Second Ave. Sagas

Category: U.S. Transit Systems

  • Apple’s money renovates a Chicago subway station

    The CTA’s North/Clybourn station shown before and after the Apple renovation. (Photos by flickr users Audrey Leon and Kevin Zolkiewicz. Click the image to enlarge.)

    The Chicago Transit Authority’s finances aren’t in much better shape than those of our beloved and hated MTA. The Windy City’s own transit system doesn’t have a fully funded capital plan, and the agency recently had to go hat in hand to Springfield for permission to issue bonds that will help balance the budget in the short term. Yet, it recently enjoyed a first of sorts. For a cost of $0 to the CTA, the North/Clybourn station in the city’s Near North Side area received a full overhaul. A private partner picked up the $4 million tab.

    That private partner, you see, had an economic interest in sprucing up the neighborhood. To much fanfare, Apple recently opened a new store in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood and hammered out a deal last year with the CTA that mirrored a sponsorship agreement. In exchange for the advertising space inside the station, a right of first refusal should the CTA sell the naming rights and use of a nearby bus depot, Apple paid for the station renovation.

    Mary Schmich, news columnist for the Chicago Tribune, went underground on the day of the opening last week and explores what $4 million buys these days. She writes:

    Outside, the station has clean new brick, big new windows and a sleek new look, partly 1940s and entirely 2010. The inside isn’t stylish, but it’s improved. Someone has scrubbed the red concrete floors, brushed red paint on the old railings, tried to wipe the grime from the escalator stairs. And the Apple name is everywhere, except out front.

    From the moment you push through the turnstile, Apple ads beam at you, as bright as searchlights. Down in the tunnel, all the other ads are gone. Apple expressed interest in calling it the Apple Red Line stop. The CTA, which is exploring the possibility of selling naming rights to its stations, said Apple would get the right of first refusal for this one.

    Even if you like Apple products, Apple’s master-of-the-universe attitude can be annoying. And the branding of everything can feel like mind control. But Apple has created a unique space in Chicago: handsome, communal, connected to the city, a space that makes public transportation attractive. The CTA may as well profit from the inevitable. Sell Apple the naming rights, for a big chunk of change. People are going to call it the Apple stop anyway.

    As is obvious from the two photos atop this post, the station both needed and benefited from this rehab project. The outside — seen at the bottom of this IFOAppleStore.com post — appeared dilapidated with peeling paint and boarded-up windows. It now has a fresh interior, and the exterior has been completely overhauled. This is a subway station that screams for attention.

    Now, not everyone is as in love with the station as Schmich is. Kevin O’Neill, a writer with Chicago Now’s CTA Tattler site, bemoans the bright lights that emanate from Apple’s advertising. But by and large, reviews have been favorable, and Chicago-based transit riders are urging the CTA to explore more public-private station-based partnerships.

    All of this leads me to the same question I had when the project was first announced almost a year ago: When will the MTA hop on board with these types of partnerships? It’s true that the authority will append the Barclays Center name to the Atlantic/Pacific subway stop when the Nets’ new arena opens, and it’s true that Forest City Ratner is funding some transportation upgrades to that busy Brooklyn hub. But Ratner purchased the Vanderbilt Yards air rights well under market value. The least he could do is fund some transit upgrades.

    For New York, a partnership of this magnitude would make sense along Manhattan’s Far West Side. As the 7 line extension inches forward — and crawls past 41st St. and 10th Ave. without a stop — real estate developers are going to benefit. Walking around the area reveals numerous new developments waiting for tenants, and easy transit access will only increase the value of these apartments. If the MTA can work out a deal with developers who stand to benefit from increased transit accessibility, our city’s cash-strapped authority could supply that better service.

    As the authority struggles to stay afloat and struggles to realize new revenue streams, these partnerships may just be an integral part of transit development over the next few decades.

  • In Philly, the wrong approach to naming rights

    When the Nets’ new arena at the Atlantic Yards area opens up, the subway station beneath it will have a new name. For $4 million spread out over 20 years, Barclays will pay the MTA for the naming rights to the station, and straphangers will get off at Atlantic Ave./Pacific St./Barclays Center.

    As the authority isn’t giving up the geographic identifiers, the station still serves its purpose of informing riders where they are, and the agency can draw in some dollars as well. It is the ideal naming rights deal and one cash-strapped transit agencies around the country should strive to duplicate. They can’t, after all, lose sight of the fact that the system must still be effective at making sure people can find their ways to and from various destinations.

    In Philadelphia, though, SEPTA is on the verge of a naming rights deal that won’t do anyone favors. According to Plan Philly, the Philadelphia-based transit agency is going to completely rename one of its most popular terminals. The station current at Pattison Ave. is home to many fans heading to Phillies, Eagles, 76ers or Flyers games at the sports complex. For five years and $3 million, the station may become simply the AT&T Station. Every trace of Pattison Ave. would be excised from the system.

    Plan Philly says that SEPTA has tried a variety of “non-traditional means” for raising revenue including asking the city’s sports teams for help. A spokesman defended the potential deal and claimed riders would not be confused “because the station is at the end of the line and is ‘unique’ because it serves the sports complex.” The station’s place as a unique destination would in fact work against a naming rights deal that completely removes geographic identifiers from the system.

    Over at The Transport Politic, Yonah Freemark doesn’t like the deal. He writes:

    But Philadelphia’s decision could be going further because not only does it remove the current name entirely from maps, but it does so to existing stations that have retained their current names for decades. Even worse, the names have no relevance to the areas they serve — it’s not like AT&T has a major facility at Pattison Station. The whole situation raises the frightening prospect in the near future that, instead of riding the Broad Street Subway from City Hall to Pattison, people will take the Coca-Cola Trolley from Pizza Hut to AT&T. Moreover, five years later, considering the current rate of changes in corporate names and sponsorships, all of those names may have to be modified!

    There are two fundamental problems with the idea that station names can be sold to the highest bidder: One, doing so challenges a fundamental element of transit service provision, that it is a public service; and two, that the names provide an important connection between the line-based geography of transit systems and the street or neighborhood-based geography of the city around stations.

    Freemark notes that the deal nets a pittance for SEPTA as the Barclays deal does for the MTA. When an agency is hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, a contract for a few hundred thousand a year doesn’t make a dent, and riders — the customers of the transit agency — are confused. A rider-based quasi-private government agency should not be inconveniencing the riding public.

    As Freemark notes, transit stops are integral to neighborhoods and communities. Trading place names for corporate places instead of appending corporate sponsors onto the stations dehumanizes the city. “Removing the geography-based name and replacing it with a corporate name virtually ensures that either infrequent commuters are fated to be completely lost in a transit system with completely irrelevant station names (especially if it’s underground),” he writes, “or that maps and signage are threatened with being overwhelmed with multiple layers of information, some important, some not, an end product that certainly won’t add ease to getting around either.”

    As the MTA moves forward with more naming rights deals and its own attempts at securing non-traditional revenue streams, it should take a lesson from Philadelphia. This isn’t the way to go.

  • In DC, more fresh coats of paint in less time

    A few weeks ago, a regular SAS reader sent me a link to an article on Progressive Railroading about the WMATA’s plans to spruce up their stations. Over the next 18 months, DC-based authority will restore 42 Metro stations. The work includes “cleaning masonry surfaces, painting interior and exterior surfaces, repairing interior masonry, installing or repairing signs, and refinishing platform shelter benches” and is part of the four-year maintenance-and-restoration the WMATA has implemented for its stations.

    In New York, station repair and beautification efforts move at a rather slower pace. The MTA is currently amidst a 39-year program in which just 12 stations a year get a fresh coat of paint. By the time this program wraps up in 2047, most stations will be decades overdue for a new coat of paint. Of course, this program is probably going to be discarded in favor of the new component-based maintenance efforts the authority has proposed, but the two projects’ estimated durations are alarming.

    On the one hand, the WMATA enjoys the benefit of five hours a day when their stations are not open. Trains do not run, passengers aren’t in the way. Furthermore, in 2008, the MTA said that its painting efforts were delayed by the need to remove old lead-based paint. Still, public acceptance of the MTA would be higher if our stations weren’t so dingy and in need of beautification. If DC can tackle 42 stations in a year a half, the MTA should be able to paint more than 2.5 percent of its stations per year.

  • In Chicago, private money to renovate a station

    A few months ago, the MTA unveiled the details of its first subway station naming rights contract. For $200,000 a year over 20 years, Barclays will attach its name to the Atlantic Ave./Pacific St. stop. Once — or if — the new Nets arena opens at that location, the station will become Barclays Center/Atlantic Ave./Pacific St. It is geographically accurate, if a bit unwieldy, and we all know that the MTA needs the cash.

    Additionally, we’ve often discussed expanding the MTA’s economic horizons by instituting an Adopt-a-Station program. Similar to the Adopt-a-Highway program in place across the nation, local businesses would pay to get their names on the station. These businesses could then be responsible for ensuring the cleanliness of subway stations or the money could go toward renovation and rehabilitation projects at that station. It is an unorthodox call, to be sure, but not out of the realm of the ordinary.

    In fact, that is just what the Chicago Transit Authority may do. According to a CTA spokesperson, Apple and the Windy City’s transit authority are in talks to have the computer giant sponsor a station rehab. Lewis Lazare of the Chicago Sun-Times reports:

    A CTA spokeswoman confirmed that the transit authority is in talks with the computer and iPhone behemoth about a deal that could net the cash-strapped CTA as much as $4 million in funding from Apple to pay for an upgrade of the run-down subway station at North and Clybourn, which is adjacent to an Apple retail store now under construction and expected to open next year.

    In exchange for its millions, Apple would receive first dibs on any and all advertising that eventually goes up at the rehabbed subway stop, which would allow Apple to create what is known as a “station domination” advertising effect at the North and Clybourn station.

    According to Lazare’s report, the funding deal would not include naming rights. Chicago is not yet ready to turn over the names of their El stops to private corporations.

    For Chicago, a deal of this nature makes perfect sense. The CTA is in worse financial straits than the MTA and has recently proposed massive service cuts and a 30 percent fare hike. They desperately need any money they can get.

    So again, though, I propose this idea for New York. At some point, the MTA should seriously considering looking at local business investment in subway stations. The agency’s new modular approach to station rehabilitation and component replacement is a bid step in the right direction and helps alleviate the nearly unattainable State of Good Repair for the system’s stations. With a little bit of creativity, the money though is out there, and we need not look further than Chicago and to Apple for proof.

  • In DC, underground cell coverage expanded

    Over the last few years, I’ve followed the MTA’s attempt at bringing cell phone service to its underground platforms while, at the same time, exploring how Washington’s WMATA has far surpassed the MTA in this technological effort. This past weekend, the Metro moved yet another step ahead of New York City as it expanded cell service at its busiest stations. While Verizon customers have enjoyed underground coverage for years, Friday marked the start of underground service for AT&T, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile at the system’s 20 most popular stations.

    Friday’s service debut was just the start of an ambitious roll-out of cellular subway service. By the end of next month, D.C. straphangers will enjoy continuous street-to-platform coverage, and in a year from now, the unwired 27 underground stations will be hooked into the cell network. In Oct. 2012, full underground service inside the tunnels will debut. As D.C. moves ahead, here in New York, we’re just spinning our wireless wheels waiting for someone to bring cell service to the subways.

  • In D.C., WMATA faces similar fiscal woes

    Now and then, we leave New York for glimpses of life in other transit systems. While TWU members are protesting MTA’s current labor policies, other public transit systems are running into their own labor-induced fiscal problems. Today’s journey out of New York City takes us south to Washington, D.C., where the WMATA is in its own financial bind.

    The excellent urban planning and pro-pedestrian and -transit blog Greater Greater Washington has tirelessly covered Metro issued in the District. Over the last few weeks, David Alpert and his team of contributors have explored the WMATA’s $100 million budget gap. To us, that figure represents small beans. After all, what is a $100 million gap after a year spent talking about a $1.5 billion gap? Yet, the vitality and viable of the D.C. area is heavily dependent upon a properly functioning Metro system.

    Michael Perkins first tackled the causes of the gap a few weeks ago. According to Perkins, over half of the raise is related to increased labor costs. Nearly $20 million will go to mandatory 3 percent pay raises for WMATA employees, and another $33 million comes from pension, health care and benefits plan increases. MetroAccess, the WMATA equivalent of our ParaTransit service, will cost an additional $19.7 million. Energy costs round out the budget deficit.

    To a tee, D.C. is facing the same problems as New York City. The MTA is facing a mandatory three-year, 11-percent raise for its employees. Pension and health care costs continue to rise, and ParaTransit’s economics were a sticking point during last winter’s fare hike debate.

    A few days after exploring the sources of the deficit, Perkins examined some gap-closing measures. His main proposal examined a rather modest (by New York’s standards) five percent fare increase with fees designed to reward constant riders. The WMATA can also ask Maryland, Virginia and the federal government for more money. The MTA doesn’t enjoy that luxury but isn’t beholden to three ideologically different and very fickle overseers. Finally, Perkins explored some service cuts and cost reductions including turning escalators into staircases during off-peak hours as a way to save energy.

    The GGW series wrapped up last week with an exploration of the long-term financial plans for the America’s Subway. While the MTA just announced a $28.8 billion five-year capital plan, the WMATA believes it needs just $7.6 billion over the next ten years to acehive and maintain its own State of Good Repair. Without more borrowing or contributions from the three jurisdictions served by Metro, the DC subway system will begin a slide into disrepair.

    In the end, I’m not surprised by any of these fiscal challenges facing the WMATA. Around the country, the story is the same. High operations costs coupled with ever-increasing compensation packages for workers along with a weakening economy are sending the nation’s transportation authorities into fiscal difficulties. Although these networks move millions of people every day, the federal government is loath to invest in them as heavily as they do roads, and cities such as New York, Washington and Chicago are left with severely unfounded infrastructure agencies that are also heavily in debt. When will that policy change?

  • The signs have it

    Subway signs are rather mysterious creatures. Really do we see work crews hanging up new signs, but somehow, whenever the MTA adjusts its routes, the ubiquitous black signs hanging up in stations change along with it. An article in the Washington Post this week illuminates the sign-making process the District of Columbia’s WMATA. While their system is smaller and less prone to service changes than ours, Metro’s in-house sign shop makes 40,000 signs and decals a year. I can only imagine how busy New York’s own sign-makers are.

  • DC’s Metro moves toward a fully wired system

    In Sept. 2007, the MTA announced plans to wire all underground subway stations for cell service. Nearly two years later, nothing has come from the ten-year contract the MTA inked with a less-than-secure company. Meanwhile, a few hundred miles to the south, the District of Columbia’s WMATA is continuing their slow and steady march to a fully equipped underground cell network, and the transit authority’s plans to wire their tunnels within three years is still on target.

    According to a report last week on DCist, the WMATA is set to unveil the first phase of its plan in October. Shortly after Columbus Day, cell service for all four major carriers will be available in the 20 busiest Metro stations. By the end of 2010, the rest of the system’s underground stations will have cell service, and by October 2012, the tunnels will be cell-equipped as well. I know New York’s system is far older and more expansive than DC’s Metro. I know the challenges are greater in the city, but DC has been working to implement service since 2000. New York’s own MTA continues to fall further and further behind its technologically-advanced competitors.

  • WMATA to get in-tunnel cell service by 2012

    Now and then, I like to see what’s happening in transit systems outside of New York City. Often, I’ll turn to Washington, D.C., for a glimpse at what an efficient — and much smaller — transit system looks like. The lessons from D.C. can be illuminating as we watch the MTA carom from one ill-fated project to another.

    Earlier this week, the Washington Metro’s board announced that WMATA passengers would enjoy in-tunnel cell service by the fall of 2012. Lena H. Sun, a staff writer for the Washington Post, reports:

    Metro officials said the agency and a consortium of wireless carriers are on track to install equipment so riders can receive and make cellphone calls on all carriers at the 20 busiest Metrorail stations by mid-October. Only Verizon and Sprint roaming customers can use their phones on the Metro now, and coverage is often spotty…

    But don’t expect to stay connected between stations. That won’t happen until the consortium finishes installing cable and other equipment underground, a process that is likely to take until October 2012.

    Under an agreement announced in February, Verizon, Sprint Nextel, AT&T and T-Mobile will be allowed to install equipment in the tunnels over the next four years. The agreement will provide the cash-strapped transit agency with nearly $25 million over the first 15 years. The estimated $2.4 million in expenses will also be paid by the wireless carriers.

    Now, we can debate for hours whether or not cell phone service underground is a positive development. Every day, I see the impact of cell service on a subway ride. As my Manhattan-bound Q or B train snakes across the Manhattan Bridge and as my Brooklyn-bound trip heads off into the heart of Brooklyn every day, I see passengers scramble for their phones and being their furtive five-minute calls. Most are respectful as they try to keep their conversation to a minimum, but others are screamers, intent on informing the entire car what their significant other has at home for dinner that night.

    As those trains head back underground, cell service is lost until the trenched, open-air tracks arrive at the Prospect Park stop. It may be silent, but it’s also a technological blackhole.

    In Washington, Metro riders have enjoyed cell phone service for the better part of this decade. It’s not perfect, but it’s there. Furthermore, the WMATA has negotiated a contract that’s beneficial to all. The agency earns millions of dollars, and the cell companies get access to a new network of customers. Everyone — except those looking for a quiet ride — wins.

    Meanwhile, in the Big Apple, the MTA keeps promising to find some company intent on writing the system at a price too low to believe, and time after time, the project stalls. Outside of the luxury of an underground cell network, the MTA’s system doesn’t have the capacity for proper emergency communications, and it just isn’t a modern system. At some point the technological modernization of the New York City subways will begin. We could do far worse than look to our neighbors to the south for inspiration.

  • A tale of two transit websites

    wmatawebsite500

    The WMATA’s website presents a clear, clean and informative home page. (Click the image — and the thumbnail below of the MTA’s website — to enlarge.)

    With The New York Times proclaiming New York to be over and with a new day dawning in the White House today, all eyes will be on Washington, DC.The Nation’s Capitol will have to cope with a crush of people, and the WMATA — a financially beleaguered transit system — will bear the brunt of the crowd.

    Absurd Style Section articles aside, Washington’s transit website certainly earns the crown in the Internet wars. Last month, the WMATA unveiled a spiffy new website design, seen above, and the reaction was uniformly positive. Greater Greater Washington gave the site a good review, and I sat here in Brooklyn jealous of the WMATA’s AJAX-based, informative and easy-to-navigate new design.

    Just look at that thing. On one screen, without having scroll down, a user gets a clear sense of what the WMATA is all about. There’s a trip planner in the top-right corner and a real-time display of train, bus and elevator status updates beneath is. Along the top are links to the system map and next train information, something sorely lacking in our subways. The centerpiece of the page is a rotating news story with links to the latest WMATA releases. Below that are key information boxes with links to pages about the SmarTrip Card and inauguration advisories.

    mtasite600 Putting the MTA’s site — at left; click to enlarge — under a similar microscope reveals some stark differences. The main role of a transit agency’s website is to aid the rider in his or her efforts at getting from point A to point B in a timely fashion. The WMATA’s site fully realizes that goal; the MTA’s site does not. It shouldn’t take three clicks to get to the service advisories or latest news releases.

    On the homepage, not all of the content on the MTA’s site fits above the fold and what is on top is arguably unimportant. The MTA in Pictures box is a nice touch, but it adds nothing of informative value to the site. Having the MTA’s powerful Trip Planner there would be a far better use of space. In fact, the Trip Planner gets very little play on the home page. It is the 18th of 21 links on the right side of the page, most of which don’t aid the casual rider in getting information he or she needs. A link to the Sustainability Webinar is useful for research, but the event was seven months ago. No one really needs that anymore.

    For the most part, the boxes in the center column contain useful information but are generally not too timely. To get to the main list of MTA news releases, a user must click through two links. On the WMATA’s site, everything is right there. The MTA’s site can be as fun as a frustrating game of hide and seek.

    Now, I realize that the MTA is a conglomerate of many different agencies, and I know that New York City Transit’s homepage features the Trip Planner link front and center. The main site, however, should be more user-friendly. Get me where I want to go first; tell me about Elliot Sander’s March presentations later.

    As the MTA gears up for another week of abuse during the public hearings on the fare hikes and service cuts, the Board members and officials who opt to sit through the torture will hear a common theme. The MTA leadership is out of touch with the riders, people say.

    We could debate the truth of that allegation for words on end, but in 2009, all it takes is the website, the true public face of the authority. If the MTA could present an easy-to-use and informative site as the WMATA has done, people would begin to think better of it.