Second Ave. Sagas

Category: Service Cuts

  • The Doomsday Shuffle continues

    Yesterday morning, I noted how many who cover the MTA had made the faulty assumption that this year’s service cuts would mirror last year’s. Never mind that the agency had to find far less in savings this year. Never mind that the authority had a year to ascertain better cuts that would leave fewer rides stranded. Reporters who covered the MTA were intent on believing that this year’s cuts would simply be last year’s Doomsday plan repackaged.

    Today, The Post proved my point. In article about the hiring of a new manager who will oversee the death of the MetroCard, Tom Namako notes that Z train and the Bx14 bus will probably be “taken off the chopping block.” Two Brooklyn buses — the B77 and B67 — will probably be rerouted to make up for cuts to the B75 and B69, respectively. Again, though, the MTA was legally required to pass a balanced budget last month, and any mentions to Doomsday cuts were simply out of convenience. It’s not a surprise that the MTA is looking at ways to save money that will impact as few riders possible, and by now, it’s clear that this year’s cuts, when they are eventually released to the public, will look far different from last year’s.

  • A $214 million negotiating tactic

    Since the MTA announced plans to cut the Student MetroCard program, I’ve written extensively about the various aspects to this threat. We’ve explored the politics of the cuts and the mathematics behind the impending death of free student rides. Last week, Assembly rep Richard Brodsky promised to fight for student funding, and today we learn just how much it will take to save the program.

    According to an article in today’s Daily News, the MTA will need $214 million from the government to maintain free student MetroCards. This total covers the entire cost of the program in 2009 dollars to the MTA as shown in this graph and would represent a significant contribution to the MTA during an era in which the state and the city have both pulled back on subsidies to transit.

    The News reports that the MTA will scrape the program if the city and state do not fund it in its entirety, and recent comments by MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder support that sentiment. “It’s my aspiration that children in this city should be able to ride free to go to school,” he said last week. “It’s up to the state and city to put together a funding package to allow that to happen.”

    In Albany, Gov. David Paterson has said he will unveil a new budget with more money for student travel within the next two weeks. Can we really expect the cash-strapped state to find $208 million more than they pledged for 2010 for student travel? After all, just under two months ago, the state cut its student subsidies from $45 million to $6 million, and so far, the city has been awfully quiet on the student travel front.

    In the end, I’m left with the same position I’ve held since the beginning. It is unpopular for the MTA to threaten free student transit, and it will create more ill will toward the embattled authority. But the political response to this move from the elected officials in Albany shows that the MTA played the right card. No one has been able to justify foisting the expense of student travel on the transit authority, and politicians are scrambling to find the dollars for it. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the state and city come up short, and when they do, the MTA will have to decide who should pay: students through a half-price fair or the rest of us through a series of inconvenient service cuts. I know what I’d choose. Do you?

  • Waiting for the official list of service cuts

    When the MTA threatened to implement its Doomsday budget a year ago, the cuts — as this PDF shows — were substantial. The agency planned to do away with the W and Z trains, roll back the M to Bay Parkway, shutter some Lower Manhattan stations and generally reduce headways all around. Buses had a it worse with 26 scheduled for a flat-out elimination while numerous others would see weekend and late-night service reductions or cuts.

    A year ago today, the agency held its first of eight planned public hearings on the service cuts, and the situation looked dire. The MTA had to close a budget gap of over $1.2 billion that, at one point, was rumored to increase to nearly $1.8 billion. Albany, meanwhile, was stalling on a proper funding package. In a real sense, the situation in 2009 is far from that facing the MTA today in 2010.

    This year, the MTA is attempting to close a budget gap much smaller. By all accounts, the gap is between $300-$400 million. It could, if the MTA so chose, easily be covered by a small fare increase, but the agency promised Albany it would not raise fares again until a planned 2011 adjustment for inflation. The body politic could not stomach three or four consecutive years with fare increases. Yet, the media has made the mistake of assuming that last year’s Doomsday budget is the same as this year’s.

    In countless stories and reports, those covering transit have talked about Doomsday cuts as though they are back. They mention subway and bus route eliminations as though the MTA will just graft last year’s plan onto this year’s problem. At the start, I too was guilty of this sin, but I’ve realized that the MTA has a different plan in the works. Yesterday, we looked at how the V train could be replacing the M train in north Brooklyn, and today, MTA sources reveal another change to the 2009 Doomsday service cuts.

    According to the Daily News, some local bus routes originally believed to be on the block may be spared. Says Pete Donohue:

    The Bx34 in the Woodlawn section of the north Bronx and the B25, which runs through East New York, Fort Greene and Brooklyn Heights in Brooklyn, are among the local routes that will be saved under the revised plans, sources said. The Bx10 in Riverdale and Norwood also gets a reprieve, sources said.

    But while transit officials have decided to spare some local bus riders, other commuters will be affected, sources said. Additional express bus routes – the most expensive to operate – are likely to be targeted for elimination. Most express buses run between Staten Island and Manhattan.

    Donohue’s report seemingly jibes with the story about the elimination of the X32. Although that bus — and many other express offerings — was originally slated for the chopping block last year, the MTA seems to have a more refined approach to the service cuts and adjustments. Instead of trying to do the most to save a lot of money, the agency is looking at cost-effective approaches. That very same X32 is a great example. Between Labor Day and the end of November, that bus carried just 50 people per day at a per customer cost in excess of $50. Even with the Express Bus fare, the MTA is simply bleeding money on those rides. Why keep that bus route and similar ones to it in service?

    Right now, we’re simply left waiting. The MTA was legally required to pass a balanced budget in December, and the approved then featured numerous service cuts carried over from last year. By now, though, it’s clear that the agency will revamp its proposed eliminations, and until then, we should reserve judgment on their respective impacts. We know late-night bus riders, express bus customers and some straphangers will be left out in the cold, but we don’t know which ones that will be quite yet.

  • Service changes could lead to Chrystie St. Cut use

    As the MTA adjusts the planned service cuts to better meet customer demands, a novel use for the Chrystie St. Connection between the IND and the BMT at Essex and Delancey Sts. may be in the cards. According to a few message board posters and now Heather Haddon’s “transit sources,” the MTA may adjust the route of the V train to subsume the current M route out to Metropolitan Ave. This new route could alleviate some pressure on the L line and provide an indirect one-seat ride from parts of Brooklyn and Queens that just aren’t that far apart.

    Over the last few days, I’ve been checking in on some of the message board chatter concerning the upcoming service cuts. Last week at the NYC Transit Forums, frequent poster Zman started a thread about a potential merging of the M and V lines. He said:

    The TA is considering eliminating the M and sending the V to Metropolitan Av via the Chrystie St Cut if the doomsday cuts aren’t head off at the pass. This would mean that the V could only run 8 car trains. This could start in late June.

    Logistically it would be a little difficult unless they took some of the 60 foot SMEE’s that are mothballed and put them back into service, or if ENY has enough 4 car unit 160’s to cover service since 46’s can’t run on the Williamsburg Bridge. For passengers though, this sounds like a good deal.

    It’s in the talking stages and nothing is official yet.

    Subchat picked up the news a short time later, and the subsequent discussion has been rather lively. Today, amNew York, citing only “transit sources,” joins the chorus. The M is scheduled to be scaled back from its current peak-hour run into South Brooklyn through the Montague St. tunnel and along the BMT Fourth Ave. and West End Lines, and this rumored cut would, in effect, kill the line.

    So how would this work? Transit would run eight-car sets along the V from Forest Hills along its current route along the IND Queens Boulevard line via the 53rd St. tunnel to the IND Sixth Ave. line. After stopping at Broadway-Lafayette, the train would then take the Chrystie St. Cut, shown in in this track map, to the current J/M/Z BMT Nassau St. stop at Essex/Delancey Sts. The V would then run over the Williamsburg Bridge and up to Metropolitan Ave.

    In a way, this makes sense. Once the M is scaled back from its southern extension into Brooklyn, the train will operate mainly as a spur to Metropolitan Ave. with peak-hour service to Lower Manhattan. Here, Transit would replace that M service with a line that serves Midtown. Although some Lower Manhattan-bound riders would have to transfer to the J, those heading to Williamsburg and points east could take a one-seat ride on the V and, ideally, avoid the L.

    Right now, Transit and the MTA are still working to formulate a plan for the service cuts, but when everything is finalized later this year, we could see some changes to the subway map. I wouldn’t be surprised to see revenue service restored to the Chrystie St. Cut as long as the numbers work out.

  • Exacerbating the impact of the service cuts

    When the MTA gets around to cutting service later this year, many New Yorkers — particularly those who rely on late-night bus service and off-peak transit options — will find themselves facing fewer options and longer commutes. In The Times this weekend, Ariel Kaminer tried to find out just how long these new commutes will take, and her article takes this experiment to an extreme. Kaminer asked HopStop’s CEO to find her a long route made longer by the death of the X32, and he routes her from “DeKalb Avenue in the Bronx, up near Woodland [sic] Cemetery, to 26th Avenue in Queens, not far from Fort Totten and Little Neck Bay.” As the crow flies, this is an 11.7-mile trip over the Throgs Neck Bridge, but for transit riders generally, it is now a one-transfer ride that involves a 4 or a D and the QM2A express bus.

    Ultimately, Kaminer’s convoluted alternate route took her on a bus, a Metro-North train, a subway and a Long Island Rail Road train. It took nearly three hours and was designed to highlight what might happen if the X32, a route designed to ferry Bronx Sciences students to and from Queens is eliminated. The problem is that this route isn’t really indicative of anything. The MTA hasn’t yet determined if it will eliminate an important school route, and the vast majority of New Yorkers will be impacted in other, less absurdist ways by the transit cuts. Anyway, Kaminer’s route is well beyond that of the X32.

    Articles such as this one make me question the “why” of it all. Is picking an obscure route that few use from one area of the Bronx to an already transit-poor area of Queens get the point across? Didn’t the piece highlighting late-night bus riders do so more effectively? There are far more tangible ways to highlight the impact of the service cuts particularly for those who do not commute into and out of Manhattan at peak hours. This was just an extreme travel stunt.

  • Brodsky promises funding for student fares

    The politicking surrounding the threatened cuts to the MTA’s student MetroCard program were in full swing yesterday as MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder made an appearance before Richard Brodsky’s Assembly Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions. While Walder spoke about his aversion toward using stimulus funds to cover the MTA’s operating gap, Brodsky reassured the MTA head that he and the Assembly would work hard to find money for student rides.

    “There is no reason in God’s Earth to make young kids pay the price of the MTA’s fiscal crisis,” Brodsky said. “I think parents should be hopeful if not confident that we’re going to solve this before next September.”

    Of course, promises from Brodsky may not be enough. The MTA is threatening to end the student MetroCard program not because of the recent reduction in state subsidies from $45 million annually to just $6 million but because neither the state or city have upped their contributions to the program. At one point, as I’ve explained in the past, the city, state and MTA split the funding for student rides evenly with each body covering approximately a third of the costs. As school enrollment levels and the cost of free rides have increased, the state and city have never upped their contributions, and the MTA has been saddled with covering nearly $170 million of student rides per year.

    “We’re going to deal with that in a timely way,” Brodsky said of the MTA’s threats to end free rides for the city’s students, “and we’re very confident there’s going to be a good outcome.” Brodsky, reports amNew York, said that he will be “pushing” to restore the state’s contributions to the student program.

    Brodsky’s words, if we parse them, seem to indicate that, on the one hand, he will find a way to fund student travel but, on the other, he will “push” simply to restore the state’s $45 million grant, but the MTA needs more. The authority needs both New York City — as Christine Quinn noted earlier this week — and New York State to up its student subsidies significantly in order to safe the program.

    The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is in the business of running a transit system. It isn’t in the business of providing free transportation for students because the city and state are too broke to do so and found a good scapegoat/transit out in the MTA’s largess. As Walder goes to Albany to lobby for money, he should make this reality quite clear to those who are listening.

    Meanwhile, Brodsky noted that the state would not provide another funding plan — or in his words, a bailout — for the MTA. Every agency, he said, has to make “painful” cuts as funding is tight. Left unsaid is the quick fix for the city and the MTA. East River Bridge Tolls would solve many of the MTA’s current fiscal woes and would simply be good for New York City. Walder won’t lobby for those because to do so now would be political folly, but free bridges remain a reminder to the way state and city representatives view the MTA and our subways as second-rate transportation options when they are truly the economic drivers of the region.

  • A transit system may sleep in a city that never does

    New York isn’t the city that never sleeps because John Kander and Fred Ebb once proclaimed it to be in a song. Rather, the New York is the city that never sleeps because it’s transit system never sleeps. It might require more patience, but anyone interested in traveling from Inwood to the Rockaways can take the same one-swipe, one-seat ride at 3 a.m. as they can at 3 p.m. That is the beauty of a city with a nightlife as vibrant as New York’s and with an economy dependent upon 24-hour transit service.

    Michael Grynbaum of The Times published a piece this afternoon on just that theme. He examines the planned late-night bus service cuts and finds a few hard-working New Yorkers who will be very inconvenienced by the dwindling off-hours service options. One woman works as a projectionist at the AMC Lincoln Center movie theater and must get home at 2 a.m. to the Upper East Side. In July, the MTA will cut three of the four buses that run through Central Park, and Elaine Beverly will find her options severely limited.

    Grynbaum offers more details on the impending cuts:

    And while not all of the cuts will be devastating, they will reshape the rhythms of nocturnal New York, when buses and subways are already scarce and routines forged over many years can be tough to shed. Transit officials studied ridership patterns and considered the proximity of other public transportation options when deciding which bus lines to reduce or erase…

    Ms. Beverly will lose both the M96 and the M104, which runs along the backbone of the Upper West Side. One alternative, the M10 along Central Park West, will also vanish, even during the daylight hours, and late-night Upper East Side bus service will be trimmed, if not eliminated…

    The M86 crosstown bus, with 8.8 million annual riders, is the most popular of the five Central Park routes; it will continue to run at all hours. But the M79, with 5.9 million riders — and the only bus that reaches East End Avenue — will not run after 1 a.m., nor will the M66. (The M72 crosstown route already stops service at midnight.)

    The deaths of these lines will lead to problems for those who work at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell and Mount Sinai hospitals and longer commutes for every off-hours worker. “There are a lot of residents in the hospital who have shifts that end late at night,” Patrisha Woolard, a second-year resident at Mount Sinai, told The Times. “That would be horrible.”

    The real statement though on the service cuts came from a bus driver. Vincent Wright drives the only bus that runs the M96 route late at night, and he understands how bus cuts will impact the heart of the city. “This is a 24-hour city, and you can’t have a 24-hour city without a 24-hour system,” he said. “The taxi business is probably going to love this; they’ll throw a big party if all the cuts happen.”

    Some cabs may benefit, but many workers needing transit at 2:30 a.m. cannot afford expensive cabs. They need their one-swipe rides to places far from subway lines. They need their bus routes. They need their transit options, and soon the MTA may take it all away. The city that never sleeps may need to find a new way around town.

  • The PR problem with the MTA’s PR department

    Much of my coverage of the MTA’s labor costs have focused around union raises and generous pension plans. I would be remiss to neglect to mention the high costs and redundancies found within the agency’s management structure as well. These problems — triple-staffing in some circumstances — are just as problematic.

    Today, Newsday’s James Bernstein highlights a problem with the agency’s public relations department. He reports that the agency employs a staff of 400 to meet its marketing and public relations needs. Says Bernstein:

    The Metropolitan Transportation Authority still maintains a staff of 400 to work in its marketing and public relations division, at a time when the agency has drawn up plans to slash service, forcing students to pay for their travel to school.

    MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin earlier this week acknowledged that about 400 people work in media, government and community relations and corporate and customer communications – departments that have not felt the budget ax being wielded by new agency chairman Jay Walder to close an unexpected deficit of nearly $400 million.

    But, Soffin said, Walder and the MTA board plan to closely examine costs for public relations and marketing. “I would expect any review would certainly look at things that are not service-related, and that would include communications,” Soffin said.

    Bernstein reports that the MTA’s corporate communications department features 16 people who work with transit reporters and bloggers. By comparison, Amtrak has just five. He notes, however, that the MTA’s daily ridership is over 100 times that of Amtrak’s. Perhaps then some of these myriad staff members aren’t redundant.

    We’ve known for a long time that the MTA is not a lean bureaucracy. Because the authority consists of seven different agencies and a centralized headquarters that have not been integrated properly and were thrown together at the start, numerous people do, in effect, the same job as others. Cutting through the red tape to streamline operations though has never come easy.

    To save money, the MTA must restructure itself internally. It can’t ask its workers to consider wage freezes or reduced staffing levels if the desk jockeys aren’t doing the same thing. The cost savings here aren’t estimated to be great enough to cover that $400 million gap, but as riders are expected to suffer through service cuts, so must the MTA’s corporate structure.

  • Teaching John Liu, comptroller-elect, a lesson in MTA economics

    When it comes to educating New Yorkers about the MTA’s problems, I’m all in favor of advocacy journalism. I’ve long believed the most New Yorkers who don’t actively seek out transit news are ill-informed on MTA matters because our major news outlets both in print and on TV do not adequately and thoroughly report on the MTA’s problems. So when PIX 11’s Project S.O.S. (Support Our Students) came along, I thought I would be able to applaud a major news organization’s transit advocacy efforts.

    Boy, was I wrong. Instead of a true educational/journalistic endeavor, PIX’s coverage is sycophantic and just plain wrong. Instead of examining how systemic long-term funding droughts from New York City and New York state have left the MTA, the region’s economic driver, struggling to stay afloat, PIX is using its TV time to blame the MTA for its financial straits and to urge it to restore student MetroCards without coming up for ways to pay for the program or to cover the $400 million gap.

    Since Project S.O.S. launched last week, PIX has featured numerous local politicians and transit advocates, and none have advocated for just and proper MTA funding. The news reporters on Channel 11 are making a sham out of advocacy journalism. The most infuriating appearance came from long-time MTA ignoramus John Liu. The current City Council member and New York City Comptroller-elect appeared last week, and if you have the patience for it, watch the video above. I’m going to parry with Liu. The italicized quotes are his; my responses follow.

    “It’s a real sad situation. You never what to expect from the MTA nowadays except that they are always asking for more money and threatening to reduce service in all different ways, and this latest round is really…they have reached a new low here.”

    Liu makes it sound as though the MTA is choosing to cut services for its own joy. The truth is that the MTA has no choice. They’ve been hung out to dry by Albany and cannot continue to offer the current level of services and pay the current levels of compensation owed to its employees without service cuts or a fare hike. Since Albany mandated no fare hikes in 2010 as part of the sub-par rescue package last spring, the agency is left with one option to balance its books: service cuts.

    “It’s absolutely abominable. A number of people have commented this morning that the students are being used as pawns, and that’s exactly right because you know what? Not allowing the students to take free mass transit to and from school, that’s not actually going to save the MTA a single red cent. The fact of the matter is they need to continue the service, allow the students to get to and from school without interruption.”

    Here, Liu begins to show a firm misunderstanding of basic economics. According to a 2007 comptroller study, students took 133.4 million free trips during the 2005-2006 school year at a total cost to the MTA of $161.5 million. Simply put, it costs more to the MTA as more people use the system. They have to ramp up the number of buses and subways available, increase the number of employees and clean up afterward.

    “Part of it is that it’s a very real situation that the state cut its budget to the MTA, but it is also true that the MTA is jumping the gun here. We don’t really know exactly what the deficit they’re facing is. we don’t know how bad it is. the number keeps changing. The current crisis just came to light a few days ago, last week, and the numbers are shifting. And they’re now saying these reductions will take place months from now and a lot of this is a threat and they’re just trying to angle for more money.”

    This one is simply a mess. Liu insinuates that the MTA is jumping the gun because the cuts won’t take place for another month. This is a logical fallacy. The MTA issued its budget last week because it has a legal mandate to approve a balanced budget before the end of the calendar year. It’s true the numbers might shift a bit, but careful accounting and transparency — another of Liu’s tried and tired points — requires the agency to detail why it has a $400 million gap and how it plans to close that gap. If Liu can’t understand that, I fear for the future of the comptroller’s office.

    “The students are already up in arms and rightfully so. The parents, the families, they are going to be screaming bloody murder if this every goes through…and like I said before, the MTA is not going to save any money simply by getting rid of these transit passes….There’s no marginal cost to providing the students with the bus and subway service so taking them away from them isn’t going to save any money. They’re not going to be able to eliminate trains because they don’t allow students to get on.”

    That, ladies and gentlemen, is a statement on economics from the next comptroller of the City of New York. That is a statement on economics from the person in charge of overseeing the city’s economy. That is a statement on economics from one who doesn’t really understand economics and should never have been elected to the comptroller’s office.

    Liu seems to believe that there is no marginal cost to the MTA. He seems to believe that 133.4 million free rides don’t impact the transit agency’s bottom line. He doesn’t understand that free isn’t actually free and that subsidies are subsidizing something that carries a price tag. He doesn’t understand that, by charging, the MTA can capture added revenue, and he doesn’t understand that, by not charging, the MTA is offering up services it must pay for to those who ride at no cost to themselves.

    In the end, I can’t say I’m too surprised by John Liu’s ignorance. He has served as the head of the City Council’s Transportation Committee for the past few years and has exhibited no willingness to learn about the city’s transit issues. In the end, we’re simply stuck with another person in a position of power and no idea how to exercise it. The MTA continues to founder.

  • How Atlantic Yards impacts the MTA’s bottom line

    Late last week, amidst all of the talk about the MTA’s budget crisis, State Sen. Pedro Espada nearly made a good point. In a letter to MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder, Espada urged the authority head to examine the state of the MTA’s real estate holdings. His point though was a bad one.

    “MTA budget gap needs must be measured against real numbers, and the MTA must prioritize fiscally prudent lease and sale of assets before deciding to leave children, seniors and hard-working citizens stranded without a safe, reliable and affordable means to get to and from work, school, grocery shopping and doctor’s appointments,” Espada wrote. “I would like to hear from you as soon as possible regarding the MTA’s real property holdings as a solution to the Authority’s serious budget concerns.”

    Now, it doesn’t take an economic genius to understand the folly of Espada’s remarks. First, he is urging the MTA to sell its real estate holdings during one of the greatest periods of market depression in U.S. history. Second, MTA real estate sales are simply another one-off quick fix and provide no long-term secure solution to the agency’s financial problems. To sell now, in other words, would be folly.

    Unfortunately, for transit advocates, Espada missed an opportunity to make a point. He could have used the MTA’s summertime decision to accept just $20 million up front from Bruce Ratner for the Vanderbilt Yards land rights to question whether the MTA is fiscally smart enough to take advantage of its real estate holdings. Originally, in 2005, the MTA extracted a promise for $100 million from Ratner, and even then, the price was a below-market rate. Today, the deal looks even worse.

    Last week, Atlantic Yards opponents lost a legal challenge to the renegotiated terms of the Atlantic Yards deal. A state judge upheld the lower upfront payment in light of the fact that all new deals must be subjected to an open bidding process. This, he said, was simply a renegotiation of a payment plan. “If every change were to be viewed as a new plan so as to trigger anew each mandated review process, no development plan could ever reach final approval — let alone ultimate completion. The MTA had a rational basis for continuing to use the 2005 appraisal rather than ordering a new one in 2009,” the judge wrote.

    There may indeed be a solid legal argument the MTA can make here, but it is one to which I find myself very unsympathetic. At a time when the agency must maximize its revenue potential, the authority — and the state along with it — is simply handing over free money to Bruce Ratner while the rest of us face the specter of service cuts. A full market rate payment for the Vanderbilt Yards land wouldn’t close the 2010 gap by itself, and since the MTA can sell that land only once, it wouldn’t help the future. But a better deal would benefit both the authority and its riders.

    As the Ratner deal becomes one step closer to reality, Pedro Espada’s words are the last ones we should be following. If this is the best the MTA can do with its real estate holdings, the authority is far better off not selling during a depressed market or perhaps not even selling at all.