MTA Absurdity

Martin Scorsese directed the video for Michael Jackson’s “Bad” in the Hoyt-Schermerhorn subway stop.

If City Council Member Letitia James gets her way, the IND station at Hoyt-Schermerhorn would soon add Michael Jackson to its moniker. As a way to honor the late King of Pop, James wants the MTA to commemorate the station in which Martin Scorscese and Jackson directed his 1987 video for the song Bad.

The New York Post first reported this story and the MTA’s subsequent rejection of James’ proposal this morning. But even a “no” from the transit authority hasn’t stopped James from seeking the spotlight. In an interview with NBC New York, she further expounded on her idea.

“After his death, I had heard about this, and I had approached them, and they told me basically to beat it,” she told NBC New York (Get it? Beat it? Clever!). “A lot of people were totally unaware,” she said, of the fact that Hoyt-Schermerhorn served as the staging ground for this video.

To avoid sounding as though she wanted to capitalize too much on Jackson’s untimely death, James focused on the tourism angle. “There’s a lot of trivia in the subway,” she said. “I think one of the ways to attract more people into the subway is to have more trivia, that so-and-so lived here, or that this movie was filmed here. I think the tourists would like it and I think that New Yorkers would like it, and I know Brooklynites would love it.”

You know what else would attract more people into the subways? Proper investment in maintenance and service so that the MTA can run newer trains more frequently through well-maintained tracks and tunnels. But I digress.

For their part, the MTA stressed its own naming scheme as one that would not support sticking Jackson’s name on the station. According to the Post’s sources, naming stations after people “could confuse riders.” The purpose of subway names, after all, is to provide geographic identifiers. Even the Barclays Center naming rights deal accomplishes that end as the Barclays Center will be located above the station at Atlantic Ave./Pacific St.

James says she’ll try to present the MTA with a petition in support of at least a plaque noting that Jackson filmed the video at this unique six-track station. To that end, what does the MTA have to lose? In fact, a series of plaques throughout the subway system commemorating movies, music videos or other unique bits of subway trivia and minutiae could add some entertainment to an otherwise mundane underground life. Station names shouldn’t adopt individuals because then we would wind up with the Mayor Bloomberg 77th St. stop on the East Side, but history and character should be embraced.

A long, long time ago in May of 2008, I wrote about the perennially out-of-service escalators at Union Square. These entombed egress options were to be maintained by the managers of the Zeckendorf Towers but have sat dormant for months.

This year, as Transit wrapped up installation of the green motion-sensitive escalators at Union Square, many of them stopped working, and the authority encountered some difficulty in getting these formerly moving staircases fixed. It has, in other words, been a rough 15 months for the MTA and its escalators.

But no more! According to a report in today’s amNew York, the various broken escalators are heading down the road to repair. Heather Haddon writes:

Zeckendorf Towers, a condo owner, built the escalators at the southeast corner of Union Square station. The stairways have been out for years, a source of constant frustration for less able-bodied riders. “This is criminal,” said Aladin Haidalgo, 59, a Brooklyn rider struggling to walk up the subway stairs with a cane Monday. “It’s a major impediment.”

Zeckendorf tried to sock NYC Transit with the bill for the escalators, but the company recently agreed to pony up for the millions of dollar in repairs, transit spokesman Paul Fleuranges said. Fleuranges could not say when the escalators will be fixed, as it’s up to the owner. A spokesman for Zeckendorf declined comment.

Meanwhile, the MTA has made strides in taking care of its own equipment. After months of outages, all 12 escalators now run at Herald Square, the system’s third busiest station. The MTA recently spent $36 million to overhaul the escalators, but the contractor did not install them properly. The escalators broke a total of 150 times during the first part of this year, with three of the stairways not running at all, according to MTA figures.

Haddon notes the sea change in agency approach. In the past, the MTA has not pursued private developers who have been negligent in maintaining these escalators. With funds tight and more pressure on the authority to be more accountable for the state of the system, Transit has changed its tune. “It’s a philosophical change,” Ellyn Shannon of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA said to amNew York. “Access to the system is now important to them whether they own the escalator or not.”

Meanwhile, these management companies and escalator contractors must fulfill their legal obligations, and the MTA should not allow them to avoid these repairs. It’s been a long time coming, and somewhere, Mitch Hedberg is smiling. After all, as he once said, “An escalator is never temporarily out order; it’s temporarily stairs.”

When I first read the news about the M.A. Angeliades indictment, I wasn’t too shocked. Fraud and dishonesty among New York City contractors! Why I never!

Then, I got to thinking: This is an MTA contractor being accused of fraud in dealing with workers hired for MTA projects. Surely, there’s more going on then just a simple indictment. In light of the recent spate of stories surrounding the MTA’s construction projects and its low-bid philosophy, I think there is a tale to be told here, but first let’s recap the news courtesy of Elizabeth Dwoskin:

A Long Island-City-based contractor with ties to the MTA was indicted today for cheating its employees out of $600,000.

The firm, M.A. Angeliades, which had been contracted to repair 11 subway stations, had 150 employees (though the District Attorney’s office wouldn’t say how many were defrauded). The firm is charged with falsifying business records and defrauding its employees by not paying them the local prevailing wage, which for laborers is $35 per hour plus $24.57 per hour for nights and overtime.

Instead, they paid laborers a flat fee of $20 — while still billing the MTA for the legally required wage.

Apparently, D.A. Robert Morgenthau’s office got wind of the graft from the MTA Inspector General’s office. “If a contractor is stealing in one area, there are other areas,” MTA Inspector General Barry L. Kluger said to NY1 News. “So it’s obviously our responsibility in MTA to look back at these contracts to look at the execution of the contracts to see if there were any direct losses that may have been affected against the MTA, in terms of change orders, overcharging, over-billing.”

The MTA has no plans to end the contract, but according to a statement released by the agency yesterday, agency officials plan to “review the situation with the District Attorney and the Inspector General before determining how to proceed.”

So that’s all well and good, but isn’t this part of a longer story we’ve been seeing pieces of lately? Numerous MTA projects are behind schedule and over budgets. Others — such as the plan to wire some subway stations for cellular service, the plan to outfit the city’s bus stops with arrival boards and the plan to install similar boards and CBTC systems in the subway — are years past due with little forward motion.

Is this what happens when an agency is forced to accept the lowest bid? Is this what happens when an agency has to build everything on the cheap because the state won’t pay its fair share — or any share really? I don’t know the answers to these questions, and perhaps I’m making a mountain out of a construction fraud molehill. I can’t help but wonder though if the old adage, saying you get what you pay for, is in full effect here.

The last few weekends have been heavy on the service announcements. With the holidays behind us, the MTA has been stepping up the weekend work as it continues the seemingly endless Capital Rebuilding Program. Often, these weekend service changes lead to some very odd results.

Take, for example, the changes from two weeks ago. That weekend, service to Lower Manhattan resembled what it will be if the service cuts come to be: The stations along the Broadway line were shuttered as the N and R were running over the Manhattan Bridge.

At the Q stop at Seventh Ave. in Brooklyn, the station announcements were warning passengers of the changes. The instructions though were rather odd. To provide service to Lower Manhattan, went the announcement, passengers were encouraged to take the Q to DeKalb Ave., exit the system and board the 4 train a few blocks away at Nevins St. The walk is about 0.1 miles according to Google Maps and should take all of two minutes.

Now, that seems reasonable, right? The 4, after all, stops near enough to Whitehall St., Rector St. and City Hall to mirror the N and R. Well, of course, but take another look at the MTA’s directions. The authority was urging people to exit the system at DeKalb and reenter at Nevins St. when one stop earlier — at Atlantic Ave. — straphangers can take advantage of a free, in-system transfer between the Q and the 4.

I certainly understand that the MTA is facing a budget crisis of epic proportions, and I’d love to see them get out of this without cutting service or drastically raising fares. But it seems rather disingenuous to urge riders to transfer out of the system for a second fare when a free transfer between the train lines in question is in place just one stop down the line. That’s just not right.

While New York City was reveling in the humor of a 70-year-old misspelling yesterday, 99 miles to the south, Philadelphia’s SEPTA was having an identity crisis of its own.

As part of a promotion for the City of Brotherly Love’s upcoming Beer Week — why doesn’t New York have a beer week?? —the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority released a commemorative daily pass for public transit. The only problem was that the city skyline on the back of the card was New York City and not Philadelphia.

Philly’s news radio station 1060 AM KYW had a comment from a SEPTA official:

One problem: the skyline on the pass isn’t Philly — it’s New York, admits Septa spokeswoman Jerri Williams:

“It was designed in-house by one of our graphic artists. And I think people liked the look of the skyline but unfortunately didn’t take a really good look to see that it wasn’t Philadelphia. It’s a stock photo.”

Williams says that Septa is redesigning the pass, and new corrected ones are being printed at what she calls a “minimal” cost.

In a way, it’s comforting to know that the MTA isn’t the only making egregious errors on its signs and passes. It is cute how Philadelphia wants to be New York so badly that it is putting our skyline on the back of its MetroCard equivalent. Good try.

Meanwhile, in the never-ending world of subway typos, it seems that one can board the B at 125th St. and head to Brighten Beach. That’s just north of Darken Beach, right?