Benjamin Kabak

If this foul-mouthed can figure this out, the rest of us should too, and it’s far better than being told, as we once were, that courtesy is contagious. I particularly enjoyed the puppets’ “Showtime!” routine at around the 45-second mark.

I’ll have more substantial material over the weekend. As a preview, check out David W. Dunlap’s excellent exploration of everyone’s favorite $4 billion subway station. There’s a lot to unpack in that piece, including a kicker that seems to indicate Santiago Calatrava tried to go back to the Port Authority for even more money when his designs fell short of expectations. As you can imagine, I have lots of thoughts on that piece, and I’ll share them soon.

When it comes to proper subway behavior, I have Very Strong Opinions about things. I’m not a big fan of the “Showtime!” troupes who sweep folks out of the way on crowded subways to perform acrobatic feats that are often more feet than anything else (though I did see a good pole routine on a semi-empty train a few weeks back). I also believe that healthy adults with backpacks should them respectfully at their feet, and riders should generally take up the right amount of space without doing anything too disgusting or personal in public.

So when I heard about a wedding on an N train on Friday, I raised a quizzical eyebrow. Maybe it’s because I’m amidst planning my own wedding (or at least my fiancée is), but I find myself unable to grow too skeptical of a wedding. And as far as minimizing impact to other riders, this one was perfect. The bridge and groom were married on a Manhattan-bound N train at 3:30 p.m. on Friday afternoon of Thanksgiving Day weekend. The bride boarded the train at 36th St., and they performed the ceremony while crossing the Manhattan Bridge. That’s a low-traffic time on a low-traffic route.

The groom summed up this zany idea. “We’ve been through a lot. Good times, bad times, and a lot of the good times have taken place on the train,” Hector Irakliotis said. “Confessions of love, reconciliations, goofy, ridiculous conversations — the whole spectrum. In New York, you spend so much time on the train, we thought why not?”

As Gawker noted, it’s exceedingly easy to answer Irakliotis’ rhetorical question, but the bride’s reason is enough to melt anyone’s heart. “I’m originally from Ukraine, and each time we’d come back here, I’d say to Hector, ‘It doesn’t feel like home until I see the skyline as we’re crossing the bridge.’ And he remembered that. He planned it out specifically so that we’d see the skyline as we were married,” Tatyana Sandler said. Hopefully, we won’t be flooded with copy cats, but as many of my Twitter followers noted, a beaming bridge is far more preferable to a flying foot landing on a straphanger’s nose.

I’m traveling for business this week and will check in when I can. I don’t anticipate any breaking news but, with the subways, you never know.

A fundamental question that isn’t often considered about New York City’s transit network concerns the adequacy of current service. Is a transit network that is essentially the same as it was in 1970 sufficient for New York City in 2014? Even if we flip ahead to 2020 when the 7 line extension, presumably, will be open, and the first phase of the Second Ave. Subway, presumably, will be open, not all that much will have changed over the past 50 years. Other than the advent of the MetroCard, improvements have been around the margins.

Very few things that are so integral to our everyday lives last five decades without change. Now, we can’t overlook new rolling stock and around $70 billion of investment in the region’s transit network, but we also can’t grow complacent. Complacency — or outright complaint — has led to where we are now. The MTA is reviled, and worse, the MTA’s forward progress seems to involve hauling a two-ton rock up a steep hill.

Nothing proves this point quite like the MTA’s Reinvention Commission report. I spoke earlier this week on my disappointment with the commission, and on Tuesday — two days before Thanksgiving — at 5:30 p.m. in a blatantly obvious attempt to bury a much-anticipated report that wound up saying very little, the MTA released the final draft. From the image on the cover of the sun setting on New York City to the fact that the report skirts the very issues that are fundamental to reinvention, the thing was designed to be good P.R. that’s ultimately ignored.

Over at Pedestrian Observations, Alon Levy has printed his very thorough examination of just why this report is so underwhelming. You should read his piece; there’s no reason for me to rehash his (or my) arguments. Instead, I want to look at three ways in which the MTA must be reinvented. I don’t the answers as to how — that’s a question above my current pay grade. But these are issues that have to be addressed for NYC to grow, and shockingly, it’s not all about a steady revenue stream.

1. The cost is too damn high. It’s been repeated everywhere for years, but the MTA’s construction costs are too high. For the amount of money they’ve spent on rather piddling subway extension north on 2nd Ave. or west to Hudson Yards, other countries build massive systems. The MTA’s construction costs are up to ten times higher than they should be. Why? Don’t ask the Reinvention Commission; they’re content with urging the MTA simply to “get the right work done faster and cheaper.”

2. Challenge the GCA … and the unions. A committee brought together by a politician isn’t about to go after two of the stronger interest groups in politics, but two of the main drivers behind the MTA’s high costs are contractors and labor. Someone with political capital will have to go after these two groups in order for the MTA to drive down its costs. Cuomo could have done that four years ago, but those were two interests that helped him gain office in the first place.

3. It all takes too long. Ask the MTA how long until we get countdown clocks at B Division stations, and the answer is, as it has been since 2011 or 2012, “three to five years.” Ask the MTA about a MetroCard replacement and the answer is still unclear. Figure out why it’s going to take over eight long years to build 2.5 miles of subway tunnel and three new stations along Second Ave., and you could win some sort of award. It’s been nearly 11 years since the MTA issued its Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Second Ave. Subway. Does that mean what we plan today won’t see the light of day until 2025? Considering that we as a city are barely planning anything, that’s not a good sign.

Start there; reinvent something. Otherwise, nothing will change.

Earlier this year, in an attempt to save face on his lack of transportation policy, Gov. Andrew Cuomo appointed a who’s who of global transit experts to the so-called MTA Reinvention Commission, and then, nothing happened. The commission met a few times, but the meetings were underwhelming. Then as Election Day came and went, nothing arrived from the panel. It seemed as though Cuomo didn’t want the report to discuss MTA financing ahead of Election Day.

Now, though, the report — or at least an early draft of it — is out, and well, it’s boring. Dana Rubinstein got her hands on it, and you can read the thing at Capital New York (PDF links: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3). Here’s Rubinstein’s take:

The resulting report suggests that the M.T.A. continue to do some things it’s already doing (make its subways more resilient in cases of flooding, partner with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to improve access to the region’s airports), and some things it’s not…If the commission’s prescriptions occasionally border on underwhelming—it recommends, for example, that the M.T.A. remove the word “bus” from Select Bus Service to distinguish it from its less-sexy bus counterparts—the report’s description of purpose is strongly worded…

The M.T.A. underpins a New York metropolitan region that “accounts for 60 percent of the population of the state and 80 percent of its tax base, and contributes nearly 10 percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product,” the report says.

“Yet despite the value of the system that enables this success, even a cursory glance at peer regions around the world makes it clear that New York is significantly under-investing in its public transportation infrastructure,” it says. “The past is not prologue to the future: if New Yorkers want to continue to live in a world class region they must envision and develop a world class transit system.”

What’s Select Bus Service without the bus? Select Service? That makes no sense to anyone unfamiliar with the transit network, but I digress.

As Rubinstein notes, and as the report clearly details, the commission wants the MTA to continue its capital expansion plans, respond to the challenges of climate change, develop a next-gen fare payment system, build real BRT and, uh, do something about funding. What that something is what the commission punted on, and therein lies the problem.

Reinventing the MTA means answering very hard questions about funding schemes, transportation equity and who’s paying for and using what mode and how. It’s also about pushing politicians to take ownership over the MTA — which is a creation of the state — and it’s about building support for transit from all constituents who use it and their elected representatives. Sometimes that may mean angering smaller, more vocal constituent blocks to deliver something more beneficial to many. That’s just the reality of it.

Here, we have a commission of big names running away from the problem. It’s not clear, and probably never will be, if someone above them torpedoed the politically challenging aspects of transit support, but what we have, unsurprisingly, is a commission tasked with someone grand and delivering an obvious message on a small scale. It’s a reinvention commission that itself needs reinventing.