In August 2007, a torrential rain storm knocked out nearly the entire New York subway system for hours. With the underground floods came a bunch of alarming developments. The MTA’s website couldn’t withstand the onslaught of visitors; their emergency alert system for service advisories was non-existent; and their anti-flood measures were ineffective at best and mostly useless. Over the last few years, the MTA has beefed up its website infrastructure and now provides near-real-time text alerts. The flood prevention was the last to come, but it’s finally in place and working.

According to Pete Donohue, the MTA completed a $31-million flood-prevention program. The highlight of this effort was a move to raise 1500 streetlevel grates a few inches off the ground. Instead of funneling rainwater underground and onto subway tracks and platforms, the waters are now siphoned to flood drains.

While New Yorkers saw the second-wettest June on record, weather-related subway delays are down significantly. For that, the agency deserves praise. Twenty-two months after a crippling storm, the system is ready for nature’s wrath.

New York City Transit is quite pleased with the performance of the grates. Paul Fleuranges sent me the above picture (which you can click to enlarge) and added a note about their use particularly on June 18 when the city received 1.84 inches of rain. “There’s no doubt given the amount of rain we’ve had this month, and the propensity of Hillside to flood out, we would have had serious problems if not for the grates,” he said.

When the MTA, with much fanfare, raised the fares this past week, many riders complained that they were paying more for the same level of service. New Yorkers, it seems, do not realize that without the fare hikes, they would suffer through crippling service cuts. These straphangers also seem to be more willing to pay higher fares for more service.

It’s not quite true that the MTA did not extend service though, and I want to take a brief second to talk about a couple of recent service extensions. These aren’t quite the service upgrades we need or want, but for now, they will have to do.

First, on Monday, Transit started running the 5 train into Brooklyn during midday, off-peak hours. For years, the 5 had a varying schedule for peak and off-peak hours. It would run express to Flatbush Ave. only from 6:15 to 10 a.m. and from 3:15 to 8:45 p.m. Now, the 5 runs to Flatbush Ave. from 6:15 a.m. straight through until 8:45 p.m. The Franklin St. transfers for midday Flatbush-bound travelers along the East Side IRT has been eliminated. Overall, the MTA has implemented this change to provide more consistent service while working to alleviate the overcrowding on the 4. Sounds good to me.

Further south in Brooklyn, this Sunday marks the extension of the G train to Church Ave. While the G signage has already been updated, the changes go into effect this weekend. The G will now continue south from Smith/9th Sts. with stops at 4th Ave.-9th Street, 7th Ave, 15th Street-Prospect Park, Fort Hamilton Parkway and Church Ave. Riders on the G can now get a one-seat ride from Kensington, Park Slope and Windsor Terrace to Williamsburg and Long Island City, and the stop at 4th Ave.-9th St. offers a connection to the M and R.

This service extension is a direct result of the Culver Viaduct rehabilitation project. However, if it is successful, Transit has expressed a willingness to make it a permanent change. It could also open up the possibility of F Express service in Brooklyn.

Finally, Transit recently wrapped up a 4 express pilot program in the Bronx as well. We’re still waiting for the results, but this too could be a new service option.

These are but small additions to a vast system, but every service extension helps.

Riders will create a garbage can wherever they can. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

When I interviewed New York City Transit President Howard Roberts in the fall, he spoke at length about his desire for cleaner stations. Roberts talked about the various plans in the works to beef up the maintenance crews around the system. Ah, to be in October. Those were simpler times.

Today, facing financial constraints and extreme internal budget-tightening, New York City Transit has been faced with a maintenance reality. The agency no longer has the money to support expanding the cleaning programs and in fact has had to cut back. Stations are, as Heather Haddon reported this morning, dirtier, and Transit’s cleaning staff is down by 100 workers. She reports:

Because of budget constraints, the MTA has curtailed station cleaning, with Transit officials acknowledging they are down by about 100 workers. The agency has also slashed overtime for cleaners, and workers say they simply can’t keep up with the mounting trash…

In recent years, the cleaning department has struggled to keep up with the surge in ridership. In 1993, the MTA employed 1.5 station cleaners per million riders. By 2007, the ratio had slipped to 1 cleaner for every million, according to Transit figures…

In a survey last year, the Straphangers Campaign found that the L and No. 7 made big improvements and were the system’s cleanest. A 2008 Transit report found that track fires also declined on the lines.

But running the pilot sapped precious manpower, which has fallen in the last several years as cleaner jobs went unfilled to save money, [union leader Marvin] Holland said. A hiring freeze implemented earlier this year has compounded the problem. Cleaners are now often scurrying to hit as many as five locations in one shift, whereas in the past they would usually just do two. And now stations only have cleaners on-site for an average of four hours a day, according to the Transit report.

The subways have never been known for their cleanliness. Oblivious or discourtesy straphangers treat every available surface as a garbage can. Food is left to rot on station platforms, and the worst offenders clip their nails onto the floors of train stations and cars.

Roberts though wants to add more cleaners. He says he can’t though because of the budgetary constraints and a worse-than-expected outlook. He hoped that internal belt-tightening would allow him reallocate resources for cleaning, but that is an optimistic prediction today.

In the end, the people who suffer most are, well, those same riders. More trash leads to more rodents. More trash leads to more track fires. More trash leads to a more unpleasant commute. Sadly, it sounds as though we may need to get used to that idea.

The latest from William Neuman is an odd tale indeed. According to The Times, New York City Transit officials are backtracking in a way on their decision earlier this year to eliminate an emergency response team.

A dedicated emergency response team for the subway — trained to help police officers and firefighters confront transit emergencies — was eliminated by New York City Transit this spring as officials overrode concerns of the agency’s safety experts.

The seven-member unit was created to address shortcomings that had become apparent after a series of bungled responses to fires and other incidents in the subway system, and it had won praise during its 13 months of existence for improving communication among police, fire and transit officials at emergencies.

Yet the agency’s leaders, including its president, Howard H. Roberts Jr., deemed the response team unnecessary. They compared the unit to Maytag repairmen, saying it was rarely used. . When the unit was eliminated in March, it was replaced by the same much-criticized system that had been in use before the team was created.

But after first defending the change, Mr. Roberts now acknowledges that it was mishandled, saying that the response team should not have been eliminated before a better system was fully in place.

He said that no analysis was done of the unit’s effectiveness before it was disbanded. He said that neither he nor the agency’s vice president for subways, Steven A. Feil, had looked at basic data on the unit’s performance, like the number of incidents it responded to, until last week when the information was requested by The New York Times. That data showed that the unit had responded to hundreds of incidents, large and small.

Neuman’s piece goes in depth on the elimination of this team, and Transit is taking the heat for downplaying the response team’s effectiveness. “I think that the basic thing that went wrong here was that people wanted you to go away,” Roberts said to Neuman, who earlier this year had poked around the situation.

In the article, Neuman tracks the creation and subsequent elimination of a team designed to streamline how Transit handles underground emergency situations. While MTA officials said that the team was underutilized, current numbers show an average of two emergency response efforts per day. Roberts plans to reestablish the team once the new Line Manager program is full implemented this fall.

I wonder how the agency, with its public image largely battered after the Doomsday budget debacle, will handle this latest revelation from The Times.

When I’m waiting for a train, I’ll often take a look at the rubber bumper along the edge of the subway platform. Generally, I don’t like what I see. The bumpers are in various states of erosion, and sometimes the boards are visibly loose or just not there.

The bumper story came to a head in February of 2008 when a station collapsed. That day, part of the Kings Highway station platform fell and took a 14-year-old with it. The next day, NYC Transit President Howard Roberts promised an inspection of every single platform.

Today, we have a follow-up. After condemning NYC Transit’s response time in a preliminary report in January, the MTA Inspector General released his final report about the state of the platform edges, and the picture he paints is not a pretty one.

The document — available here as a PDF — carries with it a rather regal title: “An Inquiry Into Whether MTA New York City Transit Consistently and Correctly Identifies and Reports Subway Platform-Edge Safety Defects.” As you could imagine, Barry Kluger isn’t too pleased with the MTA’s efforts at correcting and addressing their platform issues. He summarizes:

• Platform-level inspectors at NYCT subway stations failed to correctly identify and report platform-edge safety defects visible at 16 of 23 stations sampled by OIG (70%), as confirmed by top officials in charge of station maintenance based upon their review of NYCT records and OIG photographs.
• Out of an OIG sample of 25 comments made by platform-level inspectors reporting non-safety defects, 22 of those comments used language that actually indicated safety defects, according to a review of those comments by top station maintenance officials.
• Station Operations Division middle managers are not promptly resolving confusion caused by inspectors who describe platform-edge conditions as safety defects, but rate and report them as non-safety defects.
• Different inspectors described the same platform-edge condition inconsistently. For example, inspection reports covering one station in the OIG sample, on five different days during a nineteen-day period, with no intervening repair, showed that two inspectors described the rubbing boards as “ok,” two others described them as “loose” (a safety defect) and a fifth noted that “rubbing boards in need of repair.”
• While NYCT requires that repair of so-called “non-safety defects” (which include safety defects that have been temporarily repaired) be completed within 60 days, its stated goal is to address 75% of those defects on time. Nevertheless, NYCT only addressed within 60 days some 41% of those rubbing board defects reported in the first eight months of 2008. Further, the backlog of defective rubbing boards is so great that NYCT’s goal for bringing these boards into a state of good repair is now December 2009.

In the end, Kluger offers up a succinct conclusion. “Rubbing boards with safety defects resulting from damage and deterioration pose a serious,predictable and widespread safety hazard, especially on subway lines with outdoor stations,” he says. He also recommends that New York City Transit systematize defect analysis and prioritize oversight and safety repair.

Interestingly, the Inspector General’s report ends with a letter from NYC Transit President Howard Roberts. In response to the IG’s preliminary report from January, Roberts stresses how he will direct Transit officials to improve their inspection efforts. Roberts, one of the key officials behind the Line Manager pilot, believes his program will help streamline platform repair efforts. The jury is out on that program, but I believe Roberts is on the right track with that promise. Now let’s see the Line Managers deliver.

Hot on the heels of Friday’s rather controversial post about the funding and benefits issues facing the MTA, today we have a pair of stories about the dicey fate of MTA employees. We’ll start with the one about conductor-less trains right now and end in a few hours with another tale about the station agents.

Over the weekend, the Daily News reported that, in an effort to save on staffing costs, the MTA is considering cutting train conductors on numerous routes throughout the city. These so-called One Person Train Operations would reduce on-board staffing figures by 50 percent as only the driver would remain. This practice has been in place on lines, such as the G and shuttles, that run smaller cars, and if Transit is to implement this on a wider range, it would be the first reduction of on-board personnel in some time.

As with any publicized personnel cuts, transit advocates and union officials are none too pleased. “Axing the conductor may save the MTA money, but it comes at the expense of the safety and security of the rider,” Gene Russianoff, head of the Straphangers Campaign, said to News reporter Pete Donohue.

Donohue reminds us of another time during which the MTA tried to pull conductors out of trains:

The MTA took conductors off the L line in 2005, but had to put them back after an arbitrator ruled that its contract with Transport Workers Union Local 100 required approval by the union. The following year, the same arbitrator stopped the MTA from taking conductors off G trains on weekdays.

After the second ruling, the MTA stopped putting OPTO plans in its annual budgets and four-year fiscal plans. Sources told The News that the MTA is again seeking the staffing change as a way to save money.

Transit officials have argued in the past that trains can run safely with just a motorman, as police and firefighters quickly respond to track fires and other emergencies. Officials also have argued that train evacuations between stations are infrequent and have been conducted without passengers suffering injuries.

I let those official statements speak for themselves. The cuts are well and good if they save money and eliminate redundant personnel, but the one time Transit needs to run an evacuation, the lack of a conductor will become an issue. Of course, it’s easy to train one person to handle a subway full of panicking passengers, but advocates will always argue for safety in numbers.

The TWU has already begun its defense of the conductors. “Of course, this is one of management’s demands. This is something the MTA has been pursuing the last two or three bargaining rounds and we continue to completely disagree with them,” a Local 100 spokesman said to the News.

In addition to the G and L lines, in the past, the MTA has pegged the J, M and 7 as candidates for conductor-less trains. I say, “Why not?” The safety concerns, while reasonable, seem overblown, and the L line has the technology to run completely unmanned trains. The driverless trains along the Paris Metro’s Line 14 have been a success, and if the MTA can reduce costs by cutting, it is at least a plan to consider.

Earlier this morning, I examined the MTA’s report card from the Permanent Citizen’s Advisory Committee to the agency. The MTA got slammed on its capital construction programs and technology implementation efforts while it earned praise for sustainability initiatives and leadership.

Now, let’s tackle New York City Transit’s write-up. The subway-operating agency earned high marks all around from PCAC. Again, the full report is here as a PDF, and I’ll run down the highlights right now.

The committee appreciates the leadership at NYC Transit. Howard Roberts, agency president, is praised for his “openness, thoughtfulness and foresight.” Roberts has come across the same way to me in my interactions with him, and he’s the right man for the job right now.

In terms of organization, PCAC also praises Joseph Smith and his efforts at consolidating the NYC Transit bus operations. The committee report offers up a qualified assessment of the line manager program: “It has imparted a sense of ownership to managers and helped quantify what it takes to provide a reliable level of service and well-maintained stations. However, it is still not clear how success is going to be measured.” I believe the Rider Report Cards are supposed to provide for a measure of success, but whether those are reliable remains to be seen.

Unfortunately for straphangers, PCAC’s most glowing praise refers to services that will soon be cut. The resumption of late-night 3 train express service from 148th St. in Harlem to Times Square is called “one of the most commendable achievements by NYCT” in 2008, and the shortened headways on the 1, 4, 6 and 42nd St. Shuttle “were appreciated.” With the planned service cuts designed to increase headway throughout the system, these positive gains may be short-lived.

The PCAC’s NYC Transit Riders Council also recognizes the success of the Select Bus Service in the Bronx. “As a joint MTA/NYCT project with the New York City Police Department and the New York City Department of Transportation, this is an excellent example of cooperation among various agencies,” they write. “The NYCTRC is pleased to see this promising start to implementation of SBS throughout the City.” The report calls upon Transit to provide more Select Bus Service with an eye toward the parts of Queens that don’t enjoy subway access.

As far as construction and system upgrades go, NYC Transit received mixed marks. The Myrtle-Wyckoff modernization project was haled as “an excellent example of station modernization.” The continued decrepitude of the Chambers St./Nassau loop continued to alarm the committee. “Unfortunately, this effort, costing $30 million, hardly made a dent in the overall deleterious condition of this once beautiful station,” the report says. “There is severe water leakage damage, peeling paint, loose wires, and a general ragtag condition throughout the facility. This situation is hardly appropriate for the New York City Hall location which is above the station.”

As they did with the MTA, PCAC reserves its most scathing language for the South Ferry debacle. “The Agency needs to identify where and why these errors occurred and describe steps that are being taken to improve project management.”

Escalators and elevators continue to haunt New York City Transit. While Transit has met its goal of 67 elevator stations by 2010 ahead of schedule, escalators are another beast. Six of the 12 new motion sensitive escalators at Herald Square were listed in a fourth-quarter report as “out of service awaiting contractor to perform warranty repair work.” Perhaps Transit purchased a few lemons.

On the communication front, again, Transit receives some mixed grades. PCAC likes the Rider Report Card program and calls it a definite step toward a better rider experience. They fault NYCT though for the state of its public address system. That’s not a surprise.

In the end, while the MTA is puttering along, New York City Transit seems to be thriving. They’re making smart choices that are designed to benefit the maximum number of riders. If Albany sits up and takes notice, they will see a city that needs this transit system and a transit system excelling at a time of great future uncertainty.