We had a little bit of downtime around here this morning, but things at Second Ave. Sagas are up and running again. Thanks for your patience.
Riding the subways alone, but at what age?
Long gone are the days when the New York City subways were overrun with graffiti as they were in the 1980s.
I called my mom yesterday afternoon to quiz her on my childhood. “How old was I when you first let me ride the subways alone?” I asked.
She paused, unable to come up with the answer off the top of her head. “Um, 12, maybe?” she said. I thought back to a few nights during the winter of 1995 when I would traipse off to my friends’ B’Nai Mitzvot parties on the subways all by myself. While I have no recollection of the first time I rode the subway alone — it was that monumental a part of my growing up in New York City — I was at most 12 years old.
To me, riding the subways alone was a non-event. It was just another part of living in and growing up in New York City. We learn to cross the street alone; we learn to go to school alone; we learn to take the subways alone. We survive and thrive. A child of New York can tell you how to get from Bay Ridge to Bedford Ave., from TriBeCa to Tremont Ave. Sticking them in the woods with a map and a compass is another story altogether.
But something happened two weeks ago that has been an utter surprise to me. It started when New York Sun Lenore Skenazy left her nine-year-old son — at his request, mind you — in Bloomingdale’s with a MetroCard, a subway map, a $20 bill and no cell phone. She told him to find his own way home. Lo and behold, he did it. By using his city smarts and taking the subway and bus, he managed to make his way home in the middle of a Sunday among some of the city’s most crowded transit corridors.
Still, the backlash has been borderline ridiculous. Skenazy and her sonappeared on the Today Show (video in the link) seemingly to defend her actions when her New York City-based friends started calling her crazy and a bad mother. Their rationale? These parents were afraid that Izzy, now 10, would get abducted in the big, bad New York City subways.
They told stories about Elizabeth Smart and some girl in Florida who took the back way home through vacant lots and found herself in some trouble. What if that happened to poor Izzy on a Sunday in New York City, one of the safest large cities in the world, and in the subways where crime is at a record low?
Meanwhile, other bloggers started to weigh in. Louise Crawford of SmartMom fame wrote that she supports Skenazy but wouldn’t allow her daughter to do the same thing. Crawford blames parents today, and so do I. Parents who coddle their kids because they’re afraid of something that in the vast majority of cases doesn’t happen are engaging in urban behavior that is counterproductive to the surrounding environment.
I grew up with my parents’ trust. They allowed me to ride the subways by myself, and I grew to love the subways because these underground trains shepherded me around the city. But at the same time, they also taught me how to ride the subway from an early age. They taught me how to read the subway map and where to wait for trains. They taught me to avoid empty cars and ride with the conductor. That’s still sound advice now that I’m far removed from my 12-year-old self. This type of urban education starts young, and it can’t happen until parents remember how they learned the city and remember that Bad Things do happen but now if you’re careful.
Skenazy has continued to rail against the way parents shelter their children because of the way the media overplays one-off incidents. And she’s right. Her son proved that children today can fend for themselves, and even if he did it on a crowded Sunday afternoon along well-traveled routes, it’s refreshing to see some urban independence these days.
Complain about the subways to NYCT prez
Everyone in New York has a complaint about the subway, and today’s the day to get your voice heard. This evening from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., the NYC Transit Riders Council is hosting their 2008 President’s Forum on Subways with NYCT head Howard Roberts. I can’t make it due to a ticket to the Yankee-Red Sox game tonight, but get your voice at 2 Broadway this evening. You can’t say no one’s listening. [NYC Transit Riders Council]s
In D.C., a battle over Metro funds is brewing
Every now and then, I like to check in on how the MTA’s competitors in other cities are doing. Today, we journey down I-95 — or is that Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor? — to our Nation’s Capital where the WMATA is facing its very own funding crisis.
For the last ten days, we’ve watched in New York as the state Assembly dealt a blow to the MTA’s financial situation, and we’ve seen the agency begun a fund-searching review in order to meet goals for its next five-year capital plan. Things could be worse.
In Washington, the WMATA is in the unenvious position of receving one-third of its funds from the Federal Government, and one of the Senators who holds the purse strings — Sen. Tom Coburn, a hard-line Republican from the car-happy state of Oklahoma — is threatening to block a $1.5 billion federal grant for Metro.
Now, this isn’t just chump change for the Metro. It’s money the WMATA needs to bring their old and decaying system up to a state of good repair. Considering that environmental movements are all the rage, the government — both in New York and in DC — is strangely hesitant to help out the greenest of green options: public transportation. WTOP Radio’s Adam Tuss has more from DC:
Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., has authored a bill which would provide $1.5 billion for Metro over the next 10 years. If the bill passes, Virginia, Maryland and D.C. have agreed they will match the $1.5 billion. The funds would go a long way for Metro, which is the only major transportation system in the nation that lacks a dedicated source of funding.
But the Davis bill, as it is currently constructed, will likely never make its way past Coburn. “I’m happy to be a roadblock to that bill,” Coburn tells WTOP. “It’s $1.5 billion they want, we (the government) don’t have the money to pay for it, so where are we going to get the money?”
Coburn doesn’t think one penny of funding for Metro should come from American taxpayers. “How dare us say we are going to steal opportunity from our children so that we can have a ride on the Metro. I think the vast majority of Americans would disagree with that.”
Isn’t it cute that all of a sudden a Republican in the Senate is concerned about spending? And where, oh, where could the government find the meager sum of $1.5 billion for a transportation network that has a ridership of millions of federal workers and tourists? Considering that we’ve spent trillions of dollars on overseas wars — and, yes, Coburn supports those efforts without noting any effect whatsoever on our children — I’d think $1.5 billion wouldn’t be tough to find.
Coburn, ignoring that self-sustaining public transit would be too expensive to attract any ridership, wants the Metro riders to pay. “My position is, if you want to ride the Metro, pay what it costs to ride the Metro,” he said. “Riders will pay for the upkeep and the capital improvements that are needed.”
Coburn’s opponents on both sides of the aisle are ready to fight him for these funds, and I’d have to believe that Metro will get its money. But yet again, politicians are doing all they can to obstruct funding for mass transit. One day, maybe mass transit will get the respect it deserves as a major driver of urban economics. One day, politicians might be willing to go out on a limb to fund it.
But as we’ve learned in New York and as we see in DC right now, mass transit proponents are fighting and losing an uphill battle right now. We’ll just have to keep on trekking ahead as the cars continue to win.
I’ve never really wondered how much it would take to get me to lick a subway pole. $100? $1000? I probably wouldn’t do it for even that much. But someone did it on Long Island Rail Road train for just $20. Via New York City Metblogs, comes this lovely video. It’s not for subway squeamish or the germaphobes among us.
Do you think he kisses his mother with that mouth? [NYC Metblogs]
Coming soon: solar-powered subways
The MetroCard is looking a little green lately. (Click the image for a larger view)
Solar-powered subways cars sound similar to that great gag gift the solar-powered flashlight. After all, how could a subway — a train that is, by definition, traveling underground — rely on the sun for power? It doesn’t make sense.
Yet, that’s just what the MTA is trying to do. As part of agency’s green initiatives announced on Monday, the MTA will be increasing its use of renewable energy resources, among other efforts. Yesterday afternoon, Gov. David Paterson, MTA CEO Elliot “Lee” Sander and MTA Chairman Dale Hemmerdinger gathered to announce the MTA’s new sustainability program. This announcement came on the heels of a sixth-month study conducted by Jonathan F.P. Rose and the Commission on Sustainability and the MTA.
“Sustainability is one of my top priorities for the MTA and I am delighted that the Commission has chosen to look at every area of our operations, and even beyond,” Sander said. Public transportation can play an important role as society works to achieve greater energy efficiency and smaller environmental impacts, and these far-reaching recommendations show how we in transportation can do even more.”
Foremost among the initiatives are a lessening of the agency’s carbon footprint. To that end, the MTA will look to draw seven percent of its energy needs from renewable sources — such as solar, wind and hydroelectricity — within the next seven years. The MTA is looking to make the Roosevelt Island subway stop powered, in large part, by tidal energy, and their solar goals of six megawatts would make it the largest solar project in New York history. William Neuman writes that the plans for solar power include various MTA buildings, bus depots and a bus-washing center.
Beyond energy use, the MTA is looking to encourage transit-oriented development in the metropolitan area suburbs. Their goals are to encourage both commercial and residential development within walking distance to Metro-North and Long Island Rail Road stations in an effort to keep commuters out of cars.
“The MTA already makes an irreplaceable contribution to sustainability simply by taking 8.5 million people each day out of their cars and onto public transportation. We are now taking the opportunity to go even further and lead by example,” Hemmerding said, levying a veiled jab at a New York Assembly too afraid of change to lead by example last week.
But — and there’s always a but — the amNY Subway Tracker blog picks upon a non-sustainable part of the MTA’s environmental campaign: the green MetroCards you can see above. The MTA will introduce five million of those MetroCards as a special tie-in to the campaign. But the cards are not biodegradable and will be around long after the subways stop running. Oh, the irony.
The MTA, I’ve written in the post, is already a green organization simply because it gets so many cars off the rode. Now, the agency is trying to do even more for the environment, and in our post-congestion pricing city, for that, they should be applauded.
MTA behind schedule on Hudson Yards project
I haven’t followed the Hudson Yards drama too much around here. The land deal will help fill the MTA’s rapidly depleting coffers, and the 7 line extension makes for high comedy. But the rest of the project doesn’t interest me too much. I will note however that the MTA has missed the project’s first deadline. Bet you didn’t see that one coming. [New York Sun]
Some day my Fulton St. Transit Hub will come
It’s the Return of the Fulton St. Transit Hub! Nearly a month to the day since the MTA promised to build something at Fulton St., we have another round of Fulton St. Transit Hub news. How fun.
Toward the end of last week, while we were mourning the death of congestion pricing, word leaked out that the Empire State Development Corporation had proposed combining two long-delayed Lower Manhattan projects — the Fulton St. Hub and the performing arts center slated for the World Trade Center site — into one mega-project in an effort to get the ball rolling. Representatives from both the Joyce Theater, the site’s future tenants, and the MTA expressed lukewarm supprt, at best, for this proposal.
“We have to look at any possibility, but we are still committed to being part of redevelopment at the World Trade Center site,” she said to The Times. “The reason we were selected in the first place still stands: to be part of a performing arts center that was going to activate and animate the area.”
The Alliance for Downtown Manhattan was less diplomatic:
Elizabeth H. Berger, president of the Alliance for Downtown New York, a business group, said she was dismayed by Mr. Schick’s proposal. “We want what was promised — which was an architecturally distinctive, above-ground transit hub with retail — and we want it built now,” she said. “To change the design and the purpose of the building will cause substantial delays.”
Ms. Berger said the station’s function as a “commercial crossroads” would make the site problematic for a performing arts center…“You have 250,000 people coming in and out of that station every day, and it will be 300,000 after the connectors are built,” she said. Ms. Berger added that it would be difficult for trucks carrying scenery or remote broadcasting equipment to navigate the surrounding side streets, which are narrow.
The MTA’s architects at Grimshaw weren’t too pleased with the proposal either. “Transportation infrastructure makes lots of noise and vibration,” Andrew Whalley, director of the firm in New York, said. “A performing arts center requires a certain amount of acoustical isolation. They’re not natural bedfellows.”
Meanwhile, as the arts and subway debate goes on — there’s a 30-day study in the works — the MTA says that they’re making progress even as the estimated completion date is now 12 to 18 months later than originally scheduled. They also think that they’ll be able to build the whole hub as planned but that it will cost more. And I know a great deal on a bridge available for sale.
The e-mail solution to all your weekend service changes
Last week, on Friday, The Times, as I noted, examined the confounding state of weekend subway service. Clyde Haberman attempted to make sense of the array of service change posters that dot the subways every weekend.
While many New Yorkers are perplexed by weekend service changes, there are ways — other than this handy weekly post — to get the subway service changes in your e-mail before the weekend. Enter the MTA’s Subway Service Advisory E-mail Notification Program or, as they like to call it, Know Before You Go.
The MTA revamped the e-mail advisory program late last October, and it’s been a big hit among straphangers. As of March 21, according to NYC Transit numbers, the program had 75,266 subscribers, one of whom is I. Of those subscribers, around 64,417 get the weekend bulletins; 10,849 receive the oft-overlooked weekday advisories; and 9,697 are 100 percent in-the-know with both weekend and weekday e-mails. So be confused or be prepared.
On with the service advisories:
From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, April 12 to 5 a.m. Monday, April 14, there are no 2 trains between Atlantic Avenue and Chambers Street. Uptown 2 trains replace the 5 from Bowling Green to 149th Street and uptown 5 trains replace the 2 from Chambers Street to 149th Street. These changes are due to several projects, including station rehab at Chambers Street and tunnel lighting in the Clark Street tunnel and Wall Street.
From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, April 12 to 5 a.m. Monday, April 14, there are no 3 trains running. The M7, M102 and free shuttle buses replace the 3 between 148th Street and 135th Street. Downtown 2 trains replace the 3 from 135th Street to Chambers Street. Uptown 5 trains replace the 3 from Chambers Street to 135th Street. The 4 trains will make all 3 stops between Atlantic Avenue and New Lots Avenue in Brooklyn. These changes are due to third rail work at 145th Street.
From 4 a.m. Saturday, April 12 to 10 p.m. Sunday, April 13, Bronx-bound 4 trains skip 170th Street, Mt. Eden Avenue, and 176th Street due to track panel installation between 167th Street and Burnside Avenue stations.
From 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday, April 12, Manhattan-bound 6 trains run express from Parkchester to Hunts Point.
From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, April 12 to 5 a.m. Monday, April 14, there is no C train service. Customers should take the A instead. A trains run local between 168th Street and Euclid Avenue. Free shuttle buses replace A trains between 168th Street and 207th Street. Transfer is available between the Broadway or Ft. Washington Avenue shuttle buses and A trains at 168th Street. These service changes are necessary due to station rehab work at 47th-50th Sts/Rockefeller Center station and tunnel lighting between 168th and 207th Street.
From 11 p.m. Friday, April 11 to 5 a.m. Monday, April 14, free shuttle buses replace A trains between Far Rockaway and Beach 90th Street due to track tie replacement work from Beach 67th Street to Far Rockaway.
From 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday, April 12 and Sunday, April 13, Bronx-bound D trains skip 182nd-183rd Streets due to station work between Tremont Avenue and Bedford Park Blvd. stations.
From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, April 12 to 5 a.m. Monday, April 14, downtown D trains run on the A line from 59th Street to West 4th Street due to station rehab work at 47th-50th Sts/Rockefeller Center station.
From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, April 12 to 5 a.m. Monday, April 14, D trains run in two sections due to station rehab work 47th-50th Sts/Rockefeller Center station:
– Between 205th Street and Broadway-Lafayette and
– Between Broadway-Lafayette and Coney Island-Stillwell.
From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, April 12 to 5 a.m. Monday, April 14, Queens-bound E trains skip 74th Avenue due to ADA upgrade work and installation of steel and platform edge work at Union Turnpike station.
From 11 p.m. Friday, April 11 to 5 a.m. Monday, April 14, the last stop for some Coney Island-bound trains is Kings Highway due to installation of a metal deck at Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue RTO Facility.
From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, April 12 to 5 a.m. Monday, April 14, Queens-bound F trains skip 75th Avenue due to ADA work upgrade and installation of steel and platform edge work at Union Turnpike station.
From 8:30 a.m. Friday, April 11 to 5 a.m. Monday, April 14, there are no G trains between Forest Hills-75th Avenue and Court Square due to communications installation. Customers should take the E or R trains instead.
From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, April 12 to 5 a.m. Monday, April 14, free shuttle buses replace J trains between Essex and Chambers Streets due to station rehab work at Chambers Street station.
From 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, April 12 and Sunday, April 13, L trains run in two sections due to switch work south of Broadway Junction station:
– Between 8th Avenue and Broadway Junction and
– Between Broadway Junction and Rockaway Parkway (every 24 minutes)
From 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, April 12 and Sunday, April 13, Astoria-bound N trains skip 39th Street, 36th Street, Broadway and 30th Street due to rail work near Queensboro Plaza station.
From 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, April 12 and Sunday, April 13, Q trains run in two sections due to rail work between Brighton Beach and Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue:
– Between 57th Street and Brighton Beach and
– Between Brighton Beach and Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue
FTA Chief: We can’t help the MTA much more
While the Bush Administration doesn’t have many fans in the New York area, without the Federal Transit Administration, an arm of the federal Department of Transportation, the current MTA capital plan would be flailing for funding. The FTA is footing the bill for a significant portion of the Second Ave. Subway and the LIRR East Side Access plan, among other non-MTA projects in the area.
But the FTA chief had a warning for New York City yesterday: Don’t count on that funding to continue forever. Speaking in the City for the first time since the congestion pricing defeat earlier this week, James S. Simpson, the FTA chief, criticized Assembly Democrats for what he called the “disappointing” and “short-sighted” decision to kill congestion pricing. At the same time, he warned city leaders that the FTA’s money source — the Highway Trust Fund — is running low.
“It’s hard to imagine we’re going to be able to make any real progress without trying new things, like congestion pricing, high-speed electronic tolling and public-private partnerships that shift some of the costs and risks involved in designing, building and operating transit systems to the private sector,” he said, according to Patrick Arden’s story in Metro.
But while that sounds like something of a vague threat, City Room had more detailed comments from Simpson:
“All of these projects are tremendously important, but they pose significant challenges going forward. First, only a limited number of firms have the capacity required to bid and construct these projects. That raises concerns for us about limited competition, which has implications for how jobs are priced. Second, we’re concerned about how difficult it is to create accurate cost and performance estimates for these complicated, multiyear transit projects, given the continued escalation of commodity prices. The risk of underestimating costs — and incurring additional debt obligations — is very real. And third, we’re concerned — and the region’s business and political leadership should also be concerned — about the massive new transportation projects on the horizon — including the Tappan Zee bridge, a new Lower Manhattan rail link and the second phase of the Second Avenue subway. Are there sufficient resources and capacity available to see these projects through?”
New York, it seems, can no longer expect the Feds to help out the budget deficit.
Now, on the one hand, this is very much a matter of partisan politics, something I’ve tried to overtly avoid on this site. The Bush Administration has been rather hostile toward public transportation and would rather not see cities relying on the federal government to fund their projects.
On the other hand, a healthy urban transportation system in the New York City area is vital to our nation’s economy. As New York-centric as that sounds, it’s the truth. With a change in the White House coming in November, it’s possible that New York could find itself with a more urban-friendly and transit-friendly administration in place come 2009. At that point, the FTA may just have some more funds for us.
For now, the MTA must move forward without that safety net from the FTA. But who knows? Ten months down the road, the Feds and the City could be singing a different tune. Can we afford to wait that long?