New York City Transit

The Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA published its annual assessment of the Authority yesterday, and as I did last year, I’m going to offer up a few takes on what the report says. You can read the whole thing right here as a PDF. It’s an interesting perspective on the MTA from those tasked with giving riders a say in the way the authority is run and the policies it pursues.

In noting that 2009 was a “tumultuous year” for the MTA, the PCAC offered up praise for Transit’s development of numerous initiatives aimed at improving travel times, comfort and accessibility. Select Bus Service again earned high marks, and the new component-based station assessment plan garnered praise. Yet, as we all worry about the MTA’s financial future moving forward, so too is the PCAC. “We are concerned,” the report says, “that available resources will not be sufficient to satisfy the demands of maintaining the system and providing acceptable levels of service.”

The tumultuous year, of course, started at the top. Over the course of the summer, Howard Roberts left Transit and Thomas Prendergast took over. The PCAC had appreciated Roberts’ willingness to solicit rider feedback even if the Rider Report Cards weren’t the most rigorous statistical sampling of subway riders, and the Committee has been pleased with Prendergast’s outreach efforts as well. The impact of the recent shake-up of the line manager program remains to be seen, and the PCAC isn’t convinced this program improves station or car equipment maintenance.

In terms of service, Transit has made due with less. Despite suffering through some tough financial times, the midday 5 extension to Brooklyn was a welcome development last year, and the Jermone Ave. express pilot program earned some praise as well. Whether that will be continued in the future has yet to be determined. The PCAC strongly urged Transit to be aggressive in its Select Bus Service rollout as well.

From a pilot perspective, the PCAC praised the F line study, the new DesignLine buses and the luggage racks on airport-bound buses. I think it’s important to acknowledge Transit’s desire to improve its service, but the PCAC report is silent on the future of these initiatives. As with many pilot programs, these began this fall but particularly for the luggage racks, obvious needs remain simply pilots. Transit should be quicker to bring these initiatives to the system at large.

As far as accessibility concerns, the report is guardedly optimistic. “It is gratifying that the NYCT is ahead of schedule” to outfit 100 stations for ADA compliance by the end of the decade, it says, but “given the current tight financial situation, it remains to be seen if the remaining 30 can be finished by 2020.” The PCAC urged Transit to make the new Mets/Willets Point station completely compliant as quickly as possible.

Finally, the report touches upon a sore subject for Transit and one that has plagued the agency for years: communication and customer service. Despite the unreliability of TripPlanner, the PCAC generally praised the agency’s attention to online directions and appreciated the new PA/CIS rollout. All is not wine and roses there, however. “There are many stations,” the report noted, “still without public address systems and NYCT needs to move expeditiously to remedy this situation for the reassurance and security of all subway riders.”

Additionally, both service diversion signs and the decreasing number of MTA employees leave the PCAC worried. As I reported earlier this week, the PCAC is no fun of the confusing weekend signs, and, says the report, “the prospect of an additional 500 locations without agents will further erode confidence in the security and accessibility of the system.” MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder plans to address both of these issues.

So where does this leave Transit? By and large, this PCAC report is a generous one. It does not attack the current physical conditions of the agency’s infrastructure, but it does recognize that financial support, or lack thereof, for the city’s subways is a problem largely out of Transit’s hands. Overall, the pilot programs are seen as positive steps, but turning many of them into permanent features has so far not happened quickly. Innovation benefits everyone only when it is brought to the masses.

Stay tuned for more on the PCAC report. The Committee levied some charges against the way the MTA lobbies Albany, and I’ll explore that in depth later today.

Jumping these turnstiles won’t get you far. (Photo by flickr user saitowitz)

As New York City Transit officials announced yesterday that fare-beating numbers are higher than expected, today, we learn that cops ticketed fewer turnstile-jumpers last year than they had in the past. Somewhere along the line, the fare-enforcement system seems to be breaking down.

According to Pete Donohue of the Daily News, cops ticketed or arrested 87,000 fare-beaters last year, the lowest total in five years. Donohue has more on the statistics:

The police gave fare-evasion tickets to more than 68,000 riders last year and arrested an additional 19,000 for jumping the turnstile. That’s a 12% drop from the 99,000 straphangers cited in 2005, with about 86,000 getting summonses and nearly 13,000 arrested.

The NYPD pointed out that although overall enforcement is down, arrests are up. “The department focused on the arrest of more serious offenders,” Sgt. Carlos Nieves said.

For its part, the MTA told Donohue that it will “continue to work with the NYPD on cost-effective strategies such as targeting high-incidence locations and placing cameras in key areas.” However, I have to wonder about NYPD priorities. They seem highly skewed to me.

Over the last few months, we’ve heard numerous stories of a ticketing blitz targeting people on mostly empty trains who are taking up two seats. As I’ve written before, taking up two seats isn’t a violation of NYC Transit Rules of Conduct unless doing so would “interfere or tend to interfere with the operation of the Authority’s transit system or the comfort of other passengers.” No one is inconvenienced if someone spreads out on a train car with only four other people at 2:30 in the morning.

Instead of targeting these non-offenders, the NYPD should be focusing on fare-beating. If the recent numbers are to be believed, only half of one percent of all turnstile jumpers have been ticketed or arrested by cops. That’s a pitifully low number, and to get fare beaters under control, the police and the MTA should ramp up enforcement. Whether or not fare jumping will increase as the number of station agents decrease remains to be seen, but that shouldn’t stop the cops and the MTA from doing all they can to halt fare-jumping.

These turnstiles are not for jumpin’. (Photo by flickr user saitowitz)

For years, New York City Transit assumed that fare-beating with a minor, but containable, problem. Most estimates put the number of people who sneaked into the system at five million, a high number but just a few tenths of one percent of the subway’s annual ridership.

Well, toss that assumption out the window. As the Daily News reported today, a new study by Transit found that the agency lost $27 million to fare-beaters in 2009. The problem runs deeper and is far more widespread than anyone at the MTA had originally suspected. Based on new MTA estimates, riders hop turnstiles or sneak in through emergency exits 19 million times a year. While still just over one percent of annual ridership, that $27 million, as the News notes, would be enough to cover the planned subway service cuts.

Pete Donohue has more on the new methodology for tracking those who avoid paying:

NYC Transit for years arrived at fare-beating figures by using a formula based on the observations of token booth clerks. A one-day count was conducted each month, agency spokesman Paul Fleuranges said. An MTA audit concluded the agency was way off the mark. Clerks weren’t keeping accurate tallies because they had other duties like selling MetroCards, Fleuranges said. Because of staff cuts, there also are fewer clerks to make observations, Fleuranges said.

Despite the cuts in personnel and the massive increase in fare-beating numbers, Fleuranges insisted the system has not seen a spike in actual turnstile-jumping. Instead, he said, an unreliable system of estimating has been replaced with a better method that provides a more realistic picture.

NYC Transit now uses “traffic checkers” who are randomly placed at a sampling of turnstiles to count fare-beaters, Fleuranges said.

Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign issued the obvious comment, and there’s definitely some truth behind it. “The MTA’s only going to make jumping the turnstile more inviting by slashing scores of clerks from subway station entrances,” he said.

But what is the MTA to do? Nearly two years ago, they raised the fare-evading fine to $100. Right now, they need more police enforcement against fare-jumpers. The station agents can sit there and watch people exit and enter, but it’s still exceedingly easy to sneak into a station even with an employee in the booth.

There is, of course, a baseline problem here. No amount of enforcement will stop people from fare-jumping, but at what level of evasion does it become more costly to enforce than it would be to simply chalk up lost fares to an operating expense? After 1.6 billion paid to ride the subways last year, and as long as that 27 million doesn’t creep upward, it could just be a sunk cost.

With so many moving vehicles around New York City, New York City Transit’s vehicles get into their fare share of accidents. Sometimes, pedestrians get clipped; sometimes, buses and other surface vehicles collide; sometimes, people who aren’t supposed to be in the subway tunnels find themselves being chased down by a train. The MTA then winds up on the defending end of numerous lawsuits and often choose to settle. Yesterday, though, the MTA rolled the dice and lost a $7.5 million judgment to victims of a 2005 bus crash.

According to a 1010 WINS report, Brenda Whaley won $7.25 million and Amanda Wade walked away with $250,000 in their case against the MTA. The Authority alleged that the two had run a red light while Whaley and Wade indicated that the bus had run the red light. While lawyers were willing to settle for $3 million, the jury saddled the MTA with a $7.5 million verdict. The authority will apply the award. Sometimes, that $4 million gamble doesn’t pay.

Despite this verdict, overall, Transit has had great success recently in fighting their personal injury claims. In 2009, those injured filed 2720 claims against Transit, and only 216 of those went to trial. The agency won 65 percent of those trials, and since 2005, the agency has a similar percentage of the 870 cases to go to trial. Overall, NYC Transit has paid out $244.8 million in injury claims over the last five years.

Meanwhile, for a different take on the MTA’s legal liability, take a read through this tale from Peter at Ink Lake. He served as the foreman on a jury tasked with determining whether the authority should be liable for injuries a mugger sustained after he ran into a tunnel to escape the police and had his foot severed by a train. There, the jury found for the MTA. Recently, a 16-year-old graffiti tagger lost his leg when a subway train hit while he was trespassing inside a tunnel. There is no word yet if he plans to file suit.

The Chambers St. stop on the BMT Nassau St. line is in need of more than just a paint job. (Photo by flickr user ciamabue)

Last night, as I promoted my appearance on a CBS 2 story about the MTA, I wrote about the MTA’s new approach to station renovations. Instead of picking only a limited number of stations for State of Good Repair overhauls, the authority is also going to target 130 stations that need various repairs. This Target Component Program will focus on fresh coats of paint, station lighting and sturdier platform edges.

Meanwhile, other stations that have recently been overhauled will be entered into the Station Maintenance Program. Here, teams of contractors will fix defects that have emerged since the latest renovations and then MTA workers will regularly inspect these defects and other components in an effort to maintain the cosmetics of the stations. At the same time, approximately 24 stations will undergo complete overhauls over the next five years aimed at achieving a State of Good Repair and ADA compliance.

Today, the Daily News has the cost breakdown of this component-based repair approach. The MTA plans to spend $700 million overall on station rehabilitation efforts in the next five-year capital plan. The 24 station renovations cost on average of $15 million for a rough total of $360 million. The remaining 130 will see, on average, $3.38 million worth of upgrades per station. These repairs will shore up leaky ceilings, repair eroding staircases and generally make Transit’s stations more pleasant for straphangers as they pass through and wait for their trains.

So with that in mind, let me ask if this is a smart use of funds. As my hyperbolic headline suggests, it’s not an ideal situation. In a perfect world, the MTA would have the money it needs to overhaul all stations and not just some at an anemic pace. With 468 stations in the system, Transit can’t repair just 24 every five years to a State of Good Repair and expect to keep up with the wear and tear 7.4 million daily users exert on the system.

Yet, this new component-based program is exactly what the headline describes. The MTA is taking their ugliest stations and trying to make them look good without reengineering the problems that lead to these unsightly messes in the first place. Will Transit be able to repair leaky waterproofing at Chambers St. on the BMT Nassau St. line? Corroded pipes that have ruined the mosaics on the 2/5 platform at 149th St./Grand Concourse? Shuttered and crumbling platform staircases at 7th Ave. on the BMT Brighton line that are far from the eyes of station employees and now reek of urine and human waste? These are systematic problems that cosmetic upgrades can mask for a few years but cannot repair.

I can’t complain too much about the MTA’s approach here. Having pleasant-looking stations that aren’t grimy and don’t have tiles falling down and paint flaking off the ceilings will go a long way toward improving New Yorkers’ attitudes toward the subway system, their commutes and, hopefully, the MTA. But it’s a band aid for now. Transit may, as President Thomas Predergast said, be trying to get “more bang for its buck,” but it can’t hide the fact that the agency simply needs more money to maintain not only the aesthetics of its system but the structural integrity of it as well.