That pad arrived in the mail last night from the Transit Museum, and I unabashedly love it. It’s a small blank slate for your very own Planned Service Changes. The pad contains 25 sheets of 4 x 6 stickies and is available right here for purchase. One day I should profile the hilariously specific subway merch available for sale at the Transit Museum shop.
And for more great photos of all things transit in and around New York City, follow me on Instagram.
The MTA has developed something of a Millennial fetish over the past few months. These are the young adults of my generation or even younger, the city’s 20-somethings who don’t own apartments or cars. They rent and rely on the subway to get them anywhere at any time, and the MTA, in its twenty-year needs assessment, recognized this cohort as a key driver of transit needs and demands for the next two decades. This focus on one large and important demographic may be overblown, but here we are.
As much as Millennials embrace the subway system (and CitiBike and, yes, taxis), they do not like buses. Can you blame them? New York City buses are hardly a paragon of reliable transit. They’re slow and off-schedule. They run infrequently along routes that are often incomprehensible, and it can sometimes be quicker to walk. Millennials — and New Yorkers of any age group — are in a hurry, and the bus isn’t the thing to take if you’re in a hurry.
Yet, for some reason, buses have emerged as the center piece of the mayoral campaign and a significant component of the MTA’s attempts to expand the transit system. For those vying for Gracie Mansion, buses are an easy improvement to trump. NYC DOT has control over city streets which gives the mayor an opportunity to implement bus plans, and the MTA is willing to go along with just about anything DOT wants when it comes to reallocating street space to buses. They’re cheap and relatively quick to put in place, and they don’t involve digging up entire streets and disrupting life and commerce for nearly a decade as subway construction along Second Ave. does.
This love of buses isn’t a phenomenon unique to the mayoral campaign. The MTA too is pushing buses, and in a talk at NYU’s Rudin Center yesterday, William Wheeler, the MTA’s Director of Planning, spoke at length about getting more Millennials to ride the bus. On the one hand, I’m concerned that the MTA’s focus on buses isn’t completely genuine. Perhaps because subway construction costs are so high in New York, the MTA has decided to punt. Instead of tackling the root causes of high construction costs — a lengthy review process, the potential for protracted litigation, onerous union work rules — the agency can just turn to buses for a low-cost, but also low-capacity, fix. Put some flashing lights on it; require preboard fare payment; and voila, Select Bus Service.
On the other hand, it’s important to build out a bus network where subways right now cannot or will not go, and there’s nothing underhanded or even partly malicious about it. The city should, in fact, demand a better bus route with ridership climbing instead of declining, especially if public transit has lost much of the stigma it used to have. It’s not just for the lower and middle class workers; it’s safe at night; it’s the way to get around.
During his talk, Wheeler spoke at length about the need for the next mayor to fight for bus lanes. The debacles on 34th St. and 125th St. shouldn’t be allowed to happen, according to the planners. But Wheeler also spoke about making buses more attractive to a younger generation of potential riders. He discussed adding wifi to the city buses as though free Internet would somehow be a carrot for a bunch of young people who already all have smartphones that hook up to the next-gen LTE networks. It’s an unnecessary idea.
I think this is a problem with a rather simple solution: If you’d like to attract riders to buses, make it more convenient and quicker. Buses don’t have to stop every two blocks or be beholden to traffic. Fight for dedicated lands, signal prioritization and pre-board fare payment options. Increase service and let people know where buses are and where they’re going. If buses can be faster and just as reliable as subway service — which, for all of our complaints, is pretty reliable — people will ride them. But if buses show up once an hour, not on schedule, and inch their way down an avenue, people who value their time will not ride. Making buses sexier doesn’t require anything more than that.
It’s no real secret that New Yorkers are more than willing to pay a premium for access. Housing in the middle of Manhattan costs more than housing in the far reaches of Brooklyn and Queens, and Craigslist rentals tout access to nearby subway stations as a selling point. It’s a bit surprising then to read this Wall Street Journal article and see nary a mention of transit.
The gist of the article is this: Some renters are moving to Outer Borough developments instead of what The Journal calls “less-sought-after” neighborhoods in Manhattan. Josh Barbanel credits this willingness to cross the river “first because of lower rents, and later because of their grittier feel.” Now, though, rents are rising in these areas — such as Long Island City — while Midtown East, Murray Hill/Kips Bay and Midtown West have seen rents remain stagnant or even decline slightly.
As landlords look to space and amenities as one explanation, access is definitely another. It’s easier and quicker to take the 7 train from Long Island City to Grand Central than it is to get from 44th St. and 11th Ave. to the East Side. Waterfront neighborhoods in the Outer Boroughs have far superior transit access to Manhattan’s key job centers than do the neighborhoods cut off from the subway system. This is, of course, why Manhattan landlords should push for a Second Ave. Subway, a station along the 7 line at 41st and 10th and various other Manhattan-centric capital projects. Transit access remains a major, underappreciated driver of the New York City housing market, and somehow, The Journal omitted it.
As New York City area airports go, Newark’s is relatively easy to get to. NJ Transit and Amtrak both provide regular and frequent service to the AirTrain station, and while the AirTrain is a bit sluggish, it works. Now, at the cost of $1 billion, it’s going to get even easier to get there as Governor Chris Christie will approve a PATH extension to the airport.
Crain’s New York broke the story on Wednesday evening. Daniel Geiger notes that Gov. Christie was set to announce his support on Thursday but canceled his public appearance. Still, the money will be on the way. Geiger reports:
Mr. Christie’s backing would almost certainly assure that the extension project, which has been mulled over by transit officials for more than a year, would be included in the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s roughly $30 billion capital plan, which is expected to be released to the public in the coming months.
The extension would be of special benefit to lower Manhattan PATH riders, who would be able to take the line
all the way to Newark Airport and transfer to the Air Train to travel to the airport’s terminals. Downtown PATH service currently ends at Newark Penn Station, and the most common approach for riders coming from Manhattan now is to take New Jersey Transit from Penn Station in Manhattan to the Air Train, a route that requires downtown riders to first head to midtown.Airport advocates hailed the decision. “A one-seat PATH ride from lower Manhattan directly to Newark Airport Airtrain is a major step forward,” said Joseph Sitt, a Manhattan landlord who earlier this year founded the Global Gateway Alliance to encourage airport improvements.
This move comes after a year’s worth of study. The Port Authority first announced its plans to examine a PATH extension last September, and at the time, they estimated a $600 million project. That cost has, clearly, grown by two-thirds and will clock in at a lofty $1 billion. The details too are still unclear as we don’t yet know where the extension would terminate, but the right-of-way tracks the current NJ Transit/Amtrak routing.
I’m still on the fence about this plan. As I said last year, extending PATH to the airport is a big help for Newark-bound riders from Brooklyn, Lower Manhattan, and Jersey City. But it’s a $1 billion investment in at-grade tracks through a preexisting right-of-way to serve an airport that isn’t lacking in transit connections. It’s $1 billion arguably better spent on La Guardia connectivity, a high-speed connection from Lower Manhattan to JFK or — dare I say it? — those projected cost overruns for the long lost ARC Tunnel. And why has the price tag jumped by 66 percent in 12 months?
We’ll hear more about this plan in the “coming months” as the Port Authority gears up to unveil a $30 billion capital plan. It’s an embrace of transit from a governor who has been openly antagonist toward it, but is it a wise investment? I’m not convinced yet.
Earlier this week, amidst the brouhaha of the mayoral campaign, the above image hit the Internet, and it immediately created a stir. Why is this man sitting in front of a door on an obviously crowded 1 train while working on his laptop? The doors will inevitably open, and he will inevitably be the one sitting on the floor as though everyone can just walk around him.
The comments on Reddit were not kind, and then the subject of the photo showed up to defend himself. From there, it got ugly. His response was equally as galling as the public shaming that ensued ahead of it:
Some background: I’m wrapping up my PhD thesis. In parallel, I started a new job, my wife went back to school, and we have a new baby (second kid). My wife and I generally sleep 3-4 hours on a good night. Rest of the time is work, work, work, weekends included, with the exception of one free weeknight a week each of us gets in order to preserve some meager amount of sanity.
This means I could either get some work done on the subway or reduce the aforementioned amount of sleep even further. (BTW, at this specific instant I am reviewing the latest comments my adviser gave to my method section.) Usually I manage to get a sit but I got delayed at daycare this morning, hence this pitiful situation. I apologize for inconveniencing you- personally, I did not feel that the train was so packed (the aisle was quite empty). I switched to a sit at 72nd St.
Anyhow, have a good day and I hope poor sods such as myself will be your greatest sources of consternation in life. And to all of the worried parties, the subway floor is relatively clean (you discover this when your toddler throws a temper tantrum on it…). As far as I can see my pants are fine.
So who’s worse: the people who refuse to ask him to move or the obnoxiously holier-than-thou response to the obnoxiously holier-than-thou actions? It’s a tough call, but I can’t say this guy’s reasoning rings anything more than hollow. Millions of people ride the subway to and from work, and millions of people have busy lives, families and obligations. New Yorkers like to say the world revolves around them, but this guy is putting it into practice. He’s sitting on the subway floor of one of the crowded train lines in the city at rush hour, and as the picture was apparently taken outside, he did this from at least 125th St. down to 72nd St. It’s not considerate, but I’m not the final arbiter of subway manners. What say you?
While browsing LTV Squad’s latest offering on a former subway station entrance, I came across another piece from the mysterious author known as Control. It is, at once, both the most obnoxious and the most compelling takedown of the Triboro RX line I’ve seen so far. While many transit advocates — myself included — are salivating over the idea of such a circumferential routing, Control throws a bunch of hot water over it.
So what are the challenges? The main issue surrounds the way some of the right of way is currently used. A considerable amount of products bound for New York rely on the heavy rail lines used for freight that the Triboro RX would commandeer for passenger rail. Control believes the prices of food and goods would skyrocket, and trash collection could become problematic as well. These are arguments that have been put forward by supporters of a trans-harbor freight rail tunnel who also wish to keep the ROW for freight rail.
The physical challenges too are tremendous. If the MTA can’t get an FRA waiver, the ROW isn’t wide enough to accommodate separate tracks for passenger rail and freight. I’m far less sympathetic to the fact that there has been some encroachment onto the right of way or that eminent domain would be necessary to complete the route, but we can’t ignore those challenges.
Ultimately, I think Control’s take is worth a read. His conclusion — “MOVE CLOSER TO WHERE YOU WORK” — is myopic and undermines his point, but ultimately, Triboro RX isn’t as easy as drawing some lines on a map and calling it a done deal. He writes that “the Triboro RX subway will never, ever happen,” and it’s probably better to pick easier battles.
One of less glamorous parts of the MTA Chair’s job involves begging. Every five years, the MTA begins anew planning for the next five-year capital plan, and the head of the agency must go, cap in hand, to various interest groups and politicians asking either for vocal support or money. The ask — nearly $30 billion — is high, but so are the stakes. It requires a cohesive and coherent argument for transit investment as well as a plan for all that money.
On Monday, at the annual Crain’s New York Business Breakfast, Tom Prendergast began his two-year tour in support of the next MTA capital plan. Although the 2015-2019 program has no clear outline yet and the big ticket investments remain a work in progress, Prendergast is already fighting for those dollars. Addressing a crowd of city business leaders, Prendergast defended the MTA’s recent progress and asked for help convincing Albany and the feds to invest in transit.
“We need all of you to become advocates for public transportation and there’s a very specific way you can help,” Prendergast said. “About this time next year, we’ll be bringing our next Capital Program — covering capital projects from 2015 to 2019 — to our Board. We expect it to be roughly the same size as our current Capital Program before the Sandy projects were added, and we’ll be working with our elected officials to identify funding sources for it. But we need your help, too. And when people ask me, ‘How can the business community be supportive?’, the answer is simple: Capital Program, Capital Program, Capital Program. I need your support to figure out how to make these critical investments in our region.”
Prendergast didn’t stop there, though, and his next request was nearly as important as his initial ask. “Our Capital Programs have come to rely more and more on borrowing, and we simply don’t want to keep adding to our debt load,” he said. “That’s why I need you to tell your Congressional and State representatives that the Program needs an infusion of new money this time.”
New money can take many forms, but direct grants are the most obvious. The MTA cannot afford to borrow or bond out more money unless the bonding is explicitly for and pegged to revenue-generating projects such as new subway lines. Borrowing to attain a state of good repair will simply add to to the unsustainable debt burden.
So what will the MTA get for its money? The agency is expected to request $29 billion for the next five years, and it won’t always be, as Prendergast repeatedly said, “sexy.” That isn’t, by the way, his phase. During his brief atop the MTA, Joe Lhota said nearly the same thing, and Prendergast has picked up that message. The MTA needs to rebuild parts of the system that are over 100 years old, including extensive parts of Contracts 1 and 2 of the IRT. Beyond that, the MTA wants to add countdown clocks and, more importantly, train tracking technology to the B Division, and the Metrocard replacement comes due in 2019, just sneaking into the next five-year plan.
As to the megaprojects, Prendergast hedged. He spoke about the need to wrap up East Side Access and Phase 1 of the Second Ave. Subway, and he mentioned that he hopes to see all of the Second Ave. line become a reality before the 100th anniversary of the first bond issue. That’s not, however, until 2036. When pressed by reporters after his talk, he admitted that Phase 2 will be examined for possible funding. I’m holding out hope it will be included. It’s hard, after all, to spend $29 billion on new signal systems, and Metro-North’s Penn Station Access plan won’t be that expensive.
And so it begin is definitely one way to sum up Prendergast’s talk. It didn’t break new ground or reveal anything exciting or special. It simply repeated what needs to be said over and over again: The MTA is asking for a lot of money, it needs the money, and it needs business support to realize its plans. For the next 12 months, that’s going to be the party line.
As FASTRACK treatements go, this one’s easy: Beginning tonight at 10 p.m. and continuing 5 a.m. each night this week, there will be no local service along Lexington Ave. between Harlem and Grand Central. The 6 train will run express from 125th St. to 42nd St. in both direction, bypassing 51st St., 68th St., 77th St., 96th St., 103rd St., 110th St. and 116th St. Customers looking for the interim stops can either walk from nearby express stations or transfer to the M101 Limited, making all local 6 stops and running up 3rd Ave. and down Lexington Ave. The worst of this week’s changes concern the 5. Service along the 5 train into Manhattan will end early, and riders will have to switch to the 2 at Grand Concourse to catch the 5 at East 180th St.
This is the FASTRACK calm before the storm though. Beginning next Monday, for the first time ever, there will be no service along Central Park West/8th Ave. north of 59th Street. That won’t be too fun for anyone. More on that next Monday.
Over the past few months, as I’ve looked on with growing dismay at the field of mayoral candidates, readers have repeatedly asked if I planned on endorsing any of the candidates. It’s easier to assess why these mayoral hopefuls don’t deserve a vote than it is to explain why they do, but I’m going to endorse a pair of candidates today anyway based solely on their transit/transportation platforms. Despite some strong transit arguments in favor of some down-ballot Democratic candidates, Bill de Blasio gets my support in his primary, and in a thin GOP field, Joe Lhota should be the voters’ choice.
We’ll start with the Democrats as they present a wider array of candidates and significant overlap in positions. Here, I’ve found it easier to eliminate candidates than to support one, which speaks volumes about their various positions. John Liu, for instance, is still going on about two sets of books years after the state comptroller who initiated the charged wound up in jail and long after two New York state courts failed to find any substance to the charge. He’s also spent years claiming that the MTA doesn’t need more money to provide better transit service and that hundreds of thousands of student rides don’t add to the MTA’s costs.
Christine Quinn, meanwhile, led some pro-transit votes while in charge of the City Council, including a vote in favor of congestion pricing, but during the campaign, her ideas have seem half-baked at best. She wants city control of the MTA but doesn’t seem to understand the costs associated with such a move or the history behind state control. Her Triboro RX SBS proposal seemed careless and haphazardly developed, and her call for countdown clocks outside of subway stations costly and unnecessary.
Overall, the various candidates struck similar themes designed to placate voters without removing traffic lanes: More Select Bus Service routes; more ferry routes; more subway service; no plans to pay for anything. Down ballot, Sal Albanese embraced Gridlock Sam’s plan for congestion pricing and transit funding, but he, unfortunately, won’t garner much support in Tuesday’s primary. How then did I come to Bill de Blasio?
In part, my support from de Blasio comes from an appreciation of his transit platform, and in part, my support comes from the recent StreetsPac endorsement. While recognizing the limits that face the mayor with regards to transit, de Blasio has made more bus rapid transit — a network over which the mayor exerts plenty of control — a centerpiece of his campaign while calling for a new Penn Station focused on the needs of commuters and biking and street safety improvements. His approach is holistic and comprehensive, and while I wish he had expressed more of a willingness to up city contributions to the MTA’s capital budget and some concrete plans for expanded subway service, his plans are the best amongst an uninspiring bunch.
On the Republican side, I am supporting Lhota, a former MTA head, because I too believe trains should stop for no kittens. Need I say more? OK, OK. I’ll say more. The kittens are ultimately besides the point anyway.
Throughout the campaign, John Catsimatidis hasn’t shown any attention to the nuances of transit, and his campaign website is devoid of any sort of issues list. Earlier tonight, he claimed that the Second Ave. Subway “is a disaster” that has “put almost every merchant out of business” and tried to blame his opponent for a project that began in earnest a decade ago. That alone is enough to dismiss his candidacy out of hand, but he’s also spent considerable time railing against bike lanes and trumpeting a monorail that would run alongside the Long Island Expressway.
Lhota, on the other hand, hasn’t run a banner campaign on transit and transportation issues. His website too is devoid of a transit platform, and he discussed removing pedestrian plazas for one. He’s also expressed a desire to remove Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority revenue from the MTA, a highly problematic proposal for the MTA’s budget, but he has proposed a subway to Staten Island either as a carrot for key GOP voters or a future transit expansion. I endorse him here for what he’s done rather than for what he’s said. As head of the MTA, Lhota showed a keen instinct for and understanding of the problems facing the agency. He has knowledge and experience to be a leader on transit if he so chooses.
I wish I could be more enthusiastic about a candidate running for mayor. I wish we could witness a robust debate on transit investment priorities and expansion opportunities. For the primaries, at least, those discussions don’t often win votes or support. So this is where we are. Get out there and vote on Tuesday, and if transit and transportation are on your mind, Bill de Blasio or Joe Lhota should get your lever pull.
Take a gander at Stephen Colbert taking on the subway kittens (or click here if the embed isn’t working), and then we’ll delve into some other political issues.
The Colbert Report
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Most New Yorkers probably don’t know that, depending upon how they’re counted, there are either 468 or 421 stations in the subway system. It’s perfectly fine not to know that as it’s generally an esoteric piece of New York City trivia. Earlier today when I posed the question to my readers, the majority were in the right area. That’s better than our mayoral candidates are doing.
I asked the question in an intentionally vague manner. I wanted to see how close you would get to the right answer, and 63 percent of respondents guessed that New York City has between 400-500 subway stops. I’m sure that’s far better than the average person-the-street would do, but what about the people who are all, in one form or another, running to have a greater say on New York’s transit policies?
Earlier this summer, amNew York issued a quiz on city trivia to the mayoral candidates and printed the responses today. One question concerned the number of current subway stations, and while a few front-runners didn’t respond, among those that did, the results were ugly. Joe Lhota, former MTA CEO and Chairman, and John Liu, former City Council Transportation Committee head, both got it right, and no one else did. Anthony Weiner guessed 231 stops while Independent candidate Jack Hidary proposed 526. Sal Albanese said, “A lot. I don’t know the exact answer but a lot. Christine Quinn said 182, off by only 286 subway stops.
To me, this is a shocking result. Now, I don’t think it’s necessary to know how many subway stops there are in New York City to be an effective mayor, but most of these guesses weren’t even in the same ballpark. Quinn has made city control of the MTA a centerpiece of her transit proposals and was off by a magnitude of two and a half. Can we trust her to know about MTA operations if she doesn’t understand the extent of the system? What else doesn’t she know about transit?
As an aside, none of those who responded knew what year the MTA introduced the Metrocard either. It was 1993. Sal Albanese guessed 2002, and Weiner pegged it at 2000. Everyone else eyed the mid-1990s which I think is acceptable since the MTA’s slowly rolled out the technology throughout the system.
Anyway, enough of that. We all know not to expect much from the mayoral candidates, but what of this weekend’s train service? Keep reading after the jump.