New York City Transit

On Wednesday night, as I praised the MTA for better handling inclement weather than they had in the past, I ran a photo of the MTA’s high-powered snow blower. Described in a December release as “similar to a household snow thrower, just a lot bigger,” this particular thrower helped keep the Broad Channel crossing and the IND Rockaway Line free from snow.

Little did I realize just how alluring stories about big machinery can be. Yesterday, Pete Donohue of the Daily News profiled the MTA’s snow thrower as well. The machine is massive. It features a six-foot cylindrical brush that gobbles out snow, feeds it into a chute and launches it through a tube eight feet above ground. Transit says the machine can throw snow 200 feet and can clear 3000 tons of snow an hour.

These snow throwers are but a part of the MTA’s anti-snow fleet. The agency also has de-icer cars, jet blowers and ballast regulators that keep the tracks free from snow and ensure that snow drifts do not interfere with train operations. As other subway systems throughout the country — DC’s WMATA, in particular — struggle to maintain any semblance of service during large snow storms, the MTA has equipment ready to ensure that our 24-hour subway system can run above and below ground with few problems.

The Holiday Nostalgia Train shown here in 2007. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

Lately, as part of an effort to remember the city’s transit past while providing for a neat way to get more people interested in the subways, New York City Transit has rolled out the Nostalgia Train with some regularity. These retrofitted and well-maintained vintage subway cars have made trips to and from Yankee and Shea Stadium during their final games and up to the Bronx for the playoffs this year.

Yet, through it all, December has, for the last few years, been a time for Nostalgia Train rides, and this year is no different. Transit announced this afternoon that the Nostalgia Train will be running along the V line from 2nd Ave. to Queens Plaza on Sundays in December. The train will operate between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. with trips leaving every 90 minutes from 2nd Ave.

“With a little bit of luck and good timing, riders will be able to catch a ride on this classic subway train at stations along the V line between Queens Plaza and Second Avenue.” Steven Feil, MTA New York City Transit’s Senior Vice President of the Department of Subways, said.

The train set will feature cars that were in service between the 1930s and 1970s. All have been maintained by Transit, and most are kept at the Transit Museum. Among the highlights are Car No. 100, an R1-type that was the first car ordered for the opening of the IND subway line; Car No. 484, an R4 made by American Car & Foundry that received a PA system and bulls-eye lighting in 1946; and Car No. 1575, an R7 that was rebuilt after a crash as the prototype for the R10. With wicker seats and ceiling fans, these cars are definitely curiosities as compared with today’s modern rolling stock.

Yesterday, in writing about the MTA’s plan to run vintage buses along 42nd Street, a few readers started debating the merits of these gimmicky holiday specials. Although running Nostalgia Trains and buses makes for nice photo opportunities, critics argue, they don’t do much to push transit forward. I believe that these trains serve as a draw though. By bringing out cars that look different and are evocative of the past, people are interested in transit. Even if just for a few hours, a heightened awareness of what’s happening underground is well worth it.

In June, The Times reported on the MTA’s decision to eliminate its dedicated emergency response team. In November 2008, ABC News tracked a bunch of MTA workers who weren’t really working. In both instances, Barry Kluger, the MTA Inspector General, decided to investigate these allegations, and this week, he released his reports on these incidents.

Transit’s Emergency Response coordination lacking

Throughout the 1990s, New York City’s First Responders — Fire, Police, OEM — urged the MTA to streamline its emergency response team. It suffered from a lack of centralized leadership, poor communication and vague planning and operational standards. It took a delayed response to a track fire in 2006 to spur Transit into forming the Rapid Transit Emergency Response team.

In March 2008, the team came together with seven emergency response officers heading the emergency oversight. Then, in March 2009, as part of a cost-cutting measure, the MTA eliminated it and returned emergency response over to a rotating cast of managers. When the June Times article was published, Transit President Howard Roberts said he was still working to firm up a better solution that would also save the agency money, and MTA Inspector General Barry Kluger launched his investigation.

Nearly six months later, Roberts is no longer the head of Transit, and according to Kluger’s report, Transit’s emergency response protocols are still lacking. With new line managers and group general managers in place, the ERO teams are no longer sure to whom they should report. Kluger now calls for a clarification of Transit’s “emergency response function regarding the role of the ERO; training; communication; proximity response;
continuity of knowledge; reporting for duty; and equipment.”

“We also recommended that NYC Transit designate an emergency response coordinator to properly guide and facilitate the planning and implementation of emergency response activities through the reorganization of Subways,” the report, available here as a PDF, says.

In October, Roberts agreed to many of Kluger’s preliminary recommendations but not the one urging for a solitary emergency response coordinator. The IG report again calls for a streamlined leadership, better training requirements and more thorough communications controls.

Transit spokesman Charles Seaton told me the agency will be addressing these concerns. “In working with the Inspector General on the analysis of his report, we have already begun incorporating many of his recommendations,” he said in a statement. “[Wednesday was] the first day on the job for the new President of MTA New York City Transit and he will make it his priority to review the contents of the report. As always, our top concern remains the safety and security of our customers.” Better to resolve this one before we learn the hard way that Transit’s emergency response protocols are lacking.

Access schedules to blame for idle track workers; cost to agency $10 million

On the other side of the tracks, we have MTA work crews with a reputation for laziness. We’ve read stories of sleeping station agents and construction teams doing little work. The fault, it seems, does not lie solely with the workers. In a second report, available here, Kluger blames track access schedules for nearly $10 million in lost productivity for the MTA.

The problem here is one of scheduling. The daytime MTA work crews — approximately 455 total workers — are schedule for shifts that run from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., but because of the morning and afternoon rush hours, Transit limits track access to the four hours between 10:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. This problem plagues workers schedule to work both in the tunnels and on the MTA’s elevated structures.

Furthermore, both communications and planning efforts suffer as well. Some workers do not receive daily assignments until two hours into their shifts, and they aren’t cleared to enter the tracks until even later in the day. For workers on site, tools and equipment arrivals “are not coordinated with the start of work,” the report says.

In the end, the Inspector General’s recommendations and Transit’s response to them will not be popular with labor leaders. The MTAIG urged Transit to schedule more work for weekends when track access is uninterrupted for the duration of the eight-hour shifts and called upon Transit to better formulate a “reasonably restrictive weekend leave policy.” While Transit endorsed shifting workers to weekend shifts, the agency was not keen on restricting its leave policy.

TWU officials responded with a less-than-conciliatory note. And who can blame them? After all, unions came about partly to enforce a work week with weekends and appropriate family time off.

“The answer” — to the MTA’s work schedule woes — “is not to punish track workers and our families for the MTA’s gross mismanagement,” John Samuelsen of TWU Local 100 said. “If the MTA moves to take track workers from our families on both Saturday and Sunday every week, there will be swift intervention from TWU Local 100.”

At a time when labor relations between the TWU and the MTA are tense, Transit is going to have to ask its workers to make a pretty significant time concession. I don’t see the union being too amenable to it.

We’ve all seen the SubTalk poster promoting New York City Transit’s Lost and Found unit. Because of the presence of dentures, a seemingly used razor blade and a set of prosthetic legs, the ad generally elicits a disbelieving chuckle. There’s no way anyone has ever lost a pair of legs on the subway, right?

In a City Critic piece in The Times this weekend, Ariel Kaminer went behind the scenes at Transit’s Lost and Found department underneath the A/C/E platform at 34th St. and 8th Ave and found that, yes, a long-forgotten set of legs is in residence. You can see the legs right here.

But that’s just a part of the sideshow. Kaminer’s article is a generally optimistic take on the lost-and-found unit. She intentionally loses a few items and mostly recovers them a few days later. Along the way, she meets one formerly forlorn straphanger who was able to reclaim a lost cell phone; another who retrieved his wallet with the $70 still inside; and a third who recovered a blue canvas bag with most of her identifying papers in it. It is seemingly a minor miracle of the subway system.

Of the Lost and Found system, now mostly handled via its website, Kaminer writes:

Usually it takes 7 to 10 days for an item to make its way from a station attendant’s booth to a dispatcher, and so on up the line, but the station pickups are once a week, so if you’ve just missed one, it can take longer; Lost Property agents assured me that everything but perishable food is turned in.

I waited 10 days, then went to see if anything had turned up. Having expected the equivalent of a big cardboard box, I was impressed to find an operation closer to the Dewey Decimal System. Everything was sorted according to category and the month lost, and logged in a searchable electronic database, with an additional file of paper receipts for good measure…

My lost items were not anywhere near that valuable, which was a good thing, because after almost two weeks, all I got was an automated e-mail notice Friday afternoon saying one of the items may have appeared. The Lost Property Unit had already closed for the week, but I saw enough teary-eyed success stories to feel optimistic about the whole lost trove. I have a feeling I haven’t seen the last of that “Star Wars” umbrella.

It’s a nice story for a Sunday column, but to me, it seems to be nothing more than just a story. Two years ago, an MTA Inspector General’s report condemned the lost and found operations. At the time, just 18 percent of lost items were recovered, and 23 of 26 intentionally lost items were never logged into the system. Since then, Transit has debuted its new web-based system, and the recovery rate may have gone up.

Personally, I had a tale of Lost and Found woe earlier this year when my sunglasses fell out of my backpack. I didn’t notice for a few hours that I had lost them and when I did come to this realization, I was distraught. I filled out the detailed online form — where I lost them, when, what color, what brand — and waited. A few days later, I received an e-mail that said, “Based on the information provided, there is a possible match with an item(s) that has been received at the Lost Property Unit. Please contact or visit the Lost Property Unit for further information.”

At first, I tried calling the Lost Property Unit but with no luck. The phone would ring and ring and ring with no answer. So I hopped the train to Penn Station, went inside this windowless room and issued my inquiry. The woman who helped came back with some sunglasses, but none of them were mine. Apparently, according to the woman staffing the LPU, the system, in getting my hopes, didn’t differentiate between glasses cases or rely on the extensive description I had provided. It was a “possible” match but not a definite.

I appreciate Kaminer’s tale. It’s heartwarming to think that if one of the millions of people who ride the subway every day happens to lose something, he or she might actually get back it. It’s also highly improbable. That lost Star Wars has a new home, and it most likely isn’t a storage bin at Transit’s Lost Property Unit.

Earlier this week, I ran a story about some troubles with Access-A-Ride. My story focused on a FOX 5 report about people abusing the system and a driver literally asleep behind the wheel of an idling van.

Unfortunately, some of the FOX story — and thus my report — contained some incorrect information, and the MTA has issued a statement with a correction. Although a sleeping driver in an idling van is against regulations, this driver was not shirking other duties. Says Transit:

The driver took a scheduled lunch break between 8:45 and 9:45 a.m. Last minute changes were made to this driver’s after lunch route by the contractor’s dispatcher because of the traffic alert in Manhattan due to the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. The changes resulted in the unusual occurrence of a further 45 minutes of elapsed time before his next scheduled pick up. In this case, there were no other routes in the vicinity that required assistance.

MTA NYC Transit in no way condones excessive engine idling or sleeping while on duty. We have and will continue to direct the private transportation carriers to enforce the prohibition on engine idling. Maggies will proceed to discipline the driver for conduct unbecoming (sleeping in the vehicle), unsafe operation of the vehicle and arrival to the pick- up location earlier than five minutes prior to the scheduled pick up time.

In the end, the problems with Access-A-Ride stem from its mandate and purpose. It is a federally-required program, but it is also an unfunded mandate. The city and state have to pay for it without any assistance from the federal government, and they have to do so while meeting some stringent ADA requirements. The total cost this year is estimated to be $451 million.

In a way, then, we can take a lesson from this program and apply to the feds’ desires for more oversight over local transit safety. If that effort ends up as another federally unfunded mandate, transit agencies and local governments may have to foot some pretty expensive bills at a time when they can least afford to do so.

A bad economy has led to a slight decline in subway ridership this year. (To clarify, the bottom line is weekday ridership and the top line is the combined ridership for Saturday and Sunday.)

As part of the MTA’s bailout package, Albany required the transit authority to become more transparent. For an agency that had actually been working toward providing more information over the last few years, this was a simple request, and this month, for the first time, the MTA has made all committee and board meeting materials publicly available.

For transit junkies, having ready access to this information is similar to Christmas in November, but it comes with a downside. As with many document dumps, there is, simply put, far too much information out there, and most of it doesn’t matter. Every-day procurement orders don’t provide us with a deep understanding about the goings-on at the MTA.

Still, it’s important to understand the parts of these documents that do matter, and to that end, I’ve been working my way through the Transit committee documents. Generally, I’m intrigued by the ridership numbers. These figures drive the economy of the MTA. Since the agency is so dependent upon fare-box revenue, ridership numbers can significantly impact the bottom line, and every year, the agency uses the previous year’s numbers along with external economic condition to project ridership levels and, thus, revenue totals. The November documents feature the September ridership numbers. Let’s drill down.

Across all modes, weekday ridership figures for Transit were down 5.3 percent over September 2008. The agency attributes this to “the weaker economy, the June 2009 fare increase and calendar differences,” meaning more weekend days in September 2009 than in September 2008. The rolling average weekday ridership is down slightly as well. But lower ridership totals do not automatically mean revenue loss for the MTA. For that, we turn to the chart detailing projected revenue numbers vs. actual revenue collected.

As you can see, September’s total revenue figures were, at least preliminarily, higher than anticipated. Subway revenue was up 2.5 percent over initial projections, easily enough to make up for lower-than-expected bus ridership totals. Transit credits “lower-than-anticipated job losses” on the “higher-than-forecasted subway ridership” figures.

Take a closer look at the Fare Media Liability line. This item details money the MTA has captured due to unused value on expired MetroCards. For the month of September, the MTA recouped $5 million in pre-paid fares that went unswiped. September’s figured was 25 percent over the estimated value, and over the course of a year, that would net the agency $60 million in recovered revenue.

Year-to-date, the agency has recouped $7 million more than expected via the fare media liability route. I’ll have to find out if this figure includes Unlimited Ride MetroCards that aren’t used often enough to pay for themselves. For example, if buy a pay-per-ride card with the 15 percent bonus, I, in effect, pay $1.96 per ride. If I buy a 30-day card for $89 and use it 45 or fewer times, my rides cost more than that $1.96 per swipe. The MTA could claim recouped revenue off of underutilized Unlimited Ride cards.

Finally, we arrive at my favorite chart in which Transit divulges how much we actually pay for our subway rides. The posted fare may be $2.25 per ride, but no one pays that. Amongst pay-per-ride discounts and unlimited card purchases, the average subway fare was $1.55 this past September. A year ago, the average fare was $1.41, and that ten percent increase can be attributed to the fare hike.

As always, the MTA urges a historical, pre-MetroCard fare incentives comparison. “The September 2009 average fare was 9.6¢ above the average fare of $1.379 in September 1996, before MetroCard fare incentives began,” the document says. “In constant 1996 dollars, the September 2009 average fare was $1.04, 34¢ lower than in 1996.” Personally, I spent the last month tracking my MetroCard usage and made 88 swipes last month for a total of $1.01 per ride.

It’s tough to draw too many conclusions from just one month’s worth of data, but I can say that the subways remain popular despite the fare hikes. Furthermore, the subways remain a pretty good deal too. We may complain about the shortcomings of the MTA, but we don’t pay a lot for the millions of rides we New Yorkers take each month.