The Apple Store is courting controversy even before the plywood comes down.

The Apple Store in Grand Central is still a week or so away from its grand opening, but already, its mere presence and the lease Apple has signed is generating controversy. One State Senator may even take the extraordinarily bold step of holding a hearing to protest the lease.

Here’s the story, as first reported by The Post: Apparently, Apple negotiated a deal in which it pays $60 per square foot for the space and doesn’t have to pay the MTA, its landlord, a percentage of profits. It will be the only retailer in Grand Central with such a sweetheart deal, and the rent itself, while four times higher than what Metrazur was paying, pales in comparison with the $200 per square foot Shake Shack will soon be paying. Uh oh.

The MTA itself was a bit defensive of the deal. “We set out to maximize the rent we receive for this space, and we’re thrilled that we were able to more than quadruple what we had been receiving previously,” Authority spokesman Aaron Donovan said to The Post. No one else, the MTA has noted multiple times, even bit a bid in for the space when the authority issued a request for proposals earlier this year.

Still, those watching the proceedings and those dismayed at the state of the MTA’s finances were none too pleased. “I am surprised they didn’t get some kind of percentage,” Robin Abrams, an executive with Lansco, said. “You’d think if they were going to do, say, $50 million in sales, the MTA would at least get some percentage of anything over that.”

The MTA has repeatedly said that the Apple Store and the traffic it generates will make up for the lease terms favorable to the Cupertino computer giant. The authority anticipates that the Apple Store will “generate significant new traffic” for the other retail establishments, and as The Post reports, every one percent increase in non-Apple Grand Central sales results in an additional $500,000 for the MTA.

Throughout the city, reaction to this development has not been kind. Gizmodo slams both the MTA and Apple. The computer retailer is “screwing over one of its partners” and “might be hard-lining you right out of your ride to work.” That’s a bit of hyperbole as even a percentage-based lease wouldn’t generate the kind of dollars the MTA needs to close long-term spending gaps.

One State Senator though isn’t too impressed. “There needs to be an investigation of who negotiated this deal. The taxpayers of this state are being ripped off that Apple is getting this sweetheart deal,” Tony Avella said to WCBS.

So what to do? The MTA had no leverage in the negotiations, and Apple knew it. It’s getting more money than it used to get and could reap ancillary benefits in the form of increased traffic through Grand Central. On the other hand, Apple is paying a percentage at 59th and 5th that has amounted to around $15 million per year. That’s real money the MTA won’t see because they weren’t in a position to ask for and get it. It is another day in the life of this crazy city.

I knew the MTA’s rat problem was getting out of hand, but this might be one of the largest I’ve seen so far…

A tip of the hat to @StationRat.

Straphangers are often creative in disposing of garbage if the closest trash can is too far away. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

The MTA, as we well know, has a bit of a trash problem. Garbage piles up everywhere underground, and rodents find the subway tracks and platforms to be very comfortable homes. For years, with budgets on the decline, Transit has searched for ways to combat what they have termed the “unsightliness and malodor of trash bags” in subway platforms, and now, as the agency ramps up trash collection efforts, they’re trying something counterintuitive: At two stations, the authority has removed trash cans in an effort to cut down on trash.

The pilot program in place at 8th St. and Broadway and Flushing/Main Street has earned headlines this morning for the sheer audacity of the idea, but it is part of a broader effort aimed at keeping stations cleaner. The measures are outlined in a report presented yesterday, and they include a targeted effort to eliminate rats, the prioritization of garbage collection trains and the addition of more refuse trains and trucks. Ultimately, the MTA has to collect and remove the 40 tons per day of trash that grows in the system, and it’s finding the task challenging.

The intriguing centerpiece of this effort though is clearly the plan to remove trash cans. Michael Grynbaum has more on this idea:

The idea is to reduce the load on the authority’s overtaxed garbage crew, which is struggling to complete its daily rounds of clearing out 40 tons of trash from the system. But it also offers a novel experiment: will New Yorkers stop throwing things away in the subway if there is no place to put them?

…The no-bin experiment is a more unusual approach, but it has precedent. In London, bins are banned from some Underground stations; in Washington, a similar program was abandoned because of riders’ complaints.

The PATH train has had no bins since 2001 because of security concerns. Since the removal, “it seems there is less trash,” said Ron Marsico, a spokesman, although he noted that the PATH system was smaller and more easily cleaned than the subway.

I understand why the MTA is pursuing this line of thinking, but there’s a clear conceptual gap here. Both the WMATA and the PATH systems are cleaner than ours because food is banned. The DC Metro engaged in a public crackdown of eating and drinking a few years ago, and the Port Authority has been diligent in keeping food out of the system as well.

Some MTA officials recognize this conflict as well. Board member Charles Moerdler wants the authority to study “the extent to which foodstuffs on trains or sold on the platforms is either deleterious to the system, or can in some way be curbed or eliminated, which I would favor.” But John Gaito, Transit’s trash guru, expressed a more resigned attitude to The Times. “It’s impractical,” he said. “You have a lot of customers who need to eat food on the system.” I’m not convinced anyone needs to eat in the unsanitary conditions of the subway, but that’s long been the argument for not banning food.

The real problem though is one of human behavior in the subway. Unless the MTA bans free newspapers that make up 44 percent of system-wide waste, people will just use whatever they want as a garbage can. With the nearest trash can over a city block away, riders at 7th Ave. in Brooklyn simply improvised, and the back end of Nevins St. has also been turned into a makeshift garbage can. The solution to combating trash in stations involves more garbage cans which inevitably lead to more garbage runs and more expenditures on garbage collection.

For now, though, that’s not in the cards, and neither is a ban on food. Instead, we get this strangely counterintuitive pilot program that seems to be showing returns at one station but more trash at the other, and everyone is skeptical. “NYC Transit doesn’t have the money to keep stations clean,” Gene Russianoff said to the Daily News. “So even a ridiculous idea sounds good to them.”

Whenever I travel to a subway station with an escalator, I usually wind up taking the stairs. I like the exercise, and I find the stairs faster than trying to weave around straphangers who can’t figure out how to stand on the right and walk on the left. Still, the escalators in the New York City subway system are far from perect, and yet their reach is going to expand soon.

In today’s Times, Christine Haughney highlights the problem with the escalators. Even though the numbers are by and large positive, the ones that are broken seem to stay that way. Haughney writes:

In large measure, the system’s 194 elevators in 73 stations, and its 178 escalators in 52 stations, work far more often than not. Elevator availability was measured at 95.3 percent in the second quarter of this year, compared with 96.8 percent in the same period last year; escalators held steady at 92.8 percent.

Still, some troubling issues remained; in those three months, there were 73 instances when riders got stuck in elevators. And escalators and elevators in disrepair tended to stay that way. “The public perception is in a totally different place because if you come upon an escalator and it’s out of service, your perception is that it’s never in service,” Thomas F. Prendergast, president of New York City Transit, said.

The authority knows that this has long been a problem and is doing its best to fix it, Mr. Prendergast said. In July, the authority restructured elevator and escalator operations by creating a dedicated 299-person group, naming Tony Suarez as its leader, and having him present quarterly reports directly to the authority board.

Since then, the authority has tried to give riders better updates about out-of-service elevators and escalators by sending text messages, posting information on its Web site and adding more signs in stations. Most of all, Mr. Prendergast said, he is trying to change the mind-set of transit workers who dismiss broken elevators as an inevitable part of urban transportation. “Part of it’s denial and part of it’s blaming others,” Mr. Prendergast said of some transit workers’ view of elevator and escalator problems. “But we have to rise to another place.”

It’s sort of stunning to think that 300 people are devoted to the MTA’s escalators, and yet, many seem out of service seemingly semi-permanently. They are fixed, and then they break again. Those at the stations that need them the most, says The Times, “have the worst performance records.”

Escalators, then, would seem to be a thing to avoid for the MTA, but the authority is heading in another direction. When the 7 line extension opens at 34th St. and 11th Ave. in two years, it will be serviced by escalators and inclined elevators, thus creating the perfect storm of MTA technology. In fact, this week, the KONE Corporation announced that it had been rewarded the contract for the station.

KONE specializes in industrial escalators, and it will add nine heavy-duty transit escalators and two custom-inclined elevators to the deep-cavern station at 34th St. and 11th Ave. Earlier this year, the MTA said that it wasn’t planning on installing stairs there so these escalators and elevators will be the only manner of egress. Ultimately, then, I’m left with a Mitch Hedberg quote: “An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs.” The MTA’s escalators at worst are stairs, and that worst seems to pop up more than it should.

I arrived home from my trip to Minneapolis this afternoon and had the unfortunate occurrence of landing at LaGuardia. After spending a decent amount of money in the Twin Cities, I didn’t feel like forking over $40 for a cab ride back to Park Slope, and so I attempted to take the M60 and the subway. A whopping two hours after I collected my luggage, I walked through my front door. It would have taken only another hour and a half to walk.

The first part of my trip involved a lengthy wait. I missed an M60 while waiting for my luggage and had to wait another 15 minutes for the bus. So while the schedule says they run every 7-9 minutes, this one showed up 15 minutes later. The driver apologized after we left LaGuardia and claimed the bus that should have arrived in between had “broken down or something.”

Meanwhile, the bus was utterly packed, and it reeked of stale urine. The luggage rack filled up quickly after the Delta terminal, and as we slowly crawled through Astoria, I reflected on the absurdity of the situation. It took nearly 40 minutes for me to get from LaGuardia to 125th St. and Lexington via a bus, and I still had to take a lengthy subway ride. Somehow, LaGuardia, which sees nearly 24 million passengers a year, is barely transit accessible.

Now, flyers of course have their shortcuts. Many take cabs to the nearest subway stop and hop on there. Others simply book out of JFK. But with a highway right next to it, LaGuardia should be transit-accessible. Whether it’s a true bus rapid transit route to the airport, an extension of the AirTrain or the N or something as easy as pre-board fare payment, the city and the MTA should make an effort to make it easier to get there. Next time, I might just walk.

The MTA's budget problems apparently rendered the rest of platform too expensive for this sign.

Throughout his abbreviated tenure as CEO and Chairman of the MTA, Jay Walder has tried to focus on customer service. Even as he was forced to preside over cuts in bus and subway service and numerous layoffs, Walder has ushered through some initiatives designed to improve the customer experience, and his successor should do even more. The system’s information presentation certainly could use the overhaul.

For Walder, three intertwined initiatives aimed at improving customer service are likely to be the high points of his two years at the MTA. The new PA/CIS system — colloquially known as countdown clocks — was in the planning stages long before Walder returned from London, but he pushed the project through. Now, riders along the IRT routes know when their trains are coming and how long they must wait. Similarly, a bus tracking system is in the works, and the authority’s overhauled website along with a new commitment to open data make it slowly easier for the public to find tools that make their commutes easier.

Yet, despite the increase in information, the subway system itself can be maddeningly obtuse to navigate. The signs — remnants of the Massimo Vignelli overhaul in the 1960s — haven’t been updated in decades, and teasing information out of them can be difficult. My personal favorite is the one at right above. For the sake of visual appeal, the MTA has shortened platform to “plat” on their “No Exit” signs. Someone unfamiliar with the system sure would be excused if they didn’t know what that meant.

Another personal favorite is this one from West 4th Street:

As a regular rider of the B and D, I know what this confusing array of words means. In an attempt to decipher the text in a missive on signs I published last March, I wrote: “The B train stops at W 4th St., except when it doesn’t, and then you can take the D and transfer to the Q at De Kalb Ave. Usually, the D train runs express and skips DeKalb, except during late nights when it runs local and stops at DeKalb. Good luck, too, determining when that “late night” period is or figuring out what to do for those 90 minutes after the B stops running and before the D makes its stop at De Kalb. Even the MTA’s website is helpless on that front.”

I am not, apparently, alone. In his column this week on Sheepshead Bites, Allan Rosen delves into the world of confusing MTA signage, and he urges the authority to pay attention to customer complaints. On the same confusion regarding the B train, he writes:

Regarding signage, the IND provided timetables accurate to the half-minute at major subway stations informing passengers when trains would arrive. The MTA doesn’t wish to burden us with such details and has instead taken the path of simplicity. For example, a typical sign now reads “No B (in an orange bullet of course) Nights and Weekends.” Although useful information, what does one do at 10 or 11 p.m.? How do you know if you missed the last B train or not? I am all for simplicity and clarity, but sometimes functionality should override. While I think the IND went overboard by using half minutes, and that timetables on the stations are not really necessary today, the MTA at least should inform passengers on their signage when the first and last trains are due. “No ‘B’ before 6:20 a.m. or after 10:18 p.m., Mondays through Fridays” is far more useful information than “No ‘B’ Nights and Weekends.”

I’ve played the B train guessing game at West 4th St. before, and Transit never announces if B trains stop running or which train is the last to pass through the station. I enjoy a good mystery as much as the next person, but that is one time when I’d rather have the answer handed to me on a silver platter.

One solution is as Rosen proposes: Ask the customer. Find out which signs work and which do not. Find out what information a typical subway rider needs at various times of the day, and figure out how to deliver that information to the subway system. At West 4th St., for instance, clocks that had the wrong time in 2007 still don’t keep an accurate hour. If those could be used to notify customers of the last B train, they would be far more useful than they are today, and that is a type of customer service improvement the next MTA head should look to bring to the system.