Due to a Sunday afternoon derailment of an Amtrak work train, the MTA is anticipating a rough Monday for westbound LIRR commuters. According to a statement released this evening, the Long Island Rail Road will “operate a significantly reduced AM Rush schedule” on Monday. Numerous trains will be canceled or diverted as crews work to rerail the train and repair the damaged track and catenary wires. The authority has already canceled 19 trains while a handful of others have been diverted to Atlantic Ave. Keep an eye on this page for the latest.
Category:
Asides
MTA projecting $120 million in ad revenue for 2011
written by Benjamin Kabak on May 6, 2011
While not covering much new ground, Alex Goldmark has a short bit up at Transportation Nation on the MTA’s advertising efforts. As the authority searches for more ways to draw in revenue, it has expanded its attempts to secure more advertising deals underground. Currently, Goldmark reports, 16 train cars — one 10-car 6 train and two 3-car shuttles — are currently wrapped in ads, and the MTA hopes to sell more external space this year.
Over the past few years as the economy went south, the authority’s ad revenue numbers had dipped. After earning $118 million in 2008, revenue totals were approximately $10 million less in 2009 and 2010, and a rebound this year would help ease the MTA’s fiscal pain. Meanwhile, the MTA currently has eight stations that have been dominated by one advertiser. These include Atlantic Ave., Wall Street, Union Square, Columbus Circle, Broadway/Lafayette, Grand Central, Times Square and the Bryant Park stop. With ad-covered turnstiles already here, we may be to look forward to in-tunnel ads as well.
Cabbies agitating for steep fare increase
written by Benjamin Kabak on May 5, 2011
They don’t like hybrid taxis or going outside of Manhattan, but New York City drivers do want the Taxi & Limousine Commission to approve a steep cab fare hike. The proposed raise would be the first in seven years and would see fares go up by approximately 15 percent across the board.
According to reports, the hike would see the mileage rate jump from $2 to $2.50 and would include a $1 morning rush-hour surcharge. Furthermore, trips from Manhattan to JFK would go up by $10 to $55 a ride, not including tips or tolls. The Daily News notes that the average three-mile trip would likely cost around $12.50, a steep price to pay for a short jaunt. “With higher gas prices and higher cab lease prices, drivers’ earnings are below a livable wage and below the minimum wage after working a 12-hour shift,” Taxi Workers Alliance Executive Director Bhairavi Desai said
Rider reaction to the proposal, as WNYC found out, was mixed. Some New Yorkers support a hike if it leads to a better standard of living for drivers, but others are wary of granting the raise without ensuring better service. Rider Dan Gross told the tale a cab driver who refused to take him to his destination. “It happened to me the other day. I get into a cab, tell him where I’m going and he said he couldn’t take me there,” Gross said. “I want to help them but they have to help me. I think it starts there.”
After Osama, security ramped up underground
written by Benjamin Kabak on May 4, 2011
The MTA, two weeks ago, revamped their security campaign with the release of a few new ads urging commuters to say something if they see something. It was an almost-prescient move by the transit authority as the city, after Osama Bin Laden’s death on Sunday, ramped up security across the board. As the Daily News noted briefly earlier this week, the subways are one area that will see increased police patrols. “We’re a little more visible today,” an MTA police officer said. “We have dogs out, guys with machine guns. They’re always here but we have more out. This is a major target.”
With the increased security comes more vigilance from the city’s straphangers as well. As ABC News reported, the added police presence will continue for some time as U.S. officials attempt to discern the fallout from Bin Laden’s death. So far, the city has noticed an increase in the number of people seeing something and saying something as well. On Monday, they fielded 60 calls — not all from the subways — and that total represents a figure higher than usual. Underground, the transit system remains porous, and striking the right balance between fear and vigilance remains necessary.
Queens commuters growing impatient over Court Sq. transfer
written by Benjamin Kabak on May 2, 2011
The new transfer between the E, M, G and 7 trains at Court Square was supposed to open in February. In March, the MTA renamed the 23rd St.-Ely Ave. station in anticipation of an April opening. Now, as May 2 is upon us, the transfer remains completed but closed as Citi Corp., the owner of the building through which the new transfer runs, and the MTA have failed to come to terms on a Memorandum of Understanding that would dictate the use of the space. It is a bureaucratic mess.
In the Queens Chronicle this week, Elizabeth Daly delves into the conflict over the transfer. She speaks with antsy commuters who have waited years for an enclosed escalator transfer and rehashes the vague details surrounding the conflict between Citi and the MTA. While the authority claims the entrance will open this spring, local politicians are annoyed. “It’s already a year late,” State Sen. Michael Gianaris said. “We shouldn’t let bureaucratic inertia slow down infrastructure improvement.”
Ultimately, this is a tale of the conflict between the MTA’s work and private interests at its finest. Citi is apparently hesitant to agree to certain obligations over entrance maintenance to which the MTA asks all of its real estate developers to adhere. One day, a transfer will open. One day.
In Xanadu did Gov. Christie a state-supported pleasure-dome decree
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 29, 2011
When New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie killed the ARC Tunnel project, he did so in the name of fiscal responsibility. Cost overruns for the project, based on FTA estimates, could have ranged from $1-$5 billion, and while the FTA noted that better project oversight would have kept those costs within a reasonable range, Christie, to gain a name for himself, torpedoed a project that would have brought $4 billion in federal money to the state and provided for 44,000 jobs as well as faster rides for nearly every city-bound Jersey commuter. It was, needless to say, a big blow to the area’s transit progress.
Yesterday, we learned just how far the limits of Christie’s fiscal “responsibility” stretch. With a Super Bowl on tap for the Meadowlands in 2014 and an ugly hulk of colorful panels known as Xanadu sitting on the turnpike, unfinished and broke, Christie’s administration has promised $400 million in subsidies and tax breaks to Triple Five, the Mall of America owners, if they finish the project. The group will have to spend up to $2 billion to do so, will give the ugly structure a new outside and will call it American Dream@Meadowlands.
Transit advocates in New Jersey are feeling the sting. As TM Brown at Radials notes, Christie has made what is essentially a political decision to fund private development over a public works project. While the ARC Tunnel commitment could have been more substantial, it also promised more federal dollars and greater economic benefits for the state. “It seems,” he writes, “almost inappropriate in a time of forced and severe austerity for millions of Americans that Gov. Christie has decided to fund what amounts to a temple to profound consumption and, just a year before, defunded a project that would have improved life and finances for millions. Though if people are happy with the defunding of the ARC tunnel, they can always go skiing in Xanadu.”
SAS hits: A contract for 86th St., small businesses suffer
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 25, 2011
I have a pair of Second Ave. Subway-related stories this afternoon. Let’s dive in: As the MTA’s tunnel boring machine moves southward underneath Second Ave., planning for the post-TBM construction efforts are well under way. Recently, as Tunnel Talk reported, the joint venture between Skanska and Traylor won the bid for the 86th St. station cavern contract. The JV’s bid of $302 million came in well below engineering estimates, and construction industry officials are not surprised by this figure. Due to the need to keep workers employed, companies are willing to bid low for these projects right now.
Per the report, work under this contract will include “excavation and finishing works of the 86th Street station as well as shafts and adits for the entrances, ancillaries and cross passages; demolition work in advance of entrances and ancillaries; and underpinning of existing buildings adjacent to the ancillaries and Entrance 1.” This contract, though, is not without uncertainties as the pending litigation over the relocated station entrances could delay some of the work at 86th St.
Meanwhile, Crain’s New York has yet another story on how businesses along Second Ave. are suffering amidst construction. The story is one we’ve heard for nearly three years now, and the situation isn’t going to improve any time soon. Businesses have seem revenues drop by 20 percent from 2008, and owners see no short-term relief coming their way. Of course, they do recognize the future benefits. As Ralph Schaller, owner of a grocery store at 86th St. said, “I guess business will improve when it’s over, if we’re still around.”
MTA merch big in Japan
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 25, 2011
The MTA is apparently huge in Japan, according to an article in today’s Post. Jeremy Olshan took a look at the MTA’s merchandising and licensing sales and discovered that 20 percent of the sales are made in Japan. Of the $5 million of MTA-licensed merchandise sold last year, $1.1 million of it came from Japan, and with a royalty rate of 10 percent, the authority earned $111,332 from Cosmo Japan. “We seem to do especially well in countries that have an affinity for subway systems,” Mark Heavey, the authority’s head marketer, said.
Olshan, who offers up a full list of MTA licensees, drills down on the sales totals as well. Clothing sales from NYC Subway Line generated over $70,000 in royalties for the MTA while token and subway bullet cufflinks and umbrellas remain top sellers. My personal favorite items though are the subway bullet magnets because I can spell out my first name on my fridge.
Smartphones still powering bump in subway crimes
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 21, 2011
Every few months, as the MTA releases its crime statistics, we’ve seen a few themes recycled through the news coverage. As I wrote in October and again revisted in January, straphangers’ obliviousness underground has resulted in an uptick in subway thefts as those who flaunt their smartphones and tablets are getting robbed.
Today, as The Wall Street Journal reports, those numbers are again on the rise. Grand larcenies — defined, in part, as the theft of a cell phone — are up 17.8 percent in 2011 as compared with the same time period last year, and police officials are blaming the iPhone 4. “We’ve been seeing an incredible trend of young people snatching those cellphones,” Raymond Diaz, head of the NYPD’s transit department, said to MTA officials today.
According to Diaz, most thefts occur on crowded trains when pickpockets can be most active, and the lines most frequently targeted included the East Side IRT in Manhattan, the J and L trains in Brooklyn and the M, R and 7 lines in Queens. The thieves, the cops say, are reselling most of the phones, and the NYPD is planning a sting. Still, despite this news, crime underground is well below levels from even the late 1990s, and Diaz warned against straphangers who are too complacent. “We feel good that people feel comfortable using their devices,” he said. “But they’ve just go to be a little cautious, especially when they’re sitting by the door.”
The dilemma of picking the best route
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 20, 2011
By and large, most subway trips aren’t fraught with choices. If I want to get from, say, the northern end of Park Slope to the western edge of Washington Square Park, I take a 20-minute ride on the B train, and I don’t have to think about it. But what happens when two trains leave the same station bound for the same stop but take two different routes? How do we pick which one to take?
In the Internet age, apparently the answer is to ask Quora as one Brooklynite has done. The subway-related question is a simple one: “If an uptown F and A train depart Jay St./Borough Hall at the same time, which one will get to West 4th first?” Generally, the two trains seem to take the same amount of time to traverse the stops in between, and if anything, the F will arrive a minute or so sooner. But then other considerations take over. While neither train has seats, the A at West 4th St. is two flights closer to street level than the F.
Admittedly, these conflicts of timing are rare, but they always pose a dilemma. Is it faster to take the 4 from Brooklyn to Yankee Stadium or the D train? Should I take the F to Forest Hills or the E? And of course, if you leave from points in Midtown bound for JFK, neither the E nor the A is faster than the other. Choices, choices, choices.