Buses

A City Comptroller's report alleges that Cemusa has done a poor job cleaning its bus shelters. (Photo by flickr user animalvegetable)

When Cemusa entered into its 20-year contract with New York City to install and maintain bus shelters and newsstands across the city, critics lamented the death of New York’s individuality. Noted that the bus shelters were the same in the Big Apple as they were elsewhere, Brooks of Sheffield called unspecial and unoriginal. Others, meanwhile, had more legitimate complaints as Queens Crap complained of snow removal neglect and Sheepshead Bites accused of Cemusa’s bus stations of peddling in misinformation. Now, the city government is piling on too.

In an audit released earlier this week, New York City Comptroller set his sights on Cemusa’s failure to adhere to its bargain. Bus shelters aren’t as clean or well maintained as the company promised they would be, John Liu’s office said. The full report is available here as a PDF. The short of it from the Comptroller’s Office:

Under the franchise agreement, Cemusa is required, at its own expense, to clean, inspect, and maintain the structures in good repair. With DOT’s approval, Cemusa has outsourced its inspection, cleaning, and maintenance responsibilities to subcontractors. DynaServ Industries, Inc. (DynaServ) is responsible for cleaning, inspecting, and posting advertisements, and Pipeline Construction, LLC (Pipeline) was responsible for repairing and replacing damaged parts and performing electrical repairs and annual electrical inspections. This audit addressed Cemusa’s upkeep of the bus stop shelters, the most common type and widely used street furniture across the City.

The audit concluded that Cemusa needs to improve its oversight efforts to ensure that its subcontractors maintain bus stop shelters in compliance with its franchise agreement with DOT. Cemusa has certain mechanisms in place to assess its subcontractors’ performance regarding the upkeep of the bus stop shelters. However, these mechanisms do not provide sufficient assurance that the subcontractors’ performance ensures Cemusa’s compliance with the provisions of its franchise agreement regarding the upkeep of the bus stop shelters.

For the audit test period, Cemusa’s subcontractor, DynaServ, did not service (inspect and clean) the bus stop shelters at the level required. DynaServ’s productivity expectations (the number of shelters that can be cleaned by each crew in one shift) are overly optimistic and DynaServ has not allocated sufficient resources to ensure that each shelter will be cleaned twice each week on non-consecutive days as required. The audit also showed that Cemusa’s other subcontractor, Pipeline, needed to improve its performance in regard to responding promptly and repairing reported defective conditions. Further, there was insufficient evidence that all electrical inspections were carried out as reported. Based on these and additional factors discussed herein, we lack reasonable assurance that the bus stop shelters are serviced in accordance with Cemusa’s franchise agreement with DOT.

At a certain level, Cemusa disputed the Comptroller’s results. The company noted that Liu’s audit was based on one observable point in time and that the subcontractor routinely upheld its end of the deal. “No trend can be assessed and no conclusion can be drawn,” the company said. Despite protests from the Comptroller’s Office, Cemusa said cleaning efforts are generally sufficient and up to contractual standards.

Still, they agreed with five points from the report. It avowed the need for better subcontractor oversight, promised to clean roof panels more frequently and will establish proactive oversight and monitoring of contractors. After all, with 14 years left in the contract and more ad revenue rolling in, the company has a compelling reason to keep these shelters clean.

In response to the audit, Transportation Nation wondered if the criticism speaks to the problem of privatization. “When a private company manages public space,” Alex Goldmark wrote, “they too, leave it dirty sometimes, just like the DOT did when they managed bus shelters.”

That’s a bit of an oversimplification. The current bus stops, while perhaps not unique or to the liking of those who yearn for old New York, are cleaner, bigger and brighter than the old shelters. They’ve been modernized and are generally well maintained by Cemusa. I’ve watched those in my neighborhood cleaned regularly, and based on my lack of faith in John Liu, I am inclined to believe the City Comptroller’s Office relied upon a less than rigorous audit methodology here.

Still, privatization of public spaces isn’t a panacea. Cemusa may be paying $1.5 billion for the rights to the bus shelters and newsstands, but it still has to confront the same realities of maintenance and upkeep that the city did when it was in charge. From a use perspective, I’m far more concerned with the observations Al Rosen made in May: If the information concerning bus routes isn’t correct, who cares how often the glass gets cleaned anyway?

One question I’ve struggled with over the past few months has concerned fare-jumping. Does the New York City media place too much of an emphasis on the revenue lost to fare-jumping? Should we care that a small percentage of transit riders try to duck their fares? At what point does the cost of increased enforcement outweigh the benefits?

When it comes to subway fare enforcement efforts, I’ve been firmly on the side of ignoring it. I think the media has spent all together too much time focusing on subway fare jumping as it is mostly just an inconvenience. Steeper fines are likely a sufficient deterrent by themselves. But what about buses?

For a while, the MTA had pegged bus fare evasion as a $14 million problem. Despite anecdotal reports of rampant fare jumping on certain bus lines, Transit had downplayed their bleed rate. Now, it seems, it may be worse than they thought. Pete Donohue had the report:

The MTA loses about $50 million in revenue each year to bus farebeaters — more than triple what it previously estimated, the Daily News has learned. The staggering figure is partly the result of a new way the authority calculates fare-dodging, but also indicates that the longstanding problem has worsened because of lax enforcement, sources said.

The authority previously had estimated that bus farebeaters were stealing $14 million worth of free rides annually. Gauging bus freeloading levels has been an inexact science. Drivers are supposed to keep tallies by pushing a button every time someone boards without paying. The authority also has used video to estimate the frequency of bus farebeating.

“This is situation we have to get under control,” MTA board member Allen Cappelli said. “Not only is it a significant amount of revenue, but you’re allowing people to behave in a lawless manner.”

At a certain point, some bleed is inevitable, but if the MTA’s $50 million estimate is accurate, the new bleed rate on the buses has jumped from around 1.5 percent of annual revenue to 5.5 percent of annual revenue. It’s probably time to address the problem.

As folks enter without paying their fares, it creates a disincentive for others to swipe their MetroCards, and enforcement has been lax. According to Donohue, the MTA is working to propose a citywide plan to “deter fare evasion,” and politicians are calling for more police activity aboard buses. It’s tough to say though what the golden ticket will be here. Until these figures decline though, bus fare evasion will garner headlines one way or another.

One of the biggest obstacles the MTA and NYC DOT face in implementing their brand of Select Bus Service concerns bus lane enforcement. Since the city has hesitated to embrace physically separated lanes, somehow, the two agencies need to find a way to keep cars out of bus lanes. Aggressive policing can accomplish this but so too can bus lane cameras. The MTA can now use such cameras in some bus lanes, but the agency has ran into a problem with the city over fine collection.

According to recent reports in The Daily News, current MTA Chairman and CEO Joe Lhota has yet to authorize bus lane camera enforcement because fines collected from lane violators does not reach the MTA. Instead, it get siphoned into the city’s coffers, unlikely to benefit transit projects or riders. The situation is, in a word, absurd.

Pete Donohue has the story:

The MTA is poised to boost bus-lane enforcement on First and Second Aves. — a step that’s long overdue — but only if the city agrees to share the income with the transit agency.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Joseph Lhota refused to sign off on the purchase of the bus-lane enforcement cameras for the M15 Select route after staffers told him all the ticket revenue would go to city coffers, sources said last night.

In other words, the MTA would make an investment and the city would get all the returns. Lhota has an MBA from the Harvard Business School but anyone with the IQ of a beagle would see there’s something very wrong with that. One source said the illogic of entering into such an arrangement was indeed questioned by the prior transit administration.

The MTA has hesitated to discuss the issue publicly as any spat with the Bloomberg administration is unlikely to draw favorable. “We’re still finalizing a time frame,” a spokesman said to The News. “This turned out to be a bit more complicated than anticipated, but we are moving forward.”

Furthermore, according to Donohue, the authority doesn’t want all of the lane enforcement revenue; it just wants some to defray the costs of enforcement equipment. State politicians, though, who do not need to be beholden to a lame-duck city mayor, have been more aggressive in arguing for the revenue. Apparently, a similar set-up exists between the city and MTA for toll-evasion fines, and Staten Island’s Nicole Malliotakis wants to end that practice. “Money generated by MTA personnel should go back to benefit the MTA,” she said.

This truly seems like a no-brainer. NYPD officers have issued 27000 bus lane tickets since October and dole out, on average, around 40,000 traffic violation summonses on bridges and tunnels. The MTA does not receive any direct revenues from these enforcement efforts. Even if some of the dollars are returned to the MTA through the city’s contributions to the authority’s operating budget, the inequities are extreme and nonsensical. The MTA, which could use the money to improve service or restore routes lost to the 2010 cuts, allows enforcement dollars to slip away. That’s just a bad relationship, and Lhota is right to hold back on purchasing enforcement equipment until a more equitable solution can be reached.

More buses with three doors will hit the streets of New York City soon.

As we well know, New York City buses, particularly along crowded routes, suffer from a boarding problem. With a MetroCard system that requires riders to dip their cards in one direction, boarding can seem interminable, especially at popular stations during rush hour. With a contactless fare payment system still a few years from seeing the light of day, the slow bus board process is one of the main reasons why it’s often faster to walk than it is ride the bus.

In addition to the slow boarding process, riders exiting through the front cause additional problems as those folks waiting to board must first have to wait for others to exit. Over the years, the MTA has tried — not very hard — to combat this problem. Low-floor vehicles make buses easier to enter and exit, and bus riders are reminded to exit in the rear. No one listens.

The best approach for combating this problem can be found along the Select Bus Service routes where pre-board fare payment options allow bus riders to skip the slow process of dipping a MetroCard. This isn’t coming to the local bus system any time soon, but the MTA is trying to import another SBS feature. The three-door bus is the latest in the MTA’s ongoing struggle to speed up travel.

The Times tackled the saga of the three-door bus yesterday. In what has become a hallmark of recent Times transpo coverage, the article treats these buses as a novelty. It’s a “Ha ha! This bus has three doors” type of article complete with a reference to the doors as a “complication” and a quotation from a psychologist trying to figure out why New Yorkers can’t exit buses like normal people elsewhere. “The back door has more real or imagined perils,” one Dr. Elyse Goldstein said.

Silly quotes aside, the piece sheds some light on the MTA’s bus plans:

Howard H. Roberts Jr., a former president of New York City Transit, said the agency had struggled with exiting problems on buses for years. He said it was especially hard because the fronts of buses are often filled with elderly passengers who want to minimize how much walking they do. “They prefer to get off at the front, the same door they got on,” Mr. Roberts said. “It’s a cultural thing, and it’s not particularly easy to solve that problem.”

..The authority recently ordered 328 buses equipped with three doors, supplementing its existing fleet of 90 three-door buses on its Select Bus Service routes. Henry Sullivan, chief maintenance officer for the authority’s Department of Buses, said that while it was too early to track what effects the extra door was having on passenger flow, he remained hopeful.

“Without having statistics, I know they’re using the middle door more,” he said about riders. “It’s easier for them to get out.”

It can’t hurt to try a third door, and the MTA had to order these buses for SBS routes. But it seems that people close to the front of the bus will just exit at the front while those near the rear and middle doors will opt for those points of egress. Buses will forever be inefficient and clunky for New Yorkers, and without pre-board fare payments, the boarding process will remain a painful one. Of course, if New York bus riders continue to head to the front door to exit, well, the drivers can always just tase them for it instead.

Without unseasonably warm weather, bus ridership in January would have shown a decline.

Over the past few months, I’ve burned more than a few pixels assessing the MTA’s ongoing decline in bus ridership figures. Select Bus Services has proven popular, but as we know, the downward trend in ridership numbers has been both long-term and steady. MTA Board members would like to see this trend reversed, but it’s unclear how the MTA plans to do so.

In advance of Monday morning’s MTA Board committee hearings, the authority released its latest ridership figures, and again the bus numbers show a decline. As the authority notes, average weekday bus ridership actually climbed in January 2012 from January 2011 by approximately 5.6 percent. However, as the authority notes, “adjusted for weather differences, bus ridership would have had a small decrease.” In other words, had we had winter in January this year, bus ridership would have declined yet again. The rolling twelve-month average decreased by three percent.

So is there a way to solve this decline? Maybe technology can be a part of that answer. Earlier this year, the MTA unveiled its BusTime application on Staten Island. The in-house bus tracking system will soon spread to the Bronx and one other borough this year before a full citywide rollout is completed by the end of 2013. In the meantime, WNYC’s Jim O’Grady reports on the early Staten Island success of the technology.

He reports:

The MTA’s BusTime system has been up and running in Staten Island for barely two months and already an estimated 10 percent of all bus riders use it every weekday. The service lets riders use a mobile device to text or scan a bus stop code and receive a message with their bus’s location.

“Having that information on the phone just revolutionizes the experience of riding the bus,” said Josh Robin, a project director with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which has had its own version of the program since 2009. “You can look on the screen and see the bus moving toward you instead of peering down the road, hoping to see the lights and LED sign of a bus.”

Staten Island is the first of the city’s five boroughs to receive BusTime, which, according to transportation analysts, is off to a flying start. “I think it is a smashing success to have 10 percent of the riders using it within a year of opening the service,” said Dr. Kari Watkins, a civil engineering professor at Georgia Tech who studied real-time bus arrival information in Seattle. She said it has taken two and a half years for that city’s version of BusTime, called OneBusAway, to be used by 20 percent of its riders.

The MTA cannot yet determine if BusTime will lead to an increase in ridership on Staten Island, but I believe as this technology becomes an accepted part of the bus landscape, ridership will inch up a bit. Simply put, BusTime solves the pain of waiting for a bus, and that wait is one of the main reasons why people don’t take the bus. There have been countless times where I’ve glanced down an empty avenue in search of a bus, and with no vehicle in sight, I opt to walk instead. The schedules posted at bus stops are generally useless, and with BusTime, potential bus riders will know when to wait and when to take the bus.

Now, BusTime is only one piece of the puzzle. We need buses that are faster on the streets, have priority signaling and dedicated lanes. We need buses that aren’t slowed down by endless boarding queues as riders go through the painfully slow process of a MetroCard dip. We need bus routes that are maximized to deliver riders from where they are to where they need to be in a way other transit options do not. For now, though, we’ll settle for a good app that tells us when the bus is coming. It’s a start.