Earlier today, the MTA Board held its first meeting of 2010, and prior to that meeting, the agency released its board materials. As I’ve done in the past, today, I’d like to take a look at some of the myriad transit statistics offered up in these presentations. Let’s delve today into the Transit Committee book (PDF). In particular, I’d like to explore how the subway riding public purchases its MetroCards.

First, as the above table shows, we can explore how those who ride the subway pay for their trips. This chart shows the number of non-student passenger trips, and it appears as though the Unlimited Ride/Pay-Per-Ride gap is evenly split. According to Transit, 50.7 percent of riders used an Unlimited Ride card with the bulk of those employing the 30-day unlimited ride card. Those are the frequent commuters. Of the remainders, 45.3 percent resorted to the pay-per-ride card with the majority of those taking advantage of the MTA’s bonus discount program. Four percent — bus riders — paid via cash.

What we see here, then, are smart commuters. Over 86 percent of all subway riders are taking advantage of the MTA’s discount fare offerings and are what I would consider to be daily or near-daily riders. The remaining 14 percent are most likely tourists and visitors to the city who do not understand the pay-per-ride discount or find themselves rarely using trains. Of course, some tourists will buy unlimited ride cards as well. Interestingly, the 14-day MetroCard isn’t seeing much traction, but I wonder if those numbers increase in December when vacation times increase.

Beyond the pure fare card numbers here, Transit presented various other facts about MetroCard use. For example, those who purchase their 30- and 14-day passes from a MetroCard Vending Machine with a credit card can take advantage of the MTA’s automatic loss insurance. Transit reports 5387 lost MetroCard claims in November 2009 for an average refund amount of $51.09. Apparently, straphangers lose and report their MetroCards well before the midway point of the month.

The agency then runs through a variety of numbers. Employer-based providers of pre-tax transportation benefits purchased 209,110 MetroCards valued at $13.9 million in November, and the mobile sales unit generated just over $97,000 in sales. Meanwhile, the EasyPay Xpress Unlimited program — an auto-bill program that charges a user’s credit the $89 for a 30-day card once a month — isn’t generating much use. While 2794 customers are enrolled in this program, they rode just 120,831 times in November. That 50-trip average drops the price-per-ride of the 30-day card to $1.78, not much lower than the pay-per-ride discount.

Finally, we have monthly totals as well. The MTA’s own MetroCard Vending Machines saw 13.3 million customer transactions in November for a total revenue intake of $171.1 million. Of note is this fact: “Debit/credit card purchases account for 66 percent of total vending machine revenue while cash purchases account for 34 percent. Debit/credit card transactions account for 36 percent of total vending machine transactions while cash transactions account for 64 percent.” The average cash sale, says Transit, is $6.87 while the average credit and debit card purchases are $26.10 and $19.71, respectively.

And that is how we rode in November and how we paid for our rides.

Underground, Massimo Vignelli is the superstar of the design of subway signs. He is largely credited with bringing a uniform design to the subway system shortly after the formation of the MTA in the late 1960s. Vignelli, who at the time was with the design firm Unimark International, did not work alone. He brought Bob Noorda, a leader in Modernist design with him, and Noorda was one of the driving forces behind Transit’s eventual use of its now-ubiquitious and familiar signs.

A few weeks, Mr. Noorda passed away in Milan at the age of 82. His cause of death, one of his associates said, was complications from head trauma suffered after he fell recently. Over the weekend, Steven Heller of The Times penned an obituary that highlighted Mr. Noorda’s work in New York City.

As Heller tells the tale, Noorda, then based in Unimark’s Milan office, came to New York at the request of Vignelli in 1966 when the MTA commissioned the firm to help unify their signs. “I remember when Bob came to New York and spent every day underground in the subway to record the traffic flow in order to determine the points of decision where the signs should be placed,” Vignelli said.

Continues Heller:

The existing signs they encountered were cluttered with various typefaces of different sizes. “Their system was a mess,” Mr. Noorda was quoted as saying in “Unimark International: The Design of Business and the Business of Design” (Lars Müller), a recently published book by Jan Conradi. “Sometimes pieces of paper taped to the wall were the only indication for the station.”

He and Mr. Vignelli set about standardizing the type family to make sure that the signs were cleaner and clearer; they settled on Helvetica, originally a Swiss design known for its sans serif economy and sterility, against a white background. Mr. Noorda worked on every detail, from typeface selection to color coding. He “had a very systematic mind,” Mr. Vignelli said, adding that “his work was extremely civilized.”

Yet the project proved disappointing to the designers. The M.T.A. was responsible for executing the designs and producing the signs in its own sign shop, and Mr. Noorda’s directives were not always followed. The sign makers, for example, at first chose to use Standard Medium, a typeface from their own shop. “They did not want to invest in Helvetica,” Ms. Conradi wrote.

In the end, Noorda and Vignelli’s black-on-white designs were replaced by the MTA with white-on-black signage. The agency always maintained that the white-on-black designs were easy to clean and did not get as dirty as Noorda’s original creation. Although Noorda’s may have been easier to read in a dimly lit subway stop, the MTA’s edits proved more durable, and today, the Akzidenz Grotesk font on a black background, often with a thin white line running through the top, symbolizes the city’s subway system.

For many, the MTA’s signs have always just been there, but they are both a product of hard work and a remnant of Modernism that lives on in New York. It will be decades before someone comes along to overhaul New York’s subway signage, and today, as we remember Bob Noorda, his work lives on.

Sign illustrations courtesy of Noorda Design and the MTA. A hat tip on this sad news goes to my mom who sent me the obituary over the weekend.

In 2005, iPod ads were everyone in the subway. Today, bleeding headphones have become ubiquitous. (Photo by flickr user t_a_i_s)

I found myself on Monday evening awaiting a downtown 4 train on the IRT platform at Union Square. As the downtown 6 pulled out and an express idled on the uptown tracks, it was loud. The automated PA voice kept warning me to stand back from the moving platform; the downtown trains screeched around the sharp curve into the station; and the heated system on the idling uptown express hummed.

It is little wonder then that the noisiest spot in New York City is at a subway station. According to a recent study by Hear the World, the noisiest spot in the city with trains roaring by is the B/D/F/V stop at 42nd St./Bryant Park. The noise levels reach 93 decibels at the subway system’s 18th busiest stop.

According to hearing experts, that level of screech is enough to cause permanent hearing damage, and Craig Kasper, a Columbia doctor who works with Hear the World, urged people to be mindful of the noise. “Once you reach anything over 85 decibels, you are really at risk,” he said. “If you hear a loud noise, just put fingers in your ears.”

Outside of Bryant Park, subways in general were the fourth most noisiest part of New York City, behind the West Side Highway and the bus lanes on 42nd St. east of Fifth Ave. A typical subway ride exposes a straphanger to 80 decibels of sound. Although the new R160s are designed to reduce noise levels both as trains ride the rails and as they brake, there’s only so much engineering can accomplish, and sounds are aplenty underground.

Interestingly, this survey seems to reduce the noise levels found this summer when one group warned of 100+ decibel exposure at some subway stations. Those built around curves are the loudest as trains make more noises braking through twisted sections of track. If only we could go back in time to fix those errors of original engineering over 100 years ago.

Noise on the subways, meanwhile, is not a new phenomenon. As Bill Bahng Boyer, one of my guest columnists over the summer, explained in August, New Yorkers have been complaining about the noise since October 29, 1904, one day after the IRT opened for business. What is a new problem however is headphone bleed. Have you tried to take a relatively silent ride lately? It’s impossible.

Once upon a time, boom boxes were the scourge of New York City subway riders. Those with their noises in magazines would dread the arrival of a gang of youths with a loud radio on for all to hear. It was the ultimate in obtrusive noise pollution, and eventually the combination of a crackdown and the onset of personal audio devices saw boom boxes become a relic of another era.

Today, though, we are subjected to subpar headphone earbuds. Brought about by the iPod revolution, nearly everyone is now satisfied with tinny headphones that leak sound all over the place. Some riders listen at volumes that are death to the ears, and nothing is worse than hearing the strains of something from 15 away in a a half-empty subway cars. Others simply don’t know how bad their headphones are. One day, I imagine, New York City may see an increase in the number of people suffering hearing damage, and the iPod earbuds will be to blame.

For now, we should be mindful of the noise. Obviously, the subways are noisy, and those sounds can impact our life. We tend to tune out the sounds of metal-on-metal, the sounds of air conditioner drones, the screech of brakes. But it’s there, hurting our ears decibel after decibel.

It’s hard to believe it’s been a year, but what a year it’s been. As 2009 draws to a close, I want to take a minute to reflect on the site. I’ve had more far more visitors this year than I did last, and many of you have stopped to leave a comment. From fare hikes to service cuts to progress along Second Ave., we’ve covered it all this year.

So as the year ends, I’d like to repeat my final post from 2008. Last year, I looked at the ten most popular posts from the previous year, and right now, I’m going to do the same. Although budget talks and funding solutions dominating the conversation, the most popular posts usually are a surprise.

1. The graffiti debate: Glorifying art or vandalism?
Two decades ago, the subways were covered in graffiti, and then the City and MTA decided to attack the art. Now, the subway is clean, but those graffiti artists feel slighted. As galleries begin to reminisce on the era of graffiti, we examined whether we should classify graffiti as misunderstood art or vandalism. The debate still goes on today.

2. Yankee Stadium Metro-North stop ready to go
As the Yankees went on their World Series run, the MTA opened a new Metro-North stop a few blocks away from the team’s new home. Jorge Posada, David Cone and Brian Cashman were on hand to lead reporters through the ribbon-cutting ceremony. The station was a success in its first season.

3. Wearing the Vignelli subway map
Something Vignelli seems to make the Top Ten every year, and the 2009 entry is a post I wrote about a dress for sale that featured the Vignelli map. The item is now unavailable, but it cost $249 at the time. Any subway buff worth their stripes would now own this one. I have yet to see anyone wear it though.

4. Foreshadowing a Second Ave. demise
As the MTA’s fiscal crisis robbed the agency of its operating budget, I wondered if the eventual lack of investment in transit would lead to the end of the Second Ave. subway work as well. For now, Phase I construction seems safe, but anything beyond that is a crap shoot.

5. Mythbusting the MTA fare hike
Friend-of-SAS and On Transport writer Chris O’Leary guest posted his FAQ about the fare hike. As the MTA has descended into fiscal chaos, misinformation about the authority reigns supreme, and few news agencies are willing to set the record straight. His post is as relevant today as it was in March.

6. Inside the Bleecker/Broadway-Lafayette Construction
In November 2011, Transit will finish up the project designed to connect the uptown 6 platform to the rest of the Bleecker St./Broadway-Lafayette station. In the meantime, I explore the ongoing work and what it means for commuters who use the 6 and the B/D/F/V stop in the area.

7. When it was a train: the H
Every now and then, some train’s rollsign is set to the wrong line, and New Yorkers wonder what that relic of another era was. We’ve seen a 13 train on the 1 line, and for the this post, we explored what the H — the old designation for the Rockaway Shuttle — was doing on an A train.

8. At 7 extension groundbreaking, Bloomberg slams SAS
As the MTA began to prepare for the TBM drops at the 7 line extension, Mayor Bloomberg took the time to criticize the Second Ave. Subway. He claimed that the new, badly needed line on the Upper East Side was destroying business but declined to mention why investing $2.1 billion into the 7 line expansion was a good idea.

9. Nostalgia Train to run December Sundays
Everyone loves the Nostalgia Train, and it ran this year in Sundays in December. Transit continued this festive holiday tradition despite a mid-month snow storm that shelved the old vintage cars for a weekend.

10. To save money, MTA may axe student MetroCards
We first heard of the MTA’s plan to save $170 million through student MetroCard cuts a few weeks ago. Although students are protesting the cuts and politicians do not look favorably upon them, no one has offered up a reason why the MTA should foot the bill for student transit costs.

* * *

And that’s the year that was in Second Ave. Sagas. I’ll be back tomorrow with the weekend service advisories. Remember: Transit running extra service after the ball drops tonight, but trains run on a Sunday schedule on New Years day. Have a safe and happy New Year.

For tomorrow, the final day of the year, I’ll present my personal Top Ten stories of 2009 as I did last year on New Year’s Eve. Today, let’s review the year that was in transit news.

For the MTA, 2009 was a struggle. The year started with fears of service cuts and fare hikes and, after a brief reprieve that wasn’t as substantial as promised, service cuts are back on the table. January started with the MTA’s attempting to come to grips with its fiscal crisis. The agency set March 25th as its drop-dead date for a bailout, and the Authority and TWU announced they would go to arbitration. As the agency struggled with its own economic reality, the opening for the new South Ferry station was delayed due to an engineering issue. The MTA received some good to end the month as the beleaguered Fulton St. Hub earned a stimulus-inspired reprieve.

In February, the MTA announced that ridership was at a 59-year high, but Bridge & Tunnel revenues were plummeting. The Tunnel Boring Machine began its work along 11th Ave. where the 7 line will soon run. Transit fixed a 70-year-old typo, and the month ended with news that the MTA’s deficit could reach $2 billion. Cuts were nearly inevitable.

March was a rough month for the MTA. First, Washington, DC, announced full underground cell coverage by 2012 while the MTA’s pilot program for the city is seemingly dead. Meanwhile, Albany continued to throw charges of two sets of books at the MTA. We first heard of the Gang of Four as the plan to institute bridge tolls on the East River Bridges began to die a slow death. The MTA Board approved its Doomsday budget by month’s end, and the Second Ave. Subway officially lost its third track.

For rolling stock buffs, April began with word of the R160 making its F train debut, and the MTA announced a May opening date for the new Yankee Stadium Metro-North stop. As Senate talks of a bailout plan began to breakdown, the MTA announced a summer rollout for the planned service cuts. I again wondered whether or not station agents actually did anything as Doomsday inched closer and closer. Along Second Ave., the new MTA timeline showed a mid 2016 debut for the project’s Phase I.

May brought a tentative agreement on the MTA’s funding package. It was an imperfect solution and one that cost then-CEO and Executive Director Elliot Sander his job. The Second Ave. Subway earned $79 million in stimulus funds, and we discussed the MTA’s pension problems. We also saw a 13 train on the 1 line.

In June, the fare went up as Richard Ravitch warned of a bleak 2010 for the MTA. Transit announced 4 express service in the Bronx, and the R40 slants made their final runs. The MTA sold the naming rights to the Atlantic Ave./Pacific St. station and sweetened Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards deal. Transit announced lower-than-expected ridership and fare revenue figures for 2009.

The summer saw a reprieve from the bad news. We explored funding transit through market-rate parking spots or a 36-percent fare hike. As the subways were accused of being very noisy, we went in depth on the Bleecker St./Broadway/Lafayette St. reconstruction efforts. Jay Walder earned an MTA appointment and pledged a fully-funded capital plan. The Feds and the MTA debated whether or not the SAS Phase I would open in 2017 or 2018, and the G train was extended to Church Avenue for the duration of the Culver Viaduct rehab.

August saw some good news. The MTA, despite immediate operations budget problems, unveiled a $28 billion capital plan to cover the next five years of transit expansion. On the heels of this announcement, we examined why transit matters in New York City. Bus arrival boards made a 34th St. debut. The MTA lost its TWU arbitration case and promised to appeal. Meanwhile, Transit dealt with the fallout from a major accident as the ceiling at 181st St. along the 1 line collapsed. For two weeks, Northern Manhattan commuters faced headaches and crowded trains.

September started with the Walder confirmation hearings and ended with TWU protests. In between, Jay Walder announced plans for a new fare payment system by 2014, and the Comptroller’s Office released a report critical of Transit’s station maintenance efforts. We explored sending the Second Ave. Subway on a spur through Alphabet City, and the MTA eliminated its station agent program.

Technology took center stage in October as the MTA announced plans for an A Division rollout of the train arrival boards set for a 2011 completion date. Carolyn Maloney graded the Second Ave. Subway, and NY1 axed Bobby Cuza’s transit beat. The F line was on the wrong end of a critical internal review, and we bemoaned the lack of Second Ave. express service.

Early November saw more personnel upheaval as Howard Roberts left Transit. A few days later, Tom Prendergast was named the new Transit head. The East Side Select Bus Service plans were nearly firmed up, and someone was murdered on a crowded D train early on Saturday morning. The initial 2010 budget featured no service hikes or fare cuts, but that utopian view would last just a few weeks. The Cortlandt St. stop on the BMT Broadway line reopened on Thanksgiving Eve.

Oh, December, what pain you have brought. Although we spent the early days of the month looking at the lack of megaprojects, the last few weeks have been all budget woes all the time. First, the state cut $140 million in appropriations for the MTA. Then, the state revealed a $200 million payroll tax shortfall. All of a sudden, Doomsday service cuts — but no fare hikes — were back on the table. Then, the MTA lost its arbitration appeal and unveiled a plan to cut free subway travel for students. We saw a plethora of solutions but no real answers for the MTA as the agency approved the service cuts two weeks ago.

And so that’s that for the year that was in transit. It has been a seemingly cyclical year. The agency has moved ahead along Second Ave. and 11th Ave. as its capital plans to expand the system are firmly in place. Yet, the operations budget has been attacked and trimmed so that it can barely support an adequate 24-hour transit system. Hopefully, as the political debate over student MetroCards and other service cuts heats up into 2010, we’ll have a better year upon which we can reflect 365 days from now.

Have fun with this one. It’s quite the way to waste a few minutes while you try to stay warm on a snowy Sunday.

The poster at left — click it to enlarge — has gone up through the subway system. It is a rather innocuous warning about the impending winter. Because snow will slow down above-ground and at-grade subway lines, Transit is warning customers now, before it snows, to allow for travel time on service changes when the snows start to fall.

In cars along the BMT Brighton Line — the Q and the B — a similar sign has gone up in recent weeks. This one — available at the end of this post in full — warns of leaves on the tracks. Because much of the line from Prospect Park to Coney Island is in a tree-covered trench, falling leaves tend to create slippery rail conditions. Trains may experience problems braking, and although not frequent, delays may plague the lines as a result.

For Transit, these two signs represent the new face of customer relations. The agency is trying to keep straphangers in the loop about problems that may crop up along popular subway lines. Yet, as Sewell Chan explored, some people simply do not trust the MTA no matter what. In an article on the sign, Chan managed to track down a bunch of riders who accuse the MTA of making excuses for sub-par service.

“Because of leaves?” one rider, Sylis Gordon, asked incredulously on Wednesday as she waited for the Q train at the Parkside Avenue station. “That’s new.” She looked around her, noticing garbage on the tracks, but said, “There aren’t that many leaves.”

Kate Jassin, 29, a doctoral student at the New School who was waiting for the shuttle at the Prospect Park station, exclaimed: “Delays because of leaves? That’s amazing.”

To counter the problem, the transit agency has operated a vacuum train that sucks up leaves and other debris over the tracks once a week, as well as a special rail-adhesion train that applies “a gritty material that helps create some friction between the wheel and the rail” each night, said James E. Leopard, the line general manager for the B and Q and the Franklin Avenue shuttle.

Mr. Leopard said he decided to post the roughly 500 signs — focusing on 14 stations at or below street level, as well as in subway-car windows — starting in the middle of last month. The signs are to be taken down by early next week.

Now, I don’t believe that Ms. Jassin’s and Ms. Gordon’s comments are indicative of any sort of widespread popular opinion. Plus, these two probably know about as much about running a transit system as I do Medieval French literature. But these comments don’t exist in a vacuum: People — riders, customers, advocates — simply do not trust the MTA.

I believe this sense of distrust comes from Albany. It comes about when Carl Kruger blames the MTA for his own mistakes. It comes about when corrupt comptrollers level false charges of bad booking at the agency, and it comes about because our city and state leaders cannot make the commitment to mass transit that the area requires and demands.

The MTA isn’t creating excuses that aren’t there. Leaves, trash, snow, anything outside can get on the tracks and slow down trains. By knowing ahead of time, most rational riders would simply allow a few minutes. But with the MTA, few in New York are rational, and overcoming this PR problem is just as much a solution toward public acceptance and support as finding $200 million to cover an unexpected budget gap is.

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