MTA Absurdity

This stranded train was a part of the MTA Inspector General's assessment of the MTA's 2010 snow response. (Photo courtesy of MTA)

As Wednesday’s Winter Solstice draws nigh, snow is on the MTA’s mind. After last winter’s disastrous December blizzard that left subways stranded and buses buried, the MTA has put in place a new plan to better combat the snow. The plan at first appeared to be an attempt to cut off criticism, but now we hear a different side of the story: According to a report released Monday by the MTA Inspector General, the authority was woefully unprepared to handle the snow last year.

The report, available here as a PDF, does not paint a very flattering picture of the MTA. It is as though the transit agency had never understood what a slow, wet and heavy snow could do to the city’s roads. Ancient and out-of-date communications systems failed, common sense seemed to disappear, and the authority had no plan to rescue passengers.

Barry Kluger’s report, all of which has since been accepted by the MTA and incorporated into the authority’s new winter weather preparation, assess the response through tales of stranded buses and slow-moving subways. The MTAIG’s office spoke with transit managers, customers and rank-and-file workers who were tasked with moving people throughout New York City as the snow fell.

The first section of the report deals with the Department of Buses. In both cases, buses in Brooklyn were stranded for upwards of eight hours as Bus Command Center personnel told drivers help would be arriving in a “while.” Even after the drivers and passengers were rescued, the buses remained on the road for another 36 hours. “At the time of the Blizzard,” Kluger writes, “there was no plan for providing assistance to passengers taking shelter in snowbound buses.”

One major concern the IG’s report noted with respect to buses concerned tracking. Essentially, the MTA has no sure way of finding out where along the routes its buses are. If the radio system — built in 1991 and set to last for 15 years — is functioning, they can manually locate buses, but until BusTime is online throughout the city, guessing remains a major part of the equation. To that end, Kluger’s office strongly urges the MTA to replace its bus radio and amend its practices to allow drivers to use personal cell phones in the event of an emergency. The report paints a dire picture of MTA communications equipment:

The existing radio system was installed in 1991 and was originally intended to have a useful life of 15 years. Buses stated that a “new Bus Radio System is scheduled for 2018 in the Capital Program,” 12 years beyond the useful life of the existing system, and that “in the interim, Buses shall continue to secure parts to maintain the system in a state of good repair.” However, such maintenance will be very difficult at best because the current radio system is no longer supported by the manufacturer and maintenance personnel are already cannibalizing radios for parts. Also, it is not clear from our interviews why beneficial use will not be achieved until 2018. Thus, according to the current schedule Buses will have to rely on the existing – already outdated — radio system for the next seven years.”

Finally, the IG found that bus dispatchers could not stop buses from heading out into the storm. Says the report, “The AGMs at all three depots told us that they were aware that a large number of buses that left their depot were becoming snowbound because of the storm. Yet all three said that they continued to dispatch vehicles from the depot because they lacked authority to make any adjustments to service – even to keep additional buses from certainly getting stuck.” Although the MTA has amended its operating procedures, common sense should have made this a moot point a year ago.

Beyond the bus system, the Inspector General’s report also noted a failure of communication, long a bugaboo with the MTA. Despite advances in public address announcements and customer information signs, the MTA is woeful at communicating timely and useful information to its riders, and last December, it did no better with its external communications. The IG found, for instance, that it took between 4-24 hours for updated routing information to hit the MTA’s website while subway delays were equally ill-reported. The authority simply did not adequately prepare its customers for disruptions.

Next, the MTAIG took on the subways as well. A pair of trains along the A line in the Rockaways drew headlines as straphangers were left stranded in trains with doors frozen shut as the connection between the train and the third rail iced over. Field supervisors could not stop trains from attempting to ride over the Broad Channel bridge even as conditions become treacherous. Semi-autonomous local command centers should address these problems.

Finally, the report cast a skeptical eye on the MTA’s weekend preparations. As last winter’s storm hit on a weekend, the MTA’s top brass had already decided on an operating path. Trains would run as scheduled according to the Plan Level determined on Friday at 11 a.m. The authority would not in fact be in a position to update that plan until Monday. According to the MTAIG, “not enough employees are available on such [weekend] days to
implement a higher Plan Level.” Thus, the MTA needs “contingency action plans that enable flexibility and expediency over these weekend days and holidays.”

Ultimately, the short report paints a pretty alarming picture of MTA operations. As I mentioned, the MTA had seemingly never planned for a weekend snow emergency and did not allow for the use of common sense in operations. Luckily for riders, the authority has essentially responded to all of the Inspector General’s complaints and has said it will adopt each of the recommendations this winter. Plus, the authority has ordered a set of new snowblowers (that, for some reason, won’t arrive until 2013). So far, though, we haven’t had a chance to validate those claims, but winter is almost here. The snow will soon follow, and our transit network will be put to the test again.

In Washington, DC, escalators that bring passengers up from the depths of the Metro caverns are seemingly a necessity. No one wants to hike up the 204 feet from the platform at Woodley Park to Connecticut Ave. at street level. Yet, these escalators are often plagued by outages as one or another break down frequently. In New York, it’s much the same story.

Over the years, the MTA has had a love-hate relationship with their escalators (and elevators too). They love to build them and tote their usefulness, but they hate to oversee the repair process. Creaky elevators get stuck; escalators — never broken because they just become stairs — wind up in the purgatory of the repair process; and even staircases are somehow out of service for longer than they should be.

Even worse, according to a report published today, are the escalators and elevators that lead into MTA areas but are controlled by private owners. Throughout the system, there are 23 privately-owned escalators and 10 elevators that serve 13 stations throughout Manhattan and Queens, and although the owners are contractually obligated to maintain these access points, according to the MTA Inspector General, the MTA often fails to notify owners of outages and does not enforce these obligations. In one case, in fact, the MTA waited nearly three years to notify a property owner of an escalator outage.

According to Barry Kluger’s report, the problem is one that often plagues large bureaucracies. “No one individual or department within the MTA or NYC Transit has overall responsibility for ensuring compliance with easement agreements,” he wrote. “Each seems to minimize its responsibility and role. This apparent void in leadership and oversight has led to inadequate agency practices and procedures.”

Essentially, the problem is one of oversight. The agreements between the MTA and the private owners require the owners to maintain their escalators and elevators upon notice from the MTA. Yet, no one person at the MTA is in charge of giving that notice, and numerous departments have tried to pass along these duties to others. As Kluger relates, the Transit Elevator & Escalator Department, the Transit Station Environment Department, the MTA Real Estate Department, the MTA General Counsel, the Transit Department of Law and the Transit Office of Government & Community Relations all have responsibilities in the field, but none have sole ownership of the issue. There is no shared list of out-of-system egress points, and there is no efficient system for sharing information related to outages.

Thus, when the escalator at the 53rd St. station on the East Side went out in September of 2008, it took until April of 2011, after countless articles and news stories, for the MTA to inform the property owners of the outage. This, says, Kluger is a process that needs to change. “MTA and NYC Transit must work cooperatively and creatively to resolve out of system property issues expeditiously, utilizing all appropriate tools at their disposal, including self-help, and leveraging New York City partnerships and resources, for the benefit of the riders.”

To solve this problem, Kluger issued a series of rather simple recommendations. The authority must report these private-property outages on its website, and it must pick one lead department which will be in charge of enforcing maintenance agreements. The agency should also report quarterly statistic to the MTA Board so that the board and public are informed of the state of repairs. For its part, the authority accepted these recommendations and appointed the Real Estate department to head up all enforcement and maintenance efforts with regards to these privately-owned escalators and elevators.

Still, Kluger had strong words for the MTA in his report, and the authority will have to show that these internal changes are leading to actual improvements. “The public has been seriously disserved by the inordinate amount of time that privately-owned and maintained escalators, which help move passengers at some of the busiest stations in New York City, have been out of service,” he said. “While this disservice is largely the result of private owners not meeting their obligations, a share of the fault belongs to the MTA and NYC Transit, which
have not effectively managed their own responsibilities regarding this ‘out of system’ equipment.”

Controversy over the Apple Store show how intricacies of historic preservation are lost on our elected officials.

Last night, I took a quick look at the burgeoning brouhaha over Apple’s Grand Central lease. According to some source dug up by The Post, a few real estate folk believed the MTA didn’t get as good a deal as it might have for a space that’s tough to lease. Today, the story has exploded, and I am reminded once again how difficult it is to find comprehensive coverage of actual transit issues in the New York media.

As we join this story already in progress, as The Post report spread yesterday, everyone grew agitated. In the evening hours, Assemblymember Linda B. Rosenthal’s office sent out a press release. The Manhattan representative is outraged — OUTRAGED! — by the lease. She wants a hearing.

“It is totally unacceptable that the MTA would essentially give away some of the City’s most coveted and expensive retail space in Grand Central Terminal to this new Apple store. The cash-strapped MTA has the potential to receive millions of dollars in revenue, which would help to reduce the burden on beleaguered straphangers who have seen fares increase and services decrease over the last several years,” Assemblymember Rosenthal said. “Given the potential infusion of capital, I cannot fathom that the MTA would allow the Apple store to take such a large bite out of the Big Apples’ coffers.”

Rosenthal didn’t stop there. She had even more to add. “The State has a vested interest in the MTA’s revenue streams,” she said. “As a member of the New York State Assembly Corporations, Authorities, and Commissions Committee, I call upon the committee to hold a hearing to investigate any impropriety that may be involved with this deal. If the MTA passed on an opportunity to make much-needed capital in a year when they have a projected $6 billion budget shortfall, the State and the public have a right to know.”

Who votes for these people anyway? Of course, she’s not the only one making a mockery of the process. New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli expressed similar sentiments and pledged yet another investigation. “This is a prime property and I intend to make sure that the MTA hasn’t given away the store,” he said in a statement.

It would probably pain DiNapoli and Rosenthal to look into this before opening their mouths, but this is a ridiculous situation over which these two should not get bent out of shape. In economic terms, the MTA doubled the revenue they’re getting from the Grand Central balcony space. Metrazur’s lease, which ran until 2019, called for $250,000 in rent. Apple paid $5 million to the restaurant and is paying $2.5 million for structural accessibility improvements and at least $1 million a year for the next ten years.

Meanwhile, the space itself is hardly “prime property,” and it certainly isn’t the city’s “most coveted and expensive retail space.” Since it is in Grand Central, it is subject to stringent historic preservation regulations. Thus, it is ideal only for a restaurant or a retail space such as an Apple Store that requires minimal work or branding above the sightlines. That is, after all, why the MTA received just one bid for the space during the RFP process. Considering the up-front costs of buying out the lease and the need to spend on infrastructure, no one else would have been willing to front the dough while paying the rent.

It sure would have been nice to secure a percentage deal on the space, but the MTA wasn’t earning revenue from Metrazur in such a fashion either. When all is said and done, the authority anticipates drawing in $180 per usable square foot from Apple while much of the space will sit idle due to the space and preservation limitations. If only our politicians could understand that.

Still, reality has never interfered with Albany. As the state siphons off transit funds and refuses to address a capital budget gap, Rosenthal and her colleagues are content with cheap shots and faulty inferences. “At a time when the MTA is cutting service, rolling back the maintenance of its subway stations and worst of all predicting a new fare hike, it is outrageous that they did not make the most of this opportunity,” Rosenthal said yesterday.

Earning more money from a new lease — albeit less than many would prefer — has nothing to do with rolling back maintenance or pre-planned fare hikes that are designed to track cost-of-living and inflation increases. The MTA made a lot out of a tough situation. Nothing that happened in Grand Central is as outrageous as Rosenthal claims, and if she spent as much effort and spilled as much ink worrying about the city’s true transit problems instead of this farce of an issue, straphangers would be better off for it.

The Apple Store is courting controversy even before the plywood comes down.

The Apple Store in Grand Central is still a week or so away from its grand opening, but already, its mere presence and the lease Apple has signed is generating controversy. One State Senator may even take the extraordinarily bold step of holding a hearing to protest the lease.

Here’s the story, as first reported by The Post: Apparently, Apple negotiated a deal in which it pays $60 per square foot for the space and doesn’t have to pay the MTA, its landlord, a percentage of profits. It will be the only retailer in Grand Central with such a sweetheart deal, and the rent itself, while four times higher than what Metrazur was paying, pales in comparison with the $200 per square foot Shake Shack will soon be paying. Uh oh.

The MTA itself was a bit defensive of the deal. “We set out to maximize the rent we receive for this space, and we’re thrilled that we were able to more than quadruple what we had been receiving previously,” Authority spokesman Aaron Donovan said to The Post. No one else, the MTA has noted multiple times, even bit a bid in for the space when the authority issued a request for proposals earlier this year.

Still, those watching the proceedings and those dismayed at the state of the MTA’s finances were none too pleased. “I am surprised they didn’t get some kind of percentage,” Robin Abrams, an executive with Lansco, said. “You’d think if they were going to do, say, $50 million in sales, the MTA would at least get some percentage of anything over that.”

The MTA has repeatedly said that the Apple Store and the traffic it generates will make up for the lease terms favorable to the Cupertino computer giant. The authority anticipates that the Apple Store will “generate significant new traffic” for the other retail establishments, and as The Post reports, every one percent increase in non-Apple Grand Central sales results in an additional $500,000 for the MTA.

Throughout the city, reaction to this development has not been kind. Gizmodo slams both the MTA and Apple. The computer retailer is “screwing over one of its partners” and “might be hard-lining you right out of your ride to work.” That’s a bit of hyperbole as even a percentage-based lease wouldn’t generate the kind of dollars the MTA needs to close long-term spending gaps.

One State Senator though isn’t too impressed. “There needs to be an investigation of who negotiated this deal. The taxpayers of this state are being ripped off that Apple is getting this sweetheart deal,” Tony Avella said to WCBS.

So what to do? The MTA had no leverage in the negotiations, and Apple knew it. It’s getting more money than it used to get and could reap ancillary benefits in the form of increased traffic through Grand Central. On the other hand, Apple is paying a percentage at 59th and 5th that has amounted to around $15 million per year. That’s real money the MTA won’t see because they weren’t in a position to ask for and get it. It is another day in the life of this crazy city.

I knew the MTA’s rat problem was getting out of hand, but this might be one of the largest I’ve seen so far…

A tip of the hat to @StationRat.

Straphangers are often creative in disposing of garbage if the closest trash can is too far away. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

The MTA, as we well know, has a bit of a trash problem. Garbage piles up everywhere underground, and rodents find the subway tracks and platforms to be very comfortable homes. For years, with budgets on the decline, Transit has searched for ways to combat what they have termed the “unsightliness and malodor of trash bags” in subway platforms, and now, as the agency ramps up trash collection efforts, they’re trying something counterintuitive: At two stations, the authority has removed trash cans in an effort to cut down on trash.

The pilot program in place at 8th St. and Broadway and Flushing/Main Street has earned headlines this morning for the sheer audacity of the idea, but it is part of a broader effort aimed at keeping stations cleaner. The measures are outlined in a report presented yesterday, and they include a targeted effort to eliminate rats, the prioritization of garbage collection trains and the addition of more refuse trains and trucks. Ultimately, the MTA has to collect and remove the 40 tons per day of trash that grows in the system, and it’s finding the task challenging.

The intriguing centerpiece of this effort though is clearly the plan to remove trash cans. Michael Grynbaum has more on this idea:

The idea is to reduce the load on the authority’s overtaxed garbage crew, which is struggling to complete its daily rounds of clearing out 40 tons of trash from the system. But it also offers a novel experiment: will New Yorkers stop throwing things away in the subway if there is no place to put them?

…The no-bin experiment is a more unusual approach, but it has precedent. In London, bins are banned from some Underground stations; in Washington, a similar program was abandoned because of riders’ complaints.

The PATH train has had no bins since 2001 because of security concerns. Since the removal, “it seems there is less trash,” said Ron Marsico, a spokesman, although he noted that the PATH system was smaller and more easily cleaned than the subway.

I understand why the MTA is pursuing this line of thinking, but there’s a clear conceptual gap here. Both the WMATA and the PATH systems are cleaner than ours because food is banned. The DC Metro engaged in a public crackdown of eating and drinking a few years ago, and the Port Authority has been diligent in keeping food out of the system as well.

Some MTA officials recognize this conflict as well. Board member Charles Moerdler wants the authority to study “the extent to which foodstuffs on trains or sold on the platforms is either deleterious to the system, or can in some way be curbed or eliminated, which I would favor.” But John Gaito, Transit’s trash guru, expressed a more resigned attitude to The Times. “It’s impractical,” he said. “You have a lot of customers who need to eat food on the system.” I’m not convinced anyone needs to eat in the unsanitary conditions of the subway, but that’s long been the argument for not banning food.

The real problem though is one of human behavior in the subway. Unless the MTA bans free newspapers that make up 44 percent of system-wide waste, people will just use whatever they want as a garbage can. With the nearest trash can over a city block away, riders at 7th Ave. in Brooklyn simply improvised, and the back end of Nevins St. has also been turned into a makeshift garbage can. The solution to combating trash in stations involves more garbage cans which inevitably lead to more garbage runs and more expenditures on garbage collection.

For now, though, that’s not in the cards, and neither is a ban on food. Instead, we get this strangely counterintuitive pilot program that seems to be showing returns at one station but more trash at the other, and everyone is skeptical. “NYC Transit doesn’t have the money to keep stations clean,” Gene Russianoff said to the Daily News. “So even a ridiculous idea sounds good to them.”

Whenever I travel to a subway station with an escalator, I usually wind up taking the stairs. I like the exercise, and I find the stairs faster than trying to weave around straphangers who can’t figure out how to stand on the right and walk on the left. Still, the escalators in the New York City subway system are far from perect, and yet their reach is going to expand soon.

In today’s Times, Christine Haughney highlights the problem with the escalators. Even though the numbers are by and large positive, the ones that are broken seem to stay that way. Haughney writes:

In large measure, the system’s 194 elevators in 73 stations, and its 178 escalators in 52 stations, work far more often than not. Elevator availability was measured at 95.3 percent in the second quarter of this year, compared with 96.8 percent in the same period last year; escalators held steady at 92.8 percent.

Still, some troubling issues remained; in those three months, there were 73 instances when riders got stuck in elevators. And escalators and elevators in disrepair tended to stay that way. “The public perception is in a totally different place because if you come upon an escalator and it’s out of service, your perception is that it’s never in service,” Thomas F. Prendergast, president of New York City Transit, said.

The authority knows that this has long been a problem and is doing its best to fix it, Mr. Prendergast said. In July, the authority restructured elevator and escalator operations by creating a dedicated 299-person group, naming Tony Suarez as its leader, and having him present quarterly reports directly to the authority board.

Since then, the authority has tried to give riders better updates about out-of-service elevators and escalators by sending text messages, posting information on its Web site and adding more signs in stations. Most of all, Mr. Prendergast said, he is trying to change the mind-set of transit workers who dismiss broken elevators as an inevitable part of urban transportation. “Part of it’s denial and part of it’s blaming others,” Mr. Prendergast said of some transit workers’ view of elevator and escalator problems. “But we have to rise to another place.”

It’s sort of stunning to think that 300 people are devoted to the MTA’s escalators, and yet, many seem out of service seemingly semi-permanently. They are fixed, and then they break again. Those at the stations that need them the most, says The Times, “have the worst performance records.”

Escalators, then, would seem to be a thing to avoid for the MTA, but the authority is heading in another direction. When the 7 line extension opens at 34th St. and 11th Ave. in two years, it will be serviced by escalators and inclined elevators, thus creating the perfect storm of MTA technology. In fact, this week, the KONE Corporation announced that it had been rewarded the contract for the station.

KONE specializes in industrial escalators, and it will add nine heavy-duty transit escalators and two custom-inclined elevators to the deep-cavern station at 34th St. and 11th Ave. Earlier this year, the MTA said that it wasn’t planning on installing stairs there so these escalators and elevators will be the only manner of egress. Ultimately, then, I’m left with a Mitch Hedberg quote: “An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs.” The MTA’s escalators at worst are stairs, and that worst seems to pop up more than it should.