When a severe rain storm knocked out the subway system in August 2007, New York City Transit spend considerable resources investigation ways to better prepare the subways for weather-related emergencies. Although the raised storm grates should protect the system from massive floods, the MTA still needs to communicate with its passengers, and to that end, an internal report suggested doubling the number of full-time staffers handling weather issues from 32 to 64. Now, those folks are on the chopping block, and amNew York wonders if this will leave straphangers without the necessary notifications in the event of weather-related delays.
Of course, the usual suspects bemoan the cuts. “I think it’s a terrible mistake,” Gene Russianoff said. “They are as integral to the system as the trains and electric power.” But as I think about it, I can’t help but wonder why the MTA needs 32, let alone 64, full-time staffers whose sole responsibilities include announcing weather-related delays that simply do not crop up that frequently. Maybe it snows a handful of times over the winter; maybe one rain storm causes some minor delays. The August 2007 storm was an anomaly, and the reaction to it shouldn’t unnecessarily handcuff a fiscally-strapped agency.
8 comments
Aren’t those “storm grates” actually ventlation grates, as per a recent discussion here?
Actual storm grates are intended to funnel rainwater into the sewers.
Those subway grates are there to let air into the subway.
Yes – the problem was that they used to be functioning as storm grates ;p.
But that was an unintended consequence of their being there, right?
It would not make any sense for all of the rainwater running off the sidewalk to be intentionally funneled into the subway instead of the sewers.
Yes, sorry, I was being ironic. They’re meant to function as air vents, to keep the air fresh(er), but because of surrounding construction (basically, the grates sunk into the pavement as time went on) they started taking in water during storms.
Ben: I read the amNY article to say that the announcers didn’t just do weather announcement but other service delays, non-automated warnings, etc. I’m still not sure why they need 64 of them though, but with 450+ stations, I can see why 32 would be on order (needing continuous coverage 24/7 probably requires 5 person per slot, doing a simple division of 7 days times 24 hours per day, divide again by 40 for a full time employee, so you can assume that with 32 people, 5 announcers are on duty at any given time, which depending on the number of non-automatic announcements have to be made may not necessarily be out of line.
NYC has an Office of Emergency Services. Instead of having 64 weather people hanging around, perhaps OEM can assist in this regard? And if it is done at no cost to the MTA, the city in effect just increased its operating subsidy.
See above: I don’t think these people are solely weather people, I think they also handle other contingency announcements, even a basic “The E is running on 6th Ave” message. Anyhow, you could maybe consolidate operations and facilities (but I doubt it, since transit infrastructure is rather specialized) but one assumes that City of New York personnel have their own jobs to do – MTA would still have to either pay their way or station their own personnel at the City. Given that MTA has specialized needs and given that many things that affect the MTA (weather, blackouts, etc.) also affect the City at large, I don’t think there’s efficiencies to be found there.
I don’t think this is being reported accurately.
Traditionally, dispatchers made station announcements. But dispatchers are often busy with other stuff, especially during service disruptions, so in 1990, a bunch of conductors were turned into dedicated announcers.
Last year, their number was increased from 33 to 47, according to this article. (I don’t know where the 32 and 64 numbers came from.)
Now, NYCT is doing away with the entire Dedicated Announcers Program – not just half. The dispatchers will be making announcements from now on. Or at least that’s how the article reads to me.