,” he wrote. “Each seems to minimize its responsibility and role. This apparent void in leadership and oversight has led to inadequate agency practices and procedures.”
Essentially, the problem is one of oversight. The agreements between the MTA and the private owners require the owners to maintain their escalators and elevators upon notice from the MTA. Yet, no one person at the MTA is in charge of giving that notice, and numerous departments have tried to pass along these duties to others. As Kluger relates, the Transit Elevator & Escalator Department, the Transit Station Environment Department, the MTA Real Estate Department, the MTA General Counsel, the Transit Department of Law and the Transit Office of Government & Community Relations all have responsibilities in the field, but none have sole ownership of the issue. There is no shared list of out-of-system egress points, and there is no efficient system for sharing information related to outages.
Thus, when the escalator at the 53rd St. station on the East Side went out in September of 2008, it took until April of 2011, after countless articles and news stories, for the MTA to inform the property owners of the outage. This, says, Kluger is a process that needs to change. “MTA and NYC Transit must work cooperatively and creatively to resolve out of system property issues expeditiously, utilizing all appropriate tools at their disposal, including self-help, and leveraging New York City partnerships and resources, for the benefit of the riders.”
To solve this problem, Kluger issued a series of rather simple recommendations. The authority must report these private-property outages on its website, and it must pick one lead department which will be in charge of enforcing maintenance agreements. The agency should also report quarterly statistic to the MTA Board so that the board and public are informed of the state of repairs. For its part, the authority accepted these recommendations and appointed the Real Estate department to head up all enforcement and maintenance efforts with regards to these privately-owned escalators and elevators.
Still, Kluger had strong words for the MTA in his report, and the authority will have to show that these internal changes are leading to actual improvements. “The public has been seriously disserved by the inordinate amount of time that privately-owned and maintained escalators, which help move passengers at some of the busiest stations in New York City, have been out of service,” he said. “While this disservice is largely the result of private owners not meeting their obligations, a share of the fault belongs to the MTA and NYC Transit, which
have not effectively managed their own responsibilities regarding this ‘out of system’ equipment.”
Dec
07
A glimpse inside the GCT Apple Store
Posted by: | CommentsI took a walk through Grand Central this afternoon as word got around that the wrapping around the new Apple Store had come down. From the floor of the building’s main hall, the Apple Store looks tastefully integrated into Grand Central. There is no ostentatious glass cube, a winding staircase or any garish signage. A bright, glowing Apple logo is visible from all throughout the terminal, but the computers, iPads and iPods aren’t visible from below.
Meanwhile, members of the ol’ print media got a tour of the Apple Store courtesy of the Cupertino-based company. (Thanks for inviting me, Apple. Harumph.) Andrew Grossman of The Wall Street Journal calls the store “understated.” The main entrance simply features tables with computers, and Apple’s typical markings are reserved for the parts of the mezzanine not visible from the concourse. amNew York has some photos of the store. It all opes on Friday.
Dec
07
New Transit snow response calls for ‘preemptive curtailment of service’
Posted by: | CommentsEven as temperatures in New York stay unseasonably warm, the MTA is gearing up for snow and ice. After all, the agency doesn’t want a repeat of last winter when the authority somehow managed to forget about a stranded train. So yesterday, the authority unveiled its winter preparedness plan. It’s nothing too outlandish, but as the city wanted to be prepared in the face of Hurricane Irene, so too will it be ready for the first major snowstorm of the season.
“Last winter’s weather was tough for New York and the MTA, but we’ve made improvements to our service protocols, equipment and communications to provide the best possible service this year,” MTA Executive Director Joseph Lhota said. “We’re prepared to clear more snow and ice than ever before and we’ll be working hard to keep service running, but we won’t hesitate to suspend service on parts of our system when it’s necessary to protect the safety of our riders, employees and equipment.”
For the subways, Transit says it is “preparing an impressive fleet of snow and ice-fighting equipment” that will be dispatched in the event of a winter weather plan. The authority has also adopted “procedures for preemptive curtailment of service” in the event of a massive storm. It has also changed its storm response protocols to allow for a Level V response which would be implemented in the face of a massive storm. According to Transit officials, Level V would involve “an orderly and temporary suspension in service on select line segments to allow for snow and ice removal.”
“Our goal has always been to keep our services up and running so that our customers can get to where they need to be no matter what the weather,” Carmen Bianco, senior vice president of subways, said. “We have a tremendous investment in machinery, manpower and experience. But when we performed our review of how we performed during the Christmas weekend blizzard, we determined that there was a point where we should no longer send trains onto the nearly 220 miles of outdoor track of certain lines.”
With respect to buses, Transit and the Department of Sanitation will better align their services to prioritize bus route plowing. Last year, numerous buses were stranded in Brooklyn and Queens for days as plows failed to remove the snow drifts and often trapped buses behind accumulating mounds of snow. The MTA will also be prepared to curtail bus service and remove most articulated buses from the roads as well.
In a way, the MTA had the opportunity to dry-run their winter shutdown plans when Hurricane Irene threatened New York. Although the direst of storm surges did not flood out the subways and the city itself was spared the brunt of the storm, Transit learned what it had to do to get both employees and passengers off the roads and rails safely. Avoiding another winter debacle has now taken center stage.
“The most important shift in agency thinking was moving away from the philosophy that we will deliver service until we can’t,” Transit head Tom Prendergast said. “We learned from last year’s storm that at some point, it was safer and more prudent to temporarily suspend service.”
Dec
07
A Hoboken-based idea for the 7 extension
Posted by: | Comments
Should the 7 line head to Hoboken instead of Secaucus? (Map via The Wall Street Journal)
It’s been a few months since we’ve heard much about the city’s nascent plans to send the 7 line to Secaucus. In October, we heard reports that Mayor Bloomberg will push to get the $10 billion extension off the ground before he leaves office in 2013. It would be his shining transit moment and could transform cross-Hudson commuting.
But what if sending the train to Secaucus is only half of a good idea? Maybe the 7 should cross the Hudson, but maybe it should have a different destination. Last November, we heard rumblings of this thought as the region’s planners offered their opinions on the Secaucus extension. At the time, former Transit planner Bob Previdi suggested sending the subway to Newark Airport or even Hoboken, a major hub for New Jersey Transit service that is even closer than Secaucus.
This week, for Crain’s New York, Previdi trumpets a refined idea: The 7 should go to Hoboken instead of Secaucus. He writes:
There are three important reasons to consider Hoboken over Secaucus. First, extending the No. 7 to Secaucus would take 21,000 feet of construction, while Hoboken Terminal sits only 9,000 feet away, which would incur billions less in construction costs.
Second, Hoboken Terminal is a huge facility with plenty of spare capacity. It sits on 50 acres, has 17 platform tracks and is used by only 32,000 passengers a day. By comparison, New York’s Penn Station sits on two blocks, has 21 tracks and is used by over 500,000 passengers a day. It has no spare capacity. Third, the original ARC project was designed to double NJ Transit’s rail ridership—Secaucus is not capable of accomplishing this without major track changes. Only two tracks lead into Secaucus from Newark, which is why it is a major choke point on the Northeast Corridor.
Mr. Bloomberg’s initial response to the canceled ARC project would work brilliantly in Manhattan because it uses spare capacity on the No. 7 to avoid building a station under Macy’s. By the same token, Hoboken has spare terminal and track capacity and is much closer to the 7 than Secaucus. Marrying Hoboken Terminal and the 7 would cost half as much as the other projects, or less.
As the finer points of the engineering study for the plan to send the subway to Secaucus have yet to be released, it’s tough for me to pass judgment on Previdi’s idea. It’s worth noting too that Hoboken already has a subway system in PATH that connects to Manhattan. I can say however that Previdi presents an intriguing competing plan. He is very much in support of the mayor’s pet project, but he wants to see something realized that will help with New Jersey Transit’s capacity problems. Ultimately, that might be too tall an order for a subway extension, but if someone is going to sink $10 billion into a trans-Hudson tunnel, it must deliver returns.
It’s been 15 months since Gov. Chris Christie torpedoed the ARC Tunnel. At the time, as Previdi notes, he promised to “consider more reasonable solutions to meet NJ Transit’s goals.” Maybe throwing New Jersey’s support behind a subway extension will be considered a more reasonable solution, but maybe the 7 can’t do as much as the region wants and needs. Still, if this project is to move forward, we must consider all possibilities, and Hoboken is indeed out there, awaiting its attention and perhaps a subway stop too.
Dec
06
Cuomo deal cuts MTA payroll tax revenues, but…
Posted by: | CommentsAs New York state leaders in Albany look to reform the tax code, the payroll tax that, in part, funds the MTA will be cut, Gov. Cuomo announced this afternoon. The new plan, which enjoys the support of a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers will see the state directly reimburse the MTA for last payroll tax revenues, but I’m wary of any plan that weakens the MTA’s dedicated revenues.
The payroll tax cuts are part of a larger plan that relieves the tax burden on middle class New Yorkers while targeting the upper classes instead. It’s also designed to spur job creation through infrastructure investment, although the transit part of that picture appears to be missing. For more on the overall package, feel free to browse through the Governor’s press release. The following bit buried at the end of the release though is important:
The Governor and the legislative leaders have agreed to reduce the MTA payroll tax on small businesses while maintaining the necessary funding for the MTA from other sources. The payroll tax would be eliminated or reduced for 294,900 taxpayers overall. The tax would also be eliminated from an additional 415,000 taxpayers by raising the self-employment income exemption. In addition, private elementary and secondary schools, as well as parochial schools, would be exempt from the tax. The State would compensate the MTA for the $250 million in lost revenue.
When the original plans for a payroll tax overhaul were leaked earlier this week, the reimbursements were backwards. The state was going to reimburse tax payers for the monies they had to pay out under the payroll tax, and the MTA would see no loss in revenue from the state. Now, the state will use “other sources” to ensure that the MTA gets its $250 million while the taxpayers won’t need to pony up the dough any longer.
Of course, we know how that story ends. Without a steady stream of money from the payroll tax, the state will suddenly be unable to find the $250 million it owes to the MTA, and legislators will blame the MTA when the authority comes forward with a budget deficit. It’s unclear right now if that $250 million payment would cover just 2012 or would be implemented on an ongoing basis. As it stands now, the MTA’s budget projects long-term deficits with over $1.5 billion in payroll tax revenue. Reducing that figure by $250 million a year would increase the MTA’s deficits as well as the pressure on the public to carry that debt through fare increases, service cuts or both.
Furthermore, this move by the state highlights the need for the lockbox legislation. Not only would it make it more difficult for the state to rearrange MTA finances, but it would require the state to explain what $250 million in loss subsidies would mean for the MTA. Instead that legislation has languished on Cuomo’s desk.
The MTA in a statement was diplomatic: “”We are grateful to the Governor, Majority Leader and Speaker for reaching an agreement that ensures the MTA will continue to receive the level of funding needed to keep New York and its economy moving.” I can’t help but feel pangs of fear that the $250 million will disappear, and the MTA will slip further into the red as time goes by. A healthy MTA can spur the economy just as much as a reorganized tax code. Just ask these guys.
Dec
06
After two weeks, Second Ave. blasting resumes
Posted by: | CommentsThe Upper East Side’s two-week reprieve is over. The MTA had halted blasting underneath Second Ave. shortly before Thanksgiving in order to alleviate residents’ concerns over dust and debris, and yesterday, after implementing a series of remediation measures, the blasting resumed.
As DNA Info wrote yesterday, residents are cautiously optimistic that the fixes will solve the problem. The MTA says it has expanded the blasting window by an hour in order to allow for more time in between charges. That way, the dust can settle before any blast triggers more debris.
The authority and its contractors have also tried to improve the muck houses — the giant structures along the avenue at 72nd St. — to better minimize the spread of blasting dust. New “Dust Bosses” will spray water on the dust in order to contain it within the muck house, and a burlap curtain will help seal some overhangs and vents.
Initially, residents offered some guarded praise for the new measures. “It’s a dramatic difference,” one said to The Post. “I see a big improvement, and I hope . . . it continues.”
Postscript: I made an appearance on Fox 5′s “Good Day New York” yesterday to discuss the Second Ave. Subway blasting issues. Check out the corresponding story right here and watch the video below.
Dec
06
On the importance of transit to New York City
Posted by: | CommentsOver the past five years, as I’ve written about various attitudes toward the New York City subway system, I’ve often said that the city could not thrive without its transit network. We are more prone toward dwelling on the negatives and griping about delayed trains or crowded commutes than we are to sit back and appreciate what we have. Every now and then, though, a story somewhere drives home that point, and this week, Crain’s New York hosts such a tale.
The story from Crain’s isn’t exactly one of praise for the MTA. In fact, it focuses on just the opposite: After a fall of shuttle buses and service diversions, Williamsburg business owners are fed up with MTA weekends because the lack of trains is having a serious impact on their respective bottom lines. Adrianne Pasquarelli has the story:
William Norton spent the days leading up to the crucial Black Friday shopping weekend taping up flyers and composing an email blast to the 7,000 patrons of Peachfrog, his Williamsburg, Brooklyn-based store. But after ringing up 120 transactions that Friday, sales plummeted on Small Business Saturday and again on Sunday—the same days the neighborhood’s primary link with Manhattan, the L train, was shut down for maintenance. “Nobody was here,” said Mr. Norton, who sells an eclectic mix of apparel, shoes and antiques. “I lost 80% of my business, compared with last year.”
Weekend ridership on the L has jumped 141% since 1998, largely because it is the only line serving the heart of increasingly trendy Williamsburg. The problem nowadays is that all too frequently, that lifeline has been cut, inconveniencing residents and battering local businesses. What’s more, even when the L is up and running, the waiting time between trains is long and the cars overcrowded.
Since July, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has completely or partially shut down service on the L on a dozen weekends. The weekend after Black Friday was the worst, though. Merchants reported that business slumped 20% to 80% from last year’s levels. In response, they’ve begun meeting with community leaders and reaching out to local politicians and the MTA to figure out alternatives. “We’re not crazy people,” said Felice Kirby, co-owner of Teddy’s Bar and Grill on North Eighth Street and Berry Avenue. “We know they have work to do, and we want people to get to work on weekdays, but we count, too—there’s an imbalance.”
Slow sales are only half the problem. Without an easy lifeline to Manhattan, employees have found it onerous to commute to work from far-away locales, and residents can’t stray too far afield from the neighborhoods for fear of being left without a ride home.
Pasquarelli, meanwhile, hits upon only half of the problem. While she focuses on the L train’s woes, service changes have sidelined the G as well. The IND Crosstown line has either been running in sections or not at all, and those in Park Slope and Boerum Hill who want to reach Williamsburg on the weekends cannot. On more than one occasion this fall, I’ve had to change weekend plans when subway service changes made a trip to Williamsburg from Park Slope impractical. At times, without the Q, L, G or Manhattan-bound IRT local service, I had no easy transit route north.
So here we see how the subway rules our lives, our city and our economy. Without subway service, business slumps by 60 percent points. Although Williamsburg enjoys a ferry stop, Pasquarelli notes it carried just 5500 passengers last weekend as compared with 38,000 at Bedford Ave. alone on a typical weekend. So as suburban representatives take aim at MTA funding mechanisms, remember that the city cannot survive without its subway, let alone thrive.
Dec
05
MTA AppQuest voting opens with 42 submissions
Posted by: | Comments
Nearly five months after first announcing the MTA AppQuest challenge and after a few unavoidable delays, a group of new transit apps are ready to face the public. The authority announced last week that, after two delays in the submission date, they received 42 submissions for their app contest, and public judging is now open at MTAAppQuest.com.
“We’re thrilled at the partnership that has developed with the tech community to bring new innovations to our riders at no cost to the MTA,” the authority’s Executive Director Joseph said in a statement. “We’ve got a great crop of apps and we can’t wait to see which ones the public likes best.”
Public voting will be open through January 11, and the MTA and ChallengePost will award two winners. The winner of the public voting will take home $2000 while the runner-up will earn $1000. The MTA is not contributed financially to the prize money.
In addition to the public voting, a group of judges –including me — will also evaluate the apps. Joining me on the panel will be the following:
- Jen Chung, Executive Editor, Gothamist, and Co-Founder, Gothamist LLC
- Jeff Ferzoco, Creative and Technology Director, Regional Plan Association
- Cas Holloway, Deputy Mayor for Operations, City of New York
- Mark Gorton, Founder and Chairman, OpenPlans and Founder, Tower Research Capital LLC
- Wael Hibri, Chief Enterprise Information Officer, Metropolitan Transportation Authority
- Noel Hidalgo, Director of Engagement Technologies, World Economic Forum
- Lawrence Levy, Executive Dean, National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University
- Rachel Sterne, Chief Digital Officer, City of New York
The winners of that contest will take home $5000 with second and third place worth $3000 and $1500 respectively. I haven’t yet had the time to explore all of the offerings yet, but right now, City Maps and NYC Station Finder are in the lead. The MTA, meanwhile, is profiling each app on its Facebook page.
With 42 submissions, the contest has seemingly been a success for the authority as it looks to outsource its app process to developers with the skill and wherewithal to create these on-the-go resources. The challenge, though, was not without hiccups. Originally slated to end in September, the MTA had to push back the submission date twice to both prepare more data for developers and all coders more time to complete their submissions. Furthermore, as Transportation Nation notes, the biggest possible data dump — an API that ties into the system’s new countdown clocks — isn’t yet available. Such a move could truly revolutionize commuting patterns.
I’ll try to have more on these apps over the next few weeks. In the meantime, head on over to the AppQuest homepage and vote for your favorites.
Dec
05
Under fire, MTA’s payroll tax revenue seemingly secure
Posted by: | CommentsNow that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has pledged to overhaul New York’s tax code, Senate Republicans are chomping at the bit to do away with the controversial payroll mobility tax. As The Daily News reported last night, Senate leaders may even find a way to modify the tax without impacting the MTA’s bottom line.
“We have had some discussions about modifications on it — in certain ways for certain businesses — where it may be a little onerous,” one state source said. “It wouldn’t be money removed from the MTA because the MTA needs the money.”
According to the News, small businesses and parochial schools would likely be reimbursed for taxes, but even that relief doesn’t appease state Republicans who want the measure repealed entirely. That is, of course, an untenable position for the MTA. “It generates about $1.4 to $1.5 billion a year and it’s very important that we maintain that level of revenue to main our level of services,” the incoming MTA CEO and Chairman Jospeh Lhota said in an interview. “[The State legislatures] set tax policy; it’s their decision. I’m not a state legislator; I cannot support it one way or the other.”
With all of this politicking going on, Daily News columnist Pete Donohue has called upon the New York GOP to “drop the farce” of a payroll tax repeal effort. Donohue takes Sen. Jack Martins to task for his uninformed and misleading comments concerning the payroll tax.
“The idea that the MTA could provide anything remotely close to a safe and affordable service after such a financial pounding is fantasy,” Donohue writes. “That’s fitting because the whole Republican proposal is based on the fictional notion that the subway system is overly and unfairly subsidized by the suburbs.”
As Donohue notes, LIRR riders pay 47.8 percent of the railroad’s operating costs while NYC Transit riders are on the hook for 58.6 percent. Combine that reality with the fact that it’s nearly impossible to replace $1.4 billion in annual revenue, and the payroll tax should be safe. If it isn’t, that will spell trouble for our transit system.
Dec
05
Forever losing the option for transit
Posted by: | Comments
A schematic shows the Rockaway Beach Branch service from 1955 until it was shuttered in 1960. (Courtesy of Railfan.net)
As creative urban parks go, New York City’s High Line is a great success story. The city, with fiscal help from private donations, turned an abandoned and decrepit freight rail line that no longer went anywhere or connected to the rest of area’s transportation network into a popular park that weaves through a neighborhood teeming with residents, businesses and tourists. Now, everyone wants a piece of the action.
Across the country, urban activists are eying the nation’s dying rail infrastructure not for transit but for parks. In Chicago and Philadelphia and Detroit, community groups are searching for the “next” High Line — some infrastructure that can be turned into a park that will revitalize a neighborhood. It’s not quite that easy as New York’s High Line runs through a densely-populated neighborhood that already was a big tourist destination before the park opened, but that minor point isn’t stopping anyone.
Even within the city, New Yorkers are also looking for the next spot for the new High Line. Every few months, the Delancey Underground effort earns some press, and now an old initiative from Queens is gaining ink as well. On Friday, the Daily News explored how Queens residents are once again trying to turn the LIRR’s defunct Rockaway Beach Branch into a park. This isn’t a new plan; it last garnered coverage back in 2005. But with the High Line’s success, residents are emboldened to try again.
Lisa Colangelo has more:
Encouraged by the success of the High Line in Manhattan, a group of Queens park advocates are rebooting a proposal to rehabilitate an abandoned rail line into a greenway. The old Rockaway Beach Branch of the Long Island Rail Road, which went out of service almost 50 years ago, stretches from Rego Park to Ozone Park, cutting a swath through Forest Park.
“This is such an exciting idea,” said Andrea Crawford, the chairwoman of Community Board 9 who is helping organize supporters of the project. “It’s green, yet it has economic development opportunities. It would tie us in with other rail-to-trail projects happening all over the country.”
Crawford was part of a group of civic leaders who met with city agency representatives this week to discuss preliminary plans for a greenway along the route. Remnants of the line are visible throughout the area. The tracks ran along trestles above Metropolitan Ave. and Union Turnpike. The path is mostly clogged with trees and overgrown vegetation, but it still includes some train tracks and signal equipment and towers. The tracks, which lead into Forest Park just south of Union Turnpike and Woodhaven Blvd., are owned by the city.
As Colangelo explained, Community Board 9 supported the idea a few years ago, but Community Board 6 declined to authorize a feasibility study for a park. Residents in Forest Hills had raised concerns focused on “security and the impact on private property.” Today’s activists aren’t going to let obstacles from a few years ago hinder them.
Now, outside of the practicality of it — what money will turn this abandoned rail line into a park and is it in a part of the city to which people will travel to experience such a transformation? — there’s another issue: It’s part of a long-term effort that removes transit infrastructure from its intended use. By turning the West Side Line into the High Line, the city ensured that it would never be used for rail transportation again. If the Essex St. trolley terminal suffers the same fate, it too will never be a part of the city’s transit infrastructure.
The Rockaway Beach Branch has been fetishized by transit advocates for decades. The MTA once considered using the line as part of a one-seat ride to JFK or for Airtrain right-of-way before NIMBYs in Queens killed that idea, and an extensive thread on a popular transit message board traces the various ideas for reactivating the rail line. In his 40-year plan for the MTA, then-agency head Lee Sander mentioned restoring transit services to the line as well. Turning it into a park would immediately dash any of those hopes.
Therein lies the tension with old infrastructure: How long should a former train route lie fallow before we can accept other uses for it? Should the city be willing to discard half-formed plans to activate train lines that could provide useful service because someone else is louder or better connected? Turning the Rockaway Beach Branch into a rail trail will forever preclude using it for transit just as turning the Essex St. Terminal into a park or shopping area would do the same. That’s a decision that should not be made lightly.
