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Benjamin Kabak

For East Side Access, a new Grand Central entrance

by Benjamin Kabak January 12, 2010

written by Benjamin Kabak on January 12, 2010

A new entrance to the catacombs of Grand Central Terminal will open in Sept. 2011. (Rendering courtesy Metro-North)

In a sense, the East Side Access Project is New York City’s forgotten big construction effort. While the Second Ave. Subway construction is disrupting street traffic and residential life along the Upper East Side, the East Side Access work continues daily far below the surface of the city. Slowly, the benefits of this project will soon be coming online, and Metro-North announced yesterday the construction of a new entrance to Grand Central Terminal as part of the East Side Access work.

This new entrance, set to open in September 2011, will extend the Grand Central entrance options north to 47th St. The street-level access point will be on the side street between Lexington and Park Avenues in the building at 245 Park. The new entrance will feature an escalator from the street to the 47th St. cross passageway and a staircase from the street to the platform shaed by Tracks 11 and 13. Right now, the east end of the 47th St. cross passageway has no outlet.

“This new entrance will be a tremendous benefit to both current Metro-North customers and future LIRR customers by providing a fifth northern means of ingress and egress to the trains,” Metro-North President Howard Permut said in a statement.

“This entrance is an example of how construction can be staged so that customers can enjoy incremental benefits as each element of a project is completed,” MTA Capital Construction President Dr. Michael Horodniceanu said.

Currently, the 47th Street cross passage runs directly below street level from Lexington Avenue to Madison Avenue and has staircases that lead to every train platform on the upper level of Grand Central. From that passageway, commuters can use two walkways to reach the 45 St. cross passageway and connect to all lower level platforms. With these options, those who work north of Grand Central save, according to Metro-North, up to 15 minutes of walking time.

As crews work to build this new entry way, Tracks 11 and 13 at Grand Central will be out of service. The MTA must extend Track 13 south due to the loss of space to escalators and stairs on the northern end of the platform, and to keep a platform 10 cars long, a southern extension is necessary. Metro-North began this work yesterday, and it is due to cost $14 million over the next 20 months. When the East Side Access work is completed in 2016, the LIRR concourse will connect to the 47th St. passageway as well.

January 12, 2010 23 comments

Asides View from Underground

The conductors that you meet each day

by Benjamin Kabak January 12, 2010

written by Benjamin Kabak on January 12, 2010

Over at his Ink Lake blog, Friend of Second Ave. Sagas Peter Kaufman has up a post on the various styles of subway conductor. Riffing a famous picture of Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach, Kaufman highlights the three personalities of those in charge of getting passengers onto and off the trains while keeping to a demanding schedule. The Good is one who “opens the doors promptly at the station, and doesn’t shilly-shally when closing. If someone on the platform hesitates, their decision is made for them. The doors are closed, and the train is on its way.” The Bad are those who are overly considerate. These are the ones who allow passengers to just catch the train, but as Peter writes, the delays can add up to make trips 15 percent longer than scheduled. The Ugly are those who “try closing the doors even as people are still exiting the train, let alone anyone boarding.”

I’ve seen them all, and in a way, Kaufman’s simplified view of conductors really nails it. Of course, sometimes the Bad are held hostage by riders holding the doors, and sometimes the Ugly are just trying a bit too hard to keep their trains running on time. A good conductor will have his or her timing down just right, and for those people running to make the train, well, there’s always “another one directly behind us.”

January 12, 2010 11 comments

Service Cuts

Service changes could lead to Chrystie St. Cut use

by Benjamin Kabak January 12, 2010

written by Benjamin Kabak on January 12, 2010

As the MTA adjusts the planned service cuts to better meet customer demands, a novel use for the Chrystie St. Connection between the IND and the BMT at Essex and Delancey Sts. may be in the cards. According to a few message board posters and now Heather Haddon’s “transit sources,” the MTA may adjust the route of the V train to subsume the current M route out to Metropolitan Ave. This new route could alleviate some pressure on the L line and provide an indirect one-seat ride from parts of Brooklyn and Queens that just aren’t that far apart.

Over the last few days, I’ve been checking in on some of the message board chatter concerning the upcoming service cuts. Last week at the NYC Transit Forums, frequent poster Zman started a thread about a potential merging of the M and V lines. He said:

The TA is considering eliminating the M and sending the V to Metropolitan Av via the Chrystie St Cut if the doomsday cuts aren’t head off at the pass. This would mean that the V could only run 8 car trains. This could start in late June.

Logistically it would be a little difficult unless they took some of the 60 foot SMEE’s that are mothballed and put them back into service, or if ENY has enough 4 car unit 160’s to cover service since 46’s can’t run on the Williamsburg Bridge. For passengers though, this sounds like a good deal.

It’s in the talking stages and nothing is official yet.

Subchat picked up the news a short time later, and the subsequent discussion has been rather lively. Today, amNew York, citing only “transit sources,” joins the chorus. The M is scheduled to be scaled back from its current peak-hour run into South Brooklyn through the Montague St. tunnel and along the BMT Fourth Ave. and West End Lines, and this rumored cut would, in effect, kill the line.

So how would this work? Transit would run eight-car sets along the V from Forest Hills along its current route along the IND Queens Boulevard line via the 53rd St. tunnel to the IND Sixth Ave. line. After stopping at Broadway-Lafayette, the train would then take the Chrystie St. Cut, shown in in this track map, to the current J/M/Z BMT Nassau St. stop at Essex/Delancey Sts. The V would then run over the Williamsburg Bridge and up to Metropolitan Ave.

In a way, this makes sense. Once the M is scaled back from its southern extension into Brooklyn, the train will operate mainly as a spur to Metropolitan Ave. with peak-hour service to Lower Manhattan. Here, Transit would replace that M service with a line that serves Midtown. Although some Lower Manhattan-bound riders would have to transfer to the J, those heading to Williamsburg and points east could take a one-seat ride on the V and, ideally, avoid the L.

Right now, Transit and the MTA are still working to formulate a plan for the service cuts, but when everything is finalized later this year, we could see some changes to the subway map. I wouldn’t be surprised to see revenue service restored to the Chrystie St. Cut as long as the numbers work out.

January 12, 2010 66 comments

Asides Service Cuts

Exacerbating the impact of the service cuts

by Benjamin Kabak January 11, 2010

written by Benjamin Kabak on January 11, 2010

When the MTA gets around to cutting service later this year, many New Yorkers — particularly those who rely on late-night bus service and off-peak transit options — will find themselves facing fewer options and longer commutes. In The Times this weekend, Ariel Kaminer tried to find out just how long these new commutes will take, and her article takes this experiment to an extreme. Kaminer asked HopStop’s CEO to find her a long route made longer by the death of the X32, and he routes her from “DeKalb Avenue in the Bronx, up near Woodland [sic] Cemetery, to 26th Avenue in Queens, not far from Fort Totten and Little Neck Bay.” As the crow flies, this is an 11.7-mile trip over the Throgs Neck Bridge, but for transit riders generally, it is now a one-transfer ride that involves a 4 or a D and the QM2A express bus.

Ultimately, Kaminer’s convoluted alternate route took her on a bus, a Metro-North train, a subway and a Long Island Rail Road train. It took nearly three hours and was designed to highlight what might happen if the X32, a route designed to ferry Bronx Sciences students to and from Queens is eliminated. The problem is that this route isn’t really indicative of anything. The MTA hasn’t yet determined if it will eliminate an important school route, and the vast majority of New Yorkers will be impacted in other, less absurdist ways by the transit cuts. Anyway, Kaminer’s route is well beyond that of the X32.

Articles such as this one make me question the “why” of it all. Is picking an obscure route that few use from one area of the Bronx to an already transit-poor area of Queens get the point across? Didn’t the piece highlighting late-night bus riders do so more effectively? There are far more tangible ways to highlight the impact of the service cuts particularly for those who do not commute into and out of Manhattan at peak hours. This was just an extreme travel stunt.

January 11, 2010 12 comments

Buses

Walder reiterates need for bus lane enforcement

by Benjamin Kabak January 11, 2010

written by Benjamin Kabak on January 11, 2010

Kicking and screaming, the New York City bus network will be dragged into, well, the present. The 34th St. route features countdown clocks for buses, and the MTA and the city’s Department of Transportation are working together to plot the rollout of Select Bus Service throughout the five boroughs. None of this will work, though, without proper bus lane enforcement.

Last week, while speaking with Richard Brodsky and the Assembly Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions, MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder started beating the drum again for bus lane enforcement. In interviews shortly after he received the MTA nomination, Walder stressed the need for these cameras, and he was at it again last week.

“I simply don’t think that the MTA ever made bus lane cameras a priority. In fact, I don’t think the MTA has made buses a priority quite the way that we’re doing today,” he said. “One of the things that I’ve tried to say from day one is that buses are an under-utilized, untapped resource in New York. We can do much more with it, and we’re making it our priority to do that.”

Of course, the State Assembly has long been a reason why the city has not yet implemented bus lane cameras. Back in 2008, David Gantt, a Rochester Democrat, torpedoed a home rule measure that would have allowed the city to use cameras to enforce the bus lanes. Since then, however, the Assembly has ceded ground on red-light cameras, among others, and Walder is optimistic that they will allow for proper bus lane enforcement as well. “I recognize the issues about privacy,” Walder said. “The Assembly, the legislature, has gotten over those issues with red light cameras. There’s no reason why we can’t get over those issues with the bus lane enforcement cameras.”

Meanwhile, a City Council measure could slow down the DOT/MTA bus lane efforts as well. At the end of the year, according to a recent Streetsblog report, the City Council passed a bill mandated a 65-day review period for all “‘major realignments of the roadway,’ particularly the addition or removal of a lane of traffic or parking on more than four blocks or ‘1,000 consecutive feet of street.'”

This move is one designed to allow for more community input in DOT roadway planning, but DOT is not bound to alter plans in the face of community reaction. On the one hand, this law should eliminate any sense of paternalism that may stem from DOT unilaterally deciding how the streets should be laid out without consulting businesses and community boards. On the other, vocal minorities who seem to obsess more about parking than they should may earn too much of a say in the process. Streetsblog isn’t concerned that this measure will materially impact too many DOT plans.

In the end, these two efforts — camera enforcement and the need for dedicated lanes — highlight what is missing from the Select Bus Service plan and what the city needs to have a truly effective higher-speed bus network. I’ve seen cars driving down the 34th St. in the new bus-only lanes, and I’ve seen buses stall traffic when they have to navigate around double-parkers and other vehicles idling in bus lanes. Without dedicated lanes and without an effective enforcement means for those lanes, buses will be subject to the whims of New York City’s painfully slow surface traffic.

Walder knows that better bus service is both cheaper and more immediate than building out new subway lines. He knows that buses can be deployed to bring people into the city’s central business districts or to subway hubs. Right now, we view the buses are an inconvenience that can sometimes get us where we need to go but are mostly utilized by the aged and infirm who can’t negotiate subway staircases. In a few years, buses can be an accepted part of the city’s transit network, and with true bus lanes and enforcement measures, that vision could be one step closer to reality.

January 11, 2010 0 comment

MTA Technology

MTA to unveil website redesign on Wednesday

by Benjamin Kabak January 11, 2010

written by Benjamin Kabak on January 11, 2010

Forget CBTC subway cars with air brakes and automated announcements. Forget countdown clocks and contactless fare payment cards. This news tonight — news that the MTA will unveil a redesigned and updated website on Wednesday — is, ladies and gentlemen, the surest sign that the agency is starting to get serious about technology.

Since 2003, the MTA’s website has received nary an update. Web 2.0 with all of its interactivity and customer interaction took over the Internet, and the MTA’s site remained materially similar to its late-1990s iterations. Since I’ve started blogging in November 2006, we’ve seen the MTA’s site suffer through some growing pains. A July 2007 power outage that curtailed service along the East Side IRT and sent users to the agency’s site led to an outage, and the August 2007 flood and subsequent traffic spike knocked out the agency’s site as well.

Meanwhile, the agency’s regional and national competitors have recently unveiled new site designs. In Washington, the WMATA’s site redesign earned rave reviews, and recent NJ Transit and Port Authority site overhauls have also been well received. Still, the MTA’s site, a mish-mash of boxes and links and agencies, lumbered ever forward.

When new MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder assumed the reins in October, he knew he wanted to overhaul the agency’s site, and this week, in conjunction with his first 100 days in office, Walder will flip the switch on a new site. “We’re not cutting-edge; let’s not kid ourselves. But we’re getting closer,” Walder said to The Times today. “The idea here was not to break new ground; the point was to provide good service to our customers. Customers want to be able to find out how to get from point A to point B; they want to see right away whether or not the train or the buses they’re looking to get on are on schedule.”

The MTA’s site is popular, second only to Amtrak among the nation’s transit providers. At its peak, the agency sees 1.8 million unique users per month and over 25 million page views. Now, it will be better, and Michael Grynbaum offers a first look:

Real-time information on delays and service interruptions — difficult if not impossible to find on the current site — is the first thing that catches a viewer’s eye. A widget on the home page compiles continually updated service status for every subway, bus and commuter rail line in the region, along with nine of the bridges and tunnels operated by the authority.

The information is color coded (red for delays, green for good service) and divided into categories (subway, rail, bus) by tabs, similar to a Web browser that allows users to toggle through multiple pages. At a glance, readers get a sense of whether the F train back to Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, for instance, will be smooth sailing or an underground maelstrom.

Also prominent on the new home page is a feature called “Plan & Ride,” which lets users find door-to-door directions across several modes of transportation. The feature is similar to HopStop.com and the authority’s own TripPlanner application, although entering a search sends users directly to a Google Maps page…

The authority already licenses its scheduling data to Google, and Mr. Walder said that it made more financial sense to take advantage of an already popular outside service rather than to continue investing in a proprietary application.

The new site, says The Times, will also “make it easier for outside software designers to get free access to system timetables and routes.” The MTA has long been criticized for its approach to scheduling data and other route information, and I recently wondered when the authority would catch the open information bug. The answer, it seems, is soon.

When it goes live, the new site will still be a work in progress, and some web designers wish it could be “sexier.” Still, mobile versions for Blackberry and iPhone are in the works, and Transit has embraced Twitter. I’ll have a full review of the new site when it goes live, but I’m very encouraged by this news. A website redesign has been a long time coming for the MTA, and it shows a commitment to communication and customer service that had been, for a few years, lacking. Hopefully, this new site design is a sign of things to come.

January 11, 2010 15 comments

MTA Absurdity

Riding the subway, with no pants

by Benjamin Kabak January 10, 2010

written by Benjamin Kabak on January 10, 2010

Ah, January. It’s a brisk time of year for New York. The temperatures are hovering in the low 20s, and people ride the trains bundled up in layers of coats and sweaters. Yet, for one group of fun-loving New Yorkers, January is also the time for the No Pants Subway Ride.

For the last eight years, the instant-comedy group Improv Everywhere has hosted the No Pants Subway Ride in New York City, and this afternoon, unsuspecting straphangers will witness the ninth No Pants Ride. Last year, 1200 people dropped trou on the trains, and even more are expected later today.

So here are the details for this year’s event. For the first time in the history of this voyeuristic event, Improv Everywhere will tackle the outer boroughs. Those who wish to participate should meet at the following locations at 3 p.m.:

Astoria: Meet at Hoyt Playground
Downtown Brooklyn: Meet at Prospect Park
Downtown Manhattan: Meet at Foley Square
Queens: Meet at the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Park
strong>Uptown Manhattan: Meet at the Great Hill in Central Park
Williamsburg / Bushwick: Meet at Bushwick Park (AKA Maria Hernandez Park)

The event will culminate in a pants-less gather at Union Square shortly after. At around 4 p.m., the Union Square area should be teeming with too many people wearing only underwear and exiting the subway.

I won’t be participating this year. Two years ago, I joined my one and only No Pants Subway Ride at a time when around 900 other people joined me. At that point, enough New Yorkers didn’t know what was happening for the ride to be a gimmicky and funny and novel. Now, though, at least 1500 people will arrive, and nearly everyone is expecting someone to take his or her pants off this afternoon.

If you’re riding the rails and see it happening, enjoy the absurdity. If you’re participating, good luck. For the rest of us who may just be trying to get from Poitnt A to Point B, well, good luck with that too.

January 10, 2010 10 comments

Fulton Street Service Advisories

As a Transit Center grows at Fulton St., service changes abound

by Benjamin Kabak January 8, 2010

written by Benjamin Kabak on January 8, 2010

Scenes from above the construction at the Fulton St. Transit Center. (Photos by Peter Kaufman/Ink Lake Blog)

Charitably, the MTA is three years away from wrapping up construction at the Fulton St. Transit Center complex, and as the agency moves ahead with the work at a fairly brisk pace, weekend travel into and out of Brooklyn gets snarled at the new hub. This week, as a lead-in to our service advisories, we have some good stuff out of the construction site.

First, we have some pictures of the Hub. Peter Kaufman of the Ink Lake Blog works above the construction site and has been snapping some pictures as work crews raise a building there. The three thumbnails open larger versions in new windows, and the building is slowly coming together. I look forward to watching the progress via Peter’s camera, and I thank him for the photos.

Underground, things are about to get very, very messy. The MTA is on the verge of replacing a ramp and two staircases that connect the lower-level Broadway/Nassau St. stop with the rest of the complex. Per the press release:

In this current phase of construction, the AC mezzanine, a ramp and two staircases will be removed and replaced over the course of two weekends: January 9-11 and January 16-18. In addition, other subway work taking place on those weekends will affect travel in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. Effective Monday, January 18, a new temporary stair will replace the ramp that connects AC trains to the uptown 45 trains.

Also, the remaining platform stairs will each lead to a specific transfer or street exit. Riders are encouraged to consult way-finding signs and brochures that are available at station booths in midtown and lower Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn. Transit personnel will be on hand both weekends and on Monday, January 18 and Tuesday, January 19, to help direct customers.

One of the aforementioned brochures — detailing the various weekend work and its impact on those traveling through Fulton St. — is available here as a PDF.

To get users through the mess of service advisories, Transit has produced what they call a Life Sized Map of the change. These maps — three feet by four feet — are hanging up stations along the IRT lines that are affected by the Fulton St. work, and they help visualize the various reroutings plaguing popular subway lines. Riders, says Transit, are more apt to notice these maps than they are the oft-ignored service advisory signs that decorate subway stations every weekend. The LSM is embedded below, and you can click on it for a larger image. After the map — and the jump — this weekend’s service changes.

For the rest of this weekend’s service advisories, click here.

January 8, 2010 8 comments

Asides MTA Politics

Report: Vacca chosen to head Council transportation committee

by Benjamin Kabak January 8, 2010

written by Benjamin Kabak on January 8, 2010

The New York Observer’s Azi Paybarah is reporting that James Vacca will be the new head of the City Council’s Transportation Committee. For transit advocates hoping for a strong transportation committee, Vacca’s appointment is a disappointment. As I wrote earlier this week, Vacca is a car-friendly representative who has shown no love for transit. After eight years of John Liu’s know-nothing blustering, it looks for now as though we’re getting more of the same, and instead of a transit ally in the council heading this committee, those fighting for transit in the city are left with the prospects of another impotent Transportation Committee.

Update 4:02 p.m.: After reflecting on the above paragraph for a few minutes, I realize it is a harsh assessment of a council member who was largely out of the spotlight during his first term in the Council. I’m willing to give Vacca a chance to proof his transit allegiance, but early comments on the congestion pricing debate leave me a little wary. Hopefully, Vacca will be a surprise, but his early council history suggests otherwise.

January 8, 2010 11 comments

Asides MTA Economics

With good reason, Walder shoots down stimulus spending on deficit

by Benjamin Kabak January 8, 2010

written by Benjamin Kabak on January 8, 2010

While the big stories out of yesterday’s Richard Brodsky’s committee hearing with Jay Walder focused around the Assembly rep’s pledge to help fund student transit, another comment by Jay Walder gave me hope for the MTA’s long-term capital plan. As Christine Quinn and Gene Russianoff’s Straphangers Campaign are pushing using stimulus spending to cover the MTA’s operating deficit, the MTA CEO and Chairman rejected this plan yesterday. Comparing this plan with Abe Beame’s 1970s decision to use capital funds to avert a fare hike, Walder explained why we need to continue investing in the long-term growth and maintenance of the system during times of temporary operating budget crunches. “I think the result of that [1970s move] was to drive the transit system into the ground,” Walder said.

Meanwhile, Crossroads, a Lehigh Valley-based smart growth blog, featured a recent report that explained why capital investment in transit makes economic sense. The a new study from Smart Growth America (PDF here) notes that spending on public transit produces twice as many jobs per dollar spent than investing in highway construction does. To remove stimulus funds from the capital plan and shuffle it to the operating deficit would both unnecessarily drain the capital budget and impact job creation at a time of economic uncertainty.

In the end, if the MTA can’t avert cuts and has to either reduce service to unacceptable levels or fire more people than they would hire through capital spending, I would begrudgingly support shifting stimulus dollars to the operating deficit. Until all other funding avenues are exhausted, though, Walder is right to reject this plan.

January 8, 2010 10 comments

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