The Chambers St. stop on the BMT Nassau St. line is in need of more than just a paint job. (Photo by flickr user ciamabue)

Last night, as I promoted my appearance on a CBS 2 story about the MTA, I wrote about the MTA’s new approach to station renovations. Instead of picking only a limited number of stations for State of Good Repair overhauls, the authority is also going to target 130 stations that need various repairs. This Target Component Program will focus on fresh coats of paint, station lighting and sturdier platform edges.

Meanwhile, other stations that have recently been overhauled will be entered into the Station Maintenance Program. Here, teams of contractors will fix defects that have emerged since the latest renovations and then MTA workers will regularly inspect these defects and other components in an effort to maintain the cosmetics of the stations. At the same time, approximately 24 stations will undergo complete overhauls over the next five years aimed at achieving a State of Good Repair and ADA compliance.

Today, the Daily News has the cost breakdown of this component-based repair approach. The MTA plans to spend $700 million overall on station rehabilitation efforts in the next five-year capital plan. The 24 station renovations cost on average of $15 million for a rough total of $360 million. The remaining 130 will see, on average, $3.38 million worth of upgrades per station. These repairs will shore up leaky ceilings, repair eroding staircases and generally make Transit’s stations more pleasant for straphangers as they pass through and wait for their trains.

So with that in mind, let me ask if this is a smart use of funds. As my hyperbolic headline suggests, it’s not an ideal situation. In a perfect world, the MTA would have the money it needs to overhaul all stations and not just some at an anemic pace. With 468 stations in the system, Transit can’t repair just 24 every five years to a State of Good Repair and expect to keep up with the wear and tear 7.4 million daily users exert on the system.

Yet, this new component-based program is exactly what the headline describes. The MTA is taking their ugliest stations and trying to make them look good without reengineering the problems that lead to these unsightly messes in the first place. Will Transit be able to repair leaky waterproofing at Chambers St. on the BMT Nassau St. line? Corroded pipes that have ruined the mosaics on the 2/5 platform at 149th St./Grand Concourse? Shuttered and crumbling platform staircases at 7th Ave. on the BMT Brighton line that are far from the eyes of station employees and now reek of urine and human waste? These are systematic problems that cosmetic upgrades can mask for a few years but cannot repair.

I can’t complain too much about the MTA’s approach here. Having pleasant-looking stations that aren’t grimy and don’t have tiles falling down and paint flaking off the ceilings will go a long way toward improving New Yorkers’ attitudes toward the subway system, their commutes and, hopefully, the MTA. But it’s a band aid for now. Transit may, as President Thomas Predergast said, be trying to get “more bang for its buck,” but it can’t hide the fact that the agency simply needs more money to maintain not only the aesthetics of its system but the structural integrity of it as well.

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  • Cuts made official as Walder pledges to reduce all costs · MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder officially announced plans to eliminate 1000 MTA jobs as part of the agency’s comprehensive cost-cutting measures designed to close a $761 million budget gap. As I reported late last night, the layoff plans will include 600 administrative jobs and 500 station agent positions. The station agent positions were slated for elimination through attrition, but the MTA’s dire financial situation has forced the authority to speed up the timetable for cutting personnel levels.

    “The State’s economic crisis demands that the MTA move quickly and decisively to cut costs, and that is exactly what we are doing,” Walder said in a statement. “These layoffs are extremely painful, but we must live within our means and make the tough decisions that businesses and families across New York are making.” The agency noted that it would “comply with applicable statutory and collective bargaining obligations” for those unionized workers due to lose their jobs and that non-union workers would be offered severance packages.

    Meanwhile, as part of his overall push to change the way the MTA operates and improve its financially accountability and efficiency, Walder promised more cost-cutting measures in the future. If he is successful, Walder could, despite having to inflict pain upon riders and workers, vastly improve the beleaguered authority. “This is just the beginning of a comprehensive overhaul of how the MTA does business,” he said. “We will be reducing overtime, consolidating redundant functions and working with suppliers to lower costs. We will not stop until I can say that every dollar the MTA receives is spent wisely.” · (17)

As the MTA looks to close an ever-widening budget gap, the agency will have to trim from every department, and everyone involved in the daily operations of our public transportation network will feel the pain. From those of us rely on the subways and buses to get to and from the office and school to those of us who work for the MTA, we all will pay the price. We’ve heard a lot about the authority’s plans to cut transit service, and today, the MTA will announce a sweeping set of personnel cuts designed to save $50 million.

The story is a big one. MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder is going to propose laying off more than 1000 workers. If all goes according to his plan, 450 of those workers fired will be unionized station agents. Another 600 — or 15 percent of the MTA’s non-unionized workforce — will be let go from various administrative positions. The major news outlets broke this story late last night, and many of the local 10 and 11 o’clock newscasts featured it at or near the top of the hour. For an agency saddled with what many believe to be an unmanageably and unnecessarily large workforce, these cuts are but a start in Walder’s fat-trimming efforts.

Of course, these cuts won’t go down easily. While Walder has the discretion to fire non-unionized MTA employees, the TWU has vowed to fight cuts no matter how small a percentage of the unionized workforce these cuts represent. Originally, these workers were to be let go via attrition, and the layoffs add a political element to the budgetary battles. “If they announce layoffs, they are going to be hearing from us,” TWU Local 100 President John Samuelsen said to The Times.

As always, Samuelsen, protective of his jobs, grabbed the upper hand politically and framed this debate as one involving the safety of the MTA’s riders. Focusing on the MTA’s decision to target station agents, he bashed the supposed safety aspect of person-less stations. “Their idea of customer service is digitalized signage, rather than a human being protecting you against crime or directing you when you’re lost in the subway,” he said.

This isn’t a new argument in any sense, and yet, it’s one with which I find myself continually fighting. From a safety perspective, the station agents serve one of two purposes: Either their presence alone is a deterrent to potential criminals or straphangers feel safer knowing that a station agent is present whether or not these agents do anything to increase subway safety. The real answer probably lies in the intersection between those two roles, but there is a problem with that assumption: The station agents are not legally obligated to do anything, and they can’t see the platforms beyond the fare control areas.

Over the last few years, we’ve heard a lot about the station agents as the MTA eliminated many of them in late 2008. Since then, the pro-station agent crowd has defended them on the grounds of safety. But in a landmark case a few years ago, a New York state court found that the station agents had no affirmative duty to act if they knew someone in their station was in trouble. They have no sidearms and can do nothing about a crime in progress. Meanwhile, vast stretches of these stations are invisible to the booth agents, and in those cases, the workers won’t prevent any crime at all except as they would serving as a potential deterrent. With subway crime at all time lows, continued enforcement, and not the presence of workers who can’t do much, is the key to keeping the system safe.

Meanwhile, these employees, who field an average of around four customer requests per shift, would help out in situations involving lost passengers or those with bulky luggage. Yet, as the numbers show, those occasions are rare indeed. The MTA won’t eliminate station agents in high-traffic areas with large numbers of travelers. The agents instead will vanish from stations that won’t frequently miss them.

The MTA is up a proverbial creek without a paddle these days. The authority is broke, and New York’s politicians are searching for any way possible to avoid funding transit. If these workers are the sacrifice the city must pay, until the politicians are willing to find a lasting solution, we will have to suffer through a system with fewer station agents.

Categories : Service Cuts
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Updated 9:24 p.m.: This morning, the Daily News reported on an initiative put forward by New York City Transit President Thomas Prendergast that would see some high-traffic stations get some badly-needed renovations. According to Prendergast, eight stations — including Yankee Stadium and Third Ave./149th St. in the Bronx, Union Square and Times Square in Manhattan, Atlantic Ave./Pacific St. and Crown Heights-Utica Ave. in Brooklyn and Flushing-Main St. and Roosevelt Ave./74th St. in Queens — will get blitzed by teams of carpenters, masons, ironworkers and painters in an effort to spruce up stations that had been renovated within the last decade.

Prendergast decided to pursue these eight stations both as a display of the MTA’s new component-based approach toward station maintenance and because these high-traffic hubs were falling apart, just a decade or less after their last makeovers. The stations will then receive more frequent maintenance inspections. “We let conditions slip,” he said.

More specifically, Prendergast’s crack team of repairman are part of Transit’s new dedicated Station Maintenance teams. According to Transit, these teams will target previously rehabilitated stations in an effort to repair defects, and then the stations will enter the new Station Maintenance Program that will help preserve investments and avoid future disrepair. Transit chosen these station in this pilot because they include the four heaviest used stations in each borough.

This new project goes hand in hand with the new Target Component Program I mentioned above. This program will focus on station renewal rather than full-scale rehab. It is, according to Transit, a “less holistic approach” aimed at focusing on components in 150 stations that need repair. It’s a wider effort but one that won’t see all stations returned to a State of Good Repair.

This evening, CBS covered the story, and their video report featured a brief snippet from yours truly. Unfortunately, I can’t embed the video, but you can view it on CBS’ website. In a nutshell, I like the component-based maintenance plan. It is, after all, far more realistic than the seemingly unattainable State of Good Repair. But I wonder if the money used on the Station Maintenance program would be better spent on stations in far worse shape than these. I know Transit wants to keep its crown jewels looking shiny, but there are some very decrepit stations both within and without of the borough of Manhattan.

Anyway, check out the video. I always enjoy being a talking head for the local newscasts.

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Meet Felix Ortiz, Democrat and Assembly representative from New York City’s 51st District. A member of the Assembly since 1994, Ortiz represents an area of Brooklyn that encompasses Boerum Hill, Borough Park, Gowanus, Red Hook, South of Park Slope, Sunset Park, Windsor Terrace and Wyckoff. As a 16-year Assembly veteran, he keeps a rather low profile but was instrumental in getting the nation’s first ban on hand-held cell phone use while driving approved by the state.

This week, he entered the MTA fray when Gotham Gazette’s David King talked to him for an extensive piece on the state of the MTA’s finances. King’s thoroughly examination of the current financial crisis summarizes the various proposals and issues, and it covers ground I’ve been focusing on for the last few months. He did, however, get some choice quotes from Felix Ortiz on the Student MetroCard issue. Take a look:

“Our working and lower-income families will not be able to absorb these additional costs, especially in the current depressed economic state we are in,” said Assemblyman Felix Ortiz. “This cut is discriminatory in that it affects minority communities to a much higher degree. Everyone is entitled to an education; it should never become a privilege for those who can afford it.”

Ortiz said he can’t see providing the MTA with more funding until the agency makes its accounting more transparent. “Until they reveal their two sets of books and say here is book A and book B, we can’t listen to the MTA. We need to fire everyone, restructure and reorganize,” Ortiz said. “The MTA needs to get rid of the fat at the top.

The emphasis in there — highlight to show the sheer ignorance in Ortiz’s statement — is mine. Here is a man elected every two years to represent New Yorkers in the state Assembly, and he is not versed in the issue of the day. He is dragging up a seven-year-old charge, one levied at the MTA by a corrupt state comptroller and eventually disprove in a court of law, as indication that the MTA is not to be trusted or even funded. He wants to break labor contracts and break down the city’s transit system before he would even deign to fund the agency.

If only Ortiz were a lone insane voice amidst a sea of MTA sanity, I wouldn’t be so concerned with him. But he joins a long list of elected representatives — including current city comptroller John Liu, Peter Vallone and Aileen Gunther — who bring up trumped up charges as a way to eschew responsibility over the need to fund the MTA and student travel in New York City. This is a failure of government to an extreme.

At the end of the day, Ortiz’s statements aren’t completely about the alleged corruption at the MTA. No one is saying it’s a well run organization, but they don’t have two books and have vastly improved the transparency of their finances. Instead, it’s about an Assembly representative who won’t find money for student transit foisting the state’s problems onto an easy scapegoat. As the MTA said in a statement to me last week, “We agree that school children should not have to pay to get to school, but funding this service is the responsibility of the State and City. The MTA has been called the yellow school bus for New York City, and that’s a good analogy. All over the state school kids get picked up by yellow school buses, and they don’t pay to ride. But the bus doesn’t show up unless state or local government pays the bus company.”

If Ortiz or Liu or Gunther or Vallone want to waste his or her time blaming the victim, so be it. The MTA will turn to its last recourse and cut the services that matter to these officials’ constituents.

Categories : MTA Politics
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The new R160 configuration features seats that can flip up and handholds designed to maximize car space. (Photo courtesy of New York City Transit)

After months of delays and planning, a pair of pilot programs three years in the making are finally coming to fruition along the Queens Boulevard line. A new R160 car set to roll out as an E train will feature four cars equipped with advanced video surveillance equipment and a new car configuration featuring hand poles in new locations and rush-hour flip-up seats. The seats will be locked down for the time being, and Transit does not know when the flip-up feature will be utilized.

For the agency, the announcement that these pilots are live came after years of planning. The MTA first announced plans to install cameras in subway cars as early as March 2007, and in April 2008, Transit said that some R160 at a certain point in the future would play host to the pilot. Last August, Transit again reiterated plans to beef up on-board security, and now, an E train will test run these cameras.

“Video camera systems have clearly been shown to help deter criminal activity on transit vehicles and we believe strongly that they can also be extremely valuable in investigating accident injury claims,” NYC Transit President Thomas F. Prendergast said in a statmeent. “But we must also acknowledge the potential threat of terrorist activity on public transportation vehicles and CCTV has been instrumental in helping with investigations in this area.”

Transit started a one-year evaluation period today and offered a few details behind their plans. Four cars in a ten-car set will be equipped with four cameras each for a total of 16. Each set of four cameras is linked into one DVR system, and the four cameras are tied into a network controller unit that transmits the signals between cars. The cameras are placed to “effectively cover the passenger area,” according to Transit, and while the agency stressed that the cameras are for recording purposes and not live monitoring, it’s unclear how Transit plans to make use of the footage. Each car with a camera in it will feature a decal, seen here at right.

“The CCTV System will be evaluated for its recording quality and car-to-car transmission of video signals within the subway environment,” Steven Feil, Senior Vice President, Department of Subways, said. “Upon successful completion of the testing and evaluation of the system, NYC Transit may consider implementing the CCTV System throughout the subway fleet.”

Meanwhile, while the camera pilot will be live, the MTA’s other long-term plan — flip seats designed to maximize rush hour standing space — will be an option in a new R160 along the E but won’t be activated in the foreseeable future. The history of this plan is nearly as drawn out as that of the CCTV’s. Transit announced a seatless train experiment in early 2008, and while Boston’s MBTA started its own pilot in December 2008, Transit’s plan stalled out when Kawasaki refused to retrofit an R142 for use along the East Side IRT.

The new car, as the photo above shows, will feature flip seats and a better handhold configuration. If Transit decides to flip up the seats for any rush hour, the car’s capacity will increase by 19 percent. However, Transit says that “deployment of this feature is not being considered at this time.” In the meantime, the new pole locations should improve passenger flow and encourage riders to toward the middle of crowded subway cars. Today, with poles close to the doors, those riders who stand tend to block flow and empty space in the middle of cars often goes unused.

Categories : Subway Security
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When Eliot Spitzer won the governship in 2006, David Paterson, then Lieutenant Governor, never expected to wind up as the state’s chief executive for the better part of Spitzer’s term. Felled by a sex scandal in early 2008, Spitzer had to give way to Paterson, and since then, Paterson’s approval ratings have plummeted. Late last week, The Times, in a well-reported piece, accused him of being aloof, disinterested and simply bad at his job. It was, in my eyes, a worse indictment of his ability to govern than any uncovered scandal could have been.

Yet, Paterson will truck on. He announced this weekend that, despite rumors of a primary challenge from fellow Democrat Andrew Cuomo, Paterson will take his 26-percent approval rating on the road from Niagra to New York and Nassau in an effort to win the governorship in his own right. In his announcement speech on Saturday, he appealed to the MTA’s political and economic woes as a sign of the need for his leadership.

Claiming, in a positive light, that he has “done more in my two years of governor than most governors have done in two terms,” Paterson jumped into the fray. “So,” he said, “if you want a candidate that’s always telling the special interest what they want to hear but has never told the people of New York what they’re going to do about the problems of our time, balancing the budget, balancing the M.T.A. budget, rebuilding Ground Zero, stopping the violence among teenagers, then, don’t pick me as governor.”

Explicit in that statement is the claim that Paterson has told us what he plans to do about the problems of balancing the MTA budget. Implicit in that statement is the claim that Paterson is on the side of the MTA and will help balance the budget. As far as I can tell, neither of those statements are true.

So what, then, has David Paterson done for the MTA since taking over for Eliot Spitzer on March 17, 2008? He started his tenure off on the right foot when he announced support for congestion pricing. That, unfortunately, went nowhere. Paterson didn’t offer up much leadership on congestion pricing, and although congestion pricing remains one of the better solutions to the MTA’s woes, Paterson has not raised the issue since he endorsed the Ravitch Plan in early December 2008.

Since then, Paterson hasn’t offered up much of anything for the MTA. He dithered as the State Senate bickered and provided little leadership as the MTA faced its Doomsday last spring. His great compromise was one that simply promised schools a tax rebate. More problematic though are his recent positions and moves that have actively eliminated funding for MTA programs. He rescinded $140 million in state appropriations and has cut state Student MetroCard contributions from $45 million annually to just $6 million. His representative to the state’s capital review board torpedoed the MTA’s latest five-year plan.

Paterson is a born and bred New Yorker. He grew up in Brooklyn, went to Columbia and studied law at Hofstra before working in Queens and representing the Borough of Kings in the State Senate. He knows how valuable the MTA is to the city, the metropolitan area and the state at large. Yet, his record on the MTA is one that should not inspire the belief that he can, as he claims, balance the MTA budget.

As he gears up his run for governor, David Paterson is asking us to trust him on issues of transit while his record speaks to two years of last chances and lower state contributions. With Election Day nearly eight months away, Paterson can change his record on the MTA with one strike of the pen and some good old politicking. Right now, though, as the MTA moves into the political forefront of what promises to become a tedious race for the governship, Paterson has a long way to go.

Categories : MTA Politics
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Feb
19

Weekend ch-ch-ch-changes

By Benjamin Kabak · Comments (13) ·

Update (2:00 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 20): For the last few weekends, getting around the city has been far from easy. This week, for instance, riders trying to take the G at all or F from Jay St. to Church Ave. are confronted with some bed travel choices. The trip now involves taking a shuttle bus servicing the G this weekend and switching to another shuttle bus that services the F from Jay St. to Church Ave. The buses run fairly frequently and offer reliable service, but most people would rather not have to suffer through subway and bus rides for what is generally a one-seat trip.

As one might imagine, New Yorkers aren’t too happy about these constant changes. People are upset with the 7 line work in Queens and are despondent over the G outages in Brooklyn. That is, however, the cost of upgrading the system, and for other lines, it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

Per a Transit press release, those passengers who rely on the A and C at Broadway/Nassau are in for months of pain as the Fulton St. project proceeds apace. Here are just some of the changes in place from now until July with more to follow:

  • March 6 and 13 – The northbound A is operating via the F line between Jay and West 4th Streets; the southbound A will bypass Fulton Street/Broadway-Nassau; there is no C service.
  • March 19 – The A bypasses Fulton Street/Broadway-Nassau in both directions; there is no C service.
  • March 26 – Northbound A trains will stop at Fulton Street/Broadway Nassau; southbound A trains will be rerouted via the F line.
  • April 3 and 17 – The northbound A operates via the F from Jay to West 4th Streets; the southbound A bypasses Fulton Street/Broadway-Nassau; there is no C service.
  • April 10 and 24 – Northbound A trains will stop at Fulton Street/Broadway Nassau; southbound A trains will be rerouted via the F line.
  • May 1 – The northbound A operates via the F from Jay to West 4th Streets; the southbound A bypasses Fulton Street/Broadway-Nassau; there is no C service.
  • May 8, 15, 22 – A and C bypass Fulton Street/Broadway-Nassau in both directions.
  • May 29 – The northbound A operates via the F from Jay to West 4th Streets; the southbound A bypasses Fulton Street/Broadway-Nassau; there is no C service.
  • June 5 and 26, July 10, 17, 24, 31, Aug 7 and 14 – No A or C service at Fulton Street/Broadway-Nassau, details to be determined.

Transit promised additional changes throughout the year as the need arises. Sounds like fun to me.

Anyway, you know how the rest of this works. The changes after the jump come to me from the MTA and are subject to change without notice. Listen to on-board announcements and read the signs in your local station. To see these changes in map form, check out Subway Weekender. Read More→

Categories : Service Advisories
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  • Preliminary ridership figures show 2009 as second busiest since 1969 · In its materials for Monday’s Transit Committee meeting (PDF here), the MTA Board has released its preliminary numbers for the 2009 ridership totals. Later in the week, I’ll offer a more complete look at the numbers, but the initial figures show a very popular subway system. Despite a down economy and high New York job loss totals, Transit’s overall farebox revenue total came to $3.1369 billion last year, just $2.1 million less than the agency’s final estimate. The average fare across subways and local buses came to a hair under $1.40, and Transit saw 2.31 billion trips in 2009, just 63.5 million (or 2.7 percent) fewer than in 2008 and the second highest total ridership since 1969. For all of the MTA’s troubles, 7.4 million people per weekday rely on the authority to get them around New York City, and as the agency fights for its fiscal future, that’s not a number we should ignore. · (2)

I’ve been sitting on a few TWU-related stories over the past week, and none of them are long enough to warrant a separate post. So in the grand style of the link roundups we post periodically at River Ave. Blues, I present a TWU link roundup.

‘Pushy’ conductor wins legal fight

Our first story comes to us from Pete Donohue. He reports that the New York Court of Appeals ruled that a subway conductor who was accused of pushing a passenger after a heated exchange of words in 2006 cannot be fired. The MTA had initially tried to fire Jack Grissett after he fired a homophobic slur at a passenger and then, in Donohue’s words, “‘forcefully’ put his hands on the man.” At the time, an arbitration panel had recommended a two-month suspension without pay, and the Court determined that the arbitration ruling should stand and that the MTA owes Grissett backpay as well. The MTA had won at both the Supreme Court and Appellate level.

While Donohue and his sources portray this to be an example of wasteful MTA expenditures on legal fees, I have a different take on it. It reaches more to the power of the unions and the MTA’s inability to fire its employees acts most workplaces would not tolerates. As PSAs throughout the system remind us, if a rider assaults an MTA employee, the penalty could be up to seven years in jail. Yet, if an MTA employee is found to be guilty of similar behavior, a two-month suspension is a sufficient punishment.

Bus mirrors inadequate, says drivers

According to a Heather Haddon report in amNew York, a few express bus drivers say that replacement mirrors are inadequate and could put pedestrians at risk. Union leaders claim that the MTA’s decision to replace broken mirrors with “a more affordable model” is a flawed one because the mirrors do not allow drivers to see people on the streets or those running for the bus. While Transit officials say the mirrors “meet or exceed” safety specifications, one bus depot in Brooklyn fielded 20 complaints last month alone.

With funds tight, station cleaning shifts go unfilled

For the last few years, the MTA has threatened to eliminate station cleaning crews as a way of saving money. The current setup, Transit officials have claimed, is an inefficient use of manpower. Now, TWU leaders say that cleaning shifts are going unfilled. According to another Heather Haddon article, Transit has let cleaning shifts go unfilled when workers call in sick. She writes, “On a Monday earlier this month, 138 cleaning shifts had vacancies, with less than a fifth of them getting filled through overtime, according to transit documents.”

For the MTA, this is one way to save on overtime pay, but for the rest of us, we’re left with stations dirtier and grimier than usual. Meanwhile, despite promises from MTA heads to improve station cleanliness, the agency plans to save $6 million by eliminating 83 cleaners this year. Perhaps those naming rights deals should resemble Adopt-a-Station plans instead with the money going toward cleaning efforts.

Categories : TWU
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