It’s no secret that the MTA’s goal of achieving a State of Good Repair would always be a tough one to meet. The agency’s pace of work isn’t fast enough to keep up with the demands of a system sagging under the legacy of deferred maintenance, and as contractors slowly slog through even basic component replacement efforts, stations that were opened or refurbished in the past 20-30 years are starting to show serious wear and tear. Just how bad the state of the infrastructure is though was laid plain for all to see in a reporter issued this week by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
According to this audit, only 51 of the city’s 468 stations were free of defects, and only 25 percent had most of their station components in good repair. “New York City Transit reports it is making progress on repairing stations but the pace is too slow and much more work needs to be done,” DiNapoli said in a statement. “Worn or damaged stairs and platform edges pose risks for riders, while broken tiles, lights and peeling paint leave riders with a low opinion of the transit system.”
The short report paints a grim picture. You can read the PDF, and I’ll excerpt accordingly. From DiNapoli’s press release:
According to the latest [New York City Transit] survey, more than one-quarter of all structural components had defects. At 94 stations, at least half of the structural components needed repairs. The subway stations in Brooklyn and Queens had the largest percentage of components with defects (one-third). Nearly half of all platform edges (43 percent), which are important to rider safety, had defects in need of repair. While 33 percent of platform edges had a moderate level of deterioration, 10 percent exhibited serious defects. NYCT data also showed that 27 percent of station components — such as ceilings or columns — needed to be painted. Also, the tile or other finish on one-third of all subway platform walls and floors did not meet the NYCT’s minimum standards and needed to be repaired.
From the report:
Among the four boroughs served by NYCT, the stations in Brooklyn and Queens had the largest share of structural components with defects (one-third). Only 1 of the 81 stations in Queens was free of defects, although 13 others had most of their components in good repair. In Brooklyn, 28 percent of the stations had at least 90 percent of their components in good repair. In the Bronx, 26 of 70 stations (37 percent) had at least 90 percent of their structural components in good repair. Manhattan had the lowest percentage of components with defects (22 percent), but only 40 of the borough’s 146 stations (27 percent) had at least 90 percent of their components in good repair.
…Platform edges, which are important to rider safety because they close the gap between the platform and the train, had the largest percentage of defects (43 percent) of any structural component. While 33 percent of platform edges showed a moderate level of deterioration, 10 percent exhibited serious defects. One-third of other platform components (such as ceilings, floors and columns) were structurally deficient, while similar components at the mezzanine level (i.e., the area between the platform and the street level) were in better condition.
These gory and concerning details though are almost besides the point, and in that sense, both DiNapoli and I have buried the lede. At one point, DiNapoli notes that the MTA had hoped to renovate all 468 stations by 2022 but will be unable to attain that goal. He also states that nearly 20 percent of all escalators and elevators have outlived their useful lives. In another, DiNapoli notes that while Transit has renovated 241 stations over the last 32 years, “once the work was completed, however, NYCT moved on to the next station for rehabilitation without committing the resources to maintain the renovated stations.” Thus, stations that were renovated have inevitably begun to break down.
What DiNapoli does not cover are the reasons and ways to close this gap. The MTA’s work takes far too long, and the structures aren’t in place to adequately maintain stations after they’ve been renovated. It is a fine mess brought about by a history of disinvestment, politics and operational challenges. There’s no easy fix, but if it seems as though the subway system is crumbling around its users, well, that’s because it is.
16 comments
So why not trim low-utilization service for a specified time, putting the savings directly, do not pass general fund, into specified repairs?
Yeah, that would be honest and thus traitorous in New York culture.
There are obvious candidates for at least temporary trimming:
——Bus routes through Manhattan that quadruplicate subway routes. One bus duplicating the subway is enough, for those using wheelchairs etc.
——Some, not all crosstown Manhattan buses. These are often slower than walking, thus useless for most pax. For example, on 125th there are so many that they block each other and hold at green lights blocking all traffic.
—— Possibly a handful of subway stations, but the system is so heavily used that might not work.
—— Eliminate subway timers that force trains to brake between stops, such as through down-then-up sections. Braking=waste, it eats energy, brakes, bearings and time. It’s not always using regen so it also throws off heat. It’s also jerking the px sideways, just to rub it in.
For a lot of that gritty structural work, it seems to me that shutdowns are pretty unavoidable.
Sane work rules would accomplish wonders without spending more money. Since we have the staff anyway.
“once the work was completed, however, NYCT moved on to the next station for rehabilitation without committing the resources to maintain the renovated stations.”
Wow. Besides the obvious (not enough money), doesn’t this hint at a serious management problem inside NYCT? Is this something where Capital and Operations need to be talking to each other but aren’t?
I I’d imagine the same union work rules that make capital construction take so ridiculously long apply to smaller renovation jobs as well. Three months to refurbish a single staircase? Really?
Perhaps Donald Trump could be an useful agent here. Devolve the maintenance of the MTA to an organization Mr. Trump runs.
Just saw four workers painting a staircase at Grand Central the other day. Or, rather, one worker painting the staircase and three workers standing nearby talking to each other and blocking most of the rest of the staircase.
The real problem that nobody wants to tackle is in the work force of the MTA and NYCT. There is a lot of dead weight and once these people get the job, it’s virtually impossible to get rid of them, or rather the agency will not get rid of them because they are terrified of being sued. So, the result is lots of people doing lots of nothing and the others being overworked.
This report sounds like the story about a child who throws starfish from the beach back into the ocean. The adult says you cant save every starfish & the child replies continuously “I saved that one” after each toss ignoring the helpless attitude of said adult.
What this illustrates is – we can still try to do something despite the difficulty of the task at hand or just throw up our hands & say why bother & let the whole system rot.
The money is there no matter what people say – it just needs to be accessed. You think there’s an issue accessing federal funds for homeland security?
One of the saddest parts of this is that even the “new” stations are filthy by the time they open as the job takes so long to finish? Fulton transit center is covered with dust and grime already. And it hasn’t even been finished yet. The renovated Bleecker was no different.
Having just returned from a trip to Hong Kong and Tokyo, and having ridden both subway systems there, I’m reminded of just how apalling the condition of our stations are. The Transit Authority seems to have no comprehension of basic cleaning of its stations, nor any management oversight of its “cleaners”. The only cleaning I’ve ever seen is basically moving some bleachy-soapy-water mixture across a platform using a broom. Yet I see bus shelters getting power washed on a rather frequent schedule. They used to claim that they could not keep the trains free of graffiti and didn’t have the money to pay for that–until they chose to make it a priority. That’s what it all boils down to: somebody in MTA headquarters has to decide that they have to make a change to improve the current situation.
Back when I lived out there, I used to use the Myrtle-Wyckoff station. That station is so well cared for. Regular washing of the stairs, the platform, the mezzanine. Whoever is the station manager and making sure that place is extremely clean should be commended, and then have her/his process for managing the station cleanliness replicated throughout the system
If there is one thing I really hate, it’s Comptroller DiNapoli playing the good guy by objecting to the diminished future that State Senator DiNapoli voted to create for us. In order to advance his own career by pandering to the worst instincts of the worst members of his generation: Generation Greed.
Hey DiNapoli, how about ending all your reports with “We Win, Screw You, and Eventually, Goodbye Suckers!”
The fact that DiNapoli is only interested in the “gotcha” aspect that gets his findings press coverage doesn’t mean that his findings aren’t legit. In this case they’re pretty accurate. Nyct’s station maintenance and cleaning are both pretty ineffective for the money. More money would help but better management of a workforce that doesn’t put in an 8-hour day for their 8 hours of pay would help more.
When was all this maintenance deferred? If it’s about basic cleanliness, it can’t have been from the 1970s – cleaning operates on shorter timelines than that. Most likely, the MTA has been deferring maintenance even while claiming to be prioritizing maintenance and clearing out the backlog.
The IG report last year cited structural issues that were 15 or 20 years old and described others in more general terms (“decades”).
Some tile work looks like it was never repaired; at least parts of the signal systems get cited as being “original.” So that’s two things that probably date to the days of private operations.
As for garbage, I dunno. It must have piled up over the years. Remember Fastrack? They say they removed 20,140 pounds of debris during one blitz.
Okay, so if it’s 15-20 years, that was well into the era of prioritizing SOGR. It’s problematic, to say the least: the MTA can blame Pataki for underfunding it, but then it raises the question, is Cuomo underfunding the MTA and the MTA’s just too afraid to say so and piss off a sitting governor?