The walls of the new South Ferry station, shown here in December 2008, have sprung a leak. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

As the MTA Inspector General yesterday took the authority to task for glossing over its contracting evaluation guidelines, today, we see a prime example of work gone wrong underground. The new South Ferry terminal on the 1 line — a $527 million that has been open for less than a year — has sprung a leak, and according to reports, shoddy waterproofing by the project’s contractors as well as some design failures on behalf of the MTA are to blame.

According to amNew York’s Heather Haddon, the station is already showing an age well beyond its years, and her piece has a photo prove it. She reports of water-stained platform and mezzanine walls as well as tiles falling after the grouting has been corroded. Bad engineering, she says, is to blame. Reports Haddon:

The contractor, Schiavone Construction of Secaucus, botched the waterproofing for the station, which is located deep under the water table, according to the MTA’s independent engineer. For its part, Schiavone claimed that the MTA had flubbed the project’s design. An independent dispute board ruled last year that both parties were at fault and must share costs for the remediation…

Schiavone did not return a request for comment. Next month, the MTA will grout and add new tiles to the station with $3 million, which came from the contractor as part of the settlement, agency spokesman Kevin Ortiz said. The grouting should cure the problem, he said…

But the leaking could continue, as workers will basically fill in joint cracks instead of reengineering the station with better waterproofing technology, Henderson said.

Ortiz further clarified the agency’s approach to this problem to me in an email this afternoon. “We are monitoring the level of seasonal infiltration and will begin any necessary repairs in March during scheduled General Orders to avoid utilizing funds from the settlement for the diversions and to limit the impact on service,” he said.

For the MTA, water damage has been a source of aesthetic issues at numerous stations throughout the system. The walls on the downtown 2/5 platform, for instance, at 149th St./Grand Concourse station have long carried the scars of damage from water dripping out of corroded platforms. In other areas, wall tilings bulge from the pressure of bad waterproofing. Here, a $527 million project that was delayed due to a gap between the trains and the platform and has been plagued with some problems is the latest to carry those scars. Even the newest crown jewels can’t escape the problems of system more than 100 years old.

In complementary released yesterday, the MTA Inspector General exposed how contractors hired by the MTA are often given better evaluations than their work suggests so that the agency can maintain business ties with these bidders. For its part, agency heads say the MTA will follow the IG’s recommendations in an effort to improve its business practices.

The reports — available as PDF files here and here — find that the All-Agency Contractor Evaluation program, set up to “screen vendors will poor performance histories,” has not fulfilled that role. The fault, says Barry Kluger, is due in part to managers who are looking to curry favor with the MTA’s long-term clients. Wrote the IG:

Our interviews with managers responsible for implementing NYC Transit’s capital program provided an explanation for these deficiencies: an institutional reluctance, for a variety of reasons, to rate contractors’ work as Unsatisfactory, even when such ratings are the most appropriate.

One particularly disturbing reason given by many of these managers is that they felt pressure to upgrade ratings of Unsatisfactory to prevent important agency contractors from being precluded from bidding on future work – even though under the rules such ratings do not automatically preclude such bidding. In these cases, the managers sometimes allowed what they perceived to be agency “business decisions” to override their true assessments of contractor performance. By doing so, though, they effectively usurped the power and duty of MTA’s General Counsel, Executive Director and Board to adequately review and properly accept or reject contract awards in the future.

The examples in the reports are not unexpected. As Michael Grynbaum, who covered these findings for The Times, highlights, “managers at the Long Island Rail Road waited more than nine months to grade one vendor, DMJM & Harris, as unsatisfactory, after the firm’s work on a 2005 environmental consulting contract was deemed deficient. In the interim, that vendor received five more contracts worth nearly $25 million from New York City Transit, Metro-North Railroad, and the authority’s bridges and tunnels division; none of those other agencies were aware of any problems with the firm.”

Another egregious example of questionable ratings involves Siemens, the company originally selected to update subway signaling technology. Writes Grynbaum: “Under official guidelines, Siemens should have received an unsatisfactory rating. But a top official at New York City Transit instructed managers to instead assign a rating of “marginal,” a higher mark, because of business considerations.” We all get the point.

In response, the MTA has agreed to implement a series of measures designed to better evaluate and assess contractor performance and better oversee those issuing the ratings. “Too often we have let our contractors slide when they fail to perform, and that is why we have accepted the I.G.’s recommendations and are working to implement them,” Jay Walder, MTA CEO and Chairman, said.

For Walder, this report is but the tip of the iceberg of the inefficiencies he plans to combat. It’s a rather in-the-box example of how the MTA’s business practices are run with less oversight than they should have, and it’s a prime way Walder can restore both transparency and accountability to the agency’s contracting. I don’t want to be too cynical about Kluger’s findings or Walder’s commitment to improving the way the agency conducts business, but this is indicative of the organizational problems Walder must solve.

Following these signs will get a subway rider nowhere. (Photo by flickr user Hello Turkey Toe)

New York City Transit has a sign problem. Every week, countless signs proclaiming various service changes are plastered throughout the system, and they have begun to multiple to such an extent that no one reads them. Worse still are the ones people read but can’t understand. No wonder few can track what’s really happening over the weekend.

Now, generally, the plethora of signs lead to many headaches but few real problems. Maybe we don’t really know which train is going to take us to our destination on Saturday, but with some patience, we’ll get there nonetheless. The problem pops up, though, when the signs simply do not tell us what to do.

Earlier this week, I examined just that problem. Every subway car has an emergency brake, and yet, Transit’s message has been one of caution. In case of emergency, don’t pull the emergency brake. In that piece, I discussed a sign each car has up with instructions about emergencies. The sign — click the image to enlarge — hangs beneath the brake and supposedly tells straphangers what to do in an emergency.

This sign is highly problematic. It purports to be “Emergency Instructions,” but then has some rather odd directives. If there is a fire, do not pull the emergency brake. If there is a medial emergency, do not pull the emergency brake. If the police are needed, do not pull the emergency brake. Three do-not’s and no do’s. Anyone reading this sign could be forgiven for not having a clue what to do. When exactly should someone in trouble pull the emergency brake?

The message from Transit is to pull the brake only when someone is in danger of getting injured by a moving train. If a rider is stuck in the doors as the train begins to pull away or if some passengers spot someone on the track in danger of getting struck by the train, it is perfectly reasonable to pull that emergency break. You wouldn’t know it from the sign.

On an institutional level, the lack of emergency brake preparedness gets to another problem MTA CEO and Chair Jay Walder identified in his 100 Days report on the state of the authority. The MTA has an information problem. As the booklet he produced says, “Information on planned service changes can be overwhelming and extremely difficult to understand.” The same holds true for these emergency instructions.

For the MTA, better communication with customers is vital toward gaining more acceptance as a player in the New York political scene. People do not trust what they cannot understand, and that effort at explanation can start with something as simple as emergency brake instructions or as complicated as a convoluted service change poster. Iin the aftermath of this fall’s D Train murder in which the emergency brake was pulled and riders in one car were trapped with a killer, Transit is currently looking into ways to better present its emergency brake rules. After all, in the event of some emergencies, pull the brake. Good luck for now figuring out which ones.

To pull the emergency brake in a new subway car today requires some thought and some action. While the picture at right shows the pullcord simply dangling at the end of a subway car, today’s emergency brakes are incased in a box so that people don’t accidentally latch onto them as the subway car lurches forward.

But that’s not the only notable part of the emergency brake, that oh-so-tempting way to stop a train car. Rather, as Michael Grynbaum noted yesterday, in case of emergency, subway riders are not supposed to pull the emergency brake. As Grynbaum notes, the cards — often ignored by most riders — that discuss the emergency brake include Rule No. 1: Do not pull the emergency brake. Reminiscent of Fight Club, this makes little sense.

Grynbaum continues:

So what emergency, exactly, does this emergency brake refer to? The explanation, transit officials say, is simple. If someone gets caught between the train’s closing doors, or between subway cars, and is about to be dragged to an unenviable fate, pull the cord. The train will stop, possibly saving a life.

But in case of fire, crime or a sick passenger — in fact, any other situation that could fairly be described as an emergency — the cord should be left alone. Stopping the train between stations will make it harder for help to arrive. The explanation is on the agency’s Web site, albeit accessible only after several clicks.

“We think that it is clear,” said Charles Seaton, a spokesman for New York City Transit.

The Times transit writer goes on to speak to a few straphangers who have no idea when to use the emergency brake, and he highlights last fall’s Murder on the D Train as a prime example. Sensing an emergency, riders in the car where the murder occurred pulled the brake. Some people say that action helped catch the suspected killer while others say it delayed police response to the scene of the crime and trapped innocent bystanders in a car with a killer. Either way, it made sense even if Transit officials urged riders to eschew pulling the cord.

In the end, the problem, as a psychologist explains, is one of messaging. The MTA expects its passengers to read signs that explain the emergency brake when most people just assume that an emergency brake should be used in case of any emergency. In reality, people should pull the brake only when someone is in danger of getting struck or injured by a moving train car, but that changes the concept of the emergency brake to one with which we the straphanging public are not familiar.

And so we’re left right back where we started: In case of most emergencies, please do not pull the emergency brake.

Above: Emergency Break photo courtesy of flickr user adotmanda.

Ah, January. It’s a brisk time of year for New York. The temperatures are hovering in the low 20s, and people ride the trains bundled up in layers of coats and sweaters. Yet, for one group of fun-loving New Yorkers, January is also the time for the No Pants Subway Ride.

For the last eight years, the instant-comedy group Improv Everywhere has hosted the No Pants Subway Ride in New York City, and this afternoon, unsuspecting straphangers will witness the ninth No Pants Ride. Last year, 1200 people dropped trou on the trains, and even more are expected later today.

So here are the details for this year’s event. For the first time in the history of this voyeuristic event, Improv Everywhere will tackle the outer boroughs. Those who wish to participate should meet at the following locations at 3 p.m.:

Astoria: Meet at Hoyt Playground
Downtown Brooklyn: Meet at Prospect Park
Downtown Manhattan: Meet at Foley Square
Queens: Meet at the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Park
strong>Uptown Manhattan: Meet at the Great Hill in Central Park
Williamsburg / Bushwick: Meet at Bushwick Park (AKA Maria Hernandez Park)

The event will culminate in a pants-less gather at Union Square shortly after. At around 4 p.m., the Union Square area should be teeming with too many people wearing only underwear and exiting the subway.

I won’t be participating this year. Two years ago, I joined my one and only No Pants Subway Ride at a time when around 900 other people joined me. At that point, enough New Yorkers didn’t know what was happening for the ride to be a gimmicky and funny and novel. Now, though, at least 1500 people will arrive, and nearly everyone is expecting someone to take his or her pants off this afternoon.

If you’re riding the rails and see it happening, enjoy the absurdity. If you’re participating, good luck. For the rest of us who may just be trying to get from Poitnt A to Point B, well, good luck with that too.

The cops who patrol the subways have been busy these days — or should I say these nights? They haven’t been busy stopping quality-of-life crimes that happen during the crowded rush hour commutes. Rather, they have been busy ticketing passengers late at night for not actually violating MTA regulations and subway rules.

The Post’s Tom Namako and Kirsten Fleming have highlighted the NYPD’s recent late-night ticketing blitz focusing on straphangers who take up more than one seat. It’s an outrageous tale, but it doesn’t fully connect the dots. The cops are giving out tickets for offenses that just aren’t offensive.

The two reporters tracked down two recent victims of the NYPD’s ticketing efforts. Josh Stevens, a student at FIT who was ticketed on back-to-back nights in November, says on the first night, he was stretched out on two seats and on the second, took up two seats when he crossed his legs. The NYPD officer who issued the summons said the increased enforcement was due to a quota.

“After the second time, I asked the officer, ‘Really, what’s going on? Why is this happening?’ ” Stevens said to Namako and Fleming. “And he told me, ‘Recently we’ve been told to write tickets instead of give warnings for this type of thing.’ He said they need to hit quotas.”

Andres Azamora was summonsed for having his legs splayed out in front of him — at 2:30 a.m. on an empty train. “There was no one else in the subway with me,” he said. “They just want to make money.”

Writes Namako and Felming, “MTA rules — which are enforced by the NYPD’s Transit division — say a passenger may not ‘occupy more than one seat’ or ‘place his or her foot on a seat.’” That’s not all these rules say. In fact, while this story makes the NYPD look petty, the real problem though is how the NYPD is blatantly flouting the MTA’s own Rules and Regulations.

Section 1050.7 of the MTA’s Rules of Conduct concern disorderly conduct, and section j involves passengers and the seats to which they are entitled. A passenger shall not “(1) occupy more than one seat on a station, platform or conveyance when to do so would interfere or tend to interfere with the operation of the Authority’s transit system or the comfort of other passengers;” and may not “(2) place his or her foot on a seat on a station, platform or conveyance.”

As the rule makes clear, a foot on a seat is an automatic offense, but passengers may occupy more than one seat if they are not interfering with the comfort of other passengers and the operations of the subway. If Alzamora and Stevens are telling the truth, the cops are ignoring the rules. They’re writing tickets for actions that aren’t violations.

So far this year, police have issued 784 summonses, and that number far surpasses 2008’s 760. Even though the NYPD’s Transit division isn’t run by the MTA, the authority will look guilty by association and will have to deal with another blow to its beleaguered public image. It’s time to reign in this irresponsible behavior. Cops should know the rules, and anyone who receives a ticket for stretching on an empty train at 2:30 a.m. should fight that ticket as hard as they can.

Why are NYPD officers targeting late-night victimless offenses when mid-day harassment and groping incidents go ignored if not to meet a quota? Plenty of people interfere with passenger comfort and space by spreading out when the trains are full. Late-night enforcement though catches people who aren’t violating the MTA’s regulations. If only the police were this vigilant during the day, the ride would be nicer for all.