Service Cuts

As the MTA looks to close an ever-widening budget gap, the agency will have to trim from every department, and everyone involved in the daily operations of our public transportation network will feel the pain. From those of us rely on the subways and buses to get to and from the office and school to those of us who work for the MTA, we all will pay the price. We’ve heard a lot about the authority’s plans to cut transit service, and today, the MTA will announce a sweeping set of personnel cuts designed to save $50 million.

The story is a big one. MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder is going to propose laying off more than 1000 workers. If all goes according to his plan, 450 of those workers fired will be unionized station agents. Another 600 — or 15 percent of the MTA’s non-unionized workforce — will be let go from various administrative positions. The major news outlets broke this story late last night, and many of the local 10 and 11 o’clock newscasts featured it at or near the top of the hour. For an agency saddled with what many believe to be an unmanageably and unnecessarily large workforce, these cuts are but a start in Walder’s fat-trimming efforts.

Of course, these cuts won’t go down easily. While Walder has the discretion to fire non-unionized MTA employees, the TWU has vowed to fight cuts no matter how small a percentage of the unionized workforce these cuts represent. Originally, these workers were to be let go via attrition, and the layoffs add a political element to the budgetary battles. “If they announce layoffs, they are going to be hearing from us,” TWU Local 100 President John Samuelsen said to The Times.

As always, Samuelsen, protective of his jobs, grabbed the upper hand politically and framed this debate as one involving the safety of the MTA’s riders. Focusing on the MTA’s decision to target station agents, he bashed the supposed safety aspect of person-less stations. “Their idea of customer service is digitalized signage, rather than a human being protecting you against crime or directing you when you’re lost in the subway,” he said.

This isn’t a new argument in any sense, and yet, it’s one with which I find myself continually fighting. From a safety perspective, the station agents serve one of two purposes: Either their presence alone is a deterrent to potential criminals or straphangers feel safer knowing that a station agent is present whether or not these agents do anything to increase subway safety. The real answer probably lies in the intersection between those two roles, but there is a problem with that assumption: The station agents are not legally obligated to do anything, and they can’t see the platforms beyond the fare control areas.

Over the last few years, we’ve heard a lot about the station agents as the MTA eliminated many of them in late 2008. Since then, the pro-station agent crowd has defended them on the grounds of safety. But in a landmark case a few years ago, a New York state court found that the station agents had no affirmative duty to act if they knew someone in their station was in trouble. They have no sidearms and can do nothing about a crime in progress. Meanwhile, vast stretches of these stations are invisible to the booth agents, and in those cases, the workers won’t prevent any crime at all except as they would serving as a potential deterrent. With subway crime at all time lows, continued enforcement, and not the presence of workers who can’t do much, is the key to keeping the system safe.

Meanwhile, these employees, who field an average of around four customer requests per shift, would help out in situations involving lost passengers or those with bulky luggage. Yet, as the numbers show, those occasions are rare indeed. The MTA won’t eliminate station agents in high-traffic areas with large numbers of travelers. The agents instead will vanish from stations that won’t frequently miss them.

The MTA is up a proverbial creek without a paddle these days. The authority is broke, and New York’s politicians are searching for any way possible to avoid funding transit. If these workers are the sacrifice the city must pay, until the politicians are willing to find a lasting solution, we will have to suffer through a system with fewer station agents.

Slated for a late-June elimination, Staten Island’s S60 bus route is a questionable one in any economy. (Source: NYC Transit’s PDF of planned service changes)

Staten Island’s S60 bus is a very curious route. It runs between Sunnyside and Grymes Hill with stops at St. John’s University and Wagner College. It operates during the week from 6:15 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. and on the weekends from 10 a.m. to 6:15 p.m. Notable about this route, though, is how no one rides this bus. Average weekday ridership is just 210 passengers per day, and Saturday and Sunday combined see just 90 total riders. It is nearly a private bus for those who get on.

For the MTA, operating the S60 for its 1140 passengers a week — or fewer passengers than all but seven buses see during an average weekday — isn’t cheap. Systemwide, the total cost per ride to the MTA is $2.73, but for the weekday S60 runs, the total cost per rider is $12.98. Over the weekend, the bus costs $25.69 to operate. Even in a good economy, I’d have to question the need for or wisdom behind this bus route.

So then it is more than a little strange to hear transit rider advocates speak about the elimination of this route — the city’s least used and most expensive local bus — as though it will be missed. In a statement about how “the cuts still stink,” Gene Russianoff and the Straphangers Campaign used the S60 to highlight how the bus cuts will impact New Yorkers.

“As for bus service, go through your own 150-page list of cuts,” the group said in a statement. “Thousands of your bus riders will be forced to walk many minutes to a different bus line, make extra transfers, suffer longer waits or have go out of their way to get to their destination. Take, for example, the S-60 that goes to the top of Staten Island’s Grymes Hill. Your accompanying text says that it will be eliminated and ‘customers would be required to walk 12 to 20 minutes’ to a different route.”

This is a rather egregious example of a service cut for anyone to highlight and few should, as I mentioned, object to this cut. Furthermore, the 12 to 20 minutes of estimated increased walking time are the highest in the book. Most other bus riders would have to walk approximately five to 10 minutes out of their way, and many would suffer through longer wait times rather than longer walks. Make no mistake about it: The service cuts are going to slam bus riders, but the S60 makes a mountain of a mole hill that houses just 1140 riders every seven days.

To circle back around to the title on the post, I often wonder against whom or for whom the city’s more vocal transit advocates and politicians are fighting. In its release yesterday, the Straphangers Campaign spent five paragraphs highlighting the ways in which we the commuting public will suffer and one paragraph calling upon the MTA to shift stimulus funds to cover the operating deficit (a plan with which I disagree). At the same time as the group is fighting against the MTA, it is also trying to fight for the MTA, and they’re not alone in this odd dance.

In Brooklyn, Assembly representative Joan Millman engaged in the same two-headed attack-and-support effort. She first called upon the MTA to save the Carroll Garden bus routes. “We are urging the MTA to abandon its plans to cut bus service to this neighborhood and keep our full service,” she said. At the same time, she is trying to drum up support in Albany for a restoration of the commuter tax that would generate $300 million or a parking permit program that would funnel money to the MTA. She is one of many who control the purse strings, and if she’s serious about stopping the cuts, getting more money to the agency would do the trick.

In the end, politicians and advocates simply cannot have both ways. They cannot slam the MTA for passing cuts when the authority’s back is to the wall and then turn around to propose another fee-based funding mechanism. Rather, these politicians and advocates need to attack the route of the problem — a broken political system in Albany that leaves the MTA perennially underfunded and looking for handouts. Only then will the MTA enjoy the support it needs. Only then will the MTA be able to offer more service with more money instead of cutting service to save ever penny.

A month ago, the MTA had a legal obligation to pass a balanced budget, and in the face of a budget gap that may reach nearly $400 million, the agency simply passed a series of cuts that resembled those put forward in late 2008. Following that vote, MTA CEO and Chair Jay Walder directed those at the MTA to reassess the service cuts and set for the necessary savings in such a way that will have as little impact on the MTA’s customers as popular.

This afternoon, the agency unveiled those cuts, and barring an economic miracle, they will go into effect in late June. Although the cuts are still reductions in transit offerings and straphangers will see slightly less frequent service and slightly more crowded trains, the latest iteration are designed to minimize the pain and provide more efficient service. Many overnight bus routes have been spared the chopping block, and others have been restructured to ensure that no one is more than a quarter of a mile away from transit in high-density neighborhoods and half a mile away in lower density neighborhoods. As service cuts go, things could have been far, far worse.

As part of the announcement about the new cuts, the MTA has updated its website with some very complete information packets, all of which are available right here. The booklets feature extensive data about bus ridership levels and the cost to the MTA per bus route. “While the cuts in funding to the MTA require painful actions, we have worked hard to limit the impact on customers,” Walder said. “We are now making an unprecedented level of information available to the public so our customers understand exactly how these proposals were developed and the impacts they will have well in advance of the public hearings.”

I’ll be delving into the bus cuts over the weekend. They’re rather extensive, and the MTA should be applauded for the rigorous examination and overhaul to which they subjected their original plans. Numerous bus routes, particularly in Brownstone Brooklyn, have been restructured to provide continuous service, and although some routes were eliminated entirely, those featured some of the lowest ridership figures in the city.

Furthermore, the MTA showed a willingness to respond to complaints raised at last year’s public hearings. Last year, vocal groups of bus supporters showed up, and the new plans reflect those demands. The M8 and M10, both scheduled for elimination last year, have been partially restored. The M10 will no longer run south of 59th St., and the M8 will operate on weekdays only. The crosstown buses through Central Park, the subject of a piece in The Times a few weeks ago, won’t be cut either.

So how then are the changes configured on the subway side of the equation? To find out, you’ll have to click through the jump.