MTA Economics

A homeless man sleeps as the uptown 2 leaves 72nd St. This is becoming a common sight on late-nite trains. (Courtesy of flickr user slice_of_danny)

I boarded a downtown 2 train at 96th St. on Saturday night around 11:45 p.m. and encountered a familiar scene. As the car doors slid open and the automated voices loudly announced the stop, I noticed that the car was completely deserted except for one guy.

“Uh, oh,” I thought to myself. “That’s trouble.”

Certainly enough, as the doors slide closed, I got a good whiff of the car, and it was not pretty. Breaking the law, I moved between train cars and found olfactory relief. I wish I could say this incident was a rare occurrence, but more and more, I’m noticing it’s an every-weekend event. Ride the subway late enough, and you’ll see the tell-tale signs. Crowded cars surrounding an empty car while the guy with no shoes sleeps sprawled across three seats in that empty car.

This problem isn’t limited to the trains either. As it’s incredibly hard to sleep with some guy yelling at you to “Stand clear of the closing doors please” every five minutes, many residents of the subway have taken to sleeping in stations. Forgotten corners house homeless people, and the 2nd Ave. stop at Houston Street is a breeding ground for unsavory smells.

Many of us straphangers don’t believe the MTA ever does anything about that Stinky Guy in the next car. No one wakes him up or makes him leave the trains. But, as The New York Sun reports, the MTA is actually trying to do something about the homeless problem but at a huge cost to the cash-strapped Authority.

The MTA this year renewed its $1.5 million contract with the Bowery Residents’ Committee, a nonprofit social service provider, to fund the program for outreach workers to visit subway stations and try to convince homeless people to accept escorts to city-run shelters or detox centers…

The outreach program carried out 875 escorts last year, according to statistics provided by the MTA. Outreach workers estimated that they were re-escorting the same homeless people back to the shelters from subway stations about 25% of the time. “It’s a tough sell,” the program director, Robert Rumore, said. “The largest portion of people we escort is back out again.”

The article from Monday’s Sun details a program that is hardly the definition of success. Groups of homeless people living together in the subway exert pressure on each other to ignore the entreaties of outreach workers who are facing an uphill battle against people suffering from psychological disorders or chemical dependency issues. Furthermore, while 22 workers patrol the 660-mile subway system, no one works on weekend nights when the problem seems to be at its worst.

Meanwhile, because many of these homeless people earn money for food by panhandling in the subways, they are loathe to leave the warmth and shelter provided by the roof of the train.

The police, too, are handicapped. Arrests are meaningless for homeless people, and they, more often than not, return to the subway after being released. While the NYPD’s Homeless Outreach Squad claims some measure of success in reducing the number of homeless subway dwellers down to just under 1000, it may simply be impossible to find a solution in which 100 percent of the subway system is homeless-free.

While I wholeheartedly support the social benefits of homeless outreach projects in the subway, I am left wondering at the cost to the system. According to The Sun, this project costs $2000 per homeless person removed, and even then, at least a quarter of the 875 folks taken out of the train system head right back in.

Is the solution a return to the draconian Giuliani-era programs of arrest and incarceration? I don’t think so. But an increased presence of authority figures could do wonders for the problem of Stinky Homeless Guy in A Train Car Syndrome that so plagues the New York City subways.

Subway ridership by month, 2005 and 2006. (Source: NYCT Performance Indicators)

The F train is too crowded; there’s no doubt about that. While we’re content to blame bad scheduling and unannounced service cuts, subway ridership numbers are contributing to the overcrowding as well.

After decades of declining ridership numbers, the number of straphangers has shot up over the last few years, and 2006 was no exception. In fact, subway and bus ridership numbers are at a 37-year high, and the city could see record ridership levels sometime in the next decade. Crain’s NewYorkBusiness.com reports:

Annual ridership on subways and buses rose to 2.2 billion, a level not seen since 1969, when 2.3 billion rides were recorded, MTA officials said on Friday…

In 2006, there were 1.5 billion trips on New York’s subways. That’s up 3.4% from a year earlier and the highest since 1952, when 1.55 billion trips were made. Average weekday subway ridership rose 2.7%, to 4.9 million, the most since a 1953 when 4.99 million trips were reported.

So trains are more crowded, and the MTA is not increasing service. In fact, while New York City Transit officials won’t confirm this, most riders feel that subway service has actually declined this year with the F and L trains serving as the biggest examples of this.

It’s all a matter of economics really as Newsday reports that the average paid fare is just $1.29, a far cry, inflation-wise, from the five cents charged in 1904. The MTA may simply have to raise the fare again to meet service and maintenance demands.

Meanwhile, as Crain’s reports, 30-day unlimited MetroCards make up nearly 30 percent of all MetroCard sales. While these discounted MetroCards are driving more commuters underground, they are money-losers for the MTA. If people are paying less per ride, the MTA simply cannot capture the same revenue.

So here’s the tradeoff: Would your rather have cheaper subways and questionable service levels or a slightly more expensive train ride but more frequent subway service?

While the good folks in Queens are still trying to figure out the whole 7 train mess, Theodore Kheel’s recent call for a higher road tax that would subsidize free subway rides has found an unlikely ally among the City’s religious community.

Writing in The Jewish Press, Rabbi Gershon Tannenbaum has expressed his support for the free subway rides on religious grounds:

With increasing permitted use of automation and technology on Shabbos, such as halachically acceptable elevators and escalators, the possibility of using fare-free subways on Shabbos and Yom Tov would be of great interest. The majority of poskim in the past have leaned towards disapproval. The ability to use the subway on Shabbos was inhibited due to such considerations astechum Shabbos (measured distances prohibited outside a city) and maaris ayin (appearance of transgressing Shabbos). Should the entire NYC subway system become fare-free fulltime, the question of subway usage on Shabbos could be more clearly defined.

Since many very observant Jews do not believe in spending money on the Sabbath, free subway rides would enable these religious men and women to utilize the City’s rapid transit system without breaking the Sabbath.

My only issue with Tannenbaum’s article is his reliance on the same misinformation being promulgated by the media as they attempt to describe Kheel’s plan. Tannenbaum wrote, “Questions whether the subway system would be able to carry the increased number of passengers can be answered by a review of the subway’s history. In 1943 the NYC subway system carried eight- million passengers daily. Today’s passenger load is less than four-and-a-half million daily.”

As I’ve pointed out in the past, that information is incorrect. The 8 million figure was a one-day high set in 1946 and not an average daily total. Here’s what I wrote two weeks ago in clearing up this misconceptions:

But the most accurate ridership information I could find (in [a] PDF presentation) showed an annual ridership of slightly more than 2 billion in 1946, largely considered the busiest year in subway history. That amounts to an average daily ridership of around 5.5 million people. Recently, in September of 2006, just over 5 million people a day rode the subways. We’re not that far off from those records.

Overall, it’s a small bone to pick. I wonder if Rabbi Tannenbaum’s thoughts will gain more traction as the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility continues its Kheel-funded study of a free subway system.

MetroCard photo from Triborough’s flickr stream.

A view of the old MetroCard prices. (Courtesy of O-R-G.com and Photoshop)

“Free” is today’s subway word of the day.

The free frenzy started last week when Streetsblog reported on a talk by Theodore W. Kheel. Kheel, an environmentalist who just gave $100,000 to the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility to study his pet project, issued an interesting proclamation: The subways should be free, and drivers should foot the bill for the MTA’s upkeep.

Well, today, this news escaped from the world of Streetsblog as The Post and The Sun covered it this morning. The blogs chimed in during the day with SUBWAYblogger voicing support for the project and Brooklyn Record posing a few questions about Kheel’s ideas.

Let’s dig a little deeper here, and see what Kheel is proposing. For info, we go to The Sun:

If New Yorkers don’t pay a fee to use the police and fire departments, they should not have to pay to use the city’s mass transit system.

That’s part of the thinking of Theodore Kheel, who last Thursday donated $100,000 to the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility to study how a free mass transit system could save money for the city. Mr. Kheel, a 92-year-old philanthropist, environmentalist, and labor relations lawyer, says charging a fee to drive on the city’s most crowded streets would create an incentive for drivers to switch to mass transit. The revenue earned on the streets could be used to subsidize free subways and buses.

On the surface, it’s an interesting premise. The city over services — such as the police and the fire departments — that we as citizens use for free. Or for “free.” The police, the fire department and various other civil organizations are all funded through taxpayer money. Think we’re not paying for that? Think again.

The subways too are funded through some taxpayer money (local, state and federal) and some fare money (but, as SUBWAYBlogger pointed out, not all fare money goes back to the system). So Kheel wants to charge people more for driving on the crowded city streets, and this money would go toward the subway.

At the event last week, Kheel, as reported on Streetsblog, said that the free subway would save the city some money. The how here is up for debate. Aaron Donovan at Streetsblog speculated, “that savings would come in terms of reduced costs for road maintenance, fewer vehicle accidents and hence emergency services, reduced asthma cases, etc” would save money. I’ve also heard some people claim that fare collection is costly to the MTA, but I find it hard to believe that even an organization as inefficient as the MTA and New York City Transit would spend more money to collect fares than they would draw in through these fares.

As the cost of driving goes up, Kheel’s solution would bring more people into the subway. The subway would then become insanely overcrowded, in my opinion, as many who drive out of luxury would stop doing so and turn to the now-free mass transit options. And here is where I see Kheel’s solution breaking down. If fewer people were driving, the revenues drawn in from the increased tolls and new congestions fee would have to off-set a dramatic surge in ridership in the subway. The MTA would need more cars, more maintenance crews, more cleaners and more subway lines. I don’t see how a feasible congestion fee can achieve these monetary goals.

Meanwhile, the local media is already reporting this story incorrectly. At the event last week, Kheel noted that the one-day ridership record set in 1946 stood at 8.8 million. We’ve come close, but we’ve yet to eclipse this number. The Sun, reporting on the event, claimed, “In 1943, when the fare was five cents, average weekday ridership was more than 8 million, almost double what it is today.”

But the most accurate ridership information I could find (in this PDF presentation) showed an annual ridership of slightly more than 2 billion in 1946, largely considered the busiest year in subway history. That amounts to an average daily ridership of around 5.5 million people. Recently, in September of 2006, just over 5 million people a day rode the subways. We’re not that far off from those records.

So for now, this is just a study, but it’s a complicated issue. I’ll pay attention to it, but I’m skeptical. I’m skeptical of the media coverage of this proposal, and I’m skeptical of its feasibility. I am all for a congestion fee; I’m all for free subways. But the numbers just don’t add up.

As The Times called upon Albany to send more money the MTA’s way to bridge the MTA maintenance budget gap, one of New York’s other papers called upon the riders to foot the bill. In an editorial on Saturday that won’t be too popular with the masses, The Post looked at the issues City Comptroller William Thompson raised last week and decided that the solution was a fare hike.

In their editorial, The Post is dismayed at the problems. They agree, rightly so, with Thompson that it is not acceptable for the city subways to be in a state of disrepair for the next two decades as the comptroller noted last week. But The Post, unlike Thompson and my commenters, refuses to lay blame on the suburban commuter rails that receive more than their fair share of the funds.

Thompson’s report is valuable in identifying these outstanding problems. But his claim that the city is being “shortchanged” is dubious.

For one thing, the subways – along with the LIRR and Metro-North – are part of a unified system. And a majority of commuters – who pay hefty fares to get to the city – ride subways to work once they’re here.

The Post, a conservative-minded paper owned by FoxNews guru Rupert Murdoch, is wont to call for taxpayer money for public services such as the subway. In that, their reasoning behind this so-called “unified system” is a bit flawed. Sure, the MTA oversees MetroNorth, the LIRR and the New York City Subways. But the MTA New York City Transit is a separate entity within the MTA. The distinction may be fine, but it is an important one.

In the end, the Alexander Hamilton-founded paper has this to say:

It’s much easier for the city comptroller to “call” for another $673 million from the state, rather than follow his reasoning to a more logical – yet less popular – conclusion:

If there’s not enough money to keep the system’s infrastructure up to speed, perhaps the fare should go up.

Perhaps the fare should go up but not to cover an operating deficit brought on by an imbalanced allocation of monetary resources within the MTA. The Post just isn’t being more logical here.

(Hat tip to the Wonkster at Gotham Gazette. Tokens from NYCSubway.org)