Just over one month ago, the ceiling at 181st St. on the West Side IRT came crashing down and with it arose cries of a subpar station maintenance program. This week, New York City’s Comptroller William Thompson issued a damning report highly critical of the way New York City Transit goes about maintaining a database of stations in need of repairs and fixing those repairs.
“We recently averted tragedy when a subway ceiling collapsed onto tracks in Upper Manhattan. That should have signaled not just the need – but the urgency – to repair hazardous conditions,” Thompson said in a statement. “Instead, it’s as if New York City Transit is looking the other way. New Yorkers deserve better.”
The audit — available here as a PDF — paints a rather bleak picture of the current state of repair underground. Thompson and his office began investigating the MTA last year and have come to a rather stark conclusion. “New York City Transit is failing to repair reported defective and dangerous conditions – holes in station ceilings and platforms, corroded metal, loose or warped rubbing boards and broken steps – in commuter areas at subway stations across the city,” the Comptroller’s press release read.
The report features numerous stories such as the one about these stairs:
The Comptroller’s Office encountered this decrepit entrance at 33rd St. on the East Side IRT on November 25. On December 22, someone placed a service call, but on February 9, the steps still appeared in this state of disrepair. At other stations, damaged platform ceiling go unreported, and loose electrical wirings at 116th St. on the A went unrepaired for at least three months.
Beyond these reported and ignored problems, Thompson’s office found that the MTA has been closing out open tickets without making actual repairs. A handrail at 71st St. on the D/M in Brooklyn was reported broken on June 2, 2008, and while the trouble-call was filed as complete, six months later, the handrail was still loose. Stories such as these are pervasive at stations throughout the system.
In fact, auditors found problems with 399 of 426 sample trouble-calls, and the remaining 26 were at locations that were unidentifiable. According to to Thompson, 15 percent of calls were not repaired despite being filed 60 days prior to inspection. Two-thirds of these calls were closed out without any actual repair work being done.
The Comptroller’s Office also urged the MTA to institute a series of inspection measures:
- Ensure that station inspections are appropriately performed by station supervisors and that all observed defects are reported to maintenance shops;
- Establish a minimum requirement for frequency of station inspections and include this requirement in the Station Supervisor Training Program Manual and other operating procedures;
- Ensure that required inspection and frequency reports are used to evidence inspections and establish record maintenance requirements for such reports;
- Establish minimum requirements for supervisors to randomly review the work performed by maintenance personnel and to report on these observations. These reviews should be used as part of employee evaluations; and,
- Consult the Information Technology-Information Systems (IT-IS) department within the agency to discuss the weaknesses and needs of the MSU in tracking trouble-calls.
In response, Transit noted that it is in the process of instituting many of these suggestions. “Several of the recommendations made in the Comptroller’s Office audit report on MTA New York City Transit’s efforts to maintain and repair subway stations are being followed, while some, including those requiring the use of web-based technology, are under review for future incorporation,” the agency said in a statement.
“Improvements,” the statement continued, “are currently underway in the areas of the procedures governing station inspections and the frequency of these inspections, while supervisors receive additional training in the identification of station defects. This includes the continuation of a two-day training refresher that helps maintain the supervisor’s proficiency in this area.”
While the Line Manager program will streamline the repair process and subsequent oversight, the MTA is going to start compartmentalizing station rehabilitation plans in order to address problem spots at stations not up for a complete overhaul. Still, as the MTA struggles to reach its state of good repair and as last month’s station collapse is still fresh in our minds, Thompson’s report comes as a rather sober reminder that our system is fragile. We need better investment in transit, and we need it now.
6 comments
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To what extent does this reflect a scarcity of resources?
It seems to me to be a process problem more than a scarcity problem. The MTA has the employees and resources to fix structural deficiencies such as unsafe staircases and loose cables. There appears to be a lack of oversight in reporting and following up on these trouble-calls.
This all sounds great, but one big issue being overlooked is that the poor state of many stations is due to the bad design decisions and shoddy workmanship of the renovations of the past two decades. Using a thinset mortar bed and thin tile in areas exposed to rain, heavy foot traffic and train vibrations is a recipe for disaster. The type of work they do would maybe be appropriate for a residential bathroom, not a heavily used piece of transport infrastructure. In fact, the staircase you show in the photo above was renovated in the 1990s along with the rest of the station.
I see this every day at the Bergen station on the F where fairly new wall tile is falling off the walls because the MTA never addressed the water infiltration problems that caused the original tile to degrade in the first place. And the new tile was installed directly over the original glazed tile. Mortar won’t adhere too well to a glazed, non-porous surface. They were supposed to rough up the surface of the original tile first before installing the new, but somehow that never happened and the supervisors at the MTA never caught it (or chose to look the other way). Now they’re doing the exact same thing at Jay Street.
I’m all for spending more money on the subway, but I think someone needs to seriously look at what we’re getting for the money we’re already spending on station renovations. And why the renovated stations are deteriorating at a rapid rate.
At my station (Bay Ridge Avenue), the stairs were recently “renovated” with misshapen concrete steps. I assumed it was some sort of “base” for real steps… but this was over a year ago. One must step carefully on these things.
I too was wondering if it’s really a lack of money or just a lack of direction. At some point you have to say, look you’ve got enough money, just build a proper stairway already.
[…] hopeful William Thompson released a spate of audits critical of the MTA. I examined his report on station maintenance yesterday, and today, we’ll delve into Thompson’s views on New York City […]