On this lazy Sunday afternoon, I just wanted to take a second to pimp my site. In addition to constant content here, you can find more Second Ave. Sagas on Twitter and Facebook. On Twitter, followers receive instant notification of new content as well as lively discussions about livable streets, tidbits from the subway and the occasional comment on New York City movies. Check it out and be a fan.
This is quite the weekend for getting around. Due to water damage in the aftermath of yesterday’s rain storm, the 7 line is out of service between Manhattan and Queens, and Transit doesn’t know when service will be restored. For now, the Shuttle is running between 42nd St. and Grand Central while the N and the R are providing alternate service into Queens. The MTA had hoped to single-track the 7 by 10 p.m. Friday, but that plan is currently on hold.
Meanwhile, Transit had the following to say about the 1 train:
MTA New York City Transit announces that from 11:30 p.m. Friday, March 11 to 5 a.m. Monday, March 14, 1 Line service will be suspended between 242nd Street and 168th Street due to station renovation work and between 137th Street and 96th Street due to structural repair work south of 125th Street. Customers who normally ride the Broadway Local are urged to use the A train as an alternate where possible. Free shuttle buses and the M3 bus also provide alternate service.
Customers heading uptown should transfer to the A at 42nd Street or 59th Street. There is also a free shuttle bus available at 96th Street which will operate along Broadway making station stops at 103rd, 116th, 125th, 145th and 137th Streets (in that order). There is a 1 Line shuttle train between 137th and 168th Streets. Customers may transfer at 168th Street to the A train or the M3/shuttle bus along St. Nicholas Avenue making stops at 181st and 191st Streets.
Customers traveling to and from the Bronx should use the free shuttle bus operating on Broadway between Van Cortlandt Park-242nd Street and the 207th Street A station, making stops at 238th, 231st, 225th, 215th Streets.
The takeaway: Use the A train.
Meanwhile, everything else follows. Subway Weekender has the map sans this 7 line mess.
From 11:30 p.m. Friday, March 11 to 5 a.m. Monday, March 14, 1 service is suspended:
- Between Van Cortlandt Park/242nd Street and 168th Street (due to station renovations) and
- Between 137th Street/City College and 96th Street (due to work on the portal south of 125th Street at 122nd Street)
Customers are urged to take the A train to and from midtown Manhattan. Free shuttle buses and the M3 bus also provide alternate service. No. 1 shuttle trains will operate between 168th Street and 137th Street. Free shuttle buses run in three sections:
- On Broadway between 242nd Street and the 207th Street A station
- On St. Nicholas Avenue between 191st Street and 168th Street
- On Broadway between 137th Street and 96th Street
From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, March 12 to 5 a.m. Monday, March 14, Manhattan-bound 2 trains skip Burke Avenue, Allerton Avenue, Pelham Parkway and Bronx Park East due to track work at Bronx Park East.
From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, March 12 to 5 a.m. Monday, March 14, Brooklyn-bound 2 trains skip Bergen Street, Grand Army Plaza and Eastern Parkway due to cable installation.
From 6:30 a.m. to midnight Saturday, March 12 and Sunday, March 13, Brooklyn-bound 3 trains skip Bergen Street, Grand Army Plaza and Eastern Parkway due to cable installation.
From 1 a.m. Saturday, March 12 to 5 a.m. Monday, March 14, 4 trains skip Fulton Street in both directions due to work on the Fulton Street Transit Center. Customers may use the 2, 3, A, C or J shuttle at this station as an alternative. (Note: The J shuttle operates between Chambers Street/Brooklyn Bridge and Fulton Street.)
During the late night hours, from 12:01 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. Saturday and Sunday and to 5 a.m. on Monday, Brooklyn-bound 4 trains skip Bergen Street, Grand Army Plaza and Eastern Parkway due to cable installation.
From 6:30 a.m. to midnight, Saturday, March 12 and Sunday, March 13, 5 trains skip Fulton Street in both directions due to work on the Fulton Street Transit Center. Customers may use the 2, 3, A, C or J shuttle at this station as an alternative. (Note: The J shuttle operates between Chambers Street/Brooklyn Bridge and Fulton Street.)
From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, March 12 to 5 a.m. Monday, March 14, D trains run local between 34th Street and West 4th Street in both directions due to fan plant rehabilitation.
From 4 a.m. Saturday, March 12 to 10 p.m. Sunday, March 13, Brooklyn-bound D trains run on the N line from 36th Street to Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue due to track panel installation between 50th Street and 55th Street. There are no Brooklyn-bound D trains stopping at 9th Avenue, Ft. Hamilton Parkway, 50th, 55th, 71st, 79th Streets, 18th and 20th Avenues, Bay Parkway, 25th Avenue and Bay 50th Street stations.
From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, March 12 to 5 a.m. Monday, March 14, E trains run on the F line between Roosevelt Avenue and 34th Street-Herald Square due to fan plant rehabilitation. The platforms at 5th Avenue-53rd Street, Lexington Avenue-53rd Street, 23rd Street-Ely Avenue and World Trade Center are closed. Customers may take the R, G, A or shuttle bus instead. Free shuttle buses connect Court Square (G)/23rd Street-Ely Avenue (E), Queens Plaza (R) and the 21st Street-Queensbridge (F) stations. Note: During the overnight hours, E trains stop at 36th Street, Steinway Street, 46th Street, Northern Blvd and 65th Street.
From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, March 12 to 5 a.m. Monday, March 14, Queens-bound F trains run on the A line from Jay Street-MetroTech to West 4th Street due to work at the Broadway/Lafayette-to-Bleecker Street transfer connection. There are no Queens-bound F trains at York Street, East Broadway, Delancey Street, 2nd Avenue or Broadway-Lafayette Street.
From 4 a.m. Saturday, March 12 to 10 p.m. Sunday, March 13, Manhattan-bound N trains skip 30th Av, Broadway, 36th Av and 39th Av due to track panel installation from Astoria Blvd to 36th Avenue.
From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, March 12 to 5 a.m. Monday, March 14, Manhattan-bound N trains run on the D line from Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue to 36th Street due to track panel installation from north of Kings Highway to north of Bay Parkway. There are no Manhattan-bound N trains at 86th Street, Avenue U, Kings Highway, Bay Parkway, 20th Avenue, 18th Avenue, Ft. Hamilton Parkway or 8th Avenue stations.
From 11:30 p.m. Friday, March 11 to 5 a.m. Monday, March 14, there are no Q trains between 57th Street/7th Avenue and Prospect Park in either direction due to BMT track tunnel inspection and structural repair and track and switch work north of Atlantic Avenue. For service between 57th Street/7th Avenue and Atlantic Ave-Pacific Street, customers should use the N or R. Free shuttle buses provide service between Atlantic Avenue and Prospect Park.
Just in case you had no idea that the subways smell bad, Fox 5 would like to highlight that for you. In a story that explores some rather gruesome subject matter, the Fox news team explores the Herald Square station and finds it to both smell and look like a toilet on more ways than one.
The MTA says the human excrement has since been removed, but apparently the odor is lingering due to the station’s homeless population. This, mind you, is at one of the busiest hubs in the city. I don’t want to draw too many conclusions here, but stories like this one highlight why New Yorkers have such a love-hate relationship with transit.
As Gov. Chris Christie fights with the federal government for the right to keep $271 million earmarked for the ARC Tunnel, the state’s legal bill is beginning to mount. After just one month on the job, D.C. firm Patton Boggs had billed New Jersey Transit $330,000 for the effort. “NJ Transit’s budget contains funds for legal and other such expenses and this will come out of that,” Paul Wyckoff, agency spokesman, said. “There are hundreds of millions of dollars at stake here. This is certainly, we feel, worth the best legal effort we can produce. Patton Boggs is a highly regarded, highly professional firm that is working to save state taxpayers money as efficiently as possible.”
New Jersey politicians who have fought with Christie over the ARC cancellation since Day One again lobbed grenades toward the governor. “I’m not suggesting the state shouldn’t have counsel. I hope the state wins,” John Wisniewski, chairman of the state assembly’s Transportation Committee, said. “But $333,281 — there are lots of good lawyers in New Jersey that don’t charge $485 an hour.”
If New Jersey thinks it has a valid case to make for those federal dollars, the state has every right to employ outside counsel to do so, and Wisniewski has every right to complain about the fees. Ultimately, though, if they get to keep any of the $271 million, the $330,000 a month will be but a drop in the bucket. Still, the attempts to keep the money seem to be garnering more attention than the efforts to build a new cross-Hudson rail tunnel, and that’s not helping anyone in the region.
For a long time, the MTA had a very generous refund policy for its commuter rail ticket holders. Those who were unable to use their tickets had six months to turn them in for a full refund. It was rider-friendly and easy to to understand. That all ended last year.
When the authority voted to raise their fares last year, they implemented a series of hidden fare hikes as well. These measures didn’t garner as many headlines as the MetroCard hikes, but they were just as harmful to commuters’ wallets. The one that has generated much outrage has been the changes to the refund policy. All tickets must be returned within 30 days, and to get a refund, passengers must pay a $10 service fee.
As many Long Islanders quickly learned in January, the $10 fee often exceeded the cost of the ticket, and politicians grew outraged. “In the worst of circumstances there’s always a restocking fee,” State Sen. Jack Martins said in January. “But why a $10 processing fee? If you look at the fares Long Island Rail Road and you consider that most of those fares are going further than those $10, what they’re telling you is if you don’t use the ticket, they’ve just picked your pocket.”
Recently, Martins has issued a bill that would rectify the situation. Without an Assembly counterpart yet, the bill has been referred to the proper state committee, and it is available here. In it, Martins tries to limit the MTA’s ability to recoup its expenses. It says that the MTA is “prohibited from assessing any surcharge or processing fee for the return of any such unused ticket purchased for use on the Long Island Rail Road.” Metro-North riders, no one is looking out for you.
In addition to this explicit ban on the MTA’s economic approach, Martins wants to return the old refund structure to the massess. The authority would be forced to give a full refund up to six months for unused tickets. Thus, Martins’ bill would, in effect, roll back this part of the December fare hike. “Customers have had to deal fare increases and service cuts,” Martins said to the Patch site from Mineola. “To put in a processing fee just to return a ticket is arrogant at best. This legislation repeals the processing fee, which should never have been instituted.”
Does Martins’ stance make sense? From a position of a politician searching for votes, it certainly does. The MTA is fully exploiting its customers, and by instituting such an extreme refund penalty, the authority has effectively made most ticket sales final. On the other hand, by granting refunds, the agency incurs processing costs that it should try to recoup. If Albany won’t fund the refunds, why should the authority?
The best solution is, of course, a compromise. If the MTA can lessen the refund service fee while extending the time frame past the 30-day mark, everyone should walk away happy. Otherwise, this decidedly anti-customer measure could cause more headaches than it is worth.
As New York State politicians continue to fight over the MTA’s funding future, congestion pricing is slowly sneaking back into the discussion. Some believe congestion pricing will be the reward for a reduction the suburban counties must contribute to the payroll mobility tax while others see the congestion price revenue as a solution to the MTA’s capital budget hole.
As the debate begins to percolate, certain members of the state legislature are working to head it off before it begins. David Weprin, a representative from the 24th Assembly district in Queens, opined on congestion pricing in the Daily News yesterday. He is against the fee but proposes something else instead: a revival of the commuter tax.
Let’s take a look at the relevant parts of his argument. He raises some good and some bad points while relying too heavily on arguments that don’t withstand scrutiny. Still, he’s talking about it, and that’s the first step toward a solution.
It is true that there are severe transportation problems facing the city, but these problems have been years in the making, and instituting a tax on people attempting to drive to work isn’t going to solve it.
The fact is that most of the transportation infrastructure in the metropolitan area was designed when cars still had tail fins and ribbons of highways were laid, encircling our cities and suburbs in an effort to turn New York into a commuter’s utopia. The sprawl that followed, in addition to the neglect of the area’s mass-transit infrastructure, has brought us to the problem we are facing today: too much traffic, too few alternatives.
Here, Weprin starts off on the right foot. Most of our transportation infrastructure in the city was built either in the early 1900s or in the post-war period. We spent millions on roads without improving the mass transit network, and now the city is choked in traffic. It’s an unsustainable problem that has both an economic and environmental impact.
That said, Weprin’s next argument relies too heavily on a profile of drivers that simply doesn’t exist. He continues:
Taxing commuters as much as $2,000 a year, and taxing small businesses that use trucks to ship their goods to Manhattan a fee in excess of $5,000 a year, might be a great way to raise money, but it doesn’t solve the problem; it just covers it up at the expense of hardworking New Yorkers…
A useful exercise to understand the future transportation needs of New York is to imagine the multitude of negative effects a congestion-pricing scheme would have on the city of New York. The tax on commuters and businesses is the most obvious, but the stress that this plan would put on the already-troubled Metropolitan Transportation Authority would result in giving those who can afford to drive into Manhattan an option while forcing working-class New Yorkers to cram onto already-crowded trains, subways and buses.
What I just described is the best-case scenario. I would hope that if people had to pay money to drive into Manhattan, they would see the error of their ways, buy a MetroCard or a bike, and be content with not having their car at work. What is much more likely to happen is that the outer boroughs will become a park-and-ride lot for people commuting from Long Island and Westchester.
This proposal also represents an embargo on Manhattan businesses, theaters and restaurants by taxing customers each time they choose to drive into Manhattan to frequent these establishments. Instead of ending congestion and mitigating pollution, a congestion pricing plan would simply move all of these congestion problems off Manhattan and stick the rest of the city with them. I believe this is unthinkable.
This argument is a common one amongst congestion pricing opponents, but it ignores the numbers. Those who commute daily via automobile into Manhattan make, on average, over $20,000 more per year than those who rely on the subway. In other words, the middle class worker who daily drives into Manhattan simply doesn’t exist in numbers great enough to halt congestion pricing.
Meanwhile, Weprin fails to consider two important parts of a congestion pricing plan. First, he focuses on “the multitude of negative effects” but doesn’t pay any lip service to the positive effects. Those include a more productive economy in which people are not stuck in traffic; a better funded transit network; and a cleaner environment without congestion choking our roads or throats.
Second, to combat the threat of turning the outer boroughs into park-and-ride lots, a proper congestion pricing scheme will have to come with a residential parking permit plan. That’s a common sense part of the solution. If the idea is to discourage superfluous driving with its socially negative impact, it will require some creative thinking.
Weprin ends though on a reasonably optimistic note. He wants to restore the commuter tax:
One commonsense solution to help the MTA raise the funds needed to actually begin to confront this congestion issue is by revving the nonresident income tax or commuter tax and ensure that part of that revenue be earmarked for the MTA. This is a much less-regressive tax than charging working-class New Yorkers to drive around their own city.
I will be introducing a bill that would implement a 1% nonresident commuter tax and would split the revenue equally between the city of New York and the MTA. A plan like this would allow us to raise revenue, not by regressively taxing our working-class residents but by collecting the money from those who already use our cities’ services regularly but don’t pay taxes for them because they live outside the city.
This bill would allow us to begin the hard work of creating the 21st-century transportation infrastructure that our city desperately needs. This is the time to figure out a long-term solution for meeting our future transportation needs, not just filling a funding gap in the MTA and turning Manhattan into the Forbidden City.
It’s tough to say if restoring the commuter tax would be more or less popular than continuing the payroll tax. For starters, the commuter tax has a tough history in New York. We had one for a while, and then in the late 1990s, Albany intentionally violated the Commerce Clause by ending the commuter tax on Westchester and Long Island commuters while keeping it in place for those coming in from New Jersey and Connecticut. When a legal challenge to the tax in that form arose, the courts quickly struck it down.
Of course, it would make sense to restore it because these commuters use services for which they do not pay, but it’s a bit disingenuous to say it’s not a regressive tax on the working class. Weprin’s appeal there is to distinguish it from a congestion fee, but the reality is that a commuter tax would also be passed along to workers just as the payroll tax is today.
After digesting Weprin’s well-made argument, I’m left with the same conclusion I had. The congestion pricing plan is the best of a series of less-than-ideal offerings. It targets those who, by and large, can afford to pay, and it carries with it more positive social, economic and environmental effects than the other options. Whether enough political support can coalesce around any of these options, though, is a question for another day.
Over the past few years, I’ve burned more than a few pixels talking about the MTA’s legal liability. Most recently, in December, following a horrific accident involving a passenger and the gap fillers at Union Square, I wondered if the authority needed some tort protection. After all, does it make sense for the taxpayers to subsidize excessive jury awards when oftentimes the victims are contributorily negligent as well?
Yesterday, an Appellate Division state court showed that the system as it is established now seems to have enough legal checks and balances to work well. A Harlem man in 2009 won a $1.8 million verdict from the MTA when a jury determined he wasn’t drunk as he stepped in the path of an oncoming bus while crossing the street. The appeals court though tossed the verdict and ordered a new trial based on clear inconsistencies in the testimony and too much compassion on behalf of the jury. “Albeit very infrequently, juries sometimes make findings that are utterly without foundation in the law or the evidence,” the ruling says. “This is one such case, and the finding of no comparative negligence is so irrational as to require that we unconditionally direct a new trial.”
Usually, the multi-million-dollar awards make headlines, but those awards don’t trigger an instant payment. The MTA is bound to appeal most cases that would require a large outlay, and here, the judicial system functioned as it should. The authority may still wind up on the hook for some damages, but if Claude Williams was indeed intoxicated at the time of the accident, the award will be far smaller than originally assessed.
The MTA has added more useful information to its countdown clocks. (Photo by Rolando Pujol)
As far as transit technology goes, the MTA’s shiny new countdown clocks leave much to be desired. While the authority now has access to tons of real-time information about train location, its only public presentation of that data is via the countdown clocks, and they suffer from a basic rudimentariness.
The first problem I noticed with the new clocks concerned island platforms. At, for instance, Grand Army Plaza, the uptown and downtown trains pull in on opposite sides of the sole island platform, but the countdown clocks are for the entire station. If I’m heading to Manhattan, I don’t particularly care when the next Flatbush Ave.-bound 2 train is coming. Yet, that’s how the information is presented.
The next complaint is one of design. Most of the signs rotate through only two trains, and it takes a concerted effort to find the next train at times. Furthermore, the green arrows are tough to read at a glance, and the destination indicators — which way is New Lots Ave.? — make a rider think too much about which train they need.
That said, the MTA is not resting on its laurels. They’re upgrading the countdown clocks. In a release late Wednesday, the authority announced the UI changes. “To remove some of the confusion in the busier stations serving multiple train lines we have added express (EXP) and local (LCL) icons to help riders identify arriving trains,” the authority said.
The PA/CIS signs now have a visual representation of the train direction. (Photo via New York City Transit)
With 110 signs now up throughout the system, the authority has been able to see what works and what doesn’t. At stations with only one type of service and island platforms — generally express stops in Brooklyn or Lower Manhattan — the signs will differentiate between uptown and Brooklyn-bound service. The release explains the upgrades:
Depending on the station configuration, signs will include direction and/or service type (express or local) information, as appropriate. So at Wall Street, only the 2 and 3 trains stop there—no locals. These are express trains traveling in different directions, so the signs only display uptown (UP) or Brooklyn (BKL). At 14th Street, the island platform is common for all trains going in the same direction so we show local or express.
The addition of the icons is just a little bit more of a good thing for customers waiting for their trains. The changes were made initially at the Wall Street, 14th Street and 34th Street Stations on the West Side IRT. Stations were chosen where the Countdown Clocks are required to display multiple services and directions. The upgrade is also being performed at Chambers Street on the No.1 as well as Franklin Ave., Nevins Street and Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. The ability to include the additional information was available in the system and deployed at no additional cost.
It’s a welcome change for a technology far too many years in the waiting. By the end of the year, all 153 stations will be equipped with the clocks, and then we wait for the B Division rollout, however that will look and whenever it will be. The next step though in the MTA’s technological renaissance will be access to real-time train location information. The countdown clocks might make our waits more tolerable, but knowing where a train is at what time would revolutionize trip planning across the city.
Ben Heckscher over at The Launch Box has up an interesting bit on Contract C-26008 today. For those unfamiliar with the number, that’s contract 5B for the Second Ave. Sagas for work on the 86th Street station cavern. According to Heckscher, the bid results were recently made public, and the Skanska/Traylor joint venture is in the lead with a bid of $301,860,000.
Interestingly, as Heckscher notes, this bid is well below the amount the MTA expected to spend on the cavern and mining work around East 86th Street, and that low bid is in line with what Denise Richardson of the General Contractors Associate said at the Museum of the City of New York a few weeks ago. Because these contractors are itching to keep their workers employed and their machines running, now is a good time to submit contracts for bids. Companies are willing to operate efficiently if it means more work. As the MTA’s capital budget comes due for more money, I hope Albany is paying attention.
Meanwhile, the 86th St. contract will be an interesting one to watch because the litigation over the station entrances could pay a role yet. As Heckscher writes, it isn’t clear how the lawsuit will impact this work, but for now, the cavern work can proceed apace. Not until demolition work and entrance scoping begins does the above-ground machinations affect the construction below.
Nova Bus is readying an order of 90 low-floor systems vehicles for a New York City Transit test run, the company announced yesterday. As part of a plan to develop the next generation of rolling stock for New York City’s bus system, Transit has requested three different kinds of 40-foot buses, and Nova Bus will fulfill this $40-million order at its Plattsburgh, NY-based plant. “The Nova Bus team is keenly focused on sustainable business development,” Gilles Dion, the company’s president and CEO said, “and we are pleased to have the opportunity to pursue our partnership with one of the leading transit authorities in North America.”
According to a company spokesperson, the buses will arrive in New York within the next few weeks, and the initial tests could lead to more orders if the trials are successful. “Not only does it benefit New Yorkers downstate who get to ride these Nova buses, but more importantly, this creates good-paying jobs right here in Plattsburgh,” Senator Chuck Schumer said. “The MTA is now a repeat customer with Nova, and this new contract reaffirms that Nova is a first-class facility doing great work in Plattsburgh.” Nova Bus is currently working on an order of 60-foot articulated buses for the MTA as well.