Oh, those pesky station agents. Last week, in voting down the Doomsday fare hike, the MTA Board noted that station agent cuts remain on the table. As it always does, the topic engendered much discussion about the impact — real vs. perceived — that these agents have on subway safety.
It has long been my take that these agents offer up a deterrent force but don’t actually do much to stop crimes or quality-of-life violations in progress. A potential perp may be less likely to hop a turnstile in plain sight of a station agent, but no one will stop him or her from defacing a poster or littering.
As the MTA gears up to assess the fate of their maroon-vested employees, advocates and politicians are decrying the planned cuts. amNew York’s Heather Haddon has more:
Transit groups and some city officials are blasting the MTA’s plan to shrink the number of station agents roving the system, saying the cut saves little money while putting riders at risk.
In an average year, the red-vested station agents signal for emergency responders 85 times per station, according to the most recent data available from the Straphangers Campaign.
“All the statistics in the world about crime being down is not going to take that fear and concern (about security) away,” said Bobbie Sackman, an advocate with the Council of Senior Center and Services.
According to Haddon, those who oppose the planned cuts — including mayoral hopeful and current comptroller William Thompson — plan to protest on Monday in front of the 77th St. station on Lexington Ave. The MTA has long defending the cuts by noting that every station will have at least one employee on duty at all times. Of course, that’s little consolation for lost passengers if that employee is on the wrong side of, say, Brooklyn’s 4th Ave. in a station with no connection between the downtown and uptown platforms.
The telling part of Haddon’s story though is Sackman’s quote. Crime is down, and station agents seem to ring for emergency responders every four days. We probably won’t find out just how much subway crime will increase until and unless those agents are eliminated. Is that a chance we should be willing to take?
8 comments
I’d rather have a cop down there overnight. I bet their salary is less than the agents’, too. Win-win.
Cops make over 20k a year more minimum and have MUCH better benefits than a station agent.
Rookie cops were making under $30,000 recently. Did they get a big raise?
First, yes they got multiple raises because they were behind in there contracts. Second, it was a big myth that rookies were making no money. My cousin was a rookie in the first class that had that new lower pay scale and she made 70k her FIRST year on the job.
I don’t know about the salaries, but that would also be an interesting backdoor way for the city (which pays the cops) to bail out the MTA (which pays the station agents).
What about people with baby carriages and things that can’t go through the turnstile or the HEET? There will be a local mainstream media backlash of human interest interviews lower class borderline overweight mothers holding one kid in their arms and another by the hand talking about how they can’t get the baby carriage into the subway anymore. There will be prompt action by elected officials after that to ensure their reelection.
OK lets paint this scenerio.Tuesday Morning 9:30 AM Flushing Ave G station.Customer with a bad hip and disabled wants to go to Greenpoint Ave and needs to go Queens-Bound and voila,NO agent after the cuts.IF this goes thru,customer would have to walk back upstairs go to Smith/9th bound platform and give his ticket to the agent,than proceed to Myrtle-Willoughby and walk down and up four extra flights of stairs that they don’t need to and wait for another G train that passed them for 10 mins.In wasting 15 mins to go thru all that;one clerk at the queens-bound side could erode at least 15 mins and discomfort in walking up more stairwells than they need to.So if you cynics call it saving money,good for you but put yourself in that customers position.
Good thing then that the MTA isn’t planning on cutting the station agent at Flushing Ave. For a full list of station agent cuts, check out the comptroller’s new site.