As we await official word from the MTA on the state of the city’s subway system, it seems clear that service will not immediately return to normal. Although buses are set to hit the streets at 5 p.m., we won’t know much about subway service until later in the day. Early indications are, though, that the full system will be out for a few days at least.

So how do we move people throughout the city? I, for instance, live around seven miles from my office in Midtown and have to cross the East River to get there. We can’t all pile over the bridge at once, and the subway, which delivers millions of people each day to destinations throughout the city, isn’t going to be at full strength for days.

To that end, Transportation Alternatives has issued a call for street prioritization. Instead of a traffic free-for-all in which buses stuffed with people compete with private cars, bicyclists, taxis and emergency response vehicles, the city could rearrange traffic as such until the subways return:

• Emergency Bus Lanes to allow swift transit throughout the City until subway service is restored.
• Emergency Street Reservations exclusively for the safe use of walkers, bikers and emergency vehicles.
• Off-Peak Bridge Biking and Walking Lanes to ensure sufficient safe space for people on foot and bicycle and prevent overcrowding on the bridges.
• Emergency Biking Lanes on well-used routes to enable safe mobility, including coned-off Midtown bike lanes.
• Bike Parking Stations and Temporary Bike Storage in major employment centers in Lower Manhattan including Foley Square, Union Square, Herald Square, Times Square, Washington Square Park and Bryant Park.
• High Occupancy Vehicle Requirements on crossings into the most congested areas of the city.
• Carpool Staging Areas offering parking and passenger pick-up locations in support of drivers sharing rides to meet the HOV requirements.

As a few people noted last night, New Yorkers may be in for a shock when they discover just how slow, infrequent and, oftentimes, unreliable the bus system is, but for the next few days, we’re going to have to rely on it. The city should make sure buses get move quickly through neighborhoods, and these street-sharing suggestions deserve a consideration before the roads start to fill up after 5 p.m. today.

A City Comptroller's report alleges that Cemusa has done a poor job cleaning its bus shelters. (Photo by flickr user animalvegetable)

When Cemusa entered into its 20-year contract with New York City to install and maintain bus shelters and newsstands across the city, critics lamented the death of New York’s individuality. Noted that the bus shelters were the same in the Big Apple as they were elsewhere, Brooks of Sheffield called unspecial and unoriginal. Others, meanwhile, had more legitimate complaints as Queens Crap complained of snow removal neglect and Sheepshead Bites accused of Cemusa’s bus stations of peddling in misinformation. Now, the city government is piling on too.

In an audit released earlier this week, New York City Comptroller set his sights on Cemusa’s failure to adhere to its bargain. Bus shelters aren’t as clean or well maintained as the company promised they would be, John Liu’s office said. The full report is available here as a PDF. The short of it from the Comptroller’s Office:

Under the franchise agreement, Cemusa is required, at its own expense, to clean, inspect, and maintain the structures in good repair. With DOT’s approval, Cemusa has outsourced its inspection, cleaning, and maintenance responsibilities to subcontractors. DynaServ Industries, Inc. (DynaServ) is responsible for cleaning, inspecting, and posting advertisements, and Pipeline Construction, LLC (Pipeline) was responsible for repairing and replacing damaged parts and performing electrical repairs and annual electrical inspections. This audit addressed Cemusa’s upkeep of the bus stop shelters, the most common type and widely used street furniture across the City.

The audit concluded that Cemusa needs to improve its oversight efforts to ensure that its subcontractors maintain bus stop shelters in compliance with its franchise agreement with DOT. Cemusa has certain mechanisms in place to assess its subcontractors’ performance regarding the upkeep of the bus stop shelters. However, these mechanisms do not provide sufficient assurance that the subcontractors’ performance ensures Cemusa’s compliance with the provisions of its franchise agreement regarding the upkeep of the bus stop shelters.

For the audit test period, Cemusa’s subcontractor, DynaServ, did not service (inspect and clean) the bus stop shelters at the level required. DynaServ’s productivity expectations (the number of shelters that can be cleaned by each crew in one shift) are overly optimistic and DynaServ has not allocated sufficient resources to ensure that each shelter will be cleaned twice each week on non-consecutive days as required. The audit also showed that Cemusa’s other subcontractor, Pipeline, needed to improve its performance in regard to responding promptly and repairing reported defective conditions. Further, there was insufficient evidence that all electrical inspections were carried out as reported. Based on these and additional factors discussed herein, we lack reasonable assurance that the bus stop shelters are serviced in accordance with Cemusa’s franchise agreement with DOT.

At a certain level, Cemusa disputed the Comptroller’s results. The company noted that Liu’s audit was based on one observable point in time and that the subcontractor routinely upheld its end of the deal. “No trend can be assessed and no conclusion can be drawn,” the company said. Despite protests from the Comptroller’s Office, Cemusa said cleaning efforts are generally sufficient and up to contractual standards.

Still, they agreed with five points from the report. It avowed the need for better subcontractor oversight, promised to clean roof panels more frequently and will establish proactive oversight and monitoring of contractors. After all, with 14 years left in the contract and more ad revenue rolling in, the company has a compelling reason to keep these shelters clean.

In response to the audit, Transportation Nation wondered if the criticism speaks to the problem of privatization. “When a private company manages public space,” Alex Goldmark wrote, “they too, leave it dirty sometimes, just like the DOT did when they managed bus shelters.”

That’s a bit of an oversimplification. The current bus stops, while perhaps not unique or to the liking of those who yearn for old New York, are cleaner, bigger and brighter than the old shelters. They’ve been modernized and are generally well maintained by Cemusa. I’ve watched those in my neighborhood cleaned regularly, and based on my lack of faith in John Liu, I am inclined to believe the City Comptroller’s Office relied upon a less than rigorous audit methodology here.

Still, privatization of public spaces isn’t a panacea. Cemusa may be paying $1.5 billion for the rights to the bus shelters and newsstands, but it still has to confront the same realities of maintenance and upkeep that the city did when it was in charge. From a use perspective, I’m far more concerned with the observations Al Rosen made in May: If the information concerning bus routes isn’t correct, who cares how often the glass gets cleaned anyway?

One question I’ve struggled with over the past few months has concerned fare-jumping. Does the New York City media place too much of an emphasis on the revenue lost to fare-jumping? Should we care that a small percentage of transit riders try to duck their fares? At what point does the cost of increased enforcement outweigh the benefits?

When it comes to subway fare enforcement efforts, I’ve been firmly on the side of ignoring it. I think the media has spent all together too much time focusing on subway fare jumping as it is mostly just an inconvenience. Steeper fines are likely a sufficient deterrent by themselves. But what about buses?

For a while, the MTA had pegged bus fare evasion as a $14 million problem. Despite anecdotal reports of rampant fare jumping on certain bus lines, Transit had downplayed their bleed rate. Now, it seems, it may be worse than they thought. Pete Donohue had the report:

The MTA loses about $50 million in revenue each year to bus farebeaters — more than triple what it previously estimated, the Daily News has learned. The staggering figure is partly the result of a new way the authority calculates fare-dodging, but also indicates that the longstanding problem has worsened because of lax enforcement, sources said.

The authority previously had estimated that bus farebeaters were stealing $14 million worth of free rides annually. Gauging bus freeloading levels has been an inexact science. Drivers are supposed to keep tallies by pushing a button every time someone boards without paying. The authority also has used video to estimate the frequency of bus farebeating.

“This is situation we have to get under control,” MTA board member Allen Cappelli said. “Not only is it a significant amount of revenue, but you’re allowing people to behave in a lawless manner.”

At a certain point, some bleed is inevitable, but if the MTA’s $50 million estimate is accurate, the new bleed rate on the buses has jumped from around 1.5 percent of annual revenue to 5.5 percent of annual revenue. It’s probably time to address the problem.

As folks enter without paying their fares, it creates a disincentive for others to swipe their MetroCards, and enforcement has been lax. According to Donohue, the MTA is working to propose a citywide plan to “deter fare evasion,” and politicians are calling for more police activity aboard buses. It’s tough to say though what the golden ticket will be here. Until these figures decline though, bus fare evasion will garner headlines one way or another.

More buses with three doors will hit the streets of New York City soon.

As we well know, New York City buses, particularly along crowded routes, suffer from a boarding problem. With a MetroCard system that requires riders to dip their cards in one direction, boarding can seem interminable, especially at popular stations during rush hour. With a contactless fare payment system still a few years from seeing the light of day, the slow bus board process is one of the main reasons why it’s often faster to walk than it is ride the bus.

In addition to the slow boarding process, riders exiting through the front cause additional problems as those folks waiting to board must first have to wait for others to exit. Over the years, the MTA has tried — not very hard — to combat this problem. Low-floor vehicles make buses easier to enter and exit, and bus riders are reminded to exit in the rear. No one listens.

The best approach for combating this problem can be found along the Select Bus Service routes where pre-board fare payment options allow bus riders to skip the slow process of dipping a MetroCard. This isn’t coming to the local bus system any time soon, but the MTA is trying to import another SBS feature. The three-door bus is the latest in the MTA’s ongoing struggle to speed up travel.

The Times tackled the saga of the three-door bus yesterday. In what has become a hallmark of recent Times transpo coverage, the article treats these buses as a novelty. It’s a “Ha ha! This bus has three doors” type of article complete with a reference to the doors as a “complication” and a quotation from a psychologist trying to figure out why New Yorkers can’t exit buses like normal people elsewhere. “The back door has more real or imagined perils,” one Dr. Elyse Goldstein said.

Silly quotes aside, the piece sheds some light on the MTA’s bus plans:

Howard H. Roberts Jr., a former president of New York City Transit, said the agency had struggled with exiting problems on buses for years. He said it was especially hard because the fronts of buses are often filled with elderly passengers who want to minimize how much walking they do. “They prefer to get off at the front, the same door they got on,” Mr. Roberts said. “It’s a cultural thing, and it’s not particularly easy to solve that problem.”

..The authority recently ordered 328 buses equipped with three doors, supplementing its existing fleet of 90 three-door buses on its Select Bus Service routes. Henry Sullivan, chief maintenance officer for the authority’s Department of Buses, said that while it was too early to track what effects the extra door was having on passenger flow, he remained hopeful.

“Without having statistics, I know they’re using the middle door more,” he said about riders. “It’s easier for them to get out.”

It can’t hurt to try a third door, and the MTA had to order these buses for SBS routes. But it seems that people close to the front of the bus will just exit at the front while those near the rear and middle doors will opt for those points of egress. Buses will forever be inefficient and clunky for New Yorkers, and without pre-board fare payments, the boarding process will remain a painful one. Of course, if New York bus riders continue to head to the front door to exit, well, the drivers can always just tase them for it instead.