MTA Politics

Now that the MTA has a $40 million operating surplus, everyone wants a piece of the action. The TWU has already argued that this one-time windfall should go toward a raise for all unionized employees, and politicians from all over New York are clamoring for a rollback of the 2010 service cuts. One story from Brooklyn though highlights the hypocrisy of the whole thing and the need to figure out just what services should be restored.

Last week, a group of Brooklyn officials gathered to rally for the B37. The Brooklyn Eagle was on hand to file a report. Paula Katinas writes:

One lawmaker, state Sen. Diane Savino (D-Brooklyn-Staten Island), indicated that she’s not above playing a little hardball with the MTA to get the B37 bus back. Savino, whose district includes a section of Bay Ridge, told local residents at the May 19 rally that she wants to extract a promise from MTA Chairman Thomas Prendergast nominee that he would restore the shuttered bus line and other transit services when he faces the state senate at his confirmation hearing in two weeks. Governor Andrew Cuomo nominated Prendergast to replace Joseph Lhota, the former MTA chairman who is now running for mayor.

“The only way to get that job is through the New York State Senate,” she said, hinting that she’ll give Prendergast a hard time if he doesn’t cooperate. “It’s time for us to get back on the bus,” Savino said.

The B37 bus ran from Bay Ridge to downtown Brooklyn until the MTA eliminated the bus line in 2010 during a major budget cutting move in which dozens of transit lines were scrapped. The B37 ran on Third Avenue for a long portion of its route and lawmakers and transit advocacy groups charged that the elimination of the bus line is a hardship for senior citizens and the physically disabled who can’t use the R train on Fourth Avenue as an alternative because they can’t navigate the subway stairs. The R train stations in Bay Ridge and Sunset Park are not equipped with elevators.

I’ve highlighted Savino for a reason, and I’ll return to her for a second. The rest of Katinas’ story focuses on the interest groups fighting for the return of the B37. They include seniors who cannot navigate the Bay Ridge subway stops and merchants along 3rd Ave. who understand the need for public transit along their commercial corridor.

It’s hard to say in a vacuum if they’re right. After all, the MTA cut the B37 because barely 3000 people per weekday rode it, and the agency was losing significant money while operating the route. As the MTA addresses this $40 million surprise, its planners will have to figure out how to boost service without re-implementing too many routes that ran empty or near-empty most of the time.

But let’s get back to Savino. In the past, she has freaked out over the plans to send the 7 to Secaucus while Staten Island remains without a subway connection to Manhattan, but that’s hardly her worst offense. In 2010, when the MTA had to cut service, Savino admitted that she voted for a bill that striped $143 million from the agency’s coffers without bothering to read or understand it first. She eventually owned up to the mistake, but the damage was done.

If Savino were alone in her hypocrisy and dereliction of duty, perhaps transit would be better off in New York City, but she’s not. Countless state representatives refuse to stand up for smart investment in the network and argue for spending only when the MTA is flush with money. That’s no way to build a transit system.

Click the image to read Anthony Weiner’s Keys to the City.

It finally happened, and we have to talk about it. Last night, shortly before midnight, Anthony Weiner’s YouTube video announcing his mayoral candidacy leaked, and today, his website is up to date. Polling just behind Christine Quinn — though with high unfavorables — Weiner has the name recognition to be a major player in this year’s mediocre mayoral field and a $4 million war chest to buy his way to the top. So how’s his platform look?

Based on the video and early campaign literature, Weiner is running on an appeal to the middle class. He grew up middle class and wants to return the focus of New York City politics to a group of residents who have increasingly felt left out and marginalized. Anything middle class-related in NYC should focus on transportation, and although Weiner recognizes that the subways are “the great equalizer, used by New Yorkers at every point on the economic spectrum,” his proposals do not underscore real improvements. “Modernizing our infrastructure and transportation systems needs to be a high priority,” he says. “In the most densely populated region in the country, we need to look at alternative modes of moving people from Point A to Point B.”

“Alternative modes of moving people” is a buzzword these days for kitschy ideas that don’t solve any real mobility problems, and Weiner’s platform highlights just that approach. First up are ferries. Weiner wants to launch ferry service in all five boroughts — which essentially means bringing ferry service to the Bronx since the other four boroughs already have ferries. “What about Rockaway, Sheepshead Bay, Riverdale, and Harlem? Ferries are good for the environment, reduce congestion, and are vital lifelines in an emergency.”

The environmental arguments are the least compelling; fuel-burning ferries pollute the air and water. But from a practical standpoint, do these areas need ferries and can they support the service? The Bronx is hardly lacking in subways or express buses, and the Rockaway/Sheepshead Bay ferry idea has long suffered from lack of ridership. The idea of a Harlem ferry is simply strange.

Next up, Weiner is proposing something that’s been in the works for years at the behest of state agencies over which the mayor has no control: He wants cell service on every subway platform. It is a tried-and-true voting-trolling technique to put forward a plan already in the works and then attempt to take credit for it later on.

His last two ideas are worthwhile but of a rather marginal impact. Weiner wants to extend tax credits to employers who encouraging biking to work, and he wants to replace Access-A-Ride with 2000 new medallions that would be reserved only for handicapped-accessible yellow cabs dispatched to all corners of the city. A full Access-A-Rode replacement could save the MTA upwards of $400 million annually, but such an initiative would face a steep uphill climb. Additionally, for better or worse, it impacts the majority of New Yorkers only tangentially.

And that’s it. On the one hand, Weiner doesn’t argue for pie-in-the-sky impracticalities as Christine Quinn did when she requested city control over the MTA. He seems to recognize the limits of the office and is planning accordingly. On the other, he doesn’t go even a quarter as far as Sal Albanese does. There is nothing about safe streets. DOT and its ability to dictate bus lanes and speed up the Select Bus Service rollout is roundly ignored. The only nod to congestion pricing is to call it “dead,” and East River Bridge tolls garner nary a mention. Weiner proposes smart parking meters and thinking hard about stemming truck traffic in the form of a “renewed focus” as ways to improve traffic flaw in the city.

All in all, it’s a disappointing early platform. If someone wants to champion the middle class in New York — or any class, for that matter — a grand vision for transportation improvements has to be a part of that plan, and we’ve yet to see that from any mayoral candidate with a real shot at claiming the crown.

After 102 days without a permanent agency head in place, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has finally settled a new MTA CEO and Chairman, and he didn’t have to look far to do it. Cuomo announced this morning that Tom Prendergast, the current New York City Transit President and interim MTA Executive Director, is his choice to lead the agency.

“Tom Prendergast is a consummate public transit leader who is the ideal candidate to oversee the nation’s largest transportation system,” Cuomo said in a statement. “The MTA plays a vital role in New York’s economy and the daily lives of the millions of commuters who use its services. Tom has vast experience in infrastructure and transportation and has spent years managing commuter railroads as well as New York City’s subways and buses. From the track bed to the budget to modernizing our system for the 21st Century, I can’t imagine anyone having a better understanding of how the region’s vast system operates and the challenges that it faces.”

Prendergast, a Chicago native with an engineering background, first arrived in New York in 1982 as the Assistant Director of System Safety. In 1987, he became the General Manager of Staten Island, and in 1989 was promoted to Chief Electrical Officer. He served as Senior VP for Subways in the early 1990s and headed up the LIRR for six years. He spent a few years in the early 2000s in the private sector and headed up TransLink in Vancouver for two years before returning to New York in 2009 to serve as Transit’s president. In other words, unless pushed out for political reasons, he’s likely to stick around for a bit longer than his predecessors have. (Though perhaps the MTA CEO/Chair position is more like the Defense Against the Dark Arts professorship than we’d like to admit, as one of my Twitter followers noted.)

“It is an incredible honor to be nominated to lead the largest transportation network in North America, and to work with Governor Cuomo and his administration on the many challenges facing the MTA,” Prendergast said. “The MTA will improve the customer experience, operate more efficiently and build for the future. And we will aggressively rebuild smarter and better in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy.”

Prendergast’s nomination will face State Senate approval, but that is likely to be a formality. In the near term, he’ll have to continue to address the MTA’s needs as it rebuilds and recovers from the damage inflicted by Sandy. In the long term, the TWU is still without a contract and the next five-year capital campaign needs to be developed and defended.

Every four years, when Gracie Mansion casts around for a new tenant and the offices in City Hall need a new manager, a bunch of politicians come forward with ideas for transit. Sometimes, these ideas are loftier and more realistic than others, and sometimes, the mayoral candidates say what they think voters wants to hear. This year, the transportation platforms are not disappointing, and on Thursday, Christine Quinn, the Democrats’ leader in the polls, unveiled her less-than-inspiring and politically odd plan. For some reason, she wants MTA control.

With Joe Lhota leading the GOP polling, this year’s campaign should be about transit, and it comes on the heels of a fairly successful Bloomberg administration. In fits and starts, Mayor Bloomberg through his 12 years has seen through an extension of the 7 line, the launching of Select Bus Service and an expansion of the city’s bike network. His congestion pricing plan failed in Albany, but it would have been the most ambitious transit innovation in New York City in generations. Now, despite media coverage alleging the contrary, for SBS and the bike lane process, he and NYC DOT have been sure to engage the community almost to a fault. What happens next?

This year, Sal Albanese has taken on the mantle of transit reformer. The Brooklyn Democrat been trumpeting a congestion pricing plan based upon Sam Schwartz’s modeling, but his candidacy hasn’t gotten enough traction yet. When Christine Quinn talks, on the other hand, people listen, and what we heard yesterday was a bunch of nothing along with some wishful thinking.

In remarks delivered at La Guardia Community College, Quinn spoke about the need to improve commutes for Outer Borough residents. Noting that these New Yorkers’ rides are, on average, 20 minutes longer than most Manhattanites’, Quinn issued a series of calls for more city-subsidized ferry service, an expansion of Select Bus Service to encompass a whopping 10 more routes over four years, Metro-North service into Penn Station (which has long been a post-East Side Access goal), and, oh yes, city control over the MTA. Quinn’s ultimate aim is to make sure that no New Yorker has a one-way commute longer than 60 minutes.

On the one hand, Quinn’s proposals are admirable. The city and its various transit agencies should be trying to cut down on commute times where possible, and we have the tools — road space for buses, a bike network that Quinn never mentioned — to do it. But on the other hand, we also have geography with which to compete, and New Yorkers quite often live far away from where they work. Not everyone can live on Manhattan, and even if we recognize that a majority of New York City residents with jobs don’t commute into Manhattan, Manhattan is still the centralized job location for city residents and suburban commuters. We need better intra- and inter-borough connections, but Manhattan still drives the city’s economy.

In light of the challenges a potential Mayor Quinn would face in realizing this 60-minute time limit on commutes — the Rockaways and Bay Ridge ain’t getting any closer to Midtown — her ideas don’t do much. Promising 10 new Select Bus Service routes over four years is barely an improvement over the current pathetic pace, and Select Bus Service is hardly a major upgrade. Until someone starts talking about and pushing through physically-separated bus lanes and signal prioritization, SBS will be slightly better than super-express bus service. It’s hardly worth the brouhaha.

Ferry service is another red herring that doesn’t do much to speed up commutes, but the City Council loves the idea of subsidizing it. Why? I don’t know. It connects very well-off areas of Brooklyn and Queens with Midtown and Wall Street. These are hardly neighborhoods that require much in the way of transit subsidies, and although emptier, the ferries aren’t quicker than the subway. Again, here is where real interborough bus rapid transit would be a boon to these neighborhoods.

It’s not even worth spending too much time on Penn Station Access. Bringing Metro-North to the West Side and through the Bronx isn’t a Quinn original by a long shot. In fact, it’s been around longer than she has even been a part of city government.

I’ve saved, of course, the best for last: Quinn wants to be able to appoint the president of New York City Transit and the majority of seats on the MTA Board. Why? I have no idea. In her speech, she explained, “This change will keep our trains and buses operating as a regional system but will make sure that the majority stakeholders have a majority voice. And having the buck stop with the mayor will bring much needed accountability, just as we’ve seen with mayoral control of our schools…Having local control of our transit will allow us to focus like a laser on the gaps in the system, and commit more fully to getting commute times under control. It will also allow us to dramatically reinvent the way the MTA plans for new transit routes.”

Quinn essentially calls for a proactive MTA instead of a reactive one, and here, I agree. As we’ve seen with service along the F, L and G trains, the MTA is unwilling to increase frequencies until load guidelines require it. I think the MTA could increase transit usage by making service more frequent, but it’s a classic chicken-and-egg problem made worse by the MTA’s precarious budget.

But Quinn asserting control would be no better, and it ignores the history of New York City Transit. The MTA arose out of politics as the city politicians insisted on a fare that torpedoed the subway system’s budget. The city wouldn’t or couldn’t pay, and politicians turned fares into an electoral issue. It was an economic disaster and one we do not want to repeat.

With a Mayor Quinn in control, she would be blamed for everything that goes wrong, would have to deal with fallout from suburban interests and would have to be willing to take on the lion’s share of the MTA’s funding burden. The city just isn’t in a position to do that, and it goes against the maxim that a smaller government entity should never request to take over control of something as unwieldy as the MTA from a larger one. Work with the state and agency heads for a better responsiveness, but let the state maintain the control.

Over at The Observer, Stephen Smith picked up a similar thread, and I believe his kicker sums it up: “New York is fundamentally a rail-oriented city, and Christine Quinn apparently has no plan to add to this infrastructure, or even make more efficient use of existing lines, aside from the Metro-North plan the MTA is already working on. Buses and ferries are all well and good, but Ms. Quinn is going to need to do better if she wants to give the city back its subways.”

This isn’t a transportation plan; it’s a plan to win over voters by pinning the tail on the scapegoat. It just might work if Quinn’s endgoal is to reach City Hall, but it won’t help get those commute times below 60 minutes, for that would require true leadership.

Usually, in politics and otherwise, the first 100 days are cause for celebration. For new presidents, those first 100 days provides a time to enjoy the good feelings of the office and a time to push through a legislative agenda. For others, the first 100 days offers up a time for a new leader to shape a company as he or she sees fit. But what happens when the first 100 days isn’t about a new permanent leader but a lack thereof?

Today marks a rather dubious milestone for the MTA for it has now been 100 days since Joe Lhota, the last MTA CEO and Chairman took leave of his office to attempt a run for mayor. For 100 days, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has remained silent on the issue of agency leadership, taking credit for the good while hoping nothing bad happens. For 100 days, Tom Prendergast and Fernando Ferrer have split the duties with the former serving as both New York City Transit president and interim MTA Executive Director and the latter as the MTA Board’s chairman. For 100 days, we’ve waited for signs of action, a task force, anything, from Albany, but we’ve received only silence.

As the days have gone by, a few readers have asked why the MTA needs a permanent — or at least permanent until they quit or are forced out — CEO/Chairman. After all, the trains and buses are running on time, and day-to-day transit services and capital construction projects are moving ahead. What’s the point really? It’s worth a few minutes of our time, though, to explore why one full-time person is better than two folks with other demands and desires.

The first real issue concerns the bifurcated leadership currently in place. Both Ferrer and Prendergast have done professional and thorough jobs leading the MTA over the past 100 days, but the two-headed beast has a history of failure in the annals of the MTA. Most recently, we need look only at the dual tenures of Lee Sander and Dale Hemmerdinger to find conflict and uncertainty amidst split duties. Gov. Eliot Spitzer combined the roles for a reason.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that Prendergast, as both the acting MTA operational head and the current president of Transit, faces a difficult push and pull. The head of the MTA often has to hold off the head of Transit and prioritize accordingly. Prendergast has not, by all accounts, run into any conflicts, but it’s a difficult and time-consuming balancing act. He’s essentially working two jobs while either one on its own is challenging enough.

Meanwhile, there is also the issue of Albany. While Cuomo hasn’t acted by choice, he has not given the MTA a central point person. The Governor’s man isn’t in charge, and Prendergast and Ferrer are essentially holding the course without rocking the boat. Sometimes, a little bit of boat-rockin’ is a good thing for large agencies.

Finally, there are long-term plans that aren’t being realized but need to be considered, and the MTA needs someone in charge with the mandate to see through these plans. The next five-year capital plan has to be developed, presented and defended to the various bodies in charge of approval and oversight. The forward-facing MetroCard replacement project needs a strong champion. The Sandy recovery work and future storm preparation efforts must become an ongoing priority as well. The TWU is still without a contract, 15 months after its last one expired. With interim heads, maintaining the status quo and readying for the next appointed leader takes precedence over any of this.

Maybe the next man in charge is already there. Maybe the low-level rumblings of a replacement will come true. Maybe Tom Prendergast will get the job and the ability to set his own course. But that’s all just speculation. For 100 days, nothing has happened, and the city’s transit network remains in a state of uncertainty.

It’s too early in the mayoral race for the current slate of candidates to begin their usual diatribes about transit in New York City. No one has yet made any promises they can’t fulfill, and none of the candidates are close enough to securing a nomination to engage in a truly serious discussion of transportation issues under city control. But one candidate has enough experience in the field to raise some thought-provoking ideas.

That candidate, of course, is the MTA’s last permanent CEO/Chairman. Running for the GOP nomination on the strength of his handling of the MTA during Sandy, Joe Lhota enters the field with the most hands-on transit experience of anyone else, and a few times over the past few weeks, he’s discussed transit funding and control. Essentially, Lhota has said he wants to remove elements of the MTA — bridges and tunnels, notably — from state control. The idea still seems to be in the developmental stages, but he elaborated a bit last night.

Courtesy of Dana Rubinstein, we have a transcript:

By the way, all of the bridges and tunnels that are controlled by the M.T.A. are within the five boroughs. None of them connect anything other than the five boroughs. It now costs $15 round-trip to go from the Bronx to Queens. It costs $15 to go from Brooklyn to Staten Island. The reality is, right now, I can’t think of anything that’s reducing economic development as much. It begs the question, what are they doing with all that money, the $600 million of surplus which is going to subsidize mass transit?

I think mass transit needs to be subsidized. But when you look at the numbers, New York State actually ranks last in the country in the subsidy-per-rider that they provide. You can look at what they do in Massachusetts for the T or what they do for Metro in Washington or MARTA in Atlanta. Those states give more money per rider than in New York State. New York State shouldn’t be last in anything. It should be first. But I also believe that if you ever want to have any issues of talking about congestion pricing or anything like that, it would be great to get the M.T.A. out of the picture, let the City of New York control every bridge and tunnel in the City of New York.

I think I see where Lhota wants to go with this, but he’s muddling up some points. On the one hand, there’s a compelling argument to be made that the city — not the state — should have control over its transit infrastructure. Not only should that include bridges and tunnels, but it should encompass subways and buses as well.

On the other hand, as he’s arguing for more city control, he wants higher state subsidies. It’s a political balancing act that’s likely impossible to realize. Albany won’t agree to forking over more money while relinquishing control. It just won’t work that way. I’ve always been convinced Albany will in fact agree to relinquishing control if the city is willing to pick up the funding slack, but that’s a non-starter for a lot of reasons.

One other aspect of Lhota’s statement bothers me as well. He may be geographically correct that the MTA’s bridges and tunnels connect boroughs with each other, but that’s a rather provincial way of looking at the network. The city’s roads and the city’s rails are part of a wider network that connects us to other areas outside of New York City and even neighboring states. City residents and businesses are the primary drivers, but ours is a regional economy. It’s within such a context should any discussion on proper control over transit take place.