Apologies for the silence. It’s been a busy 24 hours. To tide you over for a bit, how about a little FASTACK recap? The MTA wrapped up the final part of the first 2012 FASTRACK treatment last night, and they’ll begin anew again with the Seventh Ave. line in early April.
“With the first round FASTRACK complete, we can already see how much progress we can make in the vital areas of cleaning and maintenance, and just as importantly, our customers can see it in the station environment,” NYC Transit President Thomas F. Prendergast said in a statement. “There is a winning combination here of increased productivity and improved worker safety.”
Here’s how Transit summarized the early improvements:
Signals: Replaced 15 switches, serviced 34 signals, serviced two timers, supported the Track Division on various rail and switch jobs;
- Track: Installed 21 rails, installed 1,610 friction pads, scraped 16,750 feet of muck, removed 11,972 bags of rubbish, removed 27,950 pounds of scrap; Corrected 2,605 third rail defects, installed 1,269 plates, installed 60 tie blocks, and cleaned, scraped and bagged refuse from nearly four miles of track;
- Stations: 1,657 station lights replaced, 52 platform edge signs replaced, replaced 81 square feet of ADA tiles, repaired 1,510 linear feet of rubbing boards, grouted floor tiles, inspected 20 platform edges, installed yellow safety tack tiles and floor tiles at various locations, cleaned and tested 101 emergency alarms and telephones, inspected and cleaned 23 cameras and 12 monitors, and replaced two cameras. Additionally, workers scraped 19,970 square feet, primed 11,590 square feet, and painted 7,970 square feet of space at stations; and
- Elevators and Escalators: Cleaned glass enclosure panels, performed tests on fire alarms and sprinkler systems, corrected 22 outstanding work order defects.
Like it or not, this is, for the foreseeable future, the new normal for weeknight travel in New York City. That State of Good Repair remains elusive indeed.
30 comments
No need to apologize for the a level of work no one is paying you to do. But perhaps as an amateur journalist, you might try to get the answer to this question the MSM has not provided.
As you know if you ever read my blog, over the past 18 years or so the state legislature has passed a series of retroactive pension enhancements in excess of what public workers, who already had better deals than most workers (actually most workers have no retirement plan), had been promised to begin with. The cost was described as zero, but the actual consequence has been higher costs and diminished services for the serfs. TWU and other MTA workers benefitted from some of these deals, but a 20/50 pension deal for the TWU was vetoed, leading to a strike.
Well a couple of days ago, the state legislature (once again) voted to screw the next generation of public employees to cover part of the tab. To the public outrage but probably private delight of the public employee unions, save perhaps for the TWU which has been less eager to “screw the newbie.” There have been multiple “screw the newbie” deals as part of the “screw the newbie, flee to Florida” cycle. Which is why I knew that future public employees would be screwed when they were cutting those enhancement deals, along with everyone else.
The details of this new plan for new employees are spotty. Specifically, New York City transit workers and New York City teachers had a different, richer pension plan than other city and state employees, the former because they fall into the “physically demanding” category and the latter because Bloomberg wanted to run for President in 2008 before changing his mind. Both had deals to retire at 55, with new teachers already not allowed to retire until 57 after kicking in 4.85% instead of 3.0% for ten years and nothing thereafter.
What has been reported seems to be the deal for office workers, such as those represented by DC37. What about NYC Transit? Are there any changes in pensions for future NYC Transit and other MTA workers? And was a job action in force on Thursday night, when subway service was stalled according to my wife and daughter, or is that just part of the general ongoing deterioration that is now in its early phases?
In a way, this is the biggest crime of all. It makes no sense to promise pensions that aren’t contingent on staying at least in the state.
Two of the big victories of NY’s public employee unions were the right to live outside the city, in places with a lower total tax burden and better schools. The last few unions got it in the last few years.
And retiree health insurance that covers people in Florida. For the TWU that too was a recent victory.
Of course, for retired public employees the NYC tax burden is low, because we have a local income tax in lieu of high residential property taxes, and retirement income is exempt.
AFAICT, it doesn’t really make sense to keep people from living outside the city, and there is no reason to reduce the talent pool by refusing to accept suburbanites workers. It’s what they do after they retire that’s pertinent here. They should be required to stay in the state, or at least within the tristate area if NJ and CT reciprocate.
Paying people to move to Florida and vote against New York’s interests is about the dumbest thing we can do politically.
The MTA stated that the next fastrack will be on the 1/2/3 on April 9th.
I wish they could do fastrack on the Nassau line why can’t they terminate the J at Essex Street?
Credit them one thing; those were actual MTA workers not, say, actors.
No professional actor has mastered how to lean on a shovel with the heroic composure of the gallant warrior at 0:44. Surely this man needs a full retirement to be available at age 42, or not more than 23 grueling years of attempting to plant that humble instrument into unyielding concrete.
Air Force pilots fly until age 55.
What? Air Force pilots can get full retirement as early as age 38.
http://www.airforce.com/benefits/retirement/
Shovels were useful when they “scraped 16,750 feet of muck, removed 11,972 bags of rubbish” etc. Maybe you think it would be more effective if they didn’t use tools like shovels.
Nyland – Didn’t know that. But I should have stated it more clearly, in that I meant AF pilots _can_ continue flying till 55 implies that one can perform less critical work at an older age. Being ready to handle the stuff that can go wrong in military jet flight requires a deep reserve of physical and mental performance, and that’s just for transport, not the super-demands of fighter, bomber and carrier operations.
AD12800: The shovel can’t clean stuff while he leans on it.
FASTRACK is a screaming no brainer. They should have used this concept ages ago.
I’d rather be inconvenienced a lot for a short time than be inconvenienced somewhat for a long time. Plus it’s cheaper.
Cheaper by $15 million a year, they said.
The cost of flying someone to Copenhagen and learning what the work rules there are so they can single-track at night is presumably lower. Alas, it requires outside knowledge.
Because New York’s and Copenhagen’s systems are identical, save for work rules. There can’t be any other possibility why something that works in one city doesn’t work in the other.
The cost of flying someone over and learning the system is measured in a few thousand dollars. You’re coming out ahead within a single year if the probability of success is one in a thousand.
Are you really confident the probability that New York has nothing to learn from Copenhagen is better than 999 in 1,000?
New York is familiar with how Copenhagen’s system works.
SAS is designed with bidirectional signaling and with enough crossovers to support single-tracking at night. For that matter, CBTC allows bidirectional traffic anywhere.
That doesn’t change the fact that the existing system is mostly not set up for single-tracking.
Nor does it change the fact that the maintenance needs of a 10-year-old system are very different from the maintenance needs of a 100-year-old system. Read the descriptions of what was done on the A/C/E FASTRACK:
How many of those tasks apply on the 10-year-old Copenhagen Metro?
By the way, the S-tog is the larger (and older, of roughly IND vintage) train system in Copenhagen. It shuts down every weeknight.
How many of those tasks? I don’t know. Do you? All you’ve done is given numbers similar to the sort of trivia you’d see on the MTA’s website about how its energy consumption would be enough to light up Buffalo. I don’t know if that’s a lot by the standards of anything else just from the description. As far as energy consumption goes, I know it’s not a lot because I know how much energy cars require, but I know that from other sources, giving comparative information.
The S-Tog serves more suburban areas – more like the LIRR (only far better-run) than like the subway.
If the problem is crossovers, then it’s worth figuring out where it’s necessary to install crossovers to allow single-tracking. As for signaling, I’ve seen trains run wrong-way at night occasionally; do they just use inefficient work orders, or is there some way to make the signaling bidirectional? Either way, with CBTC the MTA should be able to single-track easily on the L and eventually the 7, at least.
I know that most of those tasks are simply not relevant to a 10-year-old system.
Unlike the LIRR, the S-tog serves both suburban and inner-city trips. Here’s a combined system map:
http://www.wandawanders.com/im....._large.gif
In New York, two-track lines generally have low-capacity reverse signaling on each track. Installing new crossovers is a very expensive proposition, because almost all underground lines have support columns between the tracks every 5 feet. When practical, overnight single-tracking is used quite often on the L and 7 (sometimes indicated by an advisory like this one on the Lor this one on the 7).
Alon, one of the biggest problems is that the tracks were specified very close together in New York.
If you specify just a little bit more space between tracks it’s much easier to do work while single-tracking.
I can live with no overnight service, but shutting down the subway at 10pm on a weeknight in Manhattan is totally unacceptable.
Thank you.
Fortunately, nobody’s proposing to shut down the subway at 10pm on a weeknight.
I doubt that this is going to be the new normal. My sense is that NYCT uses the opportunity of seven consecutive train-free hours to throw as many people as it can scare up onto the tracks. This level of effort is sustainable for a week a month for a few months. It isn’t indefinitely sustainable.
The quantity of work the TA is saying it accomplishes during these Fastracks strikes me as nearly impossible, no matter how many workers they’re throwing at the closed off sections. But if they say they’ve accomplished that, I’ll accept it. I just hope it doesn’t come out they’re fancying up the numbers.
They’re probably reporting the numbers in worker-units –i.e., multiplying the number of feet of tracks scraped by the number of workers standing around doing nothing while one worker scrapes.
If so, the numbers are inflated by about 3.5 to 4 times, as evidenced in the video.
Considering the availability of the 4/5 right next door, they should FASTRACK and shut down the J/Z west of Essex for a week or so and clean up the Chamber of Secrets station. That thing is right by City Hall and the Municipal Building and looks awful.
It will be an easier option if the choose once the uptown Bleecker Street transfer is open, because then J train passengers can take the F train from Essex to B’way-Lafayette and continue their trip downtown on the 4/6, while also having access from downtown to the J via the same connection. Right now, if you cut the J’s connection to downtown at Essex the only option is a more roundabout trip via the F to West Fourth and from there a transfer to the downtown A train.
No, it’s currently possible to transfer at B’way-Lafayette to the downtown 4/6. It’s just not possible to do the reverse from the uptown side.
You kind of need both.
John-2 is right, I think. If they’re really generous, the M can be extended into Manhattan overnight, and the 6 can reverse at Bowling Green. That is, this would be practical if Broadway-Lafayette’s new transfer actually opens.
I like this plan. And as John-2 said, it is better to wait until the Bleecker connection is fully done this summer.
Chambers has serious leakage problems. Addressing them properly would require many weekends and nights of closures, perhaps only two tracks at a time.
This isn’t what FASTRACK is for. FASTRACK mostly focuses on infrastructure that the average rider never sees. Look through some of the photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/m.....482889813/
And are you seriously proposing a full-time closure? During rush hours, the J/Z carries over 1000 people per train, on a 5 minute headway, to lower Manhattan (most not to Chambers itself). Terminating the J/Z at Essex would severely overload both the M train and the narrow island platform at Essex (with only two narrow staircases to the uptown F). It’s simply not feasible.
I assumed he meant doing it at night, like has been done on every other trunk. But yeah, Chambers seems like a longer-term project.
As I mentioned above, the good news is that at least the idea is feasible when the Broadway-Lafayette transfer is available. All Js and Ms could terminate somewhere on Sixth Ave..