Based on something I read this morning, I wanted to poll my crowd. I know today is slow due to Rosh Hashanah, but I’m curious to see how my readership does. Comments are closed to avoid spoilers. I’ll explain later.
With ads already appearing on Metrocards, are audio spots the next frontier?
How’s this for the perfect storm of annoying transit ideas? Imagine the incessant audio announcements we’re currently subjected to on subways and, to a lesser degree, buses. Now imagine if those were advertisements. Are you sobbing in the corner yet?
It’s not a particularly far-fetched idea. Already, everything transit covered in ads. Buses carry displays on the outside, stations come sported full buy-outs, the video screens in some of the newer subway cars were once designed to broadcast advertisements and even MetroCards can now be sponsored. And now, as Eric Jaffe detailed at The Atlantic Cities yesterday, audio ads for buses are on the way in some U.S. cities.
Audio ads in transit systems are part of a natural progression as transit agencies seek to squeeze every dollar out of every possible outlet. These ads too aren’t just stock spots. The company selling them has implemented a GPS-based technology that allows ads targeted to specific routes and destinations to play as buses near those locales. Currently, riders in 11 metro areas — but not, obviously, New York — are subject to these ads, but some transit agencies are hesitant to embrace them for fear of irking riders.
Jaffe summarizes the state of play:
On paper, the idea seems like a win for everyone. (Though, what doesn’t?) Advertisers can reach consumers at hand-picked times and places. Transit authorities bag some extra operational revenue without dipping into public pockets. Commuters avoid fare hikes and service cuts in exchange for just a tiny sliver of their soul. The payoff varies by city. While Commuter Advertising doesn’t release its revenue figures, Ryan Holeywell of Governing recently reported that Champaign, Illinois, has earned about $150,000 from its audio ad partnership since 2009. Not a boom, for sure, but not much of a risk, either, because the company offers its service zero-cost to transit providers and will even compensate them if expenses are incurred…
Commuter Advertising does its best not to overwhelm the airwaves. (The company was founded by two regular transit commuters, after all, during a serendipitous trip on the Chicago El.) The audio ads never last more than 15 seconds, and they only run at 8 to 20 percent of all transit stops, which means every fifth time the door opens at most…What transit commuters worry about is the slippery slope. Print ads are no problem until riders find themselves standing at a bus stop transformed into a Dunkin’ Donuts oven. Station names are fine to sell unless the system map becomes geographically meaningless. Tame audio ads are likewise acceptable — it’s the idea that one day platform loudspeakers will play them non-stop that frightens riders.
As things stand, though, audio bus ads seem to reside at the tolerable end of the transit marketing spectrum. Riders can always wear headphones, and audio campaigns might even prompt transit agencies to fix their habitually busted speaker systems. A little annoying? Sure. Demeaning or intolerable? Hardly. If the money is right, and the approach respectful, they might even be the responsible choice.
A win-win on paper, as Jaffe calls it, though depends on the revenue generated. Even for a relatively small system like that in Champaign, Illinois, the $150,000 is a ripple in the bucket. The CUMTD has annual expenses topping $42 million, and the money from audio ads won’t avert any sort of fare hike should one be necessary. Play enough audio message, though, and riders feel harassed by them as they do in the New York City subway.
Ultimately, this is a delicate area for any transit agency. Riders are a captive audience for advertiser eyeballs, but riders can grow irate in a split second especially when public perceptions surrounding mass transit aren’t particularly positive in the first place. More advertising in and on public transit may be inevitable as agencies look to recoup lost subsidies as best they can, but I’m not looking forward to the day we hear audio ads on buses.
One of my more frequently traveled airplane routes involves leaving from Terminal 5 and arriving in West Palm Beach. The trip to visit my grandfather via JetBlue takes me through two airport terminals with free WiFi, and I often forget that free isn’t necessarily the norm in New York City. When I had to fly out of Newark in late June, the Internet, to my dismay, wasn’t free.
It’s kind of crazy, when you think about it, that WiFi in New York City’s airports in 2013 costs money and that Boingo, the provider, doesn’t supply a particularly robust network at that. As a leading business hub, New York should probably have as much free WiFi as possible (although one could argue that charging a captive audience for WiFi is a solid business model). But Boingo signed up for a 15-year exclusive deal in 1999 with a ten-year renewal option. Now, as the window for Boingo to renew opens up, a group of New York business leaders are arguing for free Internet at the airports.
Crain’s New York profiles these efforts today. Nazish Dholakia writes:
The Global Gateway Alliance, created by New York developer Joseph Sitt to promote improvements at the airports, issued an open letter urging L.A.-based Boingo to provide free access to the 110 million passengers who use La Guardia, John F. Kennedy International and Newark Liberty International airports each year. Boingo currently provides only paid Internet access at these airports, to the ire of many travelers…
New York’s airports are at Boingo’s mercy because of a contract it signed in 1999 with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airports. Under the terms of the 15-year deal, Boingo has exclusive rights to provide Internet access at all three airports and can renew it for another 10 years during a six-month window which began last week. “Boingo is operating under a very favorable contract that was signed during the Internet’s dark ages. We need to update that for a 21st-century model,” said Steve Sigmund, the executive director of the Alliance.
In its letter, the Alliance suggests Boingo adopt an advertising-supported model for free Internet access. As an alternative, it proposes a tiered system that is free for at least the first 30 minutes or provides options for both free and paid access. “It’s past time for our airports to offer what other airports offer—what even cafes and parks offer,” Mr. Sigmund said.
We know Boingo could pursue the ad-supported model, and we know it could work because of the current setup in the subways. Boingo supplies the Wifi that Transit Wireless makes available underground, and except for a brief spell earlier this summer when no sponsors came forward, the connection has been ad supported and otherwise free. I wouldn’t be surprised if Boingo could make more money, in fact, from an ad-supported network than it does through one that relies on users to pay a fee. The company has not yet responded to the Global Gateway Alliance.
Mercifully, the mayoral primary season is rapidly drawing to a close. By this time next week, we’ll know if a runoff is in our future or if the Democratic and Republican candidates for Gracie Mansion have been selected by a sliver of New York City voters, many of whom head to the polls with a strong bone to pick. Still, before this bit of political theater wraps up, we had to suffer through one final debate.
During the Democratic demagoguery, the topic of discussion shifted to transit developments, and two reports from the debate show the same old/same old. Stephen Miller at Streetsblog summarized accordingly:
If you thought the last Democratic mayoral debate was thin on transportation issues, you could be forgiven for thinking that the issue didn’t come up at all during last night’s event. Blink, and you might have missed it. Like last time, transit was relegated to the lightning round, and thin questions from the moderators didn’t elicit much information from the candidates.
At the previous debate, all the candidates had MetroCards in their pockets but we learned last night that they are, for the most part, infrequent straphangers: Thompson said he had last taken the subway on Monday, while de Blasio and Weiner rode the train last week; Liu and Quinn hadn’t swiped a MetroCard in about two weeks.
On the subject of the MTA, Liu said he had “gone after very powerful interests,” repeating the myth created by disgraced former Comptroller Alan Hevesi that the authority keeps “two sets of books” to obscure its finances from the public.
I don’t even have the heart to argue against Liu and his stubborn — if not worse — insistence that the MTA kept two sets of books. It’s been proven false every which way to Sunday, and the man who didn’t qualify for public funds because he actually kept fake campaign finance books isn’t one to talk. Those who vote for Liu deserve the worst.
Dana Rubinstein meanwhile reported on a different exchange:
The imposition of tolls on the East River bridges is widely understood to be a component of any realistic congestion-pricing scheme, and congestion pricing is the only recourse transportation advocates consistently put forward as the solution to the M.T.A.’s chronic budget problems.
“Do you support East River tolls?” asked one of the moderators. “Let me begin with you, Ms. Quinn.”
“I don’t support East River tolls,” she responded. “No.”
“Mr. Liu?”
“No, but I have a plan to implement them for out-of-city residents,” he added.
“Mr. Weiner?”
“Absolutely not,” he said.
“Mr. Thompson?”
“Definitely not.”
“Alright, and Mr. de Blasio?”
“No.”
The candidates all have various wishes to expand transit access, and a few have been forth some concrete plans. No one, though, wants to pay for it, and we’ve gotten the summer of “no, no, no.” John Liu’s plan, torn up by Streetsblog in April, was again the least thought-out even among a field of flat-out denials, and somehow, one of these politicians will have a loud say in the future transit policies and priorities of New York City.
Here is an interesting tidbit from The Wall Street Journal: Frank McCourt has acquired a development site in Manhattan for $167 million two years after Sherwood Equities paid $43.5 million for the space. The area, which will host a 730,000 square foot tower, sits at 30th St. and 10th Ave., mere blocks away from the 7 line extension, and various stakeholders are crediting the new subway stop with spurring on the tremendous increase in property value in the Far West Side.
Jeffrey Katz, president and CEO of the site’s former owner, is one of those stakeholders. “I think if you asked people a year ago about this district, still they would say ‘Are you crazy?’ Quite a number of people now understand there’s something extraordinary going on,” he said to The Journal. “The surge in value on this site was so dramatic—it was unprecedented—that our rate of return could never have been higher.”
The one-stop 7 line extension to 34th St. and 11th Ave. is set to open by next June, and the city has paid over $2 billion to the MTA to build this transit spur in the hopes of realizing the value in Manhattan’s last undeveloped frontier. So far, what I once derided as a Subway to Nowhere is shaping up to be the prime mover in something that is most definitely transit-oriented development within the boundaries of Manhattan.
Allow me to present the fourth episode of “The Next Stop Is…”, the Second Ave. Sagas podcast. It’s mayoral primary time again in New York City, and as the Big Apple looks beyond the 12-year reign of Michael Bloomberg, host Eric Brasure and I delve into what the Democratic and Republican candidates are proposing in regards to the major transit issues facing the city in 2013. We discuss the lack of Big Ideas and the recent love affair with ferries.
I opted against endorsing a candidate in this week’s podcast, but I will provide some thoughts on the best candidates for mayor, from transit and livable streets perspectives, later this week. For now, give the podcast a listen. You can also find the podcast in iTunes, but the new episode isn’t available there yet. This week’s recording runs a shade over 30 minutes, the perfect amount of time for your subway commute.
We’ll be back with a new episode in two weeks, and we’d love to take more reader questions. So if you have a topic you’d like me to cover, leave a comment or drop me a note.
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As part of their lead-up to the mayoral primary, The Times yesterday ran one of their faux-debate segments called Room for Debate on either infrastructure or “livable city” issues. The pieces’s permalink hints at the former while the current headline broadcasts the latter. Either way, there’s no debating going on in this room as five experts sound off on five issues the next mayor should confront.
Julia Vitullo-Martin, a senior fellow with the RPA, drew the transportation straw, and her segment is on transit-oriented development. It’s always struck me as funny to talk about TOD in New York City. The entire city is one giant example of transit-oriented development, and TOD in such a dense urban area clearly doesn’t mean the same as TOD surrounding a commuter rail station in the ‘burbs does. In fact, based on the way Vitullo-Martin describes it, her TOD is heavy on the D and lacking in concrete ideas surrounding the T.
Here’s her proposal to, as she puts it, “increase the supply of space, and do it by using the strategy New York virtually invented, transit-oriented development, which encourages the massing of businesses and residences near public transit hubs:”
The Bloomberg administration correctly rezoned large sections of the city, particularly the formerly derelict waterfront. But there’s much more to be done by the next mayor, who should direct the department of city planning to produce a map ranking neighborhoods by concentration of transit and suitability for development, with analyses of which areas can absorb the most new development.
The next mayor would be wise to couple these zoning changes with mandatory payments into an amenity fund to mitigate the effects of development — similar to the district improvement bonus proposed for East Midtown Rezoning. That bonus was criticized for being too generous, but that’s not the point. The point is to create a device to capture part of the profits of development to improve the neighborhood being developed, and to relieve pressure elsewhere, even helping to save historic sections of the city.
Some would say there is another solution to excessive demand: don’t let the newcomers in. But in an age of global innovation and competitiveness, do we really want to do that? Newcomers not only bring more money to the city, they have also — as Dan Doctoroff, the former deputy mayor, noted at a recent Next New York forum — been essential to paying for the “compassionate city we pride ourselves on.” But to pay for the compassion as well as the public services that have helped propel New York back to its position as a global leader, the city needs the tax revenue that only new development brings. Just make sure new development is close to public transportation.
If this mini-essay does nothing else, it certainly wins the urbanist buzzword bingo game. But what Vitullo-Martin advocates for is half of a solution. We certainly want to encourage building tall and ever upward near key transit hubs (and just about any subway station), and rezoning can be a prime mover in adding to housing stock while alleviating some of the skyrocketing housing costs in New York City. But if we’re going to call for transit-oriented development, it’s imperative to make sure the transit system can sustain development.
One of the obstacles facing the Midtown East rezoning concerns its impact, perceived or real, on the transit system. The Lexington Ave. is from the north is at capacity, and the Second Ave. Subway won’t reach midtown for a decade or two at best. Although East Side Access will bring more people in the Grand Central area and the Lex lines can handle northbound commuters from Brooklyn, politicians and community activists think the transit won’t meet demand, and in many places, that very well might be true.
So as urban policy makers advocate for more development in NYC, they can’t ignore transit. It’s not about improving neighborhoods or saving historic districts, as Vitullo-Martin claims it is. Rather, it’s about making sure the transit network can support the development she wants to see spring up around it. And that, much like Big Ideas, isn’t discussed nearly as much as it should be.
When Michael Bloomberg ran in 2009 for his third term as mayor, he launched his campaign with 33 changes for the MTA. These ranged from the obvious, with more countdown clocks and a new farecard leading the way, to an impossible plan to implement F express service during the Culver Viaduct rehab to a strange call for free crosstown bus service. Just days after winning reelection, Bloomberg seemed to rollback his promises, calling them mere suggestions instead, and if any have seen the light of day over the past four years, Bloomberg certainly shouldn’t receive the credit.
In 2009, Bloomberg’s problem wasn’t one of underthinking. He had ideas, but they came out of left field. Much as his drawing-on-a-cocktail napkin plan to send the 7 to Secaucus materialized out of thin air, his transit proposals too were developed seemingly with no input for anyone actively engaged in the space. The had their Big Ideas, but those Big Ideas had little to no chance of becoming reality. I still, after all, have to pay for my crosstown bus.
Four years later, we have a mayoral campaign one week away from the party primaries, and there are no Big Ideas. The leading candidates have talked vaguely about more subway service for outer borough residents, increasing the reach of Select Bus Service and expanding the city’s network of ferries. The former MTA head has discussed building a subway to Staten Island (though good luck finding any mention of it on his website), and the guy polling a distant second wants to build a monorail down the center of the Long Island Expressway. Transformative Big Ideas are missing from the discussion, and I’ve been thinking about why.
As my thinking goes, I’ve come up with a few reasons why there are no Big Ideas. The first is a practical one that doesn’t hold up. As the state controls the MTA, most transit expansion is allegedly out of the hands of the mayor. It’s easy for a candidate to wash his or her hands of transit planning if responsibility for funding and operations lies elsewhere, but that’s the easy way out. Mayor Bloomberg wanted the 7 line extension built; he delivered the money; and in less than 10 months, the 7 will terminate at 34th St. and 11th Ave. A mayoral candidate with the right Big Idea could easily see it through.
The second reason dovetails with the first: It’s easy to come up with Big Ideas; it’s less easy to convince voters to pay for them. The 7 line extension cost over $2 billion, and someone had to pay for it. The Second Ave. Subway costs over $4 billion, and the money has to come from somewhere. Paying for Big Ideas often involves convincing voters to fork over more money in the form of taxes or user fees (that is, East River bridge tolls or congestion pricing), and increased taxes or user fees doesn’t win primary voters. Without a way to pay for Big Ideas, any Big Ideas put forward become empty promises.
The third reason concerns timing. The 7 line extension was first proposed during Mayor Bloomberg’s first term; the groundbreaking was in his second term; and the start of revenue service will be during the next mayor’s first term. Even with three terms, Bloomberg will not be in office long enough to see his pet project open up. There will be no ribbon cutting with the mayor and no photo op. As ribbon cuttings and photo ops are the lifeblood of local politics, candidates are more than hesitant to argue for something that won’t see the light of day well after their terms are up. Why should someone else steal the limelight?
Finally, the last reason focuses around the key rule of primaries and, to a larger extent, electoral politics in general: Do not upset your voters. Although New Yorkers support congestion pricing plans that fund transit, primary voters do not. Although New Yorkers want more subway routes, people bemoan the impact of construction to no end. Although New Yorkers recognize the inadequacy of the bus network, removing space for cars and handing it over to buses instead seems to be tantamount to signing your own death sentence. In all cases, too, the people who care the most and have the most to lose, as they see it, turn out to vote in primaries.
All in all, these factors lead to safe and uninspiring campaign promises that candidates won’t try too hard to keep anyway. The problem is partially structural and partially due to the lack of a frontrunner. But here we are, a week away from primary day with no Big Ideas in sight.
Subway Kitten-gate entered its second day today as the debate continued over whether or not the MTA should ahve shut power to the third rail to rescue some cats. The Post spoke to some people who were inconvenienced by the move, and they were, by and large, none too happy. Meanwhile, New York magazine polled the mayoral candidates on the issue and received better responses on the cats than on most other transit issues. Joe Lhota doesn’t advocated stopping the trains while Christine Quinn and Bill Thomspon, whose camp said he would “work to protect” the cats, seem to prioritize kittens over straphangers.
Anyway, enough of that. It’s Labor Day weekend, and some of this weekend’s service changes will last throughout Monday. Otherwise, subways and buses will operate on a Sunday schedule on Labor Day but with the J’Ouvert and West Indian-American Day Parades in Brooklyn, 4 trains will run local in the Borough of Kings.
From 11:45 p.m. Friday, August 30 to 5 a.m. Monday, September 2, downtown 1 trains run express from 72nd Street to Times Square-42nd Street due to cable work at Times Square-42nd Street for Flushing CBTC.
From 11:45 p.m. Friday, August 30 to 6:30 a.m. Saturday, August 31, from 11:45 p.m. Saturday, August 31 to 6:30 a.m. Sunday, September 1, and from 11:45 p.m. Sunday, September 1 to 5 a.m. Monday, September 2, downtown 2 trains run express from 72nd Street to Times Square-42nd Street due to cable work at Times Square-42nd Street for Flushing CBTC.
From 11:45 p.m. Friday, August 30 to 6:30 a.m. Saturday, August 31, from 11:45 p.m. Saturday, August 31 to 6:30 a.m. Sunday, September 1, and from 11:45 p.m. Sunday, September 1 to 5 a.m. Monday, September 2, 3 service is extended to 34th Street-Penn Station due to cable work at 42nd Street-Times Square for Flushing CBTC.
From 10 p.m. Sunday, September 1 to 7 p.m. Monday, September 2, service at the following stations may be affected by events related to the West Indian-American Day Parade:
Please use nearby stations when directed.
From 11:45 p.m. Friday, August 30 to 6:30 a.m. Saturday, August 31, from 11:45 p.m. Saturday, August 31 to 6:30 a.m. Sunday, September 1, from 11:45 p.m. Sunday, September 1 to 6:30 a.m. Monday, September 2, and from 11:45 p.m. Monday, September 2 to 5 a.m. Tuesday, September 3, uptown A trains run express from Canal Street to 59th Street-Columbus Circle due to switch renewal north of 42nd Street-Port Authority and track tie renewal at Canal Street.
From 3:45 a.m. Saturday, August 31 to 10 p.m. Sunday, September 1, Lefferts Blvd-bound A trains skip 104th Street and 111th Avenue due to track panel work at Lefferts Boulevard.
From 6:30 a.m. to 11 p.m., Saturday, August 31, Sunday, September 1 and Monday, September 2, uptown C trains run express from Canal Street to 59th Street-Columbus Circle due to switch renewal north of 42nd Street-Port Authority and track tie renewal at Canal Street.
From 11:45 p.m. Friday, August 30 to 5 a.m. Tuesday, September 3, Jamaica Center-bound E trains are rerouted via the F line from 2nd Avenue to 21st Street-Queensbridge and downtown E trains are rerouted via the F line from West 4th Street to 2nd Avenue due to switch renewal north of 42nd Street-Port Authority and track tie renewal at Canal Street.
From 11:30 p.m. Friday, August 30 to 5 a.m. Monday, September 2, there is no L train service between Lorimer Street and Broadway Junction due to track tie renewal at Lorimer Street and Graham Avenue. L trains operate in two sections:
From 11:45 p.m. Friday, August 30 to 5 a.m. Tuesday, September 3, Coney Island-bound N trains are rerouted via the D from 36th Street to Stillwell Avenue due to track panel work south of 8th Avenue.
From 11:45 p.m. Friday, August 30 to 5 a.m. Monday, September 2, Coney Island-bound N trains skip 30th Avenue, Broadway, 36th Avenue and 39th Avenue due to station painting at 30th Avenue.
It was back in the waning days of June when the State Senate and Assembly both passed a lockbox bill with strong protections for transit funding. This was the second time that the bill had passed the legislature, and while Gov. Cuomo had gutted the protections that prevented a raid on transit financing last time around, advocates were optimistic that the bill would gain Cuomo’s signature. Since then, though, we’ve waited. And waited. And waited.
Lately, though, there is a reason for some optimism as upstate newspapers, not usually in favor of anything that bolsters the MTA — they amazingly view it as a drain on the rest of New York State — have lined up behind the lockbox. Since the bill protects all transit money and not just that earmarked for the MTA, upstaters have reason to argue for a signature. The Buffalo News voiced its support this week, and The Press-Republican from Plattsburgh sounded off last week.
Over at Capital New York, Dana Rubinstein sees this groundswell of support as an indicator that Cuomo will soon have to sign the bill. If everyone in New York state wants these modest protections in place, the governor will have to step in and govern soon enough.