Second Ave. Sagas - A New York City Subway Blog

Inside East Side Access, 18 months before the new terminal opens

by Benjamin Kabak June 7, 2021

written by Benjamin Kabak on June 7, 2021

Andrew Cuomo leads the scrum atop East Side Access’ 182-foot escalators. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)
Gov. Andrew Cuomo surveys the down escalator underneath 45th St. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)
Looking down the escalators. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)
Going up. The 182-foot escalators will be the longest in the MTA’s system. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)
Inside East Side Access, the passageways are reminiscent of the TWA Flight Center. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)
Major construction on East Side Access has been completed, but finishes and system testing are yet to be done. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)
Looking south toward a dead end underneath Park Ave. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)
Tunnels are dug; tracks are laid; but walls remain bare with 18 months before passengers arrive. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)
A view down the tracks. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)
Signage points the way to street level, anchoring commuters on the Manhattan street grid above. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)
East Side Access in progress. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)
An arched passageway underneath Grand Central but above the LIRR’s new tracks. With bright walls and familiar marvel, the new station is evocative of Grand Central itself. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)
Much work remains to be completed. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)
East Side Access will connect commuters directly with the subways. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)
Ceci n’est past une departure board. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

The last time I had been down into the East Side Access cavern far beneath Grand Central Terminal feels like eons ago. It was 2015, a time when New Yorkers commuted daily to their midtown offices, and the cavern was very much just that — a large, dark, very unfinished, damp cave that barely resembled a train station.

I took a trip down to the LIRR’s new midtown home two weeks ago, and after six years, I can confidently confirm there is a new Long Island Rail Road terminal deep in the ground below Grand Central. New York has successfully built a train station underneath another train station. The occasion for the trip was celebratory as Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his MTA had just announced that morning, though not for the first time, that the 350,000 square foot terminal will open on time by the end of 2022. It seemed oddly fitting for this long-delayed project that’s taken 20 years and $12 billion to construct that it’s big announcement came amidst a pandemic that has shaken commuting patterns to their very core and has left the future of Midtown Manhattan up in the air, but regardless of the oddities of the times, the Long Island Rail Road will serve the East Side in 18 months or so.

Prior to the press tour of the new terminal, Cuomo hosted one of his famous/infamous pandemic press conference. This was the first one I’ve had the opportunity to sit through, and the Governor spoke a lot, often extemporaneously, making news here and there (particularly about the Gateway Tunnel), and he spoke at length about the challenges of completing East Side Access. “Thanks to the hard work of the so many people, major construction on this transformative project is now complete and we are proud to announce East Side Access will open up next year,” Cuomo said, “significantly cutting travel times and easing the commute into Manhattan for countless travelers. I’ve been through a lot of difficult infrastructure projects during my time in government, and while this project may have been one the most difficult to get accomplished, its completion will have a huge impact on New York’s economy and vibrancy for generations to come and serve as yet another example of what New Yorkers can do when we put our minds to something.”

Cuomo said a lot of eyebrow-raising statements, including claims that the project had stalled out prior to his personal review of it in 2018, and he never mentioned the follow-up L train-inspired review he ordered in April of 2019. He also vowed that the projected 160,000 passengers per day – a relatively paltry total for the billions spent – would be back in their offices by the end of 2022. Maybe he’s right; maybe the world will clamor for the commute and the companionship of the office after 15 months (and counting) of an isolating pandemic. Or maybe the ultimate irony of the East Side Access project will be an opening into a changed world and a changed New York, where we spent countless billions on an under-used deep-bore dead-end terminal underneath Grand Central that never should have been built in the first place. We won’t know this future for a few more years, but this project will never realize full bang for its buck.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo chats with reporters during a tour of the East Side Access project. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

Cuomo’s promise to open the station next year come hell or high water set off some familiar alarm bells. When he last made this promise for Phase 1 of the Second Ave. Subway, he opened the subway before systems testing had been complete, and he drove the opening date by diverting massive MTA resources away from subway maintenance. The subway crisis, which lead to the Subway Action Plan and Andy Byford’s Fast Forward plan, grew out of Cuomo’s push to open the Second Ave. Subway, and Cuomo then later tried to take credit for solutions to the crisis he created. Will this drive to open East Side Access — in a similar state of completion — lead to a repeat of recent history? I’m holding my breath. Neither the city nor the MTA can afford that fate at this moment.

But outside of these concerns and my own long-documented skepticism toward this project and the way the cavern beneath a Metro-North terminal not under capacity highlights the lack of inter-agency cooperation with the MTA, I wanted to offer a few observations about the terminal now that I’ve seen it in its near-finished state. It is, first and foremost, very much an Andrew Cuomo Transit Project. While EXCELSIOR isn’t yet plastered all over the place, the main focus on East Side Access is about getting into and out of New York City, and it does very little to improve getting around NYC. Janno Lieber, the head of MTA Construction & Development, could not answer if the agency planned to further rationalize fares to allow Queens commuters rationally-priced access to LIRR. Cuomo himself spoke at length about how East Side Access will free up space at Penn Station for Penn Station Access, another commuter rail-based project designed to facilitate easier access into and out of NYC (though one with more benefits to Bronx commuters than East Side Access will, on Day One, deliver to Queens).

Thus, the only state-funded project finished under Cuomo’s watch to increase transit capacity in NYC will be Phase 1 of the Second Ave. Subway (and maybe Phase 2 if Cuomo gets another two terms and it moves forward). Meanwhile, the state has spent or will spend billions on Moynihan Station and the Penn Station South/Empire Station complex, the Tappan Zee Bridge replacement, the airport overhauls and new AirTrain and both East Side and Penn Station Access. New York City, with its transit system run by Andrew Cuomo, continues to get the short shrift.

On the physical side, the most evident element of East Side Access is how deep it is. During the press conference, Cuomo tried to sell the depth as a marvel. The new terminal will, he bragged, have 17 high-rise escalators, each 182 feet in length to bring commuters up from 140 feet below Grand Central to the surface. With entrances along Park and Madison Avenues up to around 48th Street, East Side commuters won’t be as far from their offices as they could be, but the depth adds time. The escalators weren’t on during the press tours, but officials said the rides will take 2 minutes at a stand still. These will be the MTA’s deepest escalators, which could spell trouble for an agency with a shaky track record when it comes to escalator maintenance.

Will all of these ticket windows ever be fully staffed? (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

The station feels deep in other ways as well. The visual design of the station is very reminiscent of Grand Central itself with similar typefaces and marble used throughout. In an era of OMNY and digital ticketing, there is, for some reason, a massive ticket hall, but I can’t imagine all of the windows ever being staffed. Still, despite bright lights and arching ceilings, the station feels deep. The ceilings are lower than they would be, and there is no sense of place or direction that far underground. When completed the station will feature ample directions, including street signs, to anchor travelers on the Manhattan street grid. Still, it will be bright and clean in the vein of Grand Central when it opens. It’s very deep. Long escalators and low ceilings, despite a generally pleasant, if sterile, aesthetic.

And finally, East Side Access will be another transit mall — which is fine, though it also relies on a return of pre-pandemic commute volumes. The MTA plans to lease out 25 new retail spaces in the terminal, which will give NYC it’s fifth train station/mall and fourth new one this century. Unlike the Grand Central retail spaces, which are a part of the street level attraction, the new retail spaces will be deeper underground and out of the way. Some will be in the passageways at the top of the 182-foot escalators and some will be in the halls connecting to 1 Vanderbilt. But these spaces will be geared far more toward LIRR commuters than the malls in the PATH Oculus, Grand Central itself or Moynihan Station are.

All of this leads me to wonder how East Side Access will work and what it means for it to work? It’s nearly unique among massive train stations and will rely heavily on a return to the old in an era of the new. It’s a project conceptualized in the 1960s, designed in the 1990s and opened, if on time, in 2022.

June 7, 2021 24 comments

MTA Politics New York City Transit

Gov. Cuomo, in charge of the MTA, announces May 17th return of 24/7 subway service

by Benjamin Kabak May 4, 2021

written by Benjamin Kabak on May 4, 2021

This sign will become a collector’s item as the overnight subway shutdown will end on May 17, Gov. Cuomo announced Monday. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

Just over a year to the date since Gov. Andrew Cuomo barred passengers from late-night subways, the man in charge of the MTA announced the return of 24/7 subway service. The trains, which kept running all night every night for the last year, will see the return of passengers between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. on May 17th when outdoor dining curfews and pandemic-related capacity limits wind down. It’s welcome news for essential workers who saw their late-night commute times spike and costs increase while they just tried to keep NYC running throughout a pandemic, and it’s a sign that life may be returning to normal sooner rather than later.

For many transit advocates and enthusiasts, the news comes with a great sigh of relief as worry had spread that the governor would use the pandemic shutdown to end 24/7 subway service once and for all. After all, the governor had signaled for years through his MTA Board loyalists that 24/7 passenger service was a luxury for New York rather than the necessity we know it is, and MTA officials had once said the subways were “going to stay closed overnight…at least through the pandemic.”

But once the governor rolled back the four-hour shutdown to two a few weeks ago, we knew logistics and political pressure would eventually win out. The MTA simply cannot park all of its trains securely and kept running empty subways each night throughout the pandemic. Once Senator Chuck Schumer joined the fray, calling this weekend for the return of 24/7 service, it was all but inevitable that Cuomo would cave.

In announcing the restoration of service, Cuomo again trumped the disinfecting regime and baselessly hinted that the subways were responsible for the spread of COVID, his long-time cover for a policy driven by media coverage of homeless New Yorkers sprawled across subway seats and a safety crisis during the worst few weeks of the initial wave of the pandemic.

“COVID-19 is on the decline in New York City and across New York State, and as we shift our focus to rebuilding our economy, helping businesses and putting people back to work, it’s time to bring the subway back to full capacity,” the governor said, taking responsibility for the MTA he controls. “We reduced subway service more than a year ago to disinfect our trains and combat the rising tide of COVID cases, and we’re going to restore 24-hour service as New York gets back on the right track. This expansion will help working people, businesses and families get back to normal as the city reopens and reimagines itself for a new future.”

Despite a heavy security presence, the governor claimed Monday that he felt on safe during his last subway ride on June 8, 2020. (Photo via governorandrewcuomo on flickr)

Yet, the governor also went off script in some head-scratching ways. The governor, who has not ridden the subway since June 8 when he took a 7 train four stops from Court Square to Grand Central, claimed he felt physically unsafe on the subway (despite being surrounded by numerous cops and adoring fans). “As you know, I am a New Yorker. I am smart. I am New York tough. Don’t lie to me and don’t play me as a fool. I’m on the subway. It’s safe. Oh, really? Have you been on the subway? Because I have. And I was scared. Tell your child to ride subway, it’s safe. I’m not telling my child to ride the subway, because I’m afraid for my child,” Cuomo said.

I’ll get into the ins and outs of the ongoing conversation about safety in the subway in an upcoming post, but it’s all part of his feud with the mayor. The numbers show major felonies in the trains are up only slightly but transit workers are getting assaulted at alarming rates and misdemeanors and harassment over goes under- or unreported. MTA officials and Cuomo aides have talked up concerns about subway security while city cops have stressed the massive decrease in crime since last April and the relative safety of the system. The governor, who controls the MTA, should not be adding to the fearmongering, especially as he trumpets New York’s reopening and a return of passengers to overnight subways.

But the governor couldn’t resist plying the subway shutdown as another part of his infamous feuds with the mayor. Bill de Blasio had called for a resumption of normal life in New York City by July 1, but the governor has decided mid-May is the appropriate timeline. The mayor didn’t put up much of a fight on “Inside City Hall” on Monday night, suggesting that his July 1 date was as much a move to goad the governor into acting faster as it was a hard deadline driven by public health figures. But the fight over 24/7 service has its origins in the de Blasio-Cuomo battle as the mayor urged the MTA last April to close terminal stations for easier treatment (and removal) of homeless New Yorkers from the subway before the governor took a sledgehammer to the idea and ended overnight service from 1-5 a.m. entirely.

MTA officials have pledged to continue to clean trains overnight and support mental health services in the subway. Interim NYC Transit President Sarah Feinberg went on the radio yesterday evening and continued the theme. Riders, she said, “continue to worry about crime and harassment in the system because we’re not where we need to be on that yet and so until my customers and my workforce are saying, ‘We feel really good, we feel as safe as we could possibly feel,’ I’m going to continue to bang the drum on it ” This response is all part of the complicated politics MTA officials have been trying to maneuver lately, and I’m confident this won’t be the end of the various debates about homelessness in the subways, the reality and the perceptions of safety or the way the governor uses the MTA as a pawn in his political games against the mayor.

So did anyone learn anything during the 12 months without passenger service? We learned that a lot of New Yorkers were continually surprised to learn that the trains kept running but without anyone on them. We learned repeatedly that Bill de Blasio viewed overnight subway service as a luxury for party-goers and denizens of New York City’s late-night scene rather than as an essential means of travel for late-shift workers who often live far from the city’s job centers but kept New York going through its darkest days this past year. We learned that homelessness drives the conversation but not in ways that produce positive change (as subway bathrooms remain closed and Moynihan Station has no public seating). We learned that the city and state haven’t taken steps to address some of the root causes of why people choose to live in the subways or how to get them more secure housing. And we learned that while the MTA was able to accomplish some work on a slightly accelerated timescale, denying passenger service throughout the system as a whole does very little to increase construction productivity.

We should also learn for the sake of New York City’s future that the governor shouldn’t have the power to simply turn off the subways overnight with flimsy reasoning and no real way to cajole him to turn it back on for over a year, short of his losing influence due to the impact of duel scandals breaking as the vaccine effort ramped up. Yet, as life returns to normal, these lessons will fade, and the overnight subway shutdown will become one of those things we remember now and then about the COVID-19 pandemic that will recede into New York City history. It should be a cautionary tale about politicians who misunderstand the fundamental role transit plays in the city’s success. For now, though, in two weeks, the subway, in all its overnight glory, is back. It’s a welcome step forward indeed.

May 4, 2021 10 comments

View from Underground

Bill de Blasio doesn’t understand Open Streets. Can it succeed despite him?

by Benjamin Kabak April 25, 2021

written by Benjamin Kabak on April 25, 2021

Open Streets on Vanderbilt Ave. was packed just one minute after the official opening time on Saturday. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

While walking back from Prospect Park on Saturday morning, I took a stroll down Vanderbilt Avenue shortly before noon. The street was bustling with volunteers dragging metal barricades into the intersections to set up the popular Open Streets program, and by 12:01 p.m., Brooklynites grabbing lunch from Ye Olde Bagel Shoppe had taken over the median between Prospect Place and St. Marks Avenue. It was a glorious sunny afternoon, and the street was alive not with the drone of traffic but with the sounds of people enjoying being outside with their friends and family.

Amidst the tragedy of the past 14 months — the millions of deaths and the economic destruction that have changed the city and country and world — New Yorkers have changed the way they interact with space in the city. To keep as many of the city’s hundreds of thousands of restaurants afloat, after significant public pressure last summer, the mayor launched an outdoor dining program that allowed tables to take over parking spots, and over the winter, these spaces became semi-enclosed structures, some fancier than others.

A few busy corridors have gotten the temporary car-free treatment as Vanderbilt Ave. has. For a few hours from Friday-Sunday, cars are prohibited from driving on a handful of streets in the city, and these streets become vibrant spots for people, with picnics in the road, tables in the street, music in the air, and the vibrancy of city life of replacing traffic. These business-oriented Open Streets aren’t the only one though, and certain other streets throughout the city have been turned over to volunteer networks to run as limited access shared spaces, giving New Yorkers more space to run, walk, bike and simply sit. Each day, volunteers drag barriers into the streets that are intended to be closed to through traffic and cars limited to speeds of just 5 miles per hours. (I volunteer for one of them – the Underhill Ave. Open Street during the week.)

The program is great and, based on recent polling, very popular, but it’s also very tenuous. Despite 3 million free parking spaces and thousands of miles of roads, drivers in the city act with intense anger when told they do not have unfettered rights to every inch of paved asphalt in New York. A recent Streetsblog post summarized the response and charged the mayor with abandoning what could have been a signature program. The problem is worse than that: Open Streets was supposed to be a way for New Yorkers to have space during the pandemic. Instead, it has become yet another symbol of the way the mayor treats pedestrian-first policies: neglected and left to rot, waiting only for tensions to boil over, as city support dries up and fiscal support never materializes. It doesn’t have to be this way.

When Bill de Blasio thought he could run for president a few years, I wrote a piece for Curbed New York exploring the shortcomings in his transit and transportation policies. These words were from before the days of COVID and our need to have space outdoors for safe socialization:

For de Blasio, the failure to act quickly and decisively in the face of multiple crises is one of perspective. He sees the city as a driver, and thus, he does not act to limit the free rein drivers have over city streets. His refusal to consider limiting space for drivers and the giveaway of on-street parking results in a subpar Vision Zero that is reactive instead of proactive, poorly designed bike and pedestrian safety infrastructure, slow bus service, and rampant placard abuse… Every decision over space allocation on public streets should prioritize safety for pedestrians and cyclists, and speed for high-capacity buses. But the mayor views the city through his daily car rides, so we’re still stuck in traffic—literally and figuratively.

How I wish I were not so prescient. This assessment of de Blasio’s transportation legacy held true last spring when the mayor undelivered on bus lanes, failed to have a plan, and failed to show any urgency in the face of the coronavirus crisis. As we begin a second pandemic spring, with significantly increased knowledge about the virus and what works for international cities, and as we face a summer of New Yorkers spending as much time as possible outside, Bill de Blasio’s failures — this time as they negatively impact the popular Open Streets program — are once again in the spotlight.

The mayor’s problem is that he thinks doing something is the same as doing something right. Open Streets was initially supposed to be a partnership between neighborhood volunteer groups and local police precincts, but that partnership never materialized. Last year, they dropped off flimsy sawhorses and accrued overtime at protests rather than at open streets. This year, NYC DOT provided metal barriers and no police presence. Why? Because the NYPD doesn’t care to undercut the privilege that allows them to park everywhere with impunity, and the mayor doesn’t care to create even the bare minimum of an enforcement regime.

Of course, as with Vision Zero, Open Streets doesn’t rely on enforcement to succeed, and a good Open Streets program will be more about design than enforcement. So long as the program relies on unempowered volunteers and flimsy barriers rather than permanently redesigned streets that do not create conditions for cars to take over, each Open Streets segment will be only as good as the neighbors in charge and as vulnerable as those in Greenpoint currently under fire by a loud but small minority of car owners. In each case, the mayor has done nothing to step in and defend Open Streets. He keeps saying there is more to come, but so far, more hasn’t come, even as volunteers ask for governmental support and funding.

And therein lies yet another rub. A successful and permanent Open Streets relies on design changes and streets that are not simply car funnels, but the current iteration needs funding to succeed before design can be upgraded. The city has delivered no funding whatsoever. In Prospect Heights and Park Slope, community groups raised $25,000 and $50,000, respectively, through GoFundMe and similar crowd-sourced fundraising platforms. Further south, in the less well-off neighborhood of Sunset Park, a similar effort is still $30,000 shy of its goal. This is a tall fundraising order for a crowdsourced streets campaign but barely a blip for a city with a budget in excess of $92 billion. In short, New York City should be able to scrounge up the money each of these groups need for their open streets, especially as those in business districts will realize the benefits in increased economic activity (and increased tax revenue) nearly immediately. That the city cannot design, enforce or even fund any real Open Streets program is yet another indictment of the way the mayor fails to understand how New Yorkers want their city to be.

All hope is not quite lost though, as sub-par Open Streets implementations have become an issue in the mayoral campaign. Shaun Donovan recently took the mayor to task for failing to lead, and current polling front-runner Andrew Yang has talked about a permanent program with city funding. But advocates are sounding a more immediate alarm, noting that 22 miles are off the list this year and calling for quick and permanent physical upgrades.

As life returns to normal over the next few months, though, this summer could be a make-or-break moment for many of the city’s open streets, both those with business and those without. The space will become a luxury rather than a mid-pandemic need, and life will move on with only those Open Streets that have a willing neighborhood partner and a strong volunteer group surviving. Sure, businesses will push for their weekend takeovers, but a networked citywide program in all neighborhoods of space given back to people from cars won’t be at the forefront of the minds of anyone but the usual slate of activists. If that reality comes to pass — and I hope it doesn’t — that will be the final transportation failure of the Bill de Blasio Administration. A better city, with slightly more space for people and slightly less space for cars, with shared streets and true slow zones, with active street life and neighbors and neighborhoods outdoors, is within our grasp. All it takes is a political push from the one person in the city who doesn’t realize he needs to give it.

April 25, 2021 7 comments

Congestion Fee

After a long wait, US DOT OKs an Environmental Assessment for congestion pricing

by Benjamin Kabak March 31, 2021

written by Benjamin Kabak on March 31, 2021

After nearly two years of political delays under the Trump Administration, New York City’s congestion pricing plan is one step closer to becoming a reality, as the Biden Administration’s DOT finally gave the MTA approvals to move forward with the environmental review process. As expected, the MTA will have to prepare only an Environmental Assessment rather than a full-fledged Environmental Impact Statement, and a long and pointless logjam put in place by a president trying to punish states that didn’t vote for him has been cleared, just two months after Biden’s inauguration.

The decision was a long time coming. Following the March 17th MTA Board meeting, I asked Pat Foye, the agency chief, if New York had received any word on the environmental review required for New York’s nascent congestion pricing proposal. While the Biden team had telegraphed a quick response, after nearly two months into the new administration, the MTA was still waiting for an answer, and Foye told me that two months simply “wasn’t that long a time” in the world of federal transportation policy.

Well, the wait ended on Tuesday as the Federal Administration, as anticipated, informed the MTA, NYS DOT and NYC DOT that a shorter Environmental Assessment will be sufficient to gain approval for congestion pricing, rather than a full-fledged Environmental Impact Statement. The decision means the MTA could complete the environmental review process this year with congestion pricing suddenly on the horizon for 2022, if the political stars align just right.

“The FHWA looks forward to assisting New York so we can arrive at a prompt and informed NEPA determination on this important and precedent-setting project,” Acting Federal Highway Administrator Stephanie Pollack said in a statement. “This approach will ensure that the public participates as local and state leaders explore new possibilities for reducing congestion, improving air quality and investing in transit to increase ridership.”

The FHWA announced the decision via press release and shed some light on the hold-up. The feds had determined that New York must join the FHWA’s Value Pricing Pilot Program (VPPP) to be able to implement congestion pricing and doing so would trigger a review under the National Environmental Policy Act. The MTA had hoped to avoid the costly and time-consuming EIS process which could have taken up to two years and had requested approvals to move forward with the Environmental Assessment instead. The MTA has maintained that it could complete an EA in three months, as Streetsblog’s Dave Colon reminded the world on Tuesday, but I would anticipate a slightly longer review process.

As the MTA and state and local DOTs commence the EA, the statutorily-required Traffic Mobility Review Board should convene to develop the pricing proposals, thus expediting the timeline to get congestion pricing off the ground. After all, the state’s politicians still want the transit-funding, congestion-busting policy to be implemented, right?

With Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio, their traffic-limiting bona fides are ripe for questioning. The two have long self-identified as motorists first with a love-hate (or just hate-hate) relationship with transit. Still, they both expressed thanks to the FHWA and reiterated their support for the traffic pricing scheme. Cuomo’s statement was verbose:

“Congestion pricing is an internationally proven method to reduce traffic congestion, enhance the availability and reliability of public transportation, and improve our air quality, and it will play a critical role as New York and the nation begin to recover from the pandemic and build back stronger and better than before. This advancement is also another step forward in generating the $15 billion the state needs to fund the MTA’s five-year $51.5 billion capital plan, which will transform the accessibility, reliability and convenience of the system for users of all ages and abilities.

“We thank President Biden and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg for advancing this important program, and we look forward to continuing to work together to further advance our nation-leading $306 billion infrastructure plan, which is preparing the State to be globally competitive for generations to come. This announcement…demonstrates once again the commitment of our new partners in Washington to support our efforts to move New York in the right direction.”

The mayor’s was terse. “Mass transit is the present and future of this city, and this day is long overdue,” de Blasio said. “I thank President Biden, Secretary Buttigieg, my fellow elected officials, and every advocate who called for a smarter approach to congestion and more reliable funding for our city’s subways and buses. New York City stands ready to get this program started and build a recovery for all of us.”

Advocates celebrated the news but with some concern as they called on the Governor to prioritize established a functional congestion pricing. Many in New York’s transit community are skeptical Cuomo will see through congestion pricing plan and have long believed Cuomo was satisfied that Trump had put a hold on congestion pricing approvals. Without Trump, Cuomo had no political foil, and the feds’ delaying a congestion pricing plan the governor never truly embraced played into Cuomo’s wheelhouse. Now, plagued by scandal, Cuomo may just push on to curry favor with some of his more vocal and skeptical transportation critics.

“Riders welcome the Biden administration’s prompt decision to order an environmental assessment of congestion pricing. This accelerated public review will expedite essential new revenue to make New York’s subway system reliable and accessible,” Riders Alliance Executive Director Betsy Plum said. “Governor Cuomo must now complete the assessment as quickly as possible so the MTA can start congestion pricing with no new special interest exemptions in 2022.”

Now, though, with congestion pricing even more of a reality, the real jockeying beings. As I wrote for Curbed New York nearly three years ago, congestion pricing is a progressive solution to transit funding and even more so in the aftermath of a pandemic that saw New Yorkers who could afford to flock to their cars. Despite some complaints from drivers that the pandemic has made congestion pricing moot, the increased volume of cars heading to Manhattan at a time when offices remain empty and entertainment venues shutters underscores the need to stop crippling congestion before it starts while restoring faith in the transit system that powers NYC and fully funding ambitious expansion efforts. Make no mistake about it: It will be a fight to craft a proper congestion pricing plan with few carve-outs for drivers.

Tuesday was a good day for NYC, but that fight is just beginning. Another piece I wrote a few years ago for Curbed — this one on the need to avoid congestion pricing exemptions — still rings true two years later. A successful plan will include few or no exemptions, and Manhattan’s drivers will just have to learn with that reality. MTA funding and the need to limit congestion on the island demand it. Still, this week was a momentous one. Nearly 13 years after Michael Bloomberg first proposed pricing access to New York’s crowded streets, relief is finally on the way. Even with a battle ahead to ensure implementation is quick and proper, simply getting this determination from DOT was a big victory for the MTA, for transit advocates and for New York City.

“It’s more important than ever that our region has a strong and robust MTA to help power the economic recovery from this unprecedented crisis, and as traffic returns to pre-pandemic levels we must tackle congestion,” Foye said on Tuesday. “With this guidance on an environmental assessment now in hand, the MTA is ready to hit the ground running to implement the Central Business District Tolling Program. We are already working on preliminary design for the roadway toll system and infrastructure, and we look forward to working with our colleagues at the Federal Highway Administration to conduct the review and broad public outreach so that we can move forward with the remainder of the program as soon as possible.”

March 31, 2021 5 comments

PANYNJ

FAA increases PFC funding options for transit projects and LaGuardia Airport could benefit

by Benjamin Kabak March 8, 2021

written by Benjamin Kabak on March 8, 2021

A policy shift from the FAA could help usher in a better plan than the Willets Point LaGuardia Airtrain.

Could a shift in federal policy save New York City from the the misguided Willets Point LaGuardia AirTrain? Could Queens — and New York City — find a way to provide a rail link to LaGuardia while improving transit through Queens? It may still take a Hail Mary, or a new governor, to stop Andrew Cuomo’s favorite rail link, but the feds may have just thrown us a lifeline if someone is willing to take it.

In a significant policy shift published one day after former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao resigned during the waning days of the Trump Administration, the FAA has said that airport-based passenger charges can now be used for rail construction that doesn’t exclusively serve airports. It’s an arcane federal policy shift, one that happens with little fanfare on a regular basis, but one with the potential to upend for the better the way Americans travel to their airports.

To understand this policy shift, allow me to conduct a brief history lesson. Many airport-based transit projects are funded through passenger facility charges (or PFCs) that the agency operating an airport can collect to fund a variety of airport-related infrastructure projects. These projects must be tailored to the airport itself, and in 2004, the FAA issued clarifying guidance that PFCs could be used for surface transportation projects only if they “exclusively serve airport traffic.” The FAA also determined that the facility in question “can experience no more than incidental use by nonairport users.”

The interpretation of this limitation has been extremely narrow for nearly two decades, and it has led to a variety of overpriced and stunted airport transit projects. In essence, it forces airports to serve as terminals for rail lines or requires agencies to build proprietary systems that serve only airport customers. Rail lines cannot pass through airports, thus severely restricting planning. It is, as Aaron Gordon explained on Vice a few weeks ago, the origin of the United States’ crappy airport trains.

The PFCs are one of the more underdiscussed elements of the LaGuardia AirTrain. While the Willets Point routing, the so-called backwards airtrain, is championed by the governor, always has been and always will be, it’s also one of the easier routes to fund because a proprietary airport-only system qualifies for PFCs under the 2004 guidance. The LaGuardia AirTrain would be most definitely a system that exclusively serves airport traffic. Even if the Governor had wanted to propose a transit extension through Queens, the spur would have to terminate at the airport, and the PFCs could cover only the airport-based part of the route. It’s not fatal to a better transit plan, but the Willets Point plan requires no compromise. It can be funded entirely through PFCs. And why spend state money on transit when you can just spend airport passenger dollars instead?

But the times, they are a changin’, and the FAA just opened up a path to better airport-based transit planning. The new policy, available here as a PDF, has been in the works since 2016, but the past four years has hardly seen a federal administration friendly to transit. Now, though, the FAA has decided that rail projects should not be treated as road projects, and PFCs can be used to fund a variety of transit projects that serve airports and continue onward. It would allow, for instance, for PFCs to be used for an on-airport LIRR stop at JFK that continues east past the airport or a transit plan that includes LaGuardia as one of many stops, whether or not the airport is the terminal.

The policy shift focuses on the “fundamental differences between railway systems and road systems.” The FAA has finally realized that while roads are part of a complex network of, pieces of which are funded at various levels of government, rail systems are not. “On-airport rail access projects, on the other hand, are planned, funded, constructed, operated, and used differently than on-airport road projects,” the new guidance notes. “By their nature, passenger rail and rail transit aggregate passenger traffic along fixed routes with a limited number of stops, each with their own justification and purpose. Users of road infrastructure have more flexibility and control in determining their route than users of rail, who are limited in their options. Non-airport users of rail are not taking advantage of the airport portions of a railway system by choice, but are likely to be passing through the airport because they cannot use the railway system to their destination without doing so. Thus, the distributed network of roads, as compared to the fixed path of rail, justifies the differentiated treatment that Congress has now ordained.”

The FAA has also nodded to the reality of urban development in the 21st Century. While airports were once on the urban periphery, sprawl has subsumed them. “It may no longer make sense for a downtown railway or transit line to terminate at the airport, where there exists a pool of potential users beyond the airport,” the policy statement notes. What took them so long to figure this out anyway?

Prior to the new FAA guidance, this transit routing was ineligible for any PFC funding.

The new policy allows for a complex funding equation for transit projects that feature a mix of airport and non-airport uses. Transit agencies can pro-rate the cost based on ridership projections; calculate the cost of a hypothetical stand-alone airport based people mover; or calculate the difference in cost between a route that bypasses an airport vs. the cost of a through-line configuration. While the FAA prefers proration, none of these are mandatory, and municipalities have discretion to apply the calculation they see fit. I’d imagine using the hypothetical cost of a proprietary people mover may be appealing too as those systems often require significant investment in rolling stock and technology that extending an existing transit line may not. The FAA did stress that the PFCs can be applied only to on-airport parts of the project so an N train extension, for example, would still require state funding for any stations outside of the airport.

Interestingly, while improving airport access should be a goal for airlines whose employees need fast and reliable travel to work and whose passengers need the same, various airlines and their lobbying groups spoke out against the proposed change. Both Delta and the International Air Transport Association objected to airport fees being used for non-airport infrastructure. This is short-sighted and an incorrect reading of the FAA’s change, and these objections did not carry the day. As the FAA astutely noticed, additional rail capacity can “reduce roadway traffic congestion, thus making the airport more attractive to airline passengers, particularly in an area with multiple airports.”

So can this policy shift save us from the misguided LaGuardia AirTrain? In one sense, despite my optimism, the answer is “no” due to politics. The heavy finger of the governor is weighing on the scale in favor of the Willets Point routing, and as a LGA terminal for an N train extension would have been eligible for PFC funding prior to this policy shift, not much has changed. But it should restart the conversation. An N train extension — or any other route that adds transit service to Queens — is far more useful for Queens residents and for airport travelers who want to head to Manhattan and not away from it. Thanks to the FAA, the Port Authority has the political and policy cover to shift its planning, and for the sake of the city, it should revisit a better transit link to LaGuardia.

March 8, 2021 18 comments

MTA Politics New York City Transit

Overnight subway closure rolled back by two hours, Gov. Cuomo announces

by Benjamin Kabak February 16, 2021

written by Benjamin Kabak on February 16, 2021

The overnight shutdown will shrink by half starting next week. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

As Frank Sinatra once said, “I want to wake up in the city that only sleeps for two hours.” Or something like that. Either way, New York City moved one step closer to returning to normal as Gov. Cuomo announced the overnight subway shutdown would be reduced to just two hours from 2 a.m. – 4 a.m. beginning next Monday.

The decision to allow passengers on trains until 2 a.m. comes as a part of a gradual restoration of overnight service, MTA officials said during the governor’s press briefing. It is not yet clear when passengers will be allowed back on to trains between 2-4 a.m., and I have qualms with tying overnight service to the restoration of the city’s nightlife and entertain industries. Though important, this framing again overlooks the essential workers who have tried to keep New York healthy and fed as best they could without the recognition they deserve or transit service they need. Still, the move is welcome relief for thousands of those essential workers who found themselves stranded by the ongoing shutdown and thousands of others returning to work.

While the transit news is undeniably good for workers as sports venues reopen and the curfew for bars and restaurants has been again extended to 11 p.m., the surprise announcement raises more than a few eyebrows. After all, MTA officials have said the 1-5 a.m. closures will last until the pandemic is over, and the pandemic is far from over. Still, with Gov. Cuomo making the announcement and sending out the press release, it is yet again clear who’s calling the subway shots.

“Thanks to the hard work of New Yorkers, COVID hospitalization and infection rates have continued to decrease, allowing us to begin re-opening different facets of the economy in a cautious, thoughtful, data-based approach,” Governor Cuomo said in a press release. “With the expansion of hours of operation for restaurants and bars, as well as the re-opening of cultural centers and sports facilities, we must ensure that both employees and patrons have transportation options to get them where they need to go, when they need to get there. Accordingly, the MTA will be expanding the overnight hours for subway service to ensure transportation is available, while still maintaining the organization’s comprehensive cleaning procedures.”

For its part, MTA officials thanked the governor for his support and indicated that the surface disinfectant procedures the agency claims necessitated the initial shutdowns will continue. “The suspension of service for two hours will enable the MTA to continue the most aggressive cleaning and disinfecting regimen that has led the subway to be the cleanest it has ever been,” MTA CEO Pat Foye said.

Interim New York City Transit President Sarah Feinberg echoed those sentiments. “This approach,” she said, “allows us to enhance service for customers as New York City cautiously reopens while maintaining our concerted effort to deep clean and disinfect the system. We want to be able to provide as much service as we can without compromising on our commitment to doing everything we can to keep New Yorkers safe during the pandemic.”

You might be asking at this point what the MTA can do in two hours that it can’t do with full overnight service or why it has to continue to deny passengers service even as we know that the risk of surface-based COVID transmission are exceedingly rare. These are questions I’ve asked for months with no real answer. I’ve maintained that the MTA could continue to clear train surfaces as passengers use the system, a charge the MTA has made no real attempt to refute lately. They say it’s easier to clean without riders in the way but have never explained why it’s impossible to disinfect trains while maintaining scant overnight headways. (The ever-helpful mayor appeared on NY1’s Inside City Hall on Monday night and “demanded” the MTA keep up the sanitation theater. The agency had no plans to stop.)

The snap decision comes amidst a flurry of moves regarding the overnight shutdown. On Friday, homeless advocates filed suit, alleging that the MTA did not follow state evidentiary requirements in barring passengers from trains overnight. A few days earlier, following a hearing in which senior MTA officials admitted the overnight shutdowns were costing the MTA money, leading state legislatures had penned a letter urging the governor to restore service. But those weren’t the only recent driving factors.

Many transit observers feel the move is, in part, a response to a heightened attention to increasing subway crime rates and a partial response to a stabbing spree on the A train on Friday that left two passengers dead and two more wounded. Both the perpetrator and his victims were homeless New Yorkers in need of housing and mental health treatment, and the driving impetus for the overnight shutdown was to remove homeless New Yorkers from the trains during the depths of the first wave of the pandemic. As MTA officials have stressed in recent days, the MTA is not equipped to serve as a social services agency. Transit watchers I spoke with believe the added service is an attempt to get more people into the system as more people and more eyeballs generally leads to less crime. It’s a safety in numbers argument that bears watching.

This saga has been an ugly one in the recent annals of NYC transit history. The MTA and New York State are using numbers from April, when ridership was at its lowest ebb barely a quarter of what it is today, to justify denying overnight service to tens of thousands of essential workers, and while restoring service from 4-5 a.m. will provide subway access for over half of overnight riders, the two-hour shutdown seems pointless at this stage. The city and state must address the crises of homelessness and access to mental health care currently affecting those in dire need of assistance, and transit service and rider safety shouldn’t suffer because of the failure to respond to these crises in good or bad times.

It’s a good outcome for New Yorkers and one that brings us closer to the day 24-hour service is restored. But it’s been a bad process from start to finish, based on a lack of transparency regarding the true motives and a reliance on a science that has shifted its understanding of reducing COVID-19 transmission risks. The subways should be cleaned. The subways should not be a rolling shelter of last resort. But closing down service to essential workers to avoid solving these complicated problem never should have been a solution in the first place.

February 16, 2021 18 comments

View from Underground

How the vaccine creates a politically expedient way to end the overnight subway closures

by Benjamin Kabak January 31, 2021

written by Benjamin Kabak on January 31, 2021

Trains keep running every night, but passengers aren’t allowed on the subway. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

Every few weeks, the absurdity of the MTA’s overnight subway closure is thrust into the spotlight. Sometimes, a tweet describing how the trains are still running even though riders aren’t allowed on board goes viral. Sometimes, MTA executives draw headlines when they admit to state representatives that the agency is not in fact saving any money by denying passengers subway rides from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. each night.

That’s what happened last week during an Albany hearing on the very precarious state of the MTA’s budget. When grilled by Robert Carroll, a Brooklyn Assembly representative who has co-sponsored a bill that would mandate restoration of 24/7 passenger service, MTA CFO Bob Foran acknowledged that the MTA is not saving any money. “That was not done as a cost saving effort,” Foran said. “We are still running trains. They are to get our workforce back and forth.”

This is of course not a surprise to those in the know. It was an open secret for months that the MTA is still running its regularly scheduled overnight service but without passengers, and it was an open secret for months that the overnight denial of service isn’t a cost-saving measure. While the MTA can point to some minimal productivity gains that could have been achieved with FastTrack-esque shutdowns, the agency never intended to use the overnight closures to save money or increase capital work. The system is simply too vast with too many projects that were planned too long ago for a short four-window to do much for productivity.

Rather, the shutdowns were about implementing a legal mechanism to permit the MTA to remove unsheltered New Yorkers from the subway system while bolstering a necessary cleaning regiment that could have continued while essential workers were permitted access to the subway overnight. That trains are still running on a normal overnight schedule gives that game away, and headways are long enough at night that the MTA could take yard most trains at the end of their runs if they truly had to clean them with no passengers on board. The incremental personnel costs wouldn’t be out of line with the costs the MTA incurs running empty trains, and essential workers would have normal commutes rather than the lengthy trips I wrote about in August.

This is neither here nor there right now. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, through MTA leadership, has made clear that 24/7 passenger service will not return to the subways until the pandemic is over, a philosophy that incorrectly views overnight service as more beneficial to leisure, rather than essential, travel. But it doesn’t have to be this way. As the vaccine effort ramps up, Cuomo and the MTA have a very easy way to gracefully usher in the return of passengers to the subways on a 24/7 by tying it to access to vaccination hubs.

This is, of course, not a novel idea. In fact, a group of City Council representatives penned a letter to the MTA last week saying as much. “Not only has the suspension of late-night service and frequency reduction caused a great strain on the commutes of essential workers who every day have been putting their lives on the line, but the subway is now going to play an important role in bringing the City through to the other side of this pandemic crisis,” the letter notes. “With the creation of 24 hour vaccine hubs and, hopefully, accelerated supply from the new Biden Administration, New York City is working hard to ramp up its vaccine roll out. If these Vaccine hubs are going to be operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, the city will need its public transportation infrastructure to be operating at the same time and capacity…It is of the utmost important to address the limited subway service immediately and restore 24-hour service.”

The political opening is there for the governor, but it’s not quite as easy as removing the chains blocking the stations at night. It requires some careful public messaging that explains how the MTA will keep cleaning and why the risk of viral transmission on transit remains low, two approaches few leaders in American government have taken throughout the pandemic. In a recent internal survey, the MTA found out that over 75% of current customers believe cleaning and disinfecting efforts make them “feel safe” when using transit. The same percentage has noticed that trains are cleaner since the overnight shutdowns began in May, and 55% of lapsed riders say cleanliness of trains is very important to them as and when they return to the subways.

Even though the virus is largely airborne and surface transmission is rare, keeping the trains clean is important for maintaining public trust in transit. Thus, if the MTA restores overnight service prior to the nebulous end of the pandemic, the agency must continue to stress that cleaning continues, as it does during the day, even if surface cleaning is more about perception than actual risk.

This of course puts the MTA in between a rock and a hard place. While the CDC has told the MTA to continue to disinfect surfaces while combating aerosol-based transmission, the MTA will have to keep spending a lot of money on surface cleaning to insure adequate faith in the system. And the issue of homelessness looms large. The MTA is not a housing agency nor are agency staffers experts in housing policy, but by denying passengers access to the trains overnight, the MTA has temporarily solved the problem of people remaining in the way on trains that need to be cleaned. Restoring 24/7 passenger service will force the MTA to reconsider this approach to removing homeless New Yorkers from the trains.

I don’t have a good answer here; it’s ultimately up to the city and state to house their unsheltered residents. But it shouldn’t be an excuse to deny essential workers a fast ride home or a city itching to escape quarantine access to 24/7 vaccine hubs. Allowing passengers on the trains overnight shouldn’t wait until the end of the pandemic when nightlife returns and things are moving back to normal. Once the vaccine supply is in place, Gov. Cuomo should allow passengers back on the subway overnight as a recognition of the way people need to travel and a symbol of a city on the rebound.

January 31, 2021 21 comments

Fare Hikes

MTA to shelve 2021 fare hike for now, citing the economic toll of the pandemic on NYC

by Benjamin Kabak January 19, 2021

written by Benjamin Kabak on January 19, 2021

Amidst an ongoing pandemic that has decimated the economy and reduced daily transit ridership to essential workers traveling to keep the city and themselves afloat, the MTA Board has tabled talks of a fare hike, agency officials confirmed on Monday. The decision comes after months of public pressure by both elected officials and transit advocates, and it marks the first time since biennial fare hikes began in 2010 that the MTA Board — and by extension, the governor — has opted to cancel or at least postpone a fare hike.

Rumors that the MTA would be delaying the fare hike had been swirling since the New Year, and as the local pile-on from elected officials continued throughout the holidays and into 2021, it seemed as though the politics of a mid-pandemic fare hike would make the move untenable. CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer broke the news, and MTA Chairman and CEO Pat Foye sent out a statement a few hours later explaining the decision:

“The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked economic havoc — devastating the MTA’s ridership and revenues and bringing them to levels far worse than the Great Depression. It has also hit people of color and low income communities hardest, many of whom are the very same essential workers that have been on the frontlines of this crisis and who are also most dependent on mass transit.

“As part of our biennial review of fare and toll policy, the MTA conducted the unprecedented level of outreach this year required, holding eight public hearings and receiving 2,100 public comments. What we heard at these hearings was that people are suffering and cannot shoulder even a modest fare increase right now.

“Buoyed by President-elect Biden, incoming Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the MTA also has hope for $8 billion in additional pandemic relief and continued federal investment in mass transit in 2021 and beyond. For these reasons, the MTA has decided to postpone the planned fare increase for several months. We plan to move forward with a discussion and vote on recommended toll changes in February.”

According to Clayton Guse of The Daily News, the MTA will not move to raise the fares until at least the summer, and I expect the agency to delay the hike until the pandemic abates and transit ridership rebounds significantly.

The city’s transit advocates were quick to praise the move. “When riders organize, our governor listens. With offices closed and Broadway dark, a transit fare hike would fall overwhelmingly on essential workers and New Yorkers with no other way to get around beside the bus, subway, and paratransit,” Riders Alliance Policy & Communications Director Danny Pearlstein said. “With the regressive MTA fare hike off the table, Governor Cuomo must now put a stop to state raids on transit-dedicated funds. While riders are breathing a sigh of relief, the governor must craft a bold, progressive solution to his transit agency’s money woes.”

For now, the relieve is temporary. The MTA will seek to raise fares within the next six or twelve months, but the decision this week is the right. Last month, as the MTA seemed on a collision course with a public economically drained by the pandemic, I wrote a piece urging the MTA to delay the fare hike, and the reasoning holds up. On the backs of essential riders, the MTA would have raised approximately $79 million in total by implementing a 2021 fare hike, and the agency is still requesting $8 billion from the incoming Biden Administration. It would have been political suicide for any fare hike to go through, and from conversations I’ve had with MTA and state sources, it seems clear the Governor knew this.

So what happens next? First, the mystifying debate over the future of unlimited ride fare cards will be delayed a few more months, and that may give us more time to understand why Larry Schwartz, architect of New York State’s current vaccine rollout plan, wants to eliminate them. Second, the bridge and tunnel toll hikes will continue, and this is good public policy. Drivers should be expected to pay more, both as a way to capture the externalities of driving and as a way to encourage transit usages.

The MTA hasn’t revealed the specifics of the planned toll hikes, but we know that crossings could increase to as much as $6.70 for New York E-ZPass customers. We also know the MTA is considering variable tolling based on time of day and/or on so-called Gridlock Alert Days, a quasi-congestion pricing plan. Resident discounts and carpool incentives may be reduced as well. Again, these are all fine proposals that should be adopted, especially as bridge and tunnel traffic has recovered significantly faster than transit usage. (Bridge and tunnel traffic is down by only 16-17 percent from pre-pandemic figures while subway and bus ridership have steadied at around 30 and 45 percent of normal, respectively.)

Still, the MTA plans to reduce some service. The commuter rail lines will see some trips eliminated as part of a pandemic-related “right-sizing” of weekday service, and New York City Transit has had to cancel around 2 percent of scheduled trips in recent months due to crew unavailability, as Jose Martinez reported on Monday. The LIRR/Metro-North cuts will be approved by the MTA Board, but the subway service reductions remain off the books. Ideally, the MTA won’t have to make further cuts, but the budget remains shaky at best.

The big X Factor though involves federal funding. With a technical Democratic majority in the Senate and control of the House, the Biden Administration should be able to secure the rest of the funding the country’s transit agencies have requested, including $8 billion the MTA wants, and the next COVID-19 relief package should include this funding, if Democrats get their way. With no room for error in the Senate, that remains a reasonably sizable “if,” but we should know soon how aggressive Democrats in the Senate will be in determining the future of the legislative filibuster and their political success. The city and the MTA need a strong federal response.

For now, though, cooler and saner heads have prevailed, and transit fares will not increase in April, as originally anticipated. This is welcome news for a city and its workforce hoping to reach the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel and the right move by the MTA and Gov. Cuomo.

January 19, 2021 5 comments

Moynihan Station

Some thoughts on Moynihan Train Hall and designing public spaces with nowhere to sit

by Benjamin Kabak January 10, 2021

written by Benjamin Kabak on January 10, 2021

A panorama of Moynihan Train Hall, New York State’s attempt at righting the wrongs at Penn Station. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

New York spent $1.6 billion on the Moynihan Train Hall, but all we got was a big waiting room/mall with nowhere to sit. New York spent $4 billion on Santiago Calatrava’s Oculus, but all we got was a big waiting room/mall with nowhere to sit. New York spent $1.4 billion on the Fulton St. Transit Center, but all we got was a big waiting room/mall with nowhere to sit.

Are you sensing a trend yet? Why is New York spending so much money on giant waiting room/malls that all have nowhere to sit? And what does this say about how we’ve chosen to treat our public spaces and transit infrastructure? Must we make every public space so inhospitable to the people using it or can we find a better way? I’ve thought a lot about these questions since visiting the brand-new Moynihan Train Hall on Saturday, and while we have a chance, as a city, to design friendlier public spaces, the opportunity is slipping away.

Before I dig into this philosophical discussion on urban policy, let’s talk about Moynihan Hall. It’s very nice – exceedingly nice. It’s so nice that I overheard someone say to his companion, “This place is too nice.” I couldn’t tell if it was a compliment or if he felt truly out of place to be in a clean, light, airy, modern train station in the middle of Manhattan. New Yorkers are so beaten down by the grunginess of Penn Station and the general mediocrity of the design of newer transit infrastructure that something nice is too good to be true. This isn’t New York City; it’s too nice.

Moynihan Hall also isn’t finished. None of the shops or restaurants that will make it feel more like London’s St Pancras Station are open yet, and they won’t be until later in 2021. Even though Gov. Andrew Cuomo insisted on opening Moynihan Hall “on time” — whatever that means during the middle of a pandemic when few people are traveling — the building is still a work in progress. Still, it has high ceilings and clear sight lines and bathrooms with three faucets and feels very much a modern train station should feel. Moynihan Train Hall, a glorified and expensive waiting room, plays the role of a state-of-the-art train station quite well, and considering how much of the problems with Penn Station are aesthetic, that may not ultimately be a bad thing.

Without capacity upgrades or service improvements, I still can’t shake the feeling it’s the infrastructure equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig. Ultimately, the space looks like the renderings, and after decades of a cramped, crowded Penn Station, the new Hall is a significant visual and environmental upgrade. It makes going to Manhattan to catch an Amtrak or Long Island Rail Road train a pleasant experience.

An Art Deco clock looms over the middle of the train hall. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

The critics have had a lot to say. You can read a review of SOM’s work at Dezeen and an interview with Peter Pennoyer, design of the Hall’s snazzy Art Deco clock, at Architectural Digest. (I love the clock, even if it is very much A Clock A Train Station Should Have According To Andrew Cuomo.) Justin Davidson likes it and took exception to my characterization of lipstick on a pig while Aaron Gordon found it mediocre. Steve Cuozzo thinks it’s a great example of adoptive reuse but says it can’t hold a candle to the original Penn Station.

As nice as the new hall is, it isn’t all days of wine and roses. What Penn Station enjoys in location, location, location, the Moynihan Train Hall does not. Penn, situated between 7th and 8th Avenues and one block away from Herald Square, is amidst 14 different subway lines. The entrance to Moynihan is west of every single one of the subway lines, and the Hall itself, with escalators down to the Penn Station platforms, is even further west. It pretends to be a Penn Station replacement but without Penn’s greatest asset, and when the world returns to regular commuting, those heading into the city may find the convenience of Penn and the shorter walk to the subway outweighs a nicer glimpse passing through Moynihan.

The hall itself continues the siloed fiefdoms of Penn Station. Although the new hall provides access to Long Island Rail Road and Amtrak trains, you wouldn’t even know New Jersey Transit services Penn Station. There are simply no signs of the New Jersey-bound trains. That’s partially due to the reality that you can’t access every NJ Transit track that far west, but it’s also due to the fact that none of the three entities that use Penn Station get along. Without through-running or capacity increases that won’t arrive until we get new trans-Hudson tunnels and Penn Station South, the Moynihan Train Hall is a testament to the reality that it’s harder to rationalize operations across multiple transit agencies based in different states than it is to simply renovate an old building that was already there.

The only seats in the Moynihan Train Hall are reserved for ticketed passengers only. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

But beyond the politics of improving commuter rail service through the New York City area, a few key aspects of the Moynihan Train Hall speak to decisions we as a city have made regarding our approach to public spaces that do not sit right with me and reflect societal failures to address policy challenges. In a sense, the Moynihan Train Hall is a public space but hostile architecture. It’s designed to look nice, but it’s not designed to encourage reflection or time spent within the space. You are to pass through the space, admire the Instagram-worthy elements of it and leave. Soon you’ll be able to dine and shop as well, but when you’re done with that, get outta here.

To hit you over the head with this element, the new building is closed every night from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m., while Penn Station remains open, and there is nowhere to sit. The new hall is a vast open space with narrow escalators leading down to the platforms, clear sight lines, a stunning skylight and no seats. The only waiting areas are reserved for ticketed Amtrak and LIRR passengers, and while station architects say the dining hall will have seats when it opens in the fall, those will be for people who are eating. Moynihan is, like Calatrava’s Oculus, the Fulton St. Transit Center, and the current iteration of Grand Central, a train station with nowhere to sit.

Why, you may ask do we make public places so anti-public? The answer is rooted in our inability to house the homeless and our societal fear that New York’s homeless residents will take over public spaces that aren’t designed properly. If Moynihan were open 24/7 as Penn Station is, if Moynihan had seats out in the open, if Moynihan were truly a public space, homeless New Yorkers would not leave, as many do not leave Penn Station, the Port Authority Bus Terminal or even parts of Laguardia Airport. Instead of solving for this specific problem, whether through better housing programs or homeless outreach or humane enforcement of public space, the city and state have opted to turn public spaces into museums. You can look at them, but you can’t stay long because staying long isn’t comfortable.

This is, of course, a New York City problem that isn’t constrained to train stations, though the profusion of new train stations in recent years has laid bare this approach to public space. It manifests itself in the lack of public seating throughout the city and the lack of any public restrooms as well. If these spaces don’t exist, then “undesirables” can’t use them or inhabit them.

Now, this should not be read as a defense of ceding public space to anyone or turning those spaces into de facto housing at the expense of the general public at large. But a competent and functional government should be able to design nice new train halls that include spaces where the public can relax while enjoying these spaces and policies that address the root of homelessness. We have chosen not to, and as nice as Moynihan Train Hall is — as much of an improvement over Penn Station it is — it’s hard to look beyond the choice made to design the space. These design choices affect more than just the homeless. For anyone facing mobility challenges or anyone pushing luggage or rolling a stroller, Moynihan offers little respite from the constant on-the-go motion of people passing through. It’s a new train hall, where people come and go, without any place for anyone to simply sit and collect themselves for a few minutes, and that’s a design choice we should un-make in the future.

January 10, 2021 27 comments

Fare Hikes

The MTA should not raise fares in 2021

by Benjamin Kabak December 29, 2020

written by Benjamin Kabak on December 29, 2020

I originally published a version of this piece on my Patreon last week and wanted to share it here as well. As a reminder, Second Ave. Sagas is fully reader-funded, and I will be revamping the Patreon tiers in the new year. Have a safe and healthy beginning to 2021.

With the news emerging from Washington a week and a half ago that the MTA will secure $4 billion in pandemic relief funding from the federal government, the MTA’s Doomsday budget has been averted for now. The agency received only one-third of the $12 billion it requested and may still face a deficit of around $1 billion for 2021 before the figures balloon in the out-years. But that’s something the agency will address down the road. The service cuts, which would have hamstrung New York’s post-COVID recovery before it even began are off the table, at least until the country goes through this unnecessary dance again later next year.

Instead, the transit advocacy world’s focus has turned entirely to the 2021 fare hikes. Over the past few weeks, the MTA has launched the process of soliciting public feedback regarding their fare hike proposals, and the early reviews are negative across the board. Although the MTA has taken great pains to stress how the fare hike was scheduled for 2021 and was going to happen regardless of the multi-billion-dollar hole the pandemic has blown through the agency’s budget, no one is happy with options on the table.

I wrote about those various options a few weeks ago, and examined why the MTA would even consider eliminating time-based Metrocards. The public comments have struck similar chords. No one wants to see unlimited ride cards, which encourage transit usage and eliminate transfer penalties, eliminated, and in fact, many politicians and advocates are taking an even stronger stance this year: They are urging the MTA to skip its biennial fare hike entirely.

It’s almost ancient history these day, but the MTA’s regularly scheduled fare hikes grew out of the 2008 recession and 2010’s own version of the Doomsday budget. As part of the state’s rescue package, in exchange for the payroll mobility tax, the MTA agreed to a series of ostensibly modest fare hikes every two years in perpetuity. This was designed to foist some of the MTA’s own economic pain onto the shoulders of its riders and allow for certainty in revenue increases. That certainty, of course, went out the window as pandemic ridership has dropped to barely 30% of normal, but the fare hikes must go on, or so says the MTA.

Should they though? The question of delaying the fare hike is both an easy one and complicated one. Or maybe it’s just an easy one. For starters, the MTA’s revenue projections for the fare hike are modest. The agency has a need for $8 billion over the next few years, but in the short-term, fare hikes are expected to cover only a small portion of the budget gap.

Setting aside the revenue from bridge and tunnel toll increases (which should continue on sound policy grounds), the MTA expects the fare hike to net just $90 million in 2021 and only an additional $189 million in 2022. Meanwhile, those who are still riding the subways and buses are essential workers who are keeping the city healthy and afloat, and those essential workers are going to be the bulk of ridership well into 2021. Does it make sense to attempt to balance even a small portion of the books on the backs of these folks who have little choice but to ride? Is it a fair and just policy decision?

The answers to those questions depend on whether one views transit as a public good to be subsidized or a quasi-private benefit that should be rider-funded. I fall into the former category. As a strong believer in the claim that transit is a public good and should be treated as one, these fare hikes amidst a pandemic — hikes that will burden essential workers at a time we need them most — are bad policy and should not be approved this year.

There are other secondary considerations at play as well. One is the current elasticity of ridership. In the Before Times, fare hikes generally had little impact on ridership as transit remained the most cost- and time-efficient way to travel. Lately, though, transit ridership has been very sensitive to outside effects. When it snowed on Thursday, bus and subway ridership dropped by nearly 40%, and even the rainy days this fall saw ridership dip by nearly a quarter. Thus, the same expectations may not apply, and with a skeptical public looking for excuses to avoid transit, higher costs could turn some casual riders away at a time the agency needs more fare revenue.

That brings me to point two. Unfairly or not, the MTA has borne the brunt of bad publicity this year. Some of the focus has been around crime (which is up in the subway as trains have emptied out, but still sits at levels comparable to the late 2000s/early 2010s); some of the focus have been around unfounded fears of transmission risks. As the MTA looks to welcome riders back to the system and assuage concerns about the relative safety of transit, raising fares may be counterproductive and, again, a bad policy decision.

Finally, politics rears its ugly head. Even as the MTA pleads poverty and begs for more and more federal funding, even as the MTA looks to foist a fare hike onto essential workers, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is again withholding money earmarked for transit or diverting millions to his pet projects. In a statement before the MTA Board this week, Reinvent Albany’s Rachael Fauss levied this charge:

The MTA board must not approve $148M in fare hikes for 2021 while Governor Cuomo is planning to raid at least $600M in MTA dedicated funds. As the MTA said in July, it is asking for $12B in federal emergency funding, including $600M to compensate for the loss of “state subsidies.” (“Subsidies are a euphemism for dedicated taxes, in this case primarily Metro Mass Transportation Operating Assistance “MMTOA” funding.) This $600M was added on top of its spring deficit of $10.3B which already accounted for COVID-19 revenue losses from ridership and its economic impact on MTA dedicated taxes.

To be clear, we fully support the MTA getting billions in much-needed federal COVID emergency aid, but at the same time more federal aid is not a license for the Governor to raid at least $600M of MTA funds.

The details get a little wonky, but effectively, New York State is cutting the MMTOA by approximately 35% while state budgets are being cut by only 20% across the board. In other words, the MTA is getting approximately $600 million less than it should have due to Cuomo’s budget moves. Again, riders should not be asked to pick up any of this slack while the governor looks to wash his hands of this decision.

Ultimately, the decision to raise the fares is a political one, and the MTA Board may not have much cover to vote down the fare hikes this time around. But they should. It’s bad policy at this moment in time to attempt to raise revenue off the backs of essential workers who have pushed the city through the pandemic, and it gives cover to bad budgetary decision-making from New York’s politicians. The MTA should not approve a fare hike for 2021. It is the right choice.

December 29, 2020 3 comments

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