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.
31 comments
My biggest fear here, Ben, isn’t so much bulky luggage or scary people, but instead the fact that the autogate readers jam with alarming regularity (often because stupid people jam regular metrocards into them). When those jam, there’s no way for wheelchair users to get into the station and no immediate way to get help without a station agent to buzz you in. Thus far, I’ve never been to an accessible station that wasn’t staffed (probably intentionally), but I suspect that this will be happening soon. For me, it’s a particular problem at Park Place on the Franklin Av Shuttle, which is currently staffed but, given its location and the fact that it’s only a shuttle station, is probably going to be one of the first to lose its agent.
You should contact the MTA or a disability rights organization to see what is going to happen at the accessible stations. There might be an agreement requiring all stations with autogates to be staffed. If there isn’t, and the agent-less stations become inaccessible as a result, it’s grounds for a civil rights lawsuit.
That’s what surprised me about the “4 customer requests day” thing. When I’m in NYC I’m often responsible for at least two of them at Park Pl ;p. Particularly, the exit machine was jammed for the entire two weeks that I was there, and the poor guy put in repair requests every day that went ignored (I started to disbelieve him and actually sat there and watched as he called one in). You can exit using the alarmed exit bar, but for entrance when it’s jammed, you’re pretty much SOL.
It seems like it would be a larger number of requests, there were a fair number of disabled customers who used Park Pl; I theorized that the area might be favorable place to live with a disability, given its quick access to accessible transfers at Franklin/Fulton, Prospect Park and Atlantic-Pacific and the fact that there were more modern apartment buildings around, rather than just the brownstones. When I move back I’d certainly prefer to live in Manhattan again, but I could definitely see the benefits of that part of Crown Heights.
We’ll see what happens when I’m back this summer, it could well be an adventure :(.
“When those jam, there’s no way for wheelchair users to get into the station and no immediate way to get help without a station agent to buzz you in.”
That’s about the only valid argument for keeping station agents around… for now.
The MTA needs video cameras and call boxes by all of the gates. That would allow people to get buzzed in remotely. Far less labor would be needed to accommodate all of the stations, and people would be able to get service faster.
I do appreciate dangerous stations. Now, not only will it be so expensive to ride the subway that it will be an occassional treat rather than commuter need but it will now be so dangerous you can afford to relive your mugging experience at dangerous stations over and over. Ah, thanks MTA!
It’s so expensive you are going to choose one of the cheaper options like, say, driving a car into manhattan?
I don’t have a problem with the laying off of the station agents as long as at least 25% of the MTA’s management is also laid off. We all know that not one single manager is going to lose there job even the ones that don’t manage anyone, or have any actual purpose.
Do we all know that, Mike? Or are you just making assumptions?
It seems pretty obvious. The entire reason that the line general manager program in the TA was started was to eliminate the superintendents who will no longer be needed. It’s been a couple of years now and not ONE has lost there job or been demoted to there former title. All the program did was add an additional 4 layers of management on top of the 5 superintendents already working each line.
For what it’s worth, I’ve heard rumors that the line manager program is the next thing slated for elimination. Not sure when, but that’s the MTA word on the street.
That’s very interesting to hear. The problem is that even if they eliminate the program those managers don’t lose there titles and over 150k/ yr salaries they get reassigned to B.S. jobs or hidden in the system while keeping everything.
Idle speculation, as opposed to the factual information that it’s impossible to fire incompetent union workers.
Sayonara station agents! TWU 100 lost all credibility for its safety argument when, a few years ago, it defended the right of its agents not to step outside of their bullet proof boxes to help customers how were being mugged.
Personally, I have no problem seeing these station agents get the axe. I walk into a train station and I see horrible maintenance, trash overflowing out of garbage cans, broken MetroCard machines, lousy signage and a near total failure to provide customers with real-time information about service changes — and then I see a paid TWU worker sitting in a bullet proof glass box taking a nap. If this system is running low on money there is simply no question that this guy should be fired.
The TWU has lost all sympathy from me for their inability or refusal to convert these workers to more useful roles in the system. For how many years did the TWU think we were all going to let them maintain totally useless, blatantly do-nothing jobs within a financially strapped subway station?
So, buh-bye, station agents! If you guys can’t even step out of your box to bend down to clean up a piece of trash or inform customers of service changes in the station for which you are supposedly the “agent” then we don’t need you. If you want to argue that you are not legally responsible to help us when we’re being attacked by a mugger, then we really don’t need you. I’d rather just have video cameras and NYPD call boxes down there.
aside from the safety canard, what exactly do station agents do? Give me poor directions, tell me to use the metro card vending machine,
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If they’re concerned about safety, have the wireless operators install the equivalent of cell phone towers underground (like they have for Moscow and DC). That’ll keep the cops a phone call away, and probably add to people’s sense of security
The subway in Los Angeles has been around for 17 years (first portion opened 1993; first light rail line opened 1990) and has NEVER had station agents. Seems to have worked out alright here.
Before you go off half cocked, saying “but that’s LA, nobody rides the subway in LA…I thought they didn’t even HAVE one!” take a breath there. LA now has the fifth largest urban rail system in the USA (after NYC, Chicago, Washington and San Francisco/Bay area), and will soon jump over Washington to be fourth largest.
If stations without station agents can work here, they can work in New York City also. About the only complaints you hear are from the foreign tourists wondering where the station agents are. Soon enough they figure out we don’t have any.
As far as broken turnstiles and wheelchair bound riders being buzzed in, well, we used to have no turnstiles. Wasn’t a problem. Unfortunately, that has changed and they ARE now installing turnstiles, but as of yet they don’t do anything and just spin freely. I guess we’ll see if there are any problems with wheelchair bound riders once the turnstiles actually become functional.
I lived car-free in LA, near Wilshire/Normandie, for 2 years – am still sad that they’re taking this step (I’m the same Aaron that used to blog over at Fred’s MetroRiderLA, if you’re curious); not necessarily opposed to the fare gates but I’m still not convinced that fare collection will actually surpass the capital costs and periodic maintenance. It still blows my mind that some bozo spilling mercury on the platform at 7th/Metro sparked all this – are the gates going to have bomb detectors built in? /snark.
When are they supposed to be active? I left in Dec. ’08 and I thought they had already started installing them then, this has apparently been a long process – I know that I was already seeing initial setup at Union Station before I left town :(.
I worry less about Metro’s because those are the kind that break less frequently – user error is not going to render the gate inoperable, like jamming a non-Autogate metrocard into that Autogate slot will. This probably would be substantially ameliorated if they used more modern fare gates like WMATA, LA Metro, or even BART used, but the setup in most NY subway stations is very obviously something they cobbled together after the fact, and it’s plainly a spit-and-chewing-gum operation. I don’t fault them, when the system was designed I don’t think “wheelchair accessibility” was even in the dictionary. But that disadvantage means that NYCT needs to take these issues into account, and I fear that there will be serious problems in unattended stations. After all, NYC doesn’t have Metro Rapid lines that run parallel to the subways, particularly in the outer boroughs. At least at Normandie I could just take the 720 to Vermont or even all the way Downtown, but in NYC if the only accessible subway station within walking distance is out of service, you may quickly have more serious problems in the outer boroughs.
Scott, you’re counting size by system length, which is a less important metric than ridership. LA’s rail ridership is about 300,000 boardings per weekday, which is puny. I don’t know of any large subway systems that are turnstile-free – the largest I can name you is the Vancouver Skytrain, with 350,000 weekday boardings. But I don’t know whether German U-Bahn systems (as opposed to trams, or S-Bahns) have turnstiles.
I think his point was that the LA system is a legitimate rail network, not to prove that PoP would work in NYC, which I have my doubts would ever work in NYC due to complex network of transfers and short distances between local stations.
Transfers aren’t really a problem for POP – cards can remain valid for two hours, and, of course, unlimited cards interact well with transfers.
The problem is more that really busy lines never use POP. Beyond a certain crowding level, ticket inspectors are infeasible or more expensive than station agents. The major subways of the world do not use POP, and neither do the most crush-loaded commuter rail systems, those of Paris and Japan. I have a lot of respect for the Berlin S-Bahn and think it’s a great model for the New York commuter rail to follow, but it’s nowhere near as crowded as New York City Transit.
I can confirm that the Berlin U-Bahn is POP, with no turnstiles. From a fare perspective, it’s indistinguishable from the S-Bahn.
This may have changed, but I think some of the outlying stations on the London Underground lack turnstiles (and even if that’s not the case anymore, there are ways into the Underground system that bypass the turnstiles – e.g., transfers from anywhere on the DLR).
Fair enough.
But does the U-Bahn have lines that get as crowded as the IRT or the QB line?
No clue.
PATH operates with zero station agents system wide.
The federal, state, and local governments are all facing fiscal crises. Either takes or other sources of revenue need to go way up, or spending has to go down.
Plain and simple. Nobody ever wants to pay new taxes or more fares from the MTA, yet people CRY if the MTA does something to save money. Moses had it right, never let public opinion get in the way of anything.
The MTA is right to eliminate a number of station agents. You don’t need that many when you have metrocard vending machines. As for safety, there have been a number of cases when people were robbed or raped and the station agent did nothing. Mind you, they are not armed.
The subway systems has a number of police in it, perhaps video cameras can be used with other communications equipment to better deal with security issues.
[…] of the agency’s cost-cutting measures. For more coverage on that story, check out my posts on the station agent issue and MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder’s statement on the personnel reductions. I’ll link […]
The union was able to pull the eyes and ears bs over peoples eyes back in 2003. IF the mta would have been able to move forward back then we would have over $300 million in our pockets to avert needed service. The mta should close most 24 hour booths and hire security code enforcers that could enforce the fare, assist in emergencies, issue tickets to people holding doors as well as assist in fighting fare evaders on buses(on some lines 25% of the people don’t pay) We need an intergrated security not useless jobs. Conductors should the next to go especially overnights and weekends. Removing conductors would save between $600-$700 million a year to be be replaced by security code enforcers where needed
Sharon, do you have a citation for the $600-700 million/year number? It seems high to me given the number of train-hours of operation.
About the cost of conductors, the only number that I’ve found is that the subway has 3,000 conductors. That comes from this web page.
With benefits, that should be at least $200 million/year.
Will any stations be left agentless, or is this just an acceleration of the program to eliminate the second (or third or fourth) agent from most stations?
Frankly, I’m more worried about the other 600. What do they do now, and those tasks be left undone?