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Benjamin Kabak

Brodsky promises funding for student fares

by Benjamin Kabak January 8, 2010

written by Benjamin Kabak on January 8, 2010

The politicking surrounding the threatened cuts to the MTA’s student MetroCard program were in full swing yesterday as MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder made an appearance before Richard Brodsky’s Assembly Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions. While Walder spoke about his aversion toward using stimulus funds to cover the MTA’s operating gap, Brodsky reassured the MTA head that he and the Assembly would work hard to find money for student rides.

“There is no reason in God’s Earth to make young kids pay the price of the MTA’s fiscal crisis,” Brodsky said. “I think parents should be hopeful if not confident that we’re going to solve this before next September.”

Of course, promises from Brodsky may not be enough. The MTA is threatening to end the student MetroCard program not because of the recent reduction in state subsidies from $45 million annually to just $6 million but because neither the state or city have upped their contributions to the program. At one point, as I’ve explained in the past, the city, state and MTA split the funding for student rides evenly with each body covering approximately a third of the costs. As school enrollment levels and the cost of free rides have increased, the state and city have never upped their contributions, and the MTA has been saddled with covering nearly $170 million of student rides per year.

“We’re going to deal with that in a timely way,” Brodsky said of the MTA’s threats to end free rides for the city’s students, “and we’re very confident there’s going to be a good outcome.” Brodsky, reports amNew York, said that he will be “pushing” to restore the state’s contributions to the student program.

Brodsky’s words, if we parse them, seem to indicate that, on the one hand, he will find a way to fund student travel but, on the other, he will “push” simply to restore the state’s $45 million grant, but the MTA needs more. The authority needs both New York City — as Christine Quinn noted earlier this week — and New York State to up its student subsidies significantly in order to safe the program.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is in the business of running a transit system. It isn’t in the business of providing free transportation for students because the city and state are too broke to do so and found a good scapegoat/transit out in the MTA’s largess. As Walder goes to Albany to lobby for money, he should make this reality quite clear to those who are listening.

Meanwhile, Brodsky noted that the state would not provide another funding plan — or in his words, a bailout — for the MTA. Every agency, he said, has to make “painful” cuts as funding is tight. Left unsaid is the quick fix for the city and the MTA. East River Bridge Tolls would solve many of the MTA’s current fiscal woes and would simply be good for New York City. Walder won’t lobby for those because to do so now would be political folly, but free bridges remain a reminder to the way state and city representatives view the MTA and our subways as second-rate transportation options when they are truly the economic drivers of the region.

January 8, 2010 16 comments

Asides View from Underground

Behind the Voices: Transit announcements

by Benjamin Kabak January 7, 2010

written by Benjamin Kabak on January 7, 2010

As new rolling stock replaces the old cars, the era of the conductor in the subway system is coming to an end. Automated pre-recorded announcements that are easier to hear are replacing individual conductors’ efforts at announcing the next stops. Some people bemoan the loss of individuality underground while others prefer the crisper and over-enunciated sounds of the new announcements. Either way, those disembodied voices have become ubiquitous underground, and earlier this week, the voice recognition blogged Whose Voice is That? explored the personalities behind the voices. Did you know that the female voices usually provide information while the male voice provides instructions and commands? Since 2000 Charlie Pellett, Jessica Ettinger Gottesman, Dianne Thompson and Catherine Cowdery have been ordering us around underground, and WViT has the goods on them.

January 7, 2010 17 comments

MTA Economics MTA Politics

Quinn’s Council proposal: Almost getting it right

by Benjamin Kabak January 7, 2010

written by Benjamin Kabak on January 7, 2010

After spending the early part of this week highlighting politicians who do not seem to care enough about transit to educate themselves, we find ourselves faced with a high-ranking New York official who nearly gets it. Christine Quinn, speaker of the City Council, has engaged in a very public campaign to support the student MetroCard program and to speak out against the MTA’s proposed service cuts. She’s nearly on the right track with some of her words, but I am wary of fully supporting her plan.

At a rally on Tuesday to protest cuts to the student MetroCard program, Quinn spoke about throwing Council support behind the student rides. More importantly, she stressed how the City Council would consider more funding for student transportation during the spring budgeting sessions and how she would prioritize this item. “I recognize there is a city responsibility in this funding, and we are willing to have that conversation and see what can be done,” Quinn said.

For this, I applaud Speaker Quinn. She is doing what a politician should be doing. She is promising to explore how the city can fulfill its funding obligations to the both the MTA and the New York’s students, many of whom rely upon free transit to get to and from school. She recognizes that these cuts aren’t something the MTA would choose to do but that years of financial neglect from the city and state have backed the MTA into a corner.

But beyond this proposal, Quinn’s actions get a little murky. In addition to her vow to find more money for student rides, she calls upon the MTA to take four actions immediately to stave off the cuts. Those are, according to her action center, as follows:

Reallocating 10 percent of direct stimulus aid to MTA operating expenses ($91.5 million);
Using budgeted PAYGO capital funds for operating ($50 million); and
Reallocating 10 percent of additional stimulus transit aid to State to operating ($30 million).
Do not implement any actions without a full set of public hearings.

First, let’s dispose of the last item. Numerous politicians have tried to criticize the MTA for passing a budget a week after it was unveiled and with no input for the public. This ignores the reality that the MTA Board was, by law, required to pass a balanced budget before the end of the 2009 calendar year and had just three weeks from the time the budget crisis was announced to do so. The agency has pledged to hold hearings this year and will reevaluate the proposed cuts before they need to be implemented in June.

The other three are, in effect, the Gene Russianoff Plan, and I’ve already voiced my reticence over using capital funds for operating deficits. In a nutshell, my fears concern the precedent such a financial move would set and the MTA’s dire need to continue investing in system maintenance and expansion even in the face of a short-term operating deficit.

If the agency is to reshuffle its budgets to cover its operating gap with capital funds, such a move will become the lazy legislature’s fallback every time a hole opens up in the MTA budget. Albany will begin reducing capital expenditures in order to meet operating budget projections, and the agency’s capital budget will empty faster than a raided piggy bank. If this is the last-gasp proposal to stave service cuts, I would support it, but until every other available long-term funding option has been exhausted, we cannot fund the MTA through a short-term reshuffling of its two separate balance sheet.

Right now, Quinn is an ally of transit, and she should remain so. I won’t sign her petition yet, but I won’t begrudge those who do. Until we know that other options — bridge tolls and congestion pricing — simply will not work, we cannot rob from the future for a short-term fix today. It won’t solve the systemic problems with the way the MTA is funded and will only exacerbate these shortcomings in the future.

January 7, 2010 5 comments

MTA Economics

Another day, another know-nothing politician: Peter Vallone, Jr.

by Benjamin Kabak January 6, 2010

written by Benjamin Kabak on January 6, 2010

City Council member Peter Vallone, Jr. (D) carries with him a familial legacy of New York politics. His grandfather was a judge in the Queens County Civil Court, and his father was the city’s first City Council speaker and a long-time representative from Astoria. When Senior stepped down in 2001, Junior took up the Vallone City Council seat mantle.

Yesterday, Peter Vallone, Jr. joined the long line of New York politicians who proved they know little to nothing about how the MTA works and how the city’s relationship with the transit agency is structured. For Vallone, ignorance of transit issues is nothing new. He opposed congestion pricing despite representing a transit-dependent district. In Astoria, according to a report from NYU’s Furman Center, 67 percent of all residents rely on public transit, and the 2000 Census found that just 53.2 percent of those who live in Vallone’s district don’t even own cars.

So what does Vallone have to say about the MTA? Lots! And none of it makes much sense. Daniel Edward Rosen of the Daily News had the report:

Vallone assembled a rally outside the Ditmars Blvd. station to slam the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for its proposed cuts, deemed necessary to plug a $400 million budget shortfall. “A lot of people think that the city officials have control over this, but we don’t,” said Vallone (D-Astoria). “What I can do is speak out for my district, and that’s what I will continue to do.”

Protesters held up signs that read “Save Our Subways” while Vallone chided the MTA for granting an 11.3% raise to its workers over three years. “You can’t give raises and then cut services. It’s Business 101, and they failed it,” said Vallone.

Chris O’Leary at On Transport has the comprehensive takedown. First, O’Leary notes that “Vallone failed Labor Relations 101.” As we know, the MTA and TWU went to binding arbitration over the new labor contract, and when the arbitration panel sided with the TWU, the MTA appealed. Ultimately, the agency lost the appeal, but Vallone is content to ignore that reality.

In truth, the MTA would rather not pay the raises and doing so will impact the bottom line over the next three years. But it is simply incorrect to say that the agency is giving out raises. Going to arbitration was a foolish move, but the MTA is legally obligated to follow the arbitration award now that it’s been judicially affirmed.

But the real problem with Vallone’s comments come in his ludicrous claim that city officials “don’t” “have control over this.” O’Leary highlights and disputes this claim by a City Council member: “Vallone seems to miss the fact that the city controls a portion of the funding provided to the MTA. Coincidentally, the city’s $159 million tithe for transit operations has been virtually unchanged since the mid-90s. If the services provided to the MTA are so important to his district, why isn’t Vallone suggesting that the city step up their funding of the MTA? That’s certainly within his control.”

Earlier this week, I took to task Assembly rep Aileen Gunther for her spurious claims about MTA financing and East River Bridge Tolls. Today, I will point my finger at Peter Vallone, Jr. as the next in a long line of politicians distorting or simply ignorant of the truth to make a populist anti-MTA point. It’s far easier to blame someone else for systemic funding problems than it is to find the political will and fiscal capital to improve the system.

January 6, 2010 14 comments

LIRR

A terminal opens in Brooklyn, over two years late

by Benjamin Kabak January 6, 2010

written by Benjamin Kabak on January 6, 2010

The new LIRR terminal at Flatbush and Atlantic Aves. is now open for business. (Photo courtesy of New York City Transit)

In 2004, the glaringly suburban and sterile Atlantic Terminal Mall complex opened as the first part of Bruce Ratner’s plan to take over a little corner of Brooklyn that doesn’t really want him there. Yesterday, after $108 million and over 30 months past due, the LIRR’s new Atlantic Terminal Pavilion finally opened.

The new building, designed by John di Domenico, is one of soaring ceiling and natural light that replaces construction tunnels and, before that, a rundown terminal. Sitting atop 10 subway lines and a busy LIRR hub, the new three-story structure is indeed a welcome improvement. According to the LIRR, the building was made of limestone, granite and glass, and its soaring atrium “allows natural light to reach the below ground LIRR concourse and subway station.” The building also features a new ticket office, public bathrooms and a new waiting area.

Efforts to rebuild and replace the Atlantic Terminal have a rather tortured history. The original station, built in 1907, was torn down in 1988, and the area has been in a state of flux since then. (For views of the old terminal, click here and here. John di Demonico’s design was chosen 13 years ago and construction began, with a price tag of $82 million, in 2002.

A.G. Sulzberger of The Times had more:

The completion of the $108 million update to the transportation hub — which has been called “Brooklyn’s Grand Central Terminal” for its approximately 25,500 Long Island Rail Road passengers and 31,650 subway riders each day — coincides with major redevelopment efforts in the neighborhood, including a new mall directly above the station and a proposed $1 billion basketball arena just blocks away.

Jay H. Walder, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, described the improved Atlantic Terminal as “a place, simply put, that you’d want to take a subway from or to.”

The semicircular outside walls and ceiling of the three-story pavilion are paneled with glass, allowing light to flood through the half-moon shaped atrium — replete with an artistic interpretation of a craggy bluff — and down a granite staircase to the remodeled limestone-clad platform level below. The architect, John di Domenico, said the design remained essentially unchanged in the thirteen years since it was chosen.

While many — from commuters passing through to Borough President Marty Markowitz — praised the new structure, others are dismayed with the anti-terrorist designs seemingly thrown in with little regard for the building. The Brooklyn Paper slames the coffin-like bollards that mar the sidewalk in front of the pavilion’s entrances. Gersh Kuntzman calls the building, airy on the inside, a “bunker” outside, and other architects agree.

“Obviously, the original design did not consider a terrorist attack,” Hayes Slade said. “In fact, the entryway presents a particularly open face to the street, which is aimed at transparency and access. Our society is at an odd transitional moment regarding how we deal with considerations of potential terrorism versus safety, mobility, openness.”

After the jump, a video tour of the Atlantic Terminal Pavilion, via the LIRR’s YouTube account.

January 6, 2010 26 comments

MTA

Amidst turmoil, MTA CFO Dellaverson calls it a career

by Benjamin Kabak January 6, 2010

written by Benjamin Kabak on January 6, 2010

Gary Dellaverson, then-director of labor relations for the MTA, speaks to reporters during a press conference in New York, Sunday, Dec. 18, 2005. (AP Photo/Ed Betz)

As the MTA struggles to close an operating deficit of approximately $300 million and reformulated its recently rejected five-year capital plan, the agency will be doing so without its long-term CFO. After 19 years at the MTA and the last three as the agency’s chief financial officer, Gary Dellaverson has retired.

At first blush, the timing of this announcements — noted today in a bond buyer’s trade — would raise an eyebrow or two. The MTA is under fire on all fronts for its financial woes. New Yorkers are irate over threatened cuts to student MetroCard programs, late-night bus routes and off-peak services, and the agency must overcome a shortfall in the revenue projected by the state and collected from the payroll tax. Meanwhile, the Governor has just vetoed the agency’s five-year $28.8 billion capital spending plan due to a funding gap of nearly $10 billion. The money just isn’t there.

Yet, Dellaverson’s departure, definitely ill-timed, was a long time coming. The 56-year-old MTA vet had planned to step down from his post in September, but incoming MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder asked him to assist his transition with the understanding that Dellaverson would retire at the end of the year. For now, David Moretti, an executive vice president at MTA Bridges & Tunnel, will assume the job on an interim basis.

As Dellaverson departs, he leaves a very tortured legacy though that is no fault of his. After the MTA enjoyed years of healthy financial outlooks and surplus budgets, Dellaverson became CFO in 2007 after serving as the lead point man for the agency’s labor relations. Since 2007, though, it has been one disaster after another. First, the economy and the real estate taxes upon which the MTA so heavily depends went south. Then, after much wrangling, Albany passed a funding package but did not deliver the money promised to the MTA. Thus, the agency is left with a yawning deficit and a hazy financial outlook.

For his part, Dellaverson did his best to bring accountability and transparency to the MTA’s finances. Living in the legacy of the false charges of two sets of books levied at the MTA, Dellaverson was more than willing to open the books at MTA Board meetings and went in depth in his financial presentations. Those available here on the MTA’s website are a testament to an agency committed to better fiscal transparency.

In the end, though, he leaves the MTA at an uncertain time. Walder has promised to overhaul the agency, and cost overruns plague many of the authority’s big-ticket projects. Meanwhile, the dueling deficits in both the capital and operating budgets remain to be filled. For now, Moretti has his work cut out for him, and whoever is the next CFO may be inheriting a fraught position on a sinking ship.

January 6, 2010 6 comments

Asides MTA Absurdity

MTA Board short six as state forgets to renew legislation

by Benjamin Kabak January 5, 2010

written by Benjamin Kabak on January 5, 2010

Chalk another one up to the ineptitude on display in Albany. The state legislature has forgotten to renew legislation that calls for six non-voting rider and union representatives on the MTA Board. As Pete Donohue reports today, the Board lost these six key members when the legislature expired at the end of 2009, and those in the Senate have shown no signs of renewing it. Those now off the board include NYC Transit Riders Council rep Andrew Albert, an outspoken rider advocate and one of the better transit experts on the board. James Blair (Metro-North riders), Norman Brown (Metro-North union), Ira Greenberg (LIRR riders), Vincent Tessitore, Jr. (United Transportation union) and Ed Watt (TWU) lost their seats as well.

“It really hurts the riders and the workers,” Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign said to The Chief-Leader. “Here was a direct pipeline to the big cheeses about what riders and workers were thinking, and that is going to be lost for what I hope will be a very brief period.”

As with most of Albany’s recent transit policies, for the state to allow these key appointments to expire at a time of fiscal crisis for the MTA is simply irresponsible. To make matters worse, four State Senators earlier this year sponsored S4480, a bill to extend the the term until 2012. The bill was committed to the Rules Committee in July and has languished there ever since. It’s just your typical Albany support for the MTA.

January 5, 2010 7 comments

Asides Public Transit Policy

Who will succeed Liu as Council Transportation Committee head?

by Benjamin Kabak January 5, 2010

written by Benjamin Kabak on January 5, 2010

For the last eight years, Comptroller John Liu had served in the City Council as ~~a bumbling fool~~ the head of the Transportation Committee. Tasked with city oversight of the MTA, the Transportation Committee could, in the right hands, be a vehicle for positive change, and as Cap’n Transit explored in depth yesterday, transit advocates should rally around a pro-transit candidate. The Cap’n ran down the list of potential contenders and noted that friend-of-cars James Vacca (D. Bronx) — a leading supporter of that five-minute parking grace period bill — seems to be the leading favorite for the seat. Vacca comes from a car-heavy district and has shown little love for mass transit. The Cap’n notes that Dan Garodnick is also interested in the spot and would be a better, transit-friendly choice.

This morning, Bob Kapstatter reported that the “powers that be” are pushing for Vacca to assume the head of the transportation committee. An appointment would give Vacca a launching point for a higher office while boosting the power of the Bronx delegations. That is not, however, a good reason to give away an important chair at a vital time in the city’s transit history. Time is of the essence, and the best way to avoid a Vacca-inspired committee is by telling Christine Quinn to appoint someone else.

January 5, 2010 15 comments

View from Underground

The sounds of anything but silence

by Benjamin Kabak January 5, 2010

written by Benjamin Kabak on January 5, 2010

In 2005, iPod ads were everyone in the subway. Today, bleeding headphones have become ubiquitous. (Photo by flickr user t_a_i_s)

I found myself on Monday evening awaiting a downtown 4 train on the IRT platform at Union Square. As the downtown 6 pulled out and an express idled on the uptown tracks, it was loud. The automated PA voice kept warning me to stand back from the moving platform; the downtown trains screeched around the sharp curve into the station; and the heated system on the idling uptown express hummed.

It is little wonder then that the noisiest spot in New York City is at a subway station. According to a recent study by Hear the World, the noisiest spot in the city with trains roaring by is the B/D/F/V stop at 42nd St./Bryant Park. The noise levels reach 93 decibels at the subway system’s 18th busiest stop.

According to hearing experts, that level of screech is enough to cause permanent hearing damage, and Craig Kasper, a Columbia doctor who works with Hear the World, urged people to be mindful of the noise. “Once you reach anything over 85 decibels, you are really at risk,” he said. “If you hear a loud noise, just put fingers in your ears.”

Outside of Bryant Park, subways in general were the fourth most noisiest part of New York City, behind the West Side Highway and the bus lanes on 42nd St. east of Fifth Ave. A typical subway ride exposes a straphanger to 80 decibels of sound. Although the new R160s are designed to reduce noise levels both as trains ride the rails and as they brake, there’s only so much engineering can accomplish, and sounds are aplenty underground.

Interestingly, this survey seems to reduce the noise levels found this summer when one group warned of 100+ decibel exposure at some subway stations. Those built around curves are the loudest as trains make more noises braking through twisted sections of track. If only we could go back in time to fix those errors of original engineering over 100 years ago.

Noise on the subways, meanwhile, is not a new phenomenon. As Bill Bahng Boyer, one of my guest columnists over the summer, explained in August, New Yorkers have been complaining about the noise since October 29, 1904, one day after the IRT opened for business. What is a new problem however is headphone bleed. Have you tried to take a relatively silent ride lately? It’s impossible.

Once upon a time, boom boxes were the scourge of New York City subway riders. Those with their noises in magazines would dread the arrival of a gang of youths with a loud radio on for all to hear. It was the ultimate in obtrusive noise pollution, and eventually the combination of a crackdown and the onset of personal audio devices saw boom boxes become a relic of another era.

Today, though, we are subjected to subpar headphone earbuds. Brought about by the iPod revolution, nearly everyone is now satisfied with tinny headphones that leak sound all over the place. Some riders listen at volumes that are death to the ears, and nothing is worse than hearing the strains of something from 15 away in a a half-empty subway cars. Others simply don’t know how bad their headphones are. One day, I imagine, New York City may see an increase in the number of people suffering hearing damage, and the iPod earbuds will be to blame.

For now, we should be mindful of the noise. Obviously, the subways are noisy, and those sounds can impact our life. We tend to tune out the sounds of metal-on-metal, the sounds of air conditioner drones, the screech of brakes. But it’s there, hurting our ears decibel after decibel.

January 5, 2010 23 comments

MTA Economics

Assembly rep re-writes history to bash MTA

by Benjamin Kabak January 4, 2010

written by Benjamin Kabak on January 4, 2010

Let me take a minute to introduce you to Aileen Gunther. Ms. Gunther, pictured at right, is the Democratic Assembly representative from the 98th District. She represents parts of Orange and Sullivan Counties, and based on her biography sounds neither clueless nor stupid.

Gunther has served in the Assembly since a special election delivered her to Albany in 2003. She has amassed a generally left-of-center voting record. She has won reelection every time she was up for it and is probably well-respected in her district — or at least as well-respected as any no-name Assembly representative can be. How then can she be so utterly clueless and in fact reckless when it comes to taking about transit policy in New York City?

In a piece over the holidays in the Times Herald-Record, Gunther opined on the MTA’s financial picture. She wrote:

Jay Walder, the MTA chief, who has been blaming the Legislature for the MTA’s problems, has an excessive — and baseless — $350,000 salary. In addition, the MTA failed to put tolls on the New York City bridges, which would have generated vital revenue for the state. It is that kind of frivolous spending and financial mismanagement that has put the MTA in this awful predicament — not the Legislature.

Where to begin? Where to begin?

We’ll start with the claim — the laughable, ludicrous, downright stupid claim — that the MTA itself “failed to put tolls” on the city’s bridges. Perhaps Ms. Gunther missed the brouhaha last spring, but it is up to her august legislative body and her colleagues across the hall in the State Senate to approve bridge tolls for New York City. Lest we forget, five State Senators quashed the toll plan in March and proposed the current funding plans a week later. The MTA would gladly have accepted tolls but couldn’t because of Albany and not some “financial mismanagement” as Ms. Gunther would have you believe.

Now, what about Gunther’s claims of Jay Walder’s “excessive” and “baseless” salary? Well, Walder was a top executive in London and is now in charge of thousands of MTA workers. He’s earning a salary barely comparable to other transit executives who oversee smaller authorities, and as Chris O’Leary at On Transport pointed out, he is in line for a pay reduction due to the budget crisis.

In the end, this piece by Gunther is an irresponsible hack job. She’s not representing anyone to the best of her ability and is displaying an utter lack of knowledge about recent transit problems in the area. Yet, her piece goes unanswered by the MTA for days and festers in its ignorance online. As O’Leary asked at his site, where is the MTA’s P.R. department to combat these spurious articles? Where are the editors of The Times Herald-Record?

January 4, 2010 15 comments

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