Category: MTA Politics

Citing the need to “assure the kind of quality mass transit that our economy and our communities demand,” Assembly representative Richard Brodsky, State Senator Bill Perkins and 12 other assembly members have called on Gov. David Paterson to reform the MTA finances.

In a public letter to the governor (available here as a PDF), the two representatives, heads of their chambers’ respective Committees on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions, want to see real financial reform from the beleaguered transit agency.

“The fundamental problems of transparency, accountability, Board responsibilities and functions, oversight and public trust have become slogans that we all speak, but have not yet enacted,” they wrote. “We write because we strongly believe this financial crisis is an opportunity to, at least, fundamentally reform the MTA.”

The problems, according to Perkins and Brodsky, start at the top. “We need to open up the operations of the MTA, to provide regular outside overisght, and to ensure that the MTA and its Board are required to fulfill their mission. While this sounds simple and obvious,” the letter says, “it has become clear to us that the MTA and its’ (sic) Boards have not been able to meet these standards.”

Brodsky and Perkins’ ideas are mostly sound and most tame, considering the rhetoric in the letter. They write:

1) Board Members of the MTA should be subject to a statutory fiduciary duty to the mission and purpose of the MTA, as set forth in existing statutes.

2) There should be created a MTA/Authority Accountability Office to oversee that fiduciary duty and MTA operations, to recommend to the Legislature effective reforms of debt, compensation, MWBE, property disposition and other issues, to inquire into MTA activities and resolve complaints, and to receive and publish MTA documents. This is modeled on the successful NYC Budget Office.

3) The MTA should be required to publish, in real time, its finances, policies, plans and decisions. The current system relies heavily on post-facto audits. These do a reasonable job in telling us what went wrong. They do little to stop mistakes. Real-time review by the public, the Legislature, and the Authority Accountability Office could prevent problems not just explain why they happened.

4) The Comptroller should be empowered, consistent with the constitutional duties of the Office, to review selected contracts issued by the MTA.

My concerns about this proposal though stem not from their aims or ideas but rather from their misguided critiques of recent MTA problems: “Recent events at the MTA including the 2 Broadway deal, the 7 Line extension, the failure to publicly acknowledge cash resources, the failure to seek state and city support before voting for fare increases, and the focus on non-essential matters such as EZ-Passes for Board Members, has left the public with little confidence in the MTA.

Those aren’t recent events at the MTA, as Brodsky and Perkins allege, but recent news coverage of the MTA. As Chris O’Leary noted here yesterday, the myths about the MTA’s finances are largely media-driven, and Brodsky and Perkins are doing nothing to end the misconceptions that have allowed the State Senate to stall on a rescue plan.

Item-by-item: The 7 line extension is fully funded by the city, and the MTA shouldn’t have been blamed for failing to cover cost overruns. The MTA didn’t fail to seek state and city support before voting for fare increases. Rather, the state and city failed to support the MTA and had nearly a year’s notice of impending financial doom. The focus on the EZ-Pass scandal made for some juicy tabloid coverage but had little to do with the actual operations of the MTA. If the public has no confidence in the MTA, it is because the MTA is losing the public relations battle.

Brodsky and Perkins could have gone after the MTA for legitimate reasons. They could have examined issues concerning budget transparency, union relations and a bloated bureaucratic management structure. Instead, they chose to focus on the same old non-issues that make for good headlines and have little to do with the ingrained problems plaguing the MTA.

The Senate and Assembly should have more financial oversight of the MTA but not until the legislatures have shown they know what to do with that responsibility. Nothing I’ve seen out of Albany over the last month lead to believe any state representative could handle that duty.

MTA CEO and Executive Director Elliot Sander has had a rough go of it since assuming the position in Dec. 2007. A leading transit expert, he is eminently qualified for the top spot, but he inherited an agency fraught with financial problems. When the bad economy and the MTA’s troubles hit, it seemed as those Sander’s days would be numbered.

Last week, word emerged that a Senate bailout may come with the requirement of change atop the MTA leadership structure. I called it a petty and short-sighted move by the Senate. They shouldn’t penalize Sander for Albany’s decades-long neglect of the MTA.

Now, The Post is reporting that Sander could be out soon. In a short, cryptic piece, David Seifman and Tom Namako report that Marc Shaw, a former Pataki aide and one-time executive director of the MTA, could replace Sander soon.

Here’s the entire article. It doesn’t say much more:

MTA chief Elliot Sander’s days could be numbered, and a leading candidate for his job is a close aide to Gov. Paterson who is a former top transit executive, sources told The Post.

Paterson’s senior adviser, Marc Shaw, could replace Sander after state lawmakers decide how or if to fix the agency’s $1.2 billion budget gap and reorganize its management, the sources said. Sander, who took the helm at the MTA in 2007, would be entitled to collect one year’s severance – a cool $343,000, a source said.

An MTA spokesman had no comment.

Basically, this seems like a political move. The Senate would want to remove Sander (and possibly MTA Chair Dale Hemmerdinger) to send some sort of message to the public. Gov. David Paterson, who inherited Sander as MTA head when Eliot Spitzer stepped down, would get to appoint someone of his choosing to head up the beleaguered transit agency.

Odds are, however, that a change at the top isn’t quite what the MTA needs. Rather, they need funding and a renewed commitment from those who hold the purse strings. Petty political revenge does not make for good transit policy.

For over a year now, I’ve slammed City Council member John Liu for his sheer lack of MTA acumen. As the head of the council’s transportation committee, he should get it. He should understand the dire financial straits in which the MTA finds itself and the city’s need for mass transit, but he just doesn’t.

Unsurprisingly, he’s at it again. This time, the City Council is going after the MTA for its proposed bus cuts, and Liu’s public statements again show that he is thinking only about his public image and not the transit authority’s long-term health. Reports The Post:

Six City Council members blasted the MTA yesterday over proposals to cut bus service in upper Manhattan. Councilwoman Inez Dickens (D-Harlem) said “the MTA wishes to strangle us” with its plan to eliminate the M10 line, which runs from Harlem to Penn Station along Seventh and Eighth avenues.

Cutting that line, she said, would force elderly riders to walk to Seventh Avenue and board a bus that takes them east of Central Park. “We don’t rely on fancy vehicles to take us places,” said Franc Perry, chair of the community board for Central Harlem.

The agency said the M10 is on the cutting block because the A, C, B and D subway lines duplicate its route. “The subway isn’t accessible for many elderly and disabled riders,” said Councilman John Liu (D-Queens). “The MTA doesn’t get it.”

The MTA gets it, John, but you don’t. The MTA is faced with a legal mandate to balance their budget, and until he and his fellow councilmembers decide to take the unpopular position of imposing bridge tolls or higher car registration fees or simply writing the authority a blank check, the agency will continue to do what is within its power to do. They will cut services; they will raise fares.

Now, I understand that Liu is a politician and wants to be re-elected. But at some, politicians are also responsible for the policy decisions they make and the areas of their expertise. Liu oversees transit for the City Council, and yet he refuses to take responsibility for finding a better solution to the city’s transit woes. In the end, he’s just as much a part of the problem as the MTA is, and until he accepts reality or vacates his position, I fear for the future of fully-funded transit in New York City.

Elliot Sander, the MTA’s first CEO and Executive Director, has a tough job right now. He’s supposed to be wielding the power once left to the chairman of the MTA’s board, and he’s supposed to be guiding a beleaguered public-benefit corporation through some very tough economic times.

While I think Sander has done an admirable job, he has steered something of a bumpy ship. In a very well done piece in today’s Times, transit beat writer William Neuman analyzes Sander’s tenure. The transportation expert-turned-MTA head has his supporters, and while his detractors are rather guarded in their words, they’re still there, assessing his every move.

When Mr. Sander took over the authority in January 2007, he became the first executive director to take full advantage of the expanded powers. But Mr. Sander’s position is also something of an unwieldy hybrid: he has much of the power once held by the chairman but not the broad sway and job security that comes with a fixed term and a vote on the board.

Though Mr. Sander is an employee of the board, he serves at the behest of the governor and can be removed at any time. And the governor he serves today is not the one who appointed him: his friend, Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who resigned earlier this year in disgrace. Though Mr. Sander says he has a strong relationship with Mr. Spitzer’s replacement, Gov. David A. Paterson, the two are clearly not as close.

Richard L. Brodsky, a Westchester assemblyman who helped lead the push for the 2005 change in the authority’s structure, now worries that it was a mistake. Having no fixed term, he says, might undercut Mr. Sander’s ability to make demands of the governor, who is struggling to close his own widening budget shortfall.

“Lee has been a very good C.E.O.-slash-executive director at a time when that was needed to get the M.T.A. functioning again,” Mr. Brodsky said. “But it also needed a 400-pound gorilla who didn’t need the job and could say ‘No’ to governors, and I don’t think Lee ever thought of himself as having that job.”

Neuman’s article goes on to touch upon some of the ammunition Sander’s critics have used against them. He took a significant pay raise a time when the MTA’s finances were in shambles. He promised service increases and then had to roll them back a few weeks later. His State of the MTA speech, while appropriately grand, has approximately no chance of becoming a reality.

In the end, I give Sander a good grade for his effort. He’s overseen the agency through some of its toughest fiscal times while ensuring that the trains continue to run and that service levels remain the same. While there’s trouble brewing on the financial horizon for the MTA, for now, Sander remains the man for the job. He has the expertise and political support to see the MTA through some dark days.

Elliot Sander, the MTA’s current CEO and executive director, hasn’t had an easy go of things over the last two years. As the economy has crashed, Sander, one of the foremost experts on transit policy, has battled a state too stingy to issue adequate funding for mass transit while overseeing a system taxed to capacity and in need of expansion.

In March, while battling debt problems that could shake the MTA to its financial core, Sander showed that he had not lost sight of the future. During his first annual State of the MTA, Sander unveiled a set of very ambitious expansion plans. While the MTA is unlikely to realize the totality of this plan, Sander’s vision showed that the current MTA leadership is looking ahead while dealing with unmanageable problems in the present. Gone are the days of Peter Kalikow.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I happened upon this piece on Newsday’s Viewsday blog. State Senator John Flanagan, a Republican from East Northport, has issued a vote of no confidence in Sander. Anne Michaud, a member of the Long Island paper’s opinions staff, writes:

In a recent meeting with Newsday’s editorial board, state Sen. John Flanagan (R-East Northport), said that Metropolitan Transportation Authority chief executive Elliot Sander should not keep his job. The senator was responding to a question about whether Sander is working out, after nearly two years at the helm. Flanagan said, “No. [But] that’s a management decision for the MTA board.”

…Flanagan said he does not think the MTA has made the case for more public money to fund its capital plan, which at last estimate came in at around $30 billion. The senator contrasted the MTA with the Port Authority, whose new director, Christopher Ward, is a “breath of fresh air.” In the interview, Flanagan, a member of the MTA Capital Program Review Board, also knocked Ward’s predecessor, Anthony Shorris, as “a disgrace.”

It’s really tough for me to imagine which political reality Flanagan currently occupies. Time and again, Sander has made the case in public for more state contributions to the MTA’s budget. Time and again, he has been rebuffed by the same state legislative body of which Flanagan is a member. Elliot Sander and the MTA don’t want to have to raise fares every two years, but the state has left them with no choice.

I can imagine a not-too-distant future in which more state representatives start dumping on Sander. After all, it’s much easier to blame the guy in charge of the MTA for the authority’s problems than it is to admit to your constituents that you, their elected State Senator, is responsible for yet another fare hike because you opted against congestion pricing, real enforcement of bus rapid transit lanes or any number of measures that would beef up transportation in the New York Metropolitan Area.

I’m sure there are ways in which Sander could be doing better, but considering all he has to deal with and what little he has to work with, Sander remains the right man for the job. Flanagan, a member of the State Senate committee that sunk congestion pricing, has long wanted to overhaul MTA oversight, and his position on the CPRB allows him to do just that. But by undermining Sander’s authority in an appropriate way, he is clearly missing the mark.

By virtue of its role as one of the world’s largest public transit agencies, the MTA is a very green organization, and now the cash-strapped MTA is looking to capitalize on its negative carbon footprint in an effort to maximize its revenue potential.

Earlier this week, Matthew Sweeney at amNew York broke the story that the MTA is working with analysts at Booz Allen Hamilton to develop a way to sell carbon credits in the growing emissions trading markets. Sweeney writes:

Last month, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority approved a $776,000 contract with consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton to measure its carbon footprint and look at ways to create revenues “in a tradable-carbon situation.”

What that means is that the MTA hopes eventually to quantify the amount of pollution it removes from the air through mass transit, put a value on it, and sell it to a company that is a high polluter. By paying the MTA, the company would legally be allowed to pollute.

“This is all quite new and unique and a little bit out there,” said Projjal Dutta, director of sustainability initiatives at the MTA.

The MTA, Sweeney notes, “actually has a negative carbon footprint because subways, trains, and buses take cars off the road and reduce congestion, which means that cars do not burn as much fuel sitting in traffic.”

In trying to wrap my head around the idea of the MTA trading its carbon credits in an emissions market, I keep landing on two distinct points that are seemingly at odds with each other. On the one hand, as we well know, the MTA is searching high and low for any dollars it can scrounge up. The authority needs money to keep our public transit system in a state of good repair and, looking ahead, for much needed expansion plans as well. To that end, if the powers that be feel they can capitalize on the MTA’s negative emissions, then they should do so.

But on the other hand, the environmentalist public transit advocate in me is a little wary of the carbon trading plan. If the MTA is allowing some other company to continue to pollute by trading them their carbon credits and profiting from it, does that really match the agency’s desired and publicly-stated goals of becoming a greener organization? Until the U.S. starts putting stricter caps on greenhouse emissions, the MTA is simply profiting off some other company’s pollutants. That’s fine for the bottom line but not so fine for the environment.

The MTA really likes its surveys these days. The survey-love started out with the subway rider report cards. That project has since taken to the buses as well. And on Wednesday, word came down that the MTA will begin yet another customer survey.

According to this authority’s press release, this latest survey will be distributed to 170,000 residents from around the city and will aim to assess New Yorkers’ travel patterns. From the release:

A randomly selected sample of 170,000 residents will receive letters asking for their participation in the survey. Soon after, an independent survey firm, NuStats / PTV DataSource, will make follow-up phone calls to ask them questions about their use of transit and other modes of travel. The MTA hopes all New Yorkers who receive the packet will participate — even if they do not take transit or travel much — as the findings will help MTA plan future transit service improvements and infrastructure enhancements. A copy of the questionnaire will accompany the letter so New Yorkers who do not have a landline telephone or have an unlisted number can fill it out and mail it back, postage paid. They can also choose to call a toll free number to take the survey over the phone…

The survey takes approximately 15 to 20 minutes to complete over the phone. Questions include: “Where and when did your trip originate?”; “Where and when did it end?”; “Did you make intermediate stops?”; “What was the purpose of your trip or trips?”; “What mode of transportation did you use?” The survey will also ask New Yorkers demographic questions, such as their age and how many automobiles they own.

MTA officials meanwhile encouraged everyone to participate. “The information we’re asking for,” Lawrence Fleischer, MTA’s Chief of Metropolitan Planning, said “will be kept confidential and will assist us in understanding how New Yorkers travel and how we can better meet their transportation needs.”

If that isn’t encouragement enough, the MTA is also resorting to the age-old survey trick of bribery. The Authority will be making good use of its currently precarious financial situation by handing out $500 to one lucky survey participant each week that the survey is open.

On the surface, the MTA is going to find out the same information they discovered following the rider report cards: Every subway rider will demand more frequent service for the lines he or she uses most. Every subway rider will note that rush hour overcrowding is a problem no matter the line, and every rider will bemoan the PA system and general state of the underground stations. Why then does the MTA need to conduct yet another survey?

Well, the answer, it seems, lies in a few obligations the Authority has to fulfill in order to secure federal capital funding for the Second Ave. subway and the East Side Access plan. The MTA is required to build a ridership profile and will do so using these survey results and the findings from similar questionnaires distributed to riders on their regional rail system as well. That’s all well and good, but we already know what the findings will be.

Midtown is rather devoid of subway stops for handicapped riders. (Source: Smorgr)

A few months ago, the urban life Website Smogr posted a heavily-edited subway map showing the limited options available to riders of the subway who are faced with limited staircase mobility. Disabled riders have long tried to get their voices heard, and it is only as old stations undergo renovations that they must be made ADA-compliant.

At the beginning of last week, the MTA announced a long-term elevator outage at the World Trade Center-Chambers Street E station due to Port Authority construction. For the vast majority of us, this news goes in one ear and out the other; what does an out-of-service Port Authority elevator that provides access to the subway platforms have to do with us? But for a significant minority who can’t depend on stairs to get underground, this is big news. Here’s how the MTA presents it, in part:

Beginning Friday, April 11, 2008, customers who rely on elevator service at the WTC-Chambers Street E Station will no longer have access to elevators at this location due to ongoing construction at the World Trade Center site…

The West 4th Street and the 14th Street-8th Avenue stations are the closest ADA accessible stations along the E line to the World Trade Center-Chambers Street E station. Customers traveling uptown from the WTC site to West 4th Street ABCDEFV lines should board the uptown M6 bus on Church Street at Vesey Street and get off on 6th Avenue at West 3rd Street. Customers traveling downtown from 14th Street-8th Avenue to the WTC area should board the downtown M20 bus on 7th Avenue at 14th Street and get off on Chambers Street at Hudson Street.

For customers traveling between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m., please note that the M6 and M20 bus routes do not operate during these hours.

So basically, the MTA has said that the nearest ADA-accessible stop to anyone trying to reach Lower Manhattan on the E is nearly a mile and a half away. Put yourself in the shoes, then, of the disabled. I know I wouldn’t be too happy finding out that my regular station is closed, and the nearest one is a mile and a half away. And, hey, the closest buses don’t operate for five hours each day.

As the MTA confronts a budget crunch, disabled rider complaints will have to compete with a plethora of other subway issues. While you and I may not think of them too often, these are real concerns for a lot of subway-riding New Yorkers.

After the jump, a broad — and small — overview of the subway map with only the handicap stations listed. Sadly, there is no larger version of this map, but as you’ll see, ADA-compliant stations are few and far between in the Outer Boroughs. In fact, after the Atlantic Ave.-Pacific St. stop on the D and N, the next accessible station is Coney Island.

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The MetroCard is looking a little green lately. (Click the image for a larger view)

Solar-powered subways cars sound similar to that great gag gift the solar-powered flashlight. After all, how could a subway — a train that is, by definition, traveling underground — rely on the sun for power? It doesn’t make sense.

Yet, that’s just what the MTA is trying to do. As part of agency’s green initiatives announced on Monday, the MTA will be increasing its use of renewable energy resources, among other efforts. Yesterday afternoon, Gov. David Paterson, MTA CEO Elliot “Lee” Sander and MTA Chairman Dale Hemmerdinger gathered to announce the MTA’s new sustainability program. This announcement came on the heels of a sixth-month study conducted by Jonathan F.P. Rose and the Commission on Sustainability and the MTA.

“Sustainability is one of my top priorities for the MTA and I am delighted that the Commission has chosen to look at every area of our operations, and even beyond,” Sander said. Public transportation can play an important role as society works to achieve greater energy efficiency and smaller environmental impacts, and these far-reaching recommendations show how we in transportation can do even more.”

Foremost among the initiatives are a lessening of the agency’s carbon footprint. To that end, the MTA will look to draw seven percent of its energy needs from renewable sources — such as solar, wind and hydroelectricity — within the next seven years. The MTA is looking to make the Roosevelt Island subway stop powered, in large part, by tidal energy, and their solar goals of six megawatts would make it the largest solar project in New York history. William Neuman writes that the plans for solar power include various MTA buildings, bus depots and a bus-washing center.

Beyond energy use, the MTA is looking to encourage transit-oriented development in the metropolitan area suburbs. Their goals are to encourage both commercial and residential development within walking distance to Metro-North and Long Island Rail Road stations in an effort to keep commuters out of cars.

“The MTA already makes an irreplaceable contribution to sustainability simply by taking 8.5 million people each day out of their cars and onto public transportation. We are now taking the opportunity to go even further and lead by example,” Hemmerding said, levying a veiled jab at a New York Assembly too afraid of change to lead by example last week.

But — and there’s always a but — the amNY Subway Tracker blog picks upon a non-sustainable part of the MTA’s environmental campaign: the green MetroCards you can see above. The MTA will introduce five million of those MetroCards as a special tie-in to the campaign. But the cards are not biodegradable and will be around long after the subways stop running. Oh, the irony.

The MTA, I’ve written in the post, is already a green organization simply because it gets so many cars off the rode. Now, the agency is trying to do even more for the environment, and in our post-congestion pricing city, for that, they should be applauded.