Service Cuts

A glimpse at the now-completed station agent booth at the new South Ferry Terminal. Will these booths slowly fade into obsolescence? (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

Station agents and token booth clerks, those caged employees of the MTA, have been often in the news lately. Last week, a judge dismissed a complaint against two MTA employees — including one token booth clerk — who failed to stop a rape. The station employee tried to summon emergency help and did nothing egregious in violation of any duty to rescue, according to a Queens judge.

Meanwhile, if Albany doesn’t come through with an appropriate MTA funding package, as part of the Doomsday budget, the transit agency will be eliminating numerous station agents and shuttering token booths at the end of July. In fact, New York City Transit has already begun reducing staffing levels at booths around the system, and in light of concerns — spurred on by the increased attention to the rape case — over safety, the reception to these staffing cuts has been decidedly mixed.

Earlier this week, amNew York’s Heather Haddon reported on the non-staffing of some station agent positions. This state of affairs underground will become commonplace as the MTA is gearing to eliminate 800 station agents. Writes Haddon:

Last Wednesday, the MTA stopped replacing station agents who called out of work or took vacation. Those who asked for overtime to fill the spots were told it was unavailable for station agent posts, transit workers say. “It’s scary. They are not covering the jobs at all,” said Jacqueline Allison, a Wall Street station agent, who tried to work one of the vacant positions.

As a result, booths in at least a dozen stations across the city have gone empty during eight-hour shifts. Straphangers searching for information or needing help entering the subway must walk to another entrance…

Most of the entrances will remain open if an agent calls out of work, Fleuranges said. But in some cases, the turnstiles are gated, creating a bottleneck when passengers have to squeeze through one high-entrance turnstile.

Obviously, no one was happy with this. Critics bemoaned the personal safety aspect of this plan. Without station agents around, people will not be — or at least they won’t feel — as safe as they would like in the subway. I say “feel” because it’s rather dubious that the station agents have a protective purpose. At best, they deter would-be criminals from attacking a person or MTA property. The TWU has been pushing this view as a way to get these staffing cuts off the table.

Other critics — and I count myself in this group — believe that the MTA’s plan is a bit disingenuous. While station agent numbers will be reduced throughout the system, each station will be staffed with at least one employee at all times. What this means, however, is that for stations such as 50th St. on the West Side IRT that require separate entrances for uptown and downtown trains, only one side of the station will be staffed. For larger complexes that have multiple entrances, only some of the entrances will be staffed.

By the end of the week, New York City Transit had reneged on its decision to gate turnstiles at unstaffed stations. All entrances will remain open as scheduled even if the station stops are unstaffed, Transit said.

This decision though requires more automated fare-evasion enforcement. While cameras could have an impact, if no one is watching — and if everyone knows no one is watching — what will stop turnstile jumpers from leaping?

In the end, the lesson is obvious: The system can ill afford any cuts. Albany, I’m lookin’ at you.

When the MTA raised the fares two weeks ago, the agency announced May 31 as the first day of the new fares. Now, thanks to a New York 1 report, details about the service cuts — the second half of the so-called Doomsday budget — have come to light.

These cuts will roll out over a span of five-and-a-half months with the last of them — the death of a few subway lines — to come in December. On its surface, then, this timetable may give the Senate a few months to get its collective act together as its members attempt to figure out an politically acceptable funding plan for the transit agency. With the first of these cuts, however, set to go into effect in June, time remains of the essence.

So what’s the timeline? Let’s take a look. This information comes to us via NY1 which get its hands on some MTA materials.

June 28
The MTA will eliminate 21 bus routes and increase headway from eight to ten minutes on nearly every lettered subway line. The first cuts include the deaths of the following bus lines:

• In Manhattan: M6, 8, 10, 18, 27 and 30
• In Brooklyn: B23, 25, 37, 39, 51, and 75
• In the Bronx: Bx4, 14, 20, 34 and the Barretto Park Pool Shuttle
• In Queens: Q26, 56, 74, 75 and 84

July 26
Twenty-nine maroon-vested roving station agents will be cut, and 29 token booths will be shuttered. Four stations along the BMT Broadway line in Lower Manhattan will be closed overnight. Those stations include City Hall, Cortlandt St. (if it ever reopens), Rector St. and Lawrence St. along the N line. No N trains will stop at Whitehall St. or Court St., but as those stations are parts of other lines, they will remain open.

September 6
Express service along five lines will be cut. Those lines include the X25, BxM7B, QM22, QM23 and X32. At some point over the summer, overnight and weekend bus service along numerous lines in all boroughs will be eliminated or drastically reduced as well. The timeline does not say when.

December 6
Subway cuts go into effect. The W and Z trains will eliminated entirely (with the Q continuing past 57th St. to Astoria and the J running local in Brooklyn and Queens). The G will be terminated at Court Square at all times, and the M will run as a shuttle. Overnight headway will be reduced to an anemic 30 minutes. Load guidelines will be adjusted to allow for more crowded trains as well.

So enjoy it while you can. Unless Albany acts, unless transit advocates band together and secure a funding plan, New Yorkers will see their transit options slowly whittled down over the next few months. That’s hardly a fun way to spend the summer.

At the end of February, New York City Transit announced that, due to construction and budgetary concerns, weekend service would be slashed no matter what. The cost savings for this move was set at around $4 million a year, and New York City Transit President Howard Roberts explained that the decision was spurred on by the MTA’s ambitious state-of-good-repair plan.

Yesterday, amidst the rancorous politicking over the MTA’s potential rescue plan, NYC Transit apparently reconsidered those potentially permanent cuts. NY1 News reports:

The MTA now says a plan to cut back weekend subway service can be avoided, if Albany lawmakers act on a plan to shore up the agency’s $1.2 billion budget gap.

Last week, the MTA said it was moving forward with plans to reduce the scheduled frequency of weekend subway service on most of the lettered lines, beginning in June. But the agency has since reversed course and now says it will drop the plan, if lawmakers come through with a rescue plan for the cash-strapped agency.

Maybe the MTA reevaluated its need to drop weekend service cuts. Maybe this is just sloppy politics. If it’s the latter, this move won’t help the MTA respond to State Senator Malcolm Smith’s claims that the agency has no control over its finances. It sure is an odd political carrot, but as a frequent weekend rider, who am I to complain?

With just over a month remaining until the MTA Board gathers to vote on the Doomsday budget proposal, the Empire State Transportation Alliance has unveiled a new ad campaign calling for transit funding from Albany. The ad, above (click to enlarge), urges riders to visit Keep New York Moving in order to contact their elected representatives and Gov. David Paterson with a pro transit message.

“Our ad urges transit riders to speak up,” Robert Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association, a civic group and co-chair of the ESTA coalition. “Lawmakers need to act now or else draconian cuts will go into effect. At a time when the American economy has hit a weak point, it would be a big mistake to let public transit falter. Doing so will hurt our struggling businesses and discourage new enterprises from starting. Transit cuts also place an undue burden on the City’s poorest workers who are already suffering tremendously. We hope this campaign will challenge riders to stand up and take action.”

ESTA unveiled this PSA yesterday, and it will soon be seen in 3000 subway cars — or nearly half of NYC Transit’s rolling stock — throughout the city.

“The ad is effective because we don’t have a luxury system and there are no frills to cut. Our transit system is a necessity, and riders must send that message loud and clear to their State elected representatives and demand that they take action now,” William Henderson, executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, said.

The ads cost $120,000 to make, according to ESTA, and hopefully will serve to spur on Albany. “These 3,000 ads are a call to action,” says Paul Steely White, Executive Director of Transportation Alternatives. “New York’s 7.5 million daily straphangers can’t sit (or stand) idly while their commuting costs soar and service erodes.”

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today out of sadness for again we are burying part of a New York City subway line. As more and more people speak out against a payroll tax to save the MTA, the service cuts and fare hikes draw ever closer.

Today, at 10:30 a.m. at the Court Square subway station on the IND Crosstown line, we bury the G train’s northern extension. No longer with the misbegotten stepchild of the subway system reach from Carroll Gardens to Forest Hills. Instead, the G will permanently terminate at Court Square, doomed to leave Brooklyn-to-Queens riders searching for a transfer, another train and a faster way to travel between the city’s largest and most populous boroughs.

This is, of course, not the first time we have eulogized a train line facing its final few weeks of existence. In mid-January, we remembered the Z while we blamed this financial crisis in part on the grandstanding politicians who showed up for the Nassau Street Express’ final rites.

Two weeks ago, those same politicians buried the M and R trains in Manhattan and Brooklyn at least. The M will no longer head south of Broad St. during rush hour, and a few stations along the BMT Broadway line in Lower Manhattan will no longer enjoy late-night service. Prior to that, The Observer noted that no one will really miss the W, the city’s least reliable and dirtiest subway line. But we can’t neglect the Black Sheep of the family.

Meanwhile, the G train funeral offers much of the same. Joining the Straphangers Campaign at Court Sq. later today will be Joseph Lentol and Hakeem Jeffries, two state assembly representatives. Both of these representatives have something in common: They opposed a plan last year that would have delivered more service to the G line. Public hypocrisy, it seems, knows no bounds.

For Jeffries, this is nothing new. With an assist from Streetsblog, we took him to task last May for bemoaning the state of the G train after helping shoot down the congestion pricing plan. Lentol, meanwhile, was more guarded in his views but never really warmed to Mayor Bloomberg’s plan.

Today, these two officials are going to do what politicians do best. They are going to pander to their constituents less than a year after voting down a plan that would have accomplished just what they want to see happen today. Nothing beats a politician at a photo op. I just hope voters remember in November who killed their subway lines.

Attend an MTA hearing on the fare hikes and service cuts and one the many documents available to the public is bound to be 150-page tome entitled “Proposed Station Changes.” That work of art, available here as a PDF, details every single station booth that would shutter under the MTA’s Doomsday budget, and I have to wonder if there is more to it than meets the eye.

For the most part, the plans look as the one above — which you can click to enlarge — does. Stations that currently enjoy station agents at more than one point of entrance will see one of those permanent positions vanish in a puff of smoke. From Union St. to Union Turnpike, stations will see far fewer permanent employees and, in fact, far fewer employees in general.

According to the MTA’s figures, New York City Transit can reduce 808 positions by shuttering what they view are unnecessary booths. The plan would eliminate 570 red-vested Station Customer Assistance workers and 26 station supervisors. Meanwhile, NYC Transit also plans to shutter 29 redundant booths at 36 stations which multiple booths and converting 13 others at high-volume stations — Times Square, Penn Station, etc. — to part-time position. In total, those cuts will eliminate another 212 jobs.

Here’s where it gets interesting. According to the MTA’s report, these cuts will save $25.1 million in 2009 and $52 million in 2010. The savings sound substantial until you realize that $52 million is just 4.33 percent of the MTA’s overall $1.2 billion deficit. Much like the not-so-cost efficient service cuts, the MTA is reducing a lot of staff for little overall savings. I guess every little bit helps.

Meanwhile, the report contains an interesting line. “All stations/complexes will retain one full-time booth,” it says. That includes the above, stations similar to 25th St. along the Fourth Ave. line in Brooklyn. These stations are generally one way on one side, one way on the other with no free transfer between the two. If you have a problem on the southbound side of 25th St., under the MTA’s new plan, you’ll have to leave the station, cross Fourth Ave. and find the station agent in the booth on the northbound side. That’s hardly a model of efficiency.

Now, it’s easy to argue that many of these positions should be cut to part-time anyway. The station agents, after all, are more psychologically preventative than physically useful, but they do play rolls in the event of an emergency. But what if this is just a ploy by the MTA to draw attention to their economic plight? By making the station agent system ruthlessly inefficient as they would at many non-crossover stations, the MTA is begging Albany to intervene before getting around and getting information in the subways becomes a very expensive hassle.

This Doomsday budget really is bleak, and the more we look at it, the more we find not to look. We need a Ravitch-inspired bailout (or better) and soon. March 25 draws ever nearer day by day.

Brooklyn Borough President sings a (hopefully unnecessary) swan song for the Z train.

I like what city officials and transit advocates are doing right now. They’re keeping the attention on the MTA’s budget issue in ways that attract cameras and press coverage. Now if only they focus the rhetoric and get the politicians listening.

A day after a very contentious public hearing, two borough presidents and leading members of the Straphangers Campaign gathered in Lower Manhattan to eulogize the doomed Z train. Bobby Cuza had more about this funeral for a train set to vanish if state and city funds don’t find their ways to the MTA:

Transit advocates held a mock funeral today to mourn the loss of the Z line, which the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has put on the chopping block. “Yea, though the Z walks through the valley of the shadow of death, it will fear no MTA plan,” said Gene Russianoff of the transit advocacy group, The Straphangers Campaign.

While the Straphangers Campaign staged the mock funeral with tongue firmly in cheek, it says the loss of the Z train is no laughing matter. Along the same line, the MTA plans to shorter the M train and eliminate J/Z skip-stop service. Although the agency will add extra J trains, the changes will add time to riders’ commutes.

“Someone coming from Parsons Boulevard-Jamaica will have about seven minutes added to their trip one-way,” said Russianoff. “So when you calculate that twice a day, five days a week, that’s an hour of additional commuting time those riders are going to have.”

Joining Russianoff were Manhattan Beep Scott Stringer and his Brooklyn counterpart Marty Markowitz. Stringer had all the right words. “I’m here to tell you that we believe in resurrection,” he said. “And we believe that this battle, which now heads to Albany, we have not yet begun to fight.”

But Markowitz’s presence is far more problematic. According to one report, Marty sounded like, well, himself. “Though the Z train begins in Queens and ends in Manhattan, it is—like the J—Brooklyn to the core,” he said to the cameras. “When trains like the Z die, our City’s economy dies with them. This is why we grieve at this mock funeral today. Let’s hope these are not the Z’s last rites.”

As Cap’n Transit succinctly pointed out, Markowitz has been a vocal opponent of bridge tolls, and right now, those bridge tolls are the MTA’s last and best hope. As I mentioned yesterday, we are again seeing a dearth of leadership and rhetoric. It is, as a mentioned, comforting to see Russianoff on the front lines, but we need to see more pressure on Albany and more pressure on city officials — like Markowitz and Stringer — to embrace East River tolls. A healthy MTA for 100 percent of New Yorkers is far more important than placating the 4 percent of Brooklyn drivers who would be impacted by East River tolls.

But in the spirit of the day, I’ll toast the Z, a train I’ve had the pleasure of riding once in my nearly 26 years of life in New York City. No matter my own ridership figures, nearly 80,000 people will miss it, and that’s a big deal.