Second Ave. Sagas

Jun

Are the MTA’s capital plans hanging in the balance?

By Benjamin Kabak · Comments (4) ·

Three days ago, the MTA dropped the news that a second fare hike may become a reality in 2009. Lost in the news on Friday were some alarming reports about the state of the MTA’s capital plan.

In discussing the financial state of the transportation authority, Mayor Bloomberg dropped a bit of a bombshell about the MTA’s construction plans. Pete Donohue repoted on Mayor Mike’s statement:

Mayor Bloomberg warned Friday that straphangers could face another fare hike next year – and said the city is broke and can’t help.

The mayor also said the MTA’s construction plan is in “shambles,” and he slammed state lawmakers for sinking his congestion pricing plan – which would have raised transit money.

“I think there is a very good likelihood that we are going to have to face the issue of a fare increase or something else,” Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show. “The city doesn’t have any money to give. We are out of money.”

We know about the fare hike, but we hadn’t heard about the problems facing the MTA’s construction plans. For a while, rumors have swirled about the state of the progress on the MTA’s big-ticket items. Observers have noted a lack of above-ground work on the Second Ave. subway and the LIRR’s East Side Access project. Now, Bloomberg’s statement confirms our worst fears: The MTA could be facing a construction problem.

Across the city, the spiking cost of work is effective progress on buildings and development. Concrete costs are up; raw material prices have gone through the roof; and the MTA is not immune to these increases. A few weeks ago, the MTA noted that real estate revenues were down by nearly $81 million off of projected levels.

The MTA has long said that these problems won’t impact construction and expansion plans, but something has to give. Either we’re facing a fare hike or the MTA is facing a massive economic problem that could bring reduced service and a construction shut down. While these problems are not unique to New York, we can’t really afford to see the MTA fall into a recession reminiscent of the 1970s.

We’ll either see yet another fare hike or the government — the city, the state, the feds — will have to come through with the bucks. Either way, this tale is far from over.

Categories : MTA Construction, MTA Economics

Comments (4)

Power outages affecting subway service into Brooklyn · As the Daily News reports, power outages in Brooklyn and a smoke situation at 59th St. is disrupting subway travel between Manhattan and Brooklyn. The MTA has service advisories on the 2, 3, 4, F and G lines, and riders are urged to seek alternate routes right now. Keep your eye on this MTA service alert as the evening goes on. · (1)

Jun

What is the MTA smoking?

By Benjamin Kabak · Comments (1) ·

This one comes off a tip from Chris. Perhaps running spellcheck on those Website blurbs would be a good idea. Or maybe the MTA just want you to use your Saturday and Sunday to have that extra bit of controlled-substance fun.

If you’re looking for the weekend service advisories, you can find them in this post.

Categories : MTA Absurdity

Comments (1)

Jun

Busy weekend on the IRT

By Benjamin Kabak · Comments (2) ·

Ah, the weekend. With 96-degree weather on tap and a few days of sunshine, it will be nice for all of us cubicle dwellers to get out in the sun for a few days. The subways are, of course, chock full o’ service changes, but before we get to those, let’s recap the week that was on Second Ave. Sagas.

We started out in London where an alcohol ban on the Tubes went into effect. Then, back on our side of the Atlantic, we reassessed U.S. transit policy and pondered a free subway system. We looked at expansion plans that were pushed aside when the MTA ran out of money a few decades ago and ended the week with the threat of another fare hike next year.

And now here we are on Friday. Let’s get to the good stuff. The press release, sans a few key changes, is here.

From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, June 7 to 5 a.m. Sunday, June 8, uptown 1 trains skip 103rd, 110th, 116th, and 125th Streets due to track and roadbed reconstruction at 110th Street.

From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, June 7 to 5 a.m. Sunday, June 8, downtown 12 trains skip 66th, 59th and 50th Streets due to 59th Street-Columbus Circle station rehabilitation. (2 trains will make local stops during the nighttime hours with the exception of local stops between 72nd and 42nd Streets.)

From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, June 7 to 5 a.m. Sunday, June 8, uptown 2 trains replace the 5 from Nevins Street to 149th Street-Grand Concourse. Uptown 5 trains replace the 2 from Chambers Street to 149th Street-Grand Concourse. These changes are due to the Clark Street tunnel lighting project.

From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, June 7 to 5 a.m. Sunday, June 8, there are no 3 trains between 14th Street and New Lots Avenue. In Manhattan, take the uptown 5 or downtown 2. In Brooklyn, take the 4. The 4 trains will be making local stops in Brooklyn. These changes are due to the Clark Street tunnel lighting project.

From 4 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday, June 7, Flushing-bound 7 trains skip 82nd, 90th, 103rd, and 111th Streets due to track panel work between 74th Street and Willets Point-Shea Stadium stations.

From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, June 7 to 5 a.m. Sunday, June 8, there is no C train service. A trains run local between 168th Street and Euclid Avenue. Manhattan-bound A trains run on the F from Jay to West 4th Streets. For Chambers, Canal, and Spring Streets, take the E instead. From High Street and Broadway Nassau take a Brooklyn-bound A to Jay Street and transfer to a Manhattan-bound A. These changes are due to Chambers Street Signal Modernization.

From 4 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday, June 7, free shuttle buses replace J trains between Crescent Street and the Jamaica-Van Wyck E station. (There are no J trains between Crescent Street and Jamaica Center-Parsons/Archer.) This is due to track panel installation between Cypress Hills and Jamaica Center-Parsons/Archer.

From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, June 7 to 5 a.m. Monday, June 9, Coney Island-bound N trains run on the D line from 36th Street (Brooklyn) to Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue due to track replacement on the 20th Avenue Bridge.

Categories : Service Advisories

Comments (2)

Jun

Here we go again: the fare hike edition

By Benjamin Kabak · Comments (12) ·

I bet you didn’t see this one coming: According to transit experts and sources at the MTA, New Yorkers may be in store for a second fare hike in two years come 2009 if the authority doesn’t come up with some money stat. It would be just the second time in city history that subway fares increased in consecutive years.

Pete Donohue has more on this alarming news:

A rare back-to-back increase – along with service cuts – could be in store for commuters now that MTA number crunchers are suddenly dealing with a massive hole in next year’s budget.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s projected 2009 budget gap has ballooned – doubling or even tripling original estimates, sources said. Without new state money, officials may soon raise the spectre of increases, service cuts – or both, sources and experts said. “They don’t have many options,” one source said…

The latest projections had the MTA struggling to fill a $220 million budget hole. That number has grown to $500 million to $700 million, sources said. Part of the problem is that last year the MTA predicted that revenue from fees on real estate transactions would drop by $160 million between January and May. Instead, they plummeted by $240 million, MTA documents show.

And despite pledges to fight for more MTA funding, the state Legislature later joined Gov. Paterson in slashing expected subsidies from one state account by $40 million earlier this year. The hit repeats next year.

Meanwhile, Donohue notes that Richard Ravitch, tasked with forming a panel to figure out how to close the MTA budget gap, is still reviewing the beleaguered authority’s finances. He has yet to put together the panel.

To those who have been watching the MTA this year as tax revenues have dried up, the arrival of this news comes as no surprise. For the last few years, in fact, city officials have grown increasingly wary of how the MTA has relied on tax revenues to shore up its budget, and a few public advocates had been sounding alarming bells for a while. The state legislature, however, seems loathe to give money to the MTA, and its decision to slash subsidies is both alarming and bewildering.

So what now? Well, this story — anonymous sources, rising numbers — could be a political ploy to get those in charge of the purse strings focusing on the MTA. But the reality is that if outside money doesn’t start flowing to the authority, the fares will have to go up.

Despite Donohue’s man-on-the-street Bryan Tran’s statement — “Any higher and I will have to walk everywhere. It’s ridiculous.” — the fares just aren’t that high. The average cost-per-ride for an unlimited ride user is still well below what the $1.50 base fare we all used to pay in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

If anything, this news just drives home what Sheldon Silver and the anti-congestion pricing contingent did when they opted to let that MTA-saving measure die in committee. Perhaps it’s time to start paying closer attention to Ted Kheel after all.

Categories : Fare Hikes

Comments (12)

Jun

Hold that train

By Benjamin Kabak · Comments (10) ·

I’m going to do something I don’t do too often in this space: I’m going to rant about the way the MTA handles train transfers at stations with island platforms. Here we go.

On Tuesday, when I was on the way back to Brooklyn from work, I took a B from West 4th St. to DeKalb where I would switch to an M or R to take me to Union St. and my gym. Usually, it’s a pretty quick ride; during rush hour, I can get a B to DeKalb or a D to Pacific St. and the M/R trains usually show up after a few minutes’ wait.

Tuesday was no exception. As the B pulled into DeKalb, the R train was sitting across the platform with the doors open seemingly waiting for connecting passengers. The B did its usually crawl into DeKalb, and we sat for a beat before the doors open. The entire time we sat there, the R had been posed, doors open awaiting passengers.

When the doors to the B finally opened, the doors to the R slammed shut. All of us waiting for that train — the Bay Ridge-bound passengers and the folks looking for stops in between — were denied our connection. It was an inexplicable move by the MTA. Why bother holding the doors to the R open just to close them when the passengers on the B finally decamp from their train?

A few minutes later, an M showed up to whisk us south through Brooklyn, and I was soon at Union St., the incident largely forgotten for most of the people who were stymied by the R. I however couldn’t help but think about that R train. How many times have we seen this happen? Whether it’s at Broadway and Lafayette on the ~~BMT~~ IND or W. 72nd St. on the IRT, trains will routinely close their doors right as a train on the adjacent platform pulls up. Frustrated passengers are left staring at lights receding down the tunnel while their desired transfer heads off into the distance.

It wouldn’t be too hard to or too inconvenient for train operators to hold their doors and extra 10 or 15 seconds at major transfer points. It wouldn’t throw off the train schedules, and it wouldn’t create back-ups in the tunnels. It would create good will and positive feelings from other passengers, and that is something the MTA could sorely use these days.

Categories : MTA

Comments (10)

A bridge by any other name · In January, before everything blew up, Eliot Spitzer started an effort to rename the Triborough Bridge for RFK. Yesterday, near the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of Kennedy, the New York State Assembly voted to pass the name change. Gov. Patterson says he’ll sign the bill, and the Triborough Bridge will soon have a new name. · (4)

Jun

MTA looking to enter emissions trading market, but to what end?

By Benjamin Kabak · Comments (6) ·

By virtue of its role as one of the world’s largest public transit agencies, the MTA is a very green organization, and now the cash-strapped MTA is looking to capitalize on its negative carbon footprint in an effort to maximize its revenue potential.

Earlier this week, Matthew Sweeney at amNew York broke the story that the MTA is working with analysts at Booz Allen Hamilton to develop a way to sell carbon credits in the growing emissions trading markets. Sweeney writes:

Last month, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority approved a $776,000 contract with consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton to measure its carbon footprint and look at ways to create revenues “in a tradable-carbon situation.”

What that means is that the MTA hopes eventually to quantify the amount of pollution it removes from the air through mass transit, put a value on it, and sell it to a company that is a high polluter. By paying the MTA, the company would legally be allowed to pollute.

“This is all quite new and unique and a little bit out there,” said Projjal Dutta, director of sustainability initiatives at the MTA.

The MTA, Sweeney notes, “actually has a negative carbon footprint because subways, trains, and buses take cars off the road and reduce congestion, which means that cars do not burn as much fuel sitting in traffic.”

In trying to wrap my head around the idea of the MTA trading its carbon credits in an emissions market, I keep landing on two distinct points that are seemingly at odds with each other. On the one hand, as we well know, the MTA is searching high and low for any dollars it can scrounge up. The authority needs money to keep our public transit system in a state of good repair and, looking ahead, for much needed expansion plans as well. To that end, if the powers that be feel they can capitalize on the MTA’s negative emissions, then they should do so.

But on the other hand, the environmentalist public transit advocate in me is a little wary of the carbon trading plan. If the MTA is allowing some other company to continue to pollute by trading them their carbon credits and profiting from it, does that really match the agency’s desired and publicly-stated goals of becoming a greener organization? Until the U.S. starts putting stricter caps on greenhouse emissions, the MTA is simply profiting off some other company’s pollutants. That’s fine for the bottom line but not so fine for the environment.

Categories : MTA Politics

Comments (6)

Liu set to leave City Council? · Gotham Gazette’s Wonkster tips us off to a statement by John Liu in which hints he is ready to leave the City Council. Liu, the chair of the council’s Transportation Committee, has long drawn my ire for his statements that conflict with reality. While he’s tried to bring more accountability and transparency to the MTA, he has long come across as out of touch with transportation realities in the city. I hope he doesn’t garner much support for his run at the mayorship. [Wonkster] · (0)

Jun

The subway expansion that never came to be

By Benjamin Kabak · Comments (16) ·

The city never received the subway upgrades in wanted in the late 1960s. (Click to enlarge.)

Every rail fan has their own pet project for a better New York City subway system, and everyone likes to dream a day in which that system is a reality. Recently, the topic du jour has focused around ways to connect the outer boroughs while avoiding Manhattan and ways to extend current lines past their outer terminals into under-served neighborhoods.

In recent months, foremost among those dreamers has been the MTA. Before the economy had completely collapsed underneath us, Elliot “Lee” Sander, CEO and Executive Director of the MTA, had unveiled an ambitious expansion plan during his State of the MTA speech. The plan focused around the Regional Plan Association’s circumferental subway route. This line, using a mix of MTA rights of way and pre-existing tracks would connect to 19 subway lines and three boroughs while avoiding Manhattan.

At the time, I expressed my support, in theory, for the idea while recognizing that the perfect storm of money and political circumstances would have to align for this pipe dream to approach reality, and I left it at that. Last week, Cap’n Transit opined on the state of Brooklyn-Queens subway connectors and briefly mentioned the RPA’s plan as an outgrowth of some long lost subway expansion plans from the 1960s.

So, a-diggin’ we shall go. The year was 1968, and Mayor Lindsay’s New York was a sitting on the rise. The financial crises of the 1970s, from which it would take the city a good twenty years to recover, were nowhere in sight, and expansion was all the rage. Among the city improvement plans was an ambitions, $2-billion MTA expansion plan for the New York City subway system. These plans, developed prior to the MTA’s takeover of the subways on March 1, 1968, called for an expansion of about 40 route miles or what was then 20 percent of the subway system.

As Richard Witkin of The Times reported then, we would have seen a great number of expansion plans come to fruition including:

A new Queens line through the planned 63rd St. tunnel that would shadow the LIRR to Jamaica and then veer south to the LIRR main line to the city limits.
Subway service out to Douglaston via the 63rd St. tunnel.
A Bronx line from the Harlem River to Dyre Ave. via the New York, Westchester and Boston Railroad tracks…
…and a Second Ave. Subway from south of Wall St. north to this new Bronx line.
An extension of the Nostrand Ave. line out to Mill Basin, an area still in need of subway service today.
A subway spur from the Atlantic branch of the LIRR to John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Over the next few years, subway advocates would continue to >trumpet these plans and talk as though they were just around the corner. Two years after this grand unveiling, John J. Gilhooley, a former Transit Authority worker, wrote at length about the MTA’s plans with little doubt as to their feasibility.

As time wore on, the plans changed to become even grander. As proposed maps from the time show, the outer boroughs would see more connections and a far-flung system while Manhattan would see train service to the far West Side, a Second Ave. line and an innovative subway running from 1st Ave. and Houston St. to 1st Ave. and 14th St. via Ave C.

But dreams do not become a reality. The Second Ave. Subway in the 1970s came to crashing halt when the city’s economy did the same. The 63rd St. Tunnel didn’t open until 1989, and the plans to extend the subway to JFK morphed into an airtrain that started service in 2003. We’re still talking about extending the subways westward and that good ol’ Second Ave. Subway.

It sure is fun to dream, eh?

Categories : Subway History

Comments (16)

Page 361 of 430« First «...359 360361362 363...»Last »

Are the MTA’s capital plans hanging in the balance?

What is the MTA smoking?

Busy weekend on the IRT

Here we go again: the fare hike edition

Hold that train

MTA looking to enter emissions trading market, but to what end?

The subway expansion that never came to be

The Author

30-Day MetroCard Challenge

Categories

Archives

Meta

Affiliates

Brooklyn Blogs

Manhattan Blogs

New York Blogs

NYC News Sites

Public Transit

Queens Blogs

Subway Maps