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Metro-North

MTA eying Metro-North access to Penn Station

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on November 11, 2011

The MTA is once again examining the possibility of bringin Metro North trains to Penn Station. Above, a map from a 2000 study.

When the Long Island Rail Road’s long-awaiting East Side Access project wraps up sometime later this decade, the MTA will shift numerous trains from Penn Station to Grand Central, and Metro-North riders bound for the West Side could stand to benefit from the move. With space available at Penn Station in a few years, the MTA is exploring a way to bring Metro-North westward, and the Bronx could gain a few more commuter rail stations if all goes according to plan.

“Metro-North is currently performing a Federal Environmental Assessment for the introduction of its rail service from the Hudson and New Haven Lines to Penn Station,” Aaron Donovan, authority spokesman, said to me in an email. “The review includes potential stations along Amtrak’s Hell Gate Line in the vicinity of Co-op City, Morris Park, Parkchester and Hunts Point. We anticipate completing this assessment in 2013.”

Earlier this week, MTA officials met with various stakeholders in the Bronx to discuss progress on the Federal Environmental Assessment. The Bronx Times was on hand to report on the meeting, and all involved spoke highly of the plan. “This is an idea that has been around for decades, and the meeting was just a preliminary step where the MTA wanted to gauge the reaction of elected officials and stakeholders, with the reaction being very positive,” John DeSio, a spokesman out of the Bronx Borough President office, said.

Patrick Rocchio had more:

The final plan could include the creation of new stations along Metro North’s New Haven line that would service Co-op City near Erskine Place, Morris Park near Einstein Medical Center and the Hutchinson Metro Center, Parkchester in the vicinity of Unionport Road and E. Tremont Avenue, and Hunts Point near Southern Boulevard, said Assemblyman Michael Benedetto.

Space for the extra trains coming into Penn Station from the new stations should be available in 2016, after Long Island Rail Road’s East Side Access Plan re-routes many of the trains currently terminating at Penn Station to Grand Central Terminal, Benedetto said. “They do expect this to happen, and therefore they want to start planning now so things are ready when space is freed up in Penn Station,” Benedetto said.

The public should not expect new Metro North stations in the Bronx in the next couple of years, even though construction theoretically could begin on the four new Bronx stations before space becomes available at Penn Station, Benedetto said.

In the Bronx, residents and property owners were thrilled with the idea of a direct line to Penn Station. “A new train station in Co-op City would enable commuters to get to Penn Station within 25 minutes, which is very welcome news to many residents of this great community,” Vernon Cooper, the general manager of Riverbay Corporation, said.

Meanwhile, early reports indicate that costs could be fairly reasonable. The Bronx Times reports that the project would come in at $350 million — $250 million from New York State and $100 million from Connecticut — a figure in line with the $91 million it cost to build one new Metro-North stop near Yankee Stadium.

Long-time MTA watchers may know this project, in vague terms, as the Penn Station Access Study. I’ve been told that the scoping documents and project plans for the early 2000s are now out of date, and the MTA plans to release more information later this year or early next. Still, this could be a relatively low-cost way to improve access from the Bronx and points north to the West Side, and I’ll keep an eye on it.

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View from Underground

Things done that should not be underground

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on November 11, 2011

What this man is doing is never an acceptable thing to do on the subways. (Photo by flickr user Dan Dickinson)

By and large, most New Yorkers believe there are certain things that just shouldn’t be done on public transit. We can take or leave coffee in a train while most people wouldn’t choose to chow down while riding to work. We don’t engage in lewd behavior; we don’t relieve ourselves in the subway system; and we don’t tend to personal grooming in the subway. Or at least, we shouldn’t attend to personal grooming.

On Wednesday morning, however, I was greeted with one of those situations that just screams out as being grossly awkward. As I commute from Park Slope to Midtown East, I switch from the IRT local to the express at Nevins Street, and rarely am I lucky enough to get a seat right away. So I found myself standing above a lady who had her pocketbook half open on her lap. It was then I heard the familiar sound.

The noise a pair of nail clippers make is an unmistakable one. It’s a brief sound as the metal blades snip through the fingernail, but it’s also one with which we are familiar. Clipping nails is just a thing that we all have to do every few weeks, and we grow accustomed to huddling over a toilet, a garbage can, the sink in an effort to control those runaway nails that tend to go flying.

So there I stood on a 5 train early in the morning with that noise echoing in my ears. As I looked around for the source, I found the woman sitting on the seat near me, and it was a strange sight indeed. This straphanger was clearly someone who knew that what she was doing was not exactly hygienic. She was well-dressed and on her way to work, but she kept her hands in the bag as she furtively attempted to trim her nails. She saw me watching disapprovingly and glanced away. She did have the decency to bury her fingers fully in her handbag, but that must meant that her pocketbook would be filled with clippings. Better her bag than the floor of the subway car.

This culprit absconded from the scene of her moral crime at Union Square, and our fleeting six-stop encounter was over. I gave her the eye; she kept trimming her nails. As I rode onward to Grand Central, I couldn’t get the experience out of my mind. What inspires someone to do something as personal and as unappealing as clipping her nails in a crowded subway car at rush hour? Did she forget to do it at home? Does she have no easy access to the privacy of a bathroom at her office? Does she simply not care what other people think and what the rest of us would consider acceptable social behavior for a subway ride?

A few years ago, I wondered about those who insist on performing bathroom rituals on the train. I’ve seen people floss their teeth, pluck their eyebrows and clip their nails all in some misguided sense of efficiency. It’s not appropriate train behavior, and it shouldn’t be something anyone has to say. Read a book; listen to music; stare off into space. But for the sake of everyone else, just leave the nail clippers at home.

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AsidesLIRRMetro-North

LIRR, Metro-North smoking ban starts Sunday

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on November 10, 2011

The days of idly smoking a cigarette while awaiting a commuter train are coming to an end. Earlier this year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a commuter rail platform smoking ban into law, and the MTA reminds us that this ban goes into effect on Sunday. Smoking will no longer be tolerated at any outdoor platform, ticketing and boarding areas of terminals and stations for LIRR and Metro-North. Stations in Connecticut are not subject to this ban.

MTA officials have been supportive of the ban. “The new law is a benefit to our customers, helping us in our efforts to provide a healthier and cleaner environment on our platforms and in our ticketing and boarding area,” Metro-North President Howard Permut said. “We appreciate the action taken by Governor Cuomo and the Legislature to protect New Yorkers and improve public health.”

Meanwhile, to spread the word, a variety of famous New Yorkers including Tommy John, Joe Namath, James Lipton, Mike Lupica and Countess LuAnn de Lesseps will record public address announcements for the commuter rail. Although the ban is effective Nov. 13, MTA police will issue warnings rather than summonses during a grace period while the educational campaign is under way. The authority could not say how long that grace period would last however.

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New Jersey TransitSubway Maps

Map of the Day: A new New Jersey rail diagram

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on November 10, 2011

The new New Jersey Transit rail diagram brings a retro look to the Garden State. (Click to enlarge)

Geography or schematic? That is the question. In a new map showing the state’s commuter rail network, New Jersey Transit has gone with the latter. The new diagram, unveiled yesterday, is supposed to be “customer-friendly” with “more open design and new color scheme for easy customer reference,” the agency said.

“The new design is intended to be simple, familiar and inviting, not only for our regular customers, but also for those residents and visitors who have never before traveled on the State’s rail network,” NJ Transit Executive Director James Weinstein said. “We hope that customers will find the new map to be a valuable tool in their travels on our system.”

The map, designed in house, marks a move from the previous version which featured the train system in a purely geographic setting. Through color-coding and a streamlined design, the map now better highglights transfer points and routing. It also features the “completion of Hudson-Bergen Light Rail 8th Street Station, accessibility improvements at Somerville, Ridgewood and Plauderville stations, and the addition of the future Pennsauken Transit Center.”

Still, despite the upgrades, there’s no small bit of state-based protectionism involved. While the PATH system gets its day in the sun and the Port Jervis line branches into New York, New Jersey Transit pays scant attention to SEPTA’s connection from Trenton to Philadelphia and beyond. Transit networks are regional, but this map doesn’t extend far beyond the borders of the Garden State.

While I like the simplicity of the design and the idea behind it, it certainly has its flaws. Over at the Transit Maps tumblr, Cameron Booth is not a fan. Calling the map “sad, tired and amateur,” Booth finds it an unwieldy amalgam of styles: “It seems to have taken elements from many different transit maps and mashes them into one big mess. We have the thick route lines and giant circle transfer stations of Washington, DC Metro, icons for the lines similar to – but nowhere nearly as well executed – the Lisbon Metro, and different station symbols for each and every mode of transit.”

Form vs. function. Design vs. geography. The rail map battle always rages on.

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MTA Economics

DiNapoli: MTA rife with ‘systemic overtime abuse’

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on November 10, 2011

Over the past few years, I’ve been rather critical of New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s reports highlighting MTA efficiencies. He’s been targeting small potato issues that wouldn’t result in major cost savings without highlighting how a comprehensive reform effort involving Albany, MTA management and its labor unions would streamline efficiency and economics at the authority. Telling the world that service changes are annoying and debt is a bad idea hardly seem like game-chargers.

Now, though, a glimmer of useful information has emerged from DiNapoli’s office. In a highly targeted forensic audit of the Signal Construction Unit for Metro-North, DiNapoli has found “systemic overtime abuse” that may rise to the level of fraud. The audit — available here as a PDF — explores how 28 workers in a 30-employee division took home an average of $42,000 per employee in overtime in 2010 and how pension padding may balloon to $5.5 million.

“MTA management has tolerated a manipulation of the system by both supervisors and workers who have enjoyed the perks of having a daytime shift for jobs that need to be done at nights and on weekends,” DiNapoli said. “In 2010, in one 30-member unit at Metro North, over one million dollars was paid out for avoidable overtime and rest shifts. Federal laws implemented to protect riders were exploited to enrich employees at the expense of taxpayers. There’s no place for this type of abuse in New York and it must stop.”

In a press release, DiNapoli’s office summed up the technical findings:

Supervisors boosted employee incomes and pensions by regularly assigning overtime work to be done at night by workers whose normally scheduled shift was during the daytime. These extra overtime shifts in turn triggered a requirement (the federal Hours of Service statute) that they rest – at full pay – during their next day’s shift.

DiNapoli’s auditors calculated that the shift manipulation for 28 of the 30 employees in the Unit cost Metro-North $991,208 in overtime and $216,128 in pay for rest shifts in 2010. For six of these employees, the additional payments inflated future projected pension benefits by $5.5 million. One worker was able to increase his projected total pension amount by $1.5 million above what would have been earned at his regular salary.

The Signal Construction Unit supervisors, who are not covered by the statute, also improperly enriched themselves by scheduling their own overtime and paid rest shifts. The Comptroller’s office believes the supervisors’ actions are potentially fraudulent because they did not perform job duties expressly set forth in the statute. In addition, the audit also found that supervisors improperly approved their own time records and charged payroll costs to unrelated capital projects to avoid detection.

While Metro-North officials in a letter appended to the audit disagreed with some of DiNapoli’s findings, the comptroller has referred the case to the MTA Inspector General for further investigation. A finding of corruption or legally-actionable fraud could be quite revealing for both the MTA and Metro-North workers.

In fact, the audit itself could be troubling without further investigation. Two rank-and-file crew members did not disguise their ability to exploit the job for more pay. “I’m entitled to it,” one said. “It’s my turn now.”
Another employee added, “I know I have a good gig going on. If I had to name the top five jobs in the country, this would have to be, hands down, number one.” DiNapoli claims these MTA workers “exemplify the sense of entitlement and culture that is likely pervasive throughout the MTA.”

Ultimately, DiNapoli’s suggestions seem rather obvious. Stop unnecessary overtime pay; don’t allow supervisors to sign their own attendance records; stop improper payments. Yet, despite this seemingly mundane outcome, DiNapoli’s audit is an eye-opener. In one department of 30 workers, 28 of them took home an extra $42,000 in overtime pay last year. How deep does this run?

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AsidesMTA Construction

Building a subway most expensive

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on November 9, 2011

A few weeks ago, when MTA Capital Construction President Michael Horodniceanu spoke at a New York Law School breakfast on the state of the MTA’s megaprojects, he let loose some interesting information on construction prices. During the Q-and-A session when I asked why construction in New York costs so much more than construction everywhere else, he said one thing: work rules. The MTA is required to overstaff projects so that the same TBM work, for instance, that can be done in Spain with 9 workers must be done in NYC with 25 workers. Thus, everything costs far too much.

Today, over at The Atlantic’s new-ish Cities blog, David Lepeska examines how $1 billion doesn’t go too far these days. Noting how projects in New York are orders of magnitude more expensive than similar efforts around the world, Lepeska wants to know why. To find out why, he spoke with Robert Paaswell of City College of New York, and the professor points to the age of our system and the general costs of regulation. The main culprits, he says, are “New York’s higher regulation costs, over-conservative labor laws and financing via bonds, which lead to longer-term debt plans.”

Paaswell also pondered on the length of time it takes to get work done. There, he blames neighborhood sensitivities. “There’s no urgency by governments or citizens here to get subways done, and when it finally happens the construction causes so much inconvenience that people don’t like it,” he said. “In Europe, they don’t care too much about it, they just blast right through and get it done.” It is a perfect storm of inefficient construction and a public that wants the results but fears the means.

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AsidesView from Underground

‘All we need is just a little (less) patience’

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on November 9, 2011

Patience, they say, is a virtue, but drawing attention to situations where patience is required is often a self-defeating measure. Since the MTA debuted its next-gen rolling stock in the late 1990s, prerecorded voices have long urged us to be patience during the so-called “unavoidable delays,” but recently, the backlash against these reminders of delays has been growing louder. Transit, it seems, is listening.

The furor, which lived in the background for the past decade, reached a crescendo in June when a Daily News columnist bemoaned the constant announcements. Calling them “presumptuous and condescending,” Juliet Lapidos termed them “counterproductive” as well. The messages, which were never focus-grouped, reminded people to be impatient when no one was in a position to do anything about the delay. Now, the tone has changed.

As many riders have noticed lately and as The Post reported today, the vocabularly of the announcements has changed. “We apologize for the inconvenience,” the commanding male voice now says after his warning of “train traffic ahead of us.” Transit officials say they don’t want to “admonish” passengers, and the new announcements are now in place systemwide. Of course, after a while, we’ll probably just ignore it all anyway.

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Public Transit Policy

On La Guardia, NIMBYism and a master planner

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on November 9, 2011

Twelve years after neighborhood opposition torpedoed a subway connection to La Guardia Aiport, the city is hoping to improve bus access instead.

New York City as we know it today exists under the shadows cast by the ghost of Robert Moses. From the bridges that connect the boroughs to roads congested with automobiles to the elevated highways that cut through neighborhoods to the lack of airport-centric transit options to the parks and greenspaces we so enjoy, Moses’ influence runs far, wide and deep. We might even miss him.

Last week, as I took a few days off to spend some time in the Caribbean, I left up a short post on the upcoming plans to turn Robert Caro’s The Power Broker into a movie. Who, I asked, should play Robert Moses, and in doing so, I offhandedly called him the villain of the story. The reaction from regular readers was loud: Robert Moses was a man of many hats, but to call him a villain is an oversimplification. By the end of his career, the Master Planner single-handedly set the stage for decades of growth and stagnant transit development, but he also realized a vision for New York City that wasn’t all bad. Although Caro’s book, written at the city’s nadir in the mid-1970s, may have needed Moses to be that villain, his legacy is far more complicated than that.

For all the good Moses did early in his career, he is best known through the prism of Caro’s biography. We know Moses as the man who built low overpasses in order to limit bus access and the people who ride buses to the area around Jones Beach. We know him as the man who wouldn’t move his highways one block over in both the Bronx and Brooklyn, thus destroying two vibrant neighborhoods in the process. We know him as the planner who refused to allow for a rail right-of-way along the Van Wyck to provide better access to Idlewild Airport.

Yet, through the prism of today, we see Moses as the man who got things done, and since the state decentralized the planning process that Moses once helmed, things rather get done with any efficiency and speed. As the conversation flowed on my post last week, I kept thinking about the recent alternatives analysis NYC DOT is conducting for access to La Guardia. The city is trying to figure out how best to improve surface transit into and out of La Guardia airport while tying in those routes with Manhattan and the rest of the city’s transit network. It is a plan a long time coming.

As I’ve revisited from time to time, Mayor Giuliani in the light 1990s tried to grow support for a subway extension to the airport. He secured funding but lost out to Queens NIMBYs. As I’ve dug into that history, I’ve learned that New York City along with the MTA and FTA had engaged in some serious planning. By early 1999, they had identified two alternate routes for the subway extension that would have been included in an environmental impact study. The Federal Register from the time explained:

The 19th Avenue Alternative would be an extension of the BMT Broadway-Astoria Line (“N” Train service) beyond its present Ditmars Boulevard Terminus. From that point, the line would be extended northerly as a modern aerial transit guideway structure along the centerline of 31st Street up to 20th Avenue. From there, the alignment would curve easterly across the Con Edison property to 19th Avenue, where it would continue along the avenue. At 45th Street, the alignment would swing northerly and then enter a tunnel section, in which the alignment would remain as it crosses onto the airport property. After serving the Marine Air Terminal and passing around the runway at the airport’s western end, the alignment would rise onto an aerial section, and extend to two other on-airport stations–one at the Central Terminal Building (CTB) and a second to jointly serve the USAir and Delta terminals.

Sunnyside Yard Alternative would be a branch of the BMT Broadway-Astoria Line (“N” Train service) starting at the Queensboro Plaza Station in Long Island City. From that point, the alignment would extend as a modern aerial transit guideway structure along the northern side of the Sunnyside Yards, and would then pass over and run along the eastern side of AMTRAK’s Northeast Corridor tracks. At approximately 30th Avenue, the alignment would turn east and run along the northern side of 30th Avenue before turning north along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE). At that point, the alignment will enter a “depressed section” (where the tracks are below grade but in an “open cut” section rather than enclosed in a tunnel) as it travels along the southern side of the Grand Central Parkway (GCP). As it approaches the airport, the alignment would rise and cross over the GCP to enter the airport. On-airport stations are projected to be provided at the CTB and USAir/Delta terminals as noted above for the 19th Avenue Alternative.

The problem, of course, was that “modern aerial transit guideway structure.” The 19th Avenue alternative included nearly 12 blocks of a new elevated structure through some residential neighborhoods. The Sunnyside Yard plan also would have included new elevated tracks, albeit through neighborhoods not quite as residential as the northern ends of Astoria. Neither were good enough for certain factions of Queens’ politicians. City Councilman Peter Villone, the loudest opponent, called it a “horrible, loud, noisy ugly elevated train line through the heart” of a vibrant neighborhood. “Extending the elevated track will cause unnecessary hardship to residents and businesses in the area,” he claimed in 1999.

Eventually, this NIMBYism killed the project, and today, we’re left with a study that may call for something resembling better bus service. Our dreams and goals certainly have shifted downward over the past 12 or 13 years.

As this torturously slow La Guardia planning process plays out — whatever alternative is selected won’t debut until 2013 — I kept thinking about Moses. Does New York need a Moses that can work through neighborhood opposition to realize a plan that would benefit the city as a whole? We want a Moses whose ideals are aligned with ours when it comes to transportation planning. We want a figure who can cut through countless Community Board meetings and the red tape of planning. But we don’t want a Moses who will run roughshod over too many neighborhoods.

In Queens in the late 1990s, the memories of devastating elevated structures still percolated in people’s minds. These New Yorkers remember what happened along 3rd Ave. in Brooklyn when Moses refused to move the Gowanus to the more industrial 2nd Ave. They saw the way the Cross-Bronx Expressway cut through Tremont. They didn’t want the same, and we’re still paying the price in a never-ending planning process to improve access to a nearby but inaccessible airport. With NIMBYism on the creep and threatening to rise as the population ages, it all almost makes me yearn for Robert Moses and his power to move mountains.

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AsidesSubway Security

These are the pickpockets in your subway car

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on November 8, 2011

One of the great things about our subway is how it serves as a de facto designated driver. New Yorkers — or at least those who aren’t in charge of the NYPL — shouldn’t have to worry about drinking and driving with a 24-hour subway system. Still, drinking in excess before heading to the subway can make one an easy prey for pickpockets. I know people who haven fallen asleep in the subway only to find themselves 20 minutes past their stop, and sometimes, those folks lose their wallets.

In The Times this weekend, Michael Wilson highlights a thankfully dying art: the pickpocket who will cut out the wallet of a drunk mark. According to the NYPD, exactly 109 regular pickpockets work the trains slipping money and phones out of a neatly severed pocket. As Wilson details, the thieves are mostly male and mostly middle aged. One is 80 years old, and a few have been arrested over 30 times. Their crimes are like science. “They’ll nudge them and see how incoherent they really are,” one police officer said. Then out comes the tool of the trade. “It’s unbelievable they don’t cut the person’s leg wide open. They’re like surgeons with a razor blade, for God’s sake.”

The article is almost tinged with nostalgia. With electronics on full display, pickpockets don’t need to work nearly as hard to score some loot, and one police officer says the cutters going the way of TV repairmen. “It’s like a lost art,” Lieutenant Kevin Callaghan said. “It’s all old-school guys who cut the pocket. They die off.” I doubt they will be missed by straphangers when they all retire.

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