Subway Security

Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.

Closed-circuit security cameras are already everywhere in New York City. I can count upwards of 30 of them between 8th Ave. at 16th St. and the elevator to my office building in the heart of Chelsea Market. But if the city officials have their way, more and more cameras will be on the way to spy on New Yorkers keep the city safer.

A few months ago, in March, I wrote about plans to install security cameras in the subways. While at the time, I was a bit opposed to that deal, I think that, if the cameras are used correctly, they can enhance the safety of late-night train rides and the general feelings of security on the subways. I’m not the only one.

Over in London this week, Mayor Bloomberg spoke a length about surveillance cameras in the city. London, a city with many more CCTV cameras than New York City, is an apt stage for Bloomberg’s talk. Much like New York will, London uses security cameras to enforce their own successful congestion fee, and Transport for London has equipped the Tube cars with cameras.

Looking to shore up support for more cameras in the city, Bloomberg opined on the roles of cameras in a post-9/11 world:

Bloomberg, holding talks with his London counterpart Ken Livingstone, said such measures as London’s “ring of steel” — a network of closed-circuit cameras that monitors the city center_ were a necessary protection in a dangerous world. “In this day and age, if you think that cameras aren’t watching you all the time, you are very naive,” Bloomberg told reporters at London’s City Hall.”

“We are under surveillance all the time” from cameras in shops and office buildings, “and in London they have multiple cameras on every bus and in every subway car,” he added. “The people of London not only support it, but if Ken Livingstone didn’t do it they would try to run him out of town on a rail. We live in a dangerous world, and people want to have security cameras.”

New Yorkers seem resigned to a city of security cameras. While many of Rudy Giuliani’s draconian police tactics came under fire during the 1990s and the NYPD’s responses to the RNC protests in 2004 were highly scrutinized, cameras have become a part of New York City life with nary a peep for civil rights advocates worried about government intrusion into private life.

Really, in the end, there are few if any downsides to lining subway cars with cameras. People will be less likely to harass or threaten passengers. They’ll be less likely to deface cars and seats. Maybe they’ll even be less likely to litter and seat hog (I can dream, right?). So as Bloomberg continues European adventure, we can only wonder what other ideas he’ll try to bring back to the states. Socialized medicine, anyone?

Only half of my headline for this post is true. Guess which half.

In a move that comes as a shock to no one, the people tasked with shoving a free copy of amNew York in your face every morning have sued The Tribune Company for paying them less than minimum wage. The New York Sun had more on the story a few weeks ago:

[Lawyer Daniel] Kirschenbaum said the promoters are paid a flat rate of $20 a day, regardless of the number of hours they work.

The promoters work as many as four hours a day, meaning that they are often paid below the New York State minimum wage of $7.15 an hour, Mr. Kirschenbaum said. “The facts of it are so simple that it’s almost sad that this is what’s happening,” Mr. Kirschenbaum said.

Simple math would tell you that those workers handing out papers for four hours a day are getting a measly $5 an hour. Reality would make you question whether anyone handing out amNew York really stands there handing out papers for a whopping four hours each day. I never see these folks after 9:30 or 10 a.m. across the city. Are you telling me they start work at 5:30 or 6 a.m. to pass out crappy papers to people who don’t really want them?

Now, when it comes to the free New York papers, I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m something of an elitist. It seems to me that a lot of commuters rely on Metro and amNew York as their primary news sources in the morning. While these papers serve something of a purpose — advertising revenue for their parent companies chief among those — they don’t do a good job of covering the news as Chris has tirelessly documented.

But my personal feelings and skepticism aside, The Tribune Company should pay these people minimum wage. It’s the least they could do while contributing to a marked rise in the number of track fires and clogged drains due to the growing volume of free papers that mysteriously end as as litter on the tracks.

Back in March, Deputy New York Police Department Commissioner Richard Falkenrath spoke in front of Congress about the federal government’s woefully inadequate contributions to NYC’s anti-terror funding. Today, the government acknowledging that it was listening.

According to a report on CBS, the Department of Homeland Security is set to announce that New York City with get $52 million for security. A large portion of that – $37 million, to be exact – will go toward securing the city’s subway systems.

On the surface, this is good news. More anti-terror funding for a very insecure subway system is always a step in the right direction. All things considered, $37 million is but a drop in the bucket. This money hardly addresses Falkenrath’s original points – that more people are needed for subway security, that airlines get $7 a person while subways get about 1.5¢ per person.

The bottom line is that New York City’s subways remain a viable target much like the subways in Madrid and London were over the last few years. We’ll gladly take the money, but it’s more of a token gesture than a move to shore up subway security. Hopefully, we won’t have to learn the hard way that the federal government, so bent on its anti-terror message, should be doing more to secure our tunnels.

Everyone loves the MTA’s security campaigns. They’re great for everything from funny pictures of dogs and ad campaign knock-offs to cheesy MTA-related blog headlines to graffiti (such as the doctored poster I saw once that said “Bush is still president, say something”).

Now, the MTA is expanded the “see something, say something” ad campaign out of the subways and buses and on to your TV screens. With 1944 tips last year, the MTA is hoping to expand the program, and beginning this month, 10-second TV spots will hit the airwaves over 4000 times until November. The ads (which you can view here) urge citizens to keep up the good work reporting abandoned backpacks and suspicious packages.

The MTA’s press releases tells us that this campaign will cost approximately $3 million. The 10,000 posters in the MTA’s system will be joined with 84 ads in 11 regional newspapers and the TV spots on New York’s major English and Spanish-language TV networks.

“As recent incidents from around the world have taught us, the public can play a vital role in helping to identify a threat. Engaging the eyes and ears of the ridership continues to be essential in developing a true security partnership,” Michael Balboni, deputy secretary for public safety for New York State, said in the MTA’s statement.

So there you have it, folks. Three-million dollars spent on TV ads while the subways themselves remain insecure. I’m all for educating the public about proper anti-terrorism messages, but at one point do we say, “Enough is enough” and invest the money spent on public awareness campaigns back into protecting the system?

It’s a popular refrain from out-of-towners from all over. “The subways aren’t safe,” they say. “You ride the subways at 3 a.m.? And you’re still alive? You’re nuts.”

Well, good news to those of us who don’t fear late-night subway rides: The New York City subways are indeed safe. In fact, crime on the subway is down to an all-time low, according to a report in the Daily News. Based on MTA and NYPD statistics, New York’s illustrious tabloids proclaims, your chances to being a victim in the subway are about the same as if you were struck by lightning.

Some 1,157 felonies have been committed in the subways this year – an average of 6.1 a day. And just 427 robberies have been reported in the underground this year, compared with nearly 9,300 in total in 1990, NYPD Transit Bureau Chief James Hall said. “That’s pretty amazing,” Hall said of the decline, crediting the hard work of transit cops and commanders.

It’s actually unprecedented, according to former Transit Bureau Chief Michael Ansbro, who spent nearly four decades with the NYPD bureau and the formerly independent transit police force. “It’s never been this low,” Ansbro said.

With an average of 4.9 million riders on the subway each weekday and 2.5 million each weekend day, the odds of becoming the victim of a crime on any given day is approximately 1 in 714,000. That’s about the same odds a U.S. resident faces of getting zapped by a bolt of lightning in any given year, according to the National Weather Service.

For straphangers, that’s great news. For years, the New York City subways have had to live down crime-ridden stereotypes. The hijackers in The Taking of Pelham One-Two-Three and the nuts in Money Train have long represented the subways in the minds of the rest of America. While smart New Yorkers know better, it’s reassuring to hear the subways are still safer.

Now if only we could stop hearing that familiar refrain of “Ladies and gentelmen, this is an important announcement from the MTA” every five minutes while riding the subways around the City.

Graphic above from the New York Daily News.

Countless emergency exits, phones and even tracks are buried — and sometimes forgotten — in the tunnels of the subway. (Courtesy of TGOS)

Buried beneath streets of New York City are 722 miles worth of subway tracks. From Far Rockaway to 241st St in the Bronx, subway tunnels wind and snake their ways through borough, over bridges and under tunnels. And no one really knows what’s down there.

Sure, we all know the general route of the system. We know where the D or the R will stop and where the train is going, but no one knows all of the countless emergency exits and alarm boxes are, where the tracks dead end or where hidden remnants of a long-gone station are. But now, in a story fascinating to transit buffs (and fairly mundane to the rest of you), the MTA is going to find out just where everything is in the tunnels of the subway.

Newsday has more, albeit only a little:

The MTA and the city’s Office of Emergency Management announced Monday a plan to map electronically every inch of the New York City subway system. The project, slated to cost about $200,000, will give first responders better information about the layout of the system in case of a terrorist attack or other emergency by making electronic versions of the subway map easily downloadable.

The map, containing every exit, emergency phone, and alarm box underground, will be available at a central command headquarters that will communicate with the emergency workers on the scene.

Let me just say: That is so cool. While I’m sure it will be some secret, sensitive document, I want that map. A full look at what’s underneath the city! It will have all of the exit doors labeled and all of those funny lighted phones an observant straphanger can spot as the trains crawl through the tunnels.

It’s certainly a positive step for security. First-responders have to be able to, well, respond. But the subway nerd in me likes this idea too just because this map will be the Holy Grail of information concerning stuff in the New York City tunnels. Will they map the homeless villages of mole people too?