When the MTA Board put its stamp on the four-year budget plan this week, it did so more with a grimace than with a smile. On one level, the plan is a strong indication of agency CEO and Chairman Jay Walder’s willingness to cut services, a necessary move his predecessor never implemented, but on the other hand, subway riders are losing more than just money. The authority has to cut some services that make commutes less painful and more pleasant. The subways are becoming austere.

“The foundation of this [Four-Year] Plan,” Walder said, “is the most aggressive and comprehensive overhaul in the history of the MTA. These actions have allowed us to hold true to our commitment regarding fare increases while maintaining the quantity and quality of service that New Yorkers rely on every day. The State’s ongoing fiscal crisis is one of many risks to the Plan, but with continued hard work and the participation of our labor unions I believe that this Plan can be achieved.”

The fares will be raised only 7.5 percent, an amount agreed upon in Albany as a precondition to the 2009 payroll tax funding plan, but the little things will go instead. We’ve already the V and W trains; we’ve already lost countless bus routes; we’ve already seen headways increase during off-peak hours. Now, as Andrew Grossman of The Wall Street Journal details, we’re going to see services scaled back as well.

The cost-cutting measures mentioned in Grossman’s article come from an engagement with the consulting firm Accenture. The savings to the MTA total nearly $202 million annually, but although economic efficient rules the day, Grossman notes that these cuts will “likely lead to an increase in the minor inconveniences of riding Greater New York’s mass transit system.” We’ve already heard about the plan to scale back on turnstile cleanliness, a move that will save the authority $1.8 million, and Grossman highlights a series of other cuts:

Once subway riders get through the turnstiles, they’ll encounter escalators with more debris on them. A program that started in 2007 aimed at cleaning escalators without taking them out of service ended on June 1. When riders get to the platform, they’ll hear fewer announcements about where trains are and whether they’ll be late. The MTA is cutting the number of stations that have dedicated announcers from 183 to 78.

Since June, there have been five fewer green-clad ushers pointing passengers confused by the hustle and bustle of Grand Central Terminal in the right direction. The reductions are part of staff cuts that will save $1.1 million this year and $1.9 million next year…

The Long Island Rail Road has cut its station pigeon-proofing in half. That could mean more droppings landing on passengers as birds nest in platform overhangs. The railroad will have fewer conductors on platforms at Jamaica Station. It won’t trim the trees and branches along its tracks as often as it did.

Commuters looking to railroad drink carts for comfort amid the cuts will find those more expensive, too. Prices for food and drink on the LIRR and Metro-North will go up 3% in September.

None of these cuts are as major as the June decrease in service levels, but combined, they create negative incentives to use transit. If stations are dingier and dustier, if food is more expensive, if people don’t find the system convenient, they will begin to eschew it for other means of transit or fewer trips away from home entirely. Maybe an outer borough denizen won’t spend money on a weekend in Manhattan; maybe a commuter will find it less appealing to wait at a station bombarded with pigeons.

The MTA has tried its best to whether the times, but without support from the state, the authority is left to enact its death by a thousand cuts. The system itself will be maintained, but the amenities will disappear as the trash piles up. “This is not a situation that we’ve created. It’s not a situation that’s occurring because our expenses are up,” Walder said at Wednesday’s board meeting. “It’s not a situation that’s occurring because our ridership is down. It’s a situation that is occurring because our subsidies have not been there and because money has been taken by the state.”

Reduced service on the Bx20 have left many Bronx residents paying two fares for their commutes.

As most straphangers come to terms with longer wait times and fewer seats on our post-service cut commutes, a few commuters who live in the harder-to-reach areas of New York City are finding life particularly tough in the post-cut environment. These are the people who once enjoyed bus service to the nearest subway but now must take a subway and a bus or two buses to reach a route that gets them to work. These are the people who have sufferd through service cuts only to be greeted with a de facto fare hike.

For the vast majority of those who are dependent upon the MTA, the fare hikes have resulted in less pleasant rides. As NY1 details today, the MTA’s new load guidelines have meant fewer, more crowded trains, and riders accustomed to a sit are finding themselves out of luck. “Forget about that,” Olmon Hairston said. “What seat? You have to be very strategic and find maybe the very back of the train or the very front of the train and position yourself in such a way so you can jockey for position.”

Those bemoaning about seats are the lucky ones. For many in the outer boroughs, the cost of travel just went up. Some riders have to pay two fares to cover the same distance. Clyde Haberman, with an assist from frequent SAS commenter Allan Rosen, explains the dual fare:

Allan Rosen, who worked for the authority for many years, called my attention to a little-discussed aspect of changes that led to the closing or altering of dozens of bus routes. Some New Yorkers may now be forced to pay double to get from Point A to Point B. They have in effect been placed in two-fare zones.

Until recently, for example, people traveling in Brooklyn from Bushwick to Crown Heights might have taken the B52 bus along Gates Avenue and transferred at Franklin Avenue to the B48, heading south toward Empire Boulevard. But the southbound B48 no longer goes that far. To get where they want, riders who transfer from the B52 to the B48 must switch again at Fulton Street to the B49, running on Bedford Avenue.

That means three buses. For those with per-ride MetroCards, that second transfer costs them an extra $2.25. Similar situations exist on other routes. Are vast numbers of riders affected? Probably not. “But the point isn’t how many people,” Mr. Rosen said. “It’s the fact that it’s unfair and no one should have to suffer like this.”

To a lesser extent, the same problem exists in Riverdale. Bronx residents no longer enjoy the Bx20 and now must either transfer to the Bx7 and pay again to board the A in Manhattan or take the bus to the 1 train to the A train, a rather lengthy trip from Riverdale.

Although few have solutions for this two-fare problem, watchdogs and other transit advocates are not happy with this turn of events. “It’s bad enough somebody has to transfer two times to get where they need to go. They shouldn’t have to pay two fares,” William Henderson, executive director of the MTA Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, said to New York 1.

For now, some of those riders can switch to unlimited ride MetroCards, but even that, based upon recent rumors, is a temporary solution. When the MTA implements a 90-ride cap on the cards early next year, the two-fare ride, a remnant of the pre-MetroCard days, will again become a reality. It is, as Haberman said, transit death by a thousand cuts.

While the new routes are in effect, many stations still feature old maps.

New York City Transit has a map problem. It’s not that the new subway map is bad. In fact, the redesign with fewer bus boxes and less unnecessary information makes the map more useful as a system navigation tool. The devil, however, is in the stations as five days after the service changes went into effect, the maps present throughout the system are still in the process of being updated.

To illustrate, a story: Every morning, I ride the train from Grand Army Plaza to Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall. I exit the stop in Manhattan at the northern end and pass through the unstaffed entrance that leads into Foley Square. The subway maps at both stations have been updated, but every other piece of supporting navigational materials has not. The “Neighorhood” maps at both Grand Army Plaza and City Hall still show the brown M train and its route into Brooklyn via the Montague St. tunnel. The Manhattan bus map at City Hall displays the routes as of last week and not this past Monday.

These aren’t isolated incidents. I’ve ridden more than a few trains that still display the old maps, and today, my Brooklyn-bound 2 train announced that customers could transfer to the J and M trains at Fulton St. The M hasn’t stopped there since last Friday. The Fulton St. complex is the tenth busiest station in the system, and if Transit’s pre-recorded announcements are telling people wrong information, that’s a problem.

Meanwhile, at other stations, the situation remains the same. Last night, I made the trip from Chambers St. to Christopher St. The latter is a reasonably popular destination stop. In 2009, an average of 10,000 people passed through it every weekday, and it serves as the gateway to Greenwich Village for many tourists visiting the city. The former serves around 20,000 per day. In both of those stations, featured prominently at the Customer Information Center, were subway maps that hadn’t yet been updated to reflect the new routing. Now, I’m not talking about far-off stations in the Rockaways that see a few hundred people a day; I’m talking about the 65th and 128th busiest stations in the system.

Eventually, Transit workers will get around to fixing these problems. The new maps will go up; life will go on. Yet, this situation reminds me of the post I wrote earlier this week about the MTA’s customer service woes. For weeks, Transit has been planning for the new service cuts and rerouted subway lines. The authority made a big show of putting up new subway bullets and fixed an obscene meme in two days when the Internet uproar began. Yet, five days after the cuts, they still haven’t replaced the maps hanging in at least a few stations, and the Neighborhood and Bus maps might remain outdated for some time.

This delay in updating the maps — arguably as important as hanging up some subway bullets at oft-deserted ends of platforms — isn’t a grave oversight by the MTA. It just shows how the authority doesn’t consider its customers. If anything, the maps should be the first things in a station changed because they are what allows people unfamiliar with the system to get around. A tourist unfamiliar with the subway system and bound for, say, MoMA would be left waiting for a V train that won’t arrive and would find at Christopher St. no station agent able to provide them with directions. The customer, it seems, is an afterthought.

As the first rush hour in the post-service cut era dawned yesterday, riders throughout the city had to scope with a radically altered transit network. As the city’s commuters struggled to adjust to this new reality, service cuts coverage dominated the news. Reporters from various news outlets produced numerous pieces featuring exception reporting on various aspects of the changes, and I’d like to round them up here.

When signs get ost in translation

Although English remains New York’s dominant language, the city is filled with thousands of immigrants who are only just adjusting to life in the United States. Many of the subway and bus changes impact these non-English speaking communities. The M, for instance, ran through Hispanic communities in Brooklyn and Chinese communities in Manhattan while buses no longer serve Haitian neighborhoods.

To track these changes, WNYC’s Matthew Schuerman hit the streets and found signs only in English. The MTA urged those in need of translation services to call an 800 number, but communities were left to fend for themselves. Eventually, street-savvy New Yorkers found their ways to the proper train lines.

Queens residents protest residential bus routes

While many people were out in force protesting against the MTA’s cuts, one neighborhood association in Queens had a different gripe. Residents in Whitestone spoke out against what they saw as a poorly planned rerouting. Their target was the Q15A, an alternate route of the Q15 that was designed for passengers stranded by the elimination of the Q14.

When the MTA put this new line into service, they routed it down a few narrow residential streets, and local politicians requested a route change on the grounds that the streets were too narrow. Yesterday, with protesters watching from the sidelines, a new Q15A and a pick-up truck came to a stalemate as the street was not wide enough to let the two vehicles pass each other. The police had to clear the road, and neighborhood residents have renewed their calls for a better route.

Those who suffer the most

Times columnist Clyde Haberman tackled the service cuts in his latest NYC column this week. He says that the city’s poor are the ones hardest hit by the cuts. As I mentioned earlier today, Haberman’s charge is true because of the general disregard for buses found in American society, but otherwise, I think he misses the point. Everyone will suffer with these service cuts. Trains upon which people from all walks of life rely will be more crowded, and as the wealthiest opt to drive, congestion will slow down the city’s economy.

Union inspections slow down new routes

Over the past few days, I’ve received numerous reports of slower-than-normal commutes on the BMT lines in northern Brooklyn. While some of the delays are due to passengers adjusting to the new service patterns, amNew York says that union inspections have led to delayed service as well. TWU inspectors have done safety checks on the new M trains, and the lines should pick up speed as those inspections are wrapped up.

Fourth Avenue: The deepest cut, oft ignored

Finally, news on a topic I plan to cover more in depth later on: the R train along 4th Ave. is too crowded. When the MTA announced its subway service cuts, most of the attention focused on the new M routing. Lost in the coverage was the reality of longer waits and headways along the BMT 4th Ave. line in Brooklyn. Since the M would no longer be servicing the local stops here, those Manhattan-bound customers would have to wait for only the R train.

These eight-minute headways coupled with fewer trains has led to overcrowding on the R. Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign, a frequent R train rider himself, said, “One of our people reported heavy crowding on the R at DeKalb, where they got rid of the M. The R is picking up the slack, but waits are near doubling and crowding is significantly up.” I wonder how this line will hold up under the pressure of the new crowds.