After hammering the MTA on safety issues related to the move to eliminate 450 station agent positions, amNew York reversed course today and is now questioning one of the MTA’s decisions designed to improve station safety. The authority, says Heather Haddon, is spending money on lighting abandoned station areas. Haddon and Julia Borovskaya found numerous examples of areas with 55-watt Sylvanina fluorescent tubes but without pedestrian access.
While the free daily calculates an energy bill at one station of over $20,000, the authority defends its lighting practices. Officials say that the lights are “necessary for security purposes, particularly for employees working in closed areas and emergency responders responding to calls. It also would be too expensive to separate the circuits in closed sections of the stations from the public ones, a transit spokeswoman said.” Safety, it seems, is not inexpensive.
5 comments
When I worked for the state of NY in Albany, they had no problem coming through our offices and taking the fluorescent tubes out of every other fixture to save energy.
Now, since this was in the electrical engineering department, they also remembered to take the ballasts out of the fixtures. Without the ballasts, it was too much effort to undo the change.
My supervisor decided to protest by wearing a LED headlamp around the office, everyday for a week. Then he brought in some desk lamps that used more energy than the fluorescent tubes they removed from directly over his desk.
When they turned the set-point for the AC up, we brought in oscillating fans. When they turned down the set-point for the heat, we brought in portable heaters. All the changes that the top brass were so keen to make to save money, were all undone at the rank-and-file level because in the end, it was too dark and too uncomfortable to work.
Josh. LOL that’s awesome.
As the previous post on the union labor situation suggests, many of the in-the-trenches workers feel taken advantage of. And, like Josh K’s anecdote above, doing anything to frustrate them even more would be detrimental. For God’s sake… let these guys working underground have a little light. If the areas are truly abandoned, the bulbs won’t get replaced when they burn out anyway.
They should have mentioned Bowery in the article
Can the MTA turn any of the abandond station areas into motel sixes? At least that way they could leave the lights on. LOL