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LI Bus cut from MTA budget, for now

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on December 15, 2010

After months of public posturing and closed-door negotiations with Nassau County, the MTA Board voted this morning to cut all subsidies for the Long Island Bus. As the battle over funding has dragged on through the fall, the vote was not a surprise, and negotiations will continue into the spring. For now, Nassau County riders won’t be left without buses as the MTA must give 60 days’ notice before suspending service, but the urgency to find a solution to the funding woes is very much there.

Essentially, the debate is one of dollars. The bus system costs over $130 million to operate, and while the state picks up $45 million in costs, the county pays just $9 million. The MTA pays the rest even though Nassau County originally agreed in the 1970s to foot the bill. “I think Nassau County has an obligation to fund bus service in Nassau County, just as every other suburban county has an obligation,” MTA CEO and Chair Jay Walder said after the vote today.

Eventually, I expect the county and authority to reach a funding agreement that will gradually phase out MTA contributions while Nassau County increases theirs. Still, Nassau County is moving forward with a request for proposals should they need to privatize the system, and advocates are awaiting the resolution of this political drama with bated breath. “We’re disappointed,” TSTC’s Ryan Lynch said to Newsday. “They’re negotiating, so we have some hope.”

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AsidesNew York City Transit

Rumblings of a full line weekend shutdown grow louder

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on December 14, 2010

Back in May, at a talk with reporters, MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder talked, as he often does, about his experiences in London. To accomplish work efficiently, Transport for London often shuts down service across entire lines for much of a weekend, and the MTA has been debating doing that here. Walder mentioned it to me again during my interview with him, and at yesterday’s Transit Committee meeting, NYCT head Tom Prendergast broached the subject as well.

The MTA, it seems, may be revamping the way they approach weekend work. “Maybe for some of the more difficult tests, that take a long time to set up, pick one Saturday a month and do it at night, starting after five or six o’clock at night, look at things like that,” Prendergast said.

On the one hand, this will inconvenience thousands of subway riders, but on the other hand, weekend service changes already do that. If the MTA can minimize the frequency of the changes, blitzing a line could pay off in the long run. Meanwhile, in response to the findings that crews falsified signal inspections, Transit may need to increase the time and manpower required to conduct a thorough review of the system’s numerous signals. Weekend work and changes just make get worse before it gets better.

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AsidesStaten Island

At Tompkinsville, a low fare evasion total

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on December 13, 2010

Since 2008, the MTA had plans in the works to add tolls to the Tompkinsville stop along the Staten Island Rail Road. They move, they said, would generate $700,000 annually and cut into the SIR’s $3.4 million operating loss. That fare collection started in January, and it has so far been a guarded success.

In documents released this weekend, New York City Transit reported that ridership at Tompkinsville had totalled 204,000 paying customers between January 20 and the end of October with a low fare evasion rate of just 0.59 percent. Overall, SIR revenue is up only 6.1 percent over the same period last year, and the MTA attributes this lower-than-expected total to the weak economy and some higher labor expenses. The authority is still considering a plan to institute fares along the entire length of the SIR.

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AsidesBrooklyn

Incentivizing transit ridership with…beer?

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on December 12, 2010

When the Nets new arena opens at the Atlantic Yards complex in a few years, it will bring with it traffic to a few of Brooklyn’s quieter residential neighborhoods. With Park Slope to the south, Prospect Heights to the east and Fort Greene to the north, the area doesn’t lend itself to the multitude of cars that will throng its streets on game days. Unfortunately, despite sitting atop one of the city’s busiest subway hubs and a Long Island Rail Road, the project will come with more parking than we’d like. To encourage mass transit use then, one advocate has proposed an idea for the masses: free beer.

At a Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council meeting held last week to attack the traffic problem, Ryan Lynch of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign called upon Forest City Ratner to subsidize a free beer for those who take the train to the game. “Give people a free beer. They’re not driving,” Lynch said. “There needs to be more incentives from the developer and events promoters to encourage event-goers to get on mass transit. You could show your Metrocard or LIRR ticket and get a discount at the concession stand.”

A spokesman for the developers issued a very spokesman-y statement. “We’re working on a fully integrated transportation plan that will look at a variety of ways of using mass transit instead of driving to the arena on game nights or event nights,” Joe DePlasco said. Ultimately, though, the Nets and Forest City Ratner should figure out a way to encourage transit use. Whether that includes supporting a residential parking permit program for the neighborhood’s streets or offering MetroCard- and LIRR-based discounts, driving to this arena should be discouraged. I’d drink to that.

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AsidesMetroCard

Automating the MetroCard replacement process

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on December 9, 2010

To replace a damaged MetroCard involves, as with many things at the MTA, a process. A rider has to get a form from a station agent, figure out how to fill it out and mail it back to the MTA in a postage-paid envelope. Over the course of a year, Transit processes 170,000 for demagnetized cards or for those scanned twice, and the average turnaround time is 7-11 days.

Lately, though, this cumbersome process has been slowed because the envelopes have become a scarce commodity. As the New York City Transit Riders Council President’s Forum a few weeks ago, a station agent spoke on how the postage-paid envelopes hadn’t been restocked in months, and Pete Donohue noted earlier this week that the envelopes were in short supply.

Today, the News reports that the MTA is going to use a nascent technology called the Internet to improve the MetroCard trade-in process. Beginning in the second quarter of 2011, when customers encounter a faulty card, they can fill out an online form to process an exchange. That move online should allow the MTA to cut down on administrative and mailing costs and should also speed up the exchange. The online upgrade, reportedly in the works since 2009, has been a long time coming, but what’s taken so long?

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AsidesSecond Avenue Subway

A hearing for 2nd Ave. businesses, but what response?

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on December 8, 2010

Since construction fences, noise and debris descended upon Second Ave. in mid-2007, businesses along the future subway route have struggled to survive. Fewer Upper East Siders are walking the work-clogged strip and restaurants who have had to sacrifice their outdoor cafes due to lost sidewalk space have seen revenues drop precipitously. Business owners have routinely asked for state or MTA hand-outs, but these requests have been met with a resounding no.

Last week, the Second Ave. Business Association again went hat-in-hand to the New York Senate, Dan Rivoli reported in Our Town. During a hearing on the status of the Second Ave. Subway construction, Joe Pecora asked for two intertwined things: “Promote foot traffic that has gone down 50 percent. Make Second Avenue a sales tax-free zone.” In the past, the Senate had failed to act on a grant fund or a property tax abatement, and the city has not responded to these requests either.

For its part, the MTA vowed again to make sure its work site is cleaned up. The authority will ensure that garbage isn’t left to rot — and breed rats — overnight, and capital construction has engaged in an effort to beautify the construction area. They are considering a call to minimize the number of empty construction containers left in front of storefronts as well. Yet, from politicians and from the MTA the message was the same: There’s only so much they can do, and the business disruptions are just the cost of constructing a subway line that will lead to a neighborhood boom when it’s completed. “Our options,” City Councilman Dan Garodnick said, “are limited.”

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AsidesFulton Street

Fulton St. Hub finally sticking to a schedule

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on December 7, 2010

In Transit Fantasyland, the Fulton St. Hub would have been completed last year at a cost of $700 million. Instead, after years of delays, redesigns and cost overruns, the MTA in 2007 eventually set a completion date of 2014 and a budget of $1.4 billion. “What I present today, I stand by. I expect you to hold me accountable to it,” Capital Construction President Michael Horodniceanu said a few years ago, and it appears as though the authority is indeed sticking to its schedule.

As Matt Dunning of The Tribeca Trib reports, the Fulton St. Hub is still on pace for a 2014 opening. “The job is going well,” Uday Durg, a program executive at the MTA, said to a Community Board 1 meeting recently. “All of our contracts are moving on schedule and are tracking on budget.”

As Dunning notes, 2011 will see the continued gradual opening of parts of the hub. Southbound R trains will again pick up and drop off passengers at Cortlandt St. by 9/11/11, the tenth anniversary of the 2011 attacks. A new entrance for the West Side IRT will open on William St., and a temporary tunnel between the IND platform and the East Side IRT stop will be available for use as well. With the Corbin Building shored up and funding in place, the plagued project is finally getting well off the ground.

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ARC TunnelAsidesPANYNJ

A mundane ending for Port Authority’s ARC money

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on December 6, 2010

With the ARC Tunnel dead and buried for the foreseeable future, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has unexpectedly found itself with over $3 billion to spend. Since there are no shortages of transportation infrastructure upgrades in the New York region that need funding, finding ways to spend this dough is no tall order. As Andrew Grossman reported in the Wall Street Journal this weekend, the Port Authority has already lined up projects to complete.

By and large, the ARC money will go to road improvements. The PA plans to reconstruct the 72-year-old approach to the Lincoln Tunnel on the New Jersey side of the river, and the George Washington Bridge needs a new set of support cables. On the transit side of things, the PA will start work on a new bus garage in Manhattan that will allow for increased bus loading and drop-offs at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Most of these projects would have been delayed until 2016 or beyond had ARC gone ahead.

I certainly can’t fault the PA for using its money, and they seem to be doing so wisely. Unfortunately, these projects won’t do much, if anything, to address the need to increase rail capacity across the Hudson River. Until we do that, the PA is simply spinning its wheels as it modernizes infrastructure leading to bottlenecks under the river.

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AsidesBrooklynQueens

Queens, Brooklyn to enjoy long-awaited subway connections

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on December 4, 2010

As far as minor subway construction projects go, none generate more interest among riders than the long-awaited transfer between the 7 at Court House Square and G at Court Square. The project was supposed to be completed in early 2010, and it has stretched ever onward. Today, though, NY1’s John Mancini brings word that the connection will finally open in February. Riders will now have an in-system transfer between the E, M, G and 7 and will no longer have to cross Jackson Ave. or pay two fares.

Meanwhile, Mancini tells us that another new subway connection — the pedestrian tunnel between Jay St. and Lawrence St. in Downtown Brooklyn — will open on December 10, ahead of schedule. This new transfer point between the A/C/F and R trains is part of a $108 million rehab of the Lawrence St.-MetroTech and Jay St.-Borough Hall Stations. When the project is completed, the new station complex will be called Jay St.-MetroTech. For a video on the new transfer point, check out this July post. Now if only Transit would connect the L and 3 trains at Junius and Livonia.

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ARC TunnelAsides

Nearly one-third of ARC money heading to roads

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on December 2, 2010

When Gov. Chris Christie canceled the ARC Tunnel over what he said were cost overrun concerns, many transit advocates believed he had an ulterior motive for canceling the project. Today, we learn that the conspiracy theories just might be true. As Bloomberg News’ Dustan McNichol reported, New Jersey will take $1.25 billion in money originally intended for the ARC Tunnel and use it on roads instead.

On the one hand, this development isn’t as outrageous as it could be. The $1.25 billion is coming from bonds issued by the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, and had ARC gone forward, this bond issue would have been one of the few in which highway funds were bonded for rail projects. “Historically, only turnpike projects have been funded with turnpike tolls,” Martin Robins of the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center said. “[ARC] was one of a few exceptions to the rule — by far the largest exception.”

On the other, well, investing in roads — and in particular, road expansion plans — without adding rail capacity will hinder the New York/New Jersey region. By improving and widening roads, New Jersey will be encouraging more cars to hit the roads, and as these cars head to the region’s center of commerce, congestion under the Hudson River will continue to gross worse. Sustainability and economic efficiency will take a significant hit. It’s true that the ARC Tunnel had design flaws, but spending on roads without increasing rail capacity will be disastrous for the region.

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