Open Streets on Vanderbilt Ave. was packed just one minute after the official opening time on Saturday. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)
While walking back from Prospect Park on Saturday morning, I took a stroll down Vanderbilt Avenue shortly before noon. The street was bustling with volunteers dragging metal barricades into the intersections to set up the popular Open Streets program, and by 12:01 p.m., Brooklynites grabbing lunch from Ye Olde Bagel Shoppe had taken over the median between Prospect Place and St. Marks Avenue. It was a glorious sunny afternoon, and the street was alive not with the drone of traffic but with the sounds of people enjoying being outside with their friends and family.
Amidst the tragedy of the past 14 months — the millions of deaths and the economic destruction that have changed the city and country and world — New Yorkers have changed the way they interact with space in the city. To keep as many of the city’s hundreds of thousands of restaurants afloat, after significant public pressure last summer, the mayor launched an outdoor dining program that allowed tables to take over parking spots, and over the winter, these spaces became semi-enclosed structures, some fancier than others.
A few busy corridors have gotten the temporary car-free treatment as Vanderbilt Ave. has. For a few hours from Friday-Sunday, cars are prohibited from driving on a handful of streets in the city, and these streets become vibrant spots for people, with picnics in the road, tables in the street, music in the air, and the vibrancy of city life of replacing traffic. These business-oriented Open Streets aren’t the only one though, and certain other streets throughout the city have been turned over to volunteer networks to run as limited access shared spaces, giving New Yorkers more space to run, walk, bike and simply sit. Each day, volunteers drag barriers into the streets that are intended to be closed to through traffic and cars limited to speeds of just 5 miles per hours. (I volunteer for one of them – the Underhill Ave. Open Street during the week.)
The program is great and, based on recent polling, very popular, but it’s also very tenuous. Despite 3 million free parking spaces and thousands of miles of roads, drivers in the city act with intense anger when told they do not have unfettered rights to every inch of paved asphalt in New York. A recent Streetsblog post summarized the response and charged the mayor with abandoning what could have been a signature program. The problem is worse than that: Open Streets was supposed to be a way for New Yorkers to have space during the pandemic. Instead, it has become yet another symbol of the way the mayor treats pedestrian-first policies: neglected and left to rot, waiting only for tensions to boil over, as city support dries up and fiscal support never materializes. It doesn’t have to be this way.
When Bill de Blasio thought he could run for president a few years, I wrote a piece for Curbed New York exploring the shortcomings in his transit and transportation policies. These words were from before the days of COVID and our need to have space outdoors for safe socialization:
For de Blasio, the failure to act quickly and decisively in the face of multiple crises is one of perspective. He sees the city as a driver, and thus, he does not act to limit the free rein drivers have over city streets. His refusal to consider limiting space for drivers and the giveaway of on-street parking results in a subpar Vision Zero that is reactive instead of proactive, poorly designed bike and pedestrian safety infrastructure, slow bus service, and rampant placard abuse… Every decision over space allocation on public streets should prioritize safety for pedestrians and cyclists, and speed for high-capacity buses. But the mayor views the city through his daily car rides, so we’re still stuck in traffic—literally and figuratively.
How I wish I were not so prescient. This assessment of de Blasio’s transportation legacy held true last spring when the mayor undelivered on bus lanes, failed to have a plan, and failed to show any urgency in the face of the coronavirus crisis. As we begin a second pandemic spring, with significantly increased knowledge about the virus and what works for international cities, and as we face a summer of New Yorkers spending as much time as possible outside, Bill de Blasio’s failures — this time as they negatively impact the popular Open Streets program — are once again in the spotlight.
The mayor’s problem is that he thinks doing something is the same as doing something right. Open Streets was initially supposed to be a partnership between neighborhood volunteer groups and local police precincts, but that partnership never materialized. Last year, they dropped off flimsy sawhorses and accrued overtime at protests rather than at open streets. This year, NYC DOT provided metal barriers and no police presence. Why? Because the NYPD doesn’t care to undercut the privilege that allows them to park everywhere with impunity, and the mayor doesn’t care to create even the bare minimum of an enforcement regime.
Of course, as with Vision Zero, Open Streets doesn’t rely on enforcement to succeed, and a good Open Streets program will be more about design than enforcement. So long as the program relies on unempowered volunteers and flimsy barriers rather than permanently redesigned streets that do not create conditions for cars to take over, each Open Streets segment will be only as good as the neighbors in charge and as vulnerable as those in Greenpoint currently under fire by a loud but small minority of car owners. In each case, the mayor has done nothing to step in and defend Open Streets. He keeps saying there is more to come, but so far, more hasn’t come, even as volunteers ask for governmental support and funding.
And therein lies yet another rub. A successful and permanent Open Streets relies on design changes and streets that are not simply car funnels, but the current iteration needs funding to succeed before design can be upgraded. The city has delivered no funding whatsoever. In Prospect Heights and Park Slope, community groups raised $25,000 and $50,000, respectively, through GoFundMe and similar crowd-sourced fundraising platforms. Further south, in the less well-off neighborhood of Sunset Park, a similar effort is still $30,000 shy of its goal. This is a tall fundraising order for a crowdsourced streets campaign but barely a blip for a city with a budget in excess of $92 billion. In short, New York City should be able to scrounge up the money each of these groups need for their open streets, especially as those in business districts will realize the benefits in increased economic activity (and increased tax revenue) nearly immediately. That the city cannot design, enforce or even fund any real Open Streets program is yet another indictment of the way the mayor fails to understand how New Yorkers want their city to be.
All hope is not quite lost though, as sub-par Open Streets implementations have become an issue in the mayoral campaign. Shaun Donovan recently took the mayor to task for failing to lead, and current polling front-runner Andrew Yang has talked about a permanent program with city funding. But advocates are sounding a more immediate alarm, noting that 22 miles are off the list this year and calling for quick and permanent physical upgrades.
As life returns to normal over the next few months, though, this summer could be a make-or-break moment for many of the city’s open streets, both those with business and those without. The space will become a luxury rather than a mid-pandemic need, and life will move on with only those Open Streets that have a willing neighborhood partner and a strong volunteer group surviving. Sure, businesses will push for their weekend takeovers, but a networked citywide program in all neighborhoods of space given back to people from cars won’t be at the forefront of the minds of anyone but the usual slate of activists. If that reality comes to pass — and I hope it doesn’t — that will be the final transportation failure of the Bill de Blasio Administration. A better city, with slightly more space for people and slightly less space for cars, with shared streets and true slow zones, with active street life and neighbors and neighborhoods outdoors, is within our grasp. All it takes is a political push from the one person in the city who doesn’t realize he needs to give it.
Trains keep running every night, but passengers aren’t allowed on the subway. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)
Every few weeks, the absurdity of the MTA’s overnight subway closure is thrust into the spotlight. Sometimes, a tweet describing how the trains are still running even though riders aren’t allowed on board goes viral. Sometimes, MTA executives draw headlines when they admit to state representatives that the agency is not in fact saving any money by denying passengers subway rides from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. each night.
That’s what happened last week during an Albany hearing on the very precarious state of the MTA’s budget. When grilled by Robert Carroll, a Brooklyn Assembly representative who has co-sponsored a bill that would mandate restoration of 24/7 passenger service, MTA CFO Bob Foran acknowledged that the MTA is not saving any money. “That was not done as a cost saving effort,” Foran said. “We are still running trains. They are to get our workforce back and forth.”
This is of course not a surprise to those in the know. It was an open secret for months that the MTA is still running its regularly scheduled overnight service but without passengers, and it was an open secret for months that the overnight denial of service isn’t a cost-saving measure. While the MTA can point to some minimal productivity gains that could have been achieved with FastTrack-esque shutdowns, the agency never intended to use the overnight closures to save money or increase capital work. The system is simply too vast with too many projects that were planned too long ago for a short four-window to do much for productivity.
Rather, the shutdowns were about implementing a legal mechanism to permit the MTA to remove unsheltered New Yorkers from the subway system while bolstering a necessary cleaning regiment that could have continued while essential workers were permitted access to the subway overnight. That trains are still running on a normal overnight schedule gives that game away, and headways are long enough at night that the MTA could take yard most trains at the end of their runs if they truly had to clean them with no passengers on board. The incremental personnel costs wouldn’t be out of line with the costs the MTA incurs running empty trains, and essential workers would have normal commutes rather than the lengthy trips I wrote about in August.
This is neither here nor there right now. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, through MTA leadership, has made clear that 24/7 passenger service will not return to the subways until the pandemic is over, a philosophy that incorrectly views overnight service as more beneficial to leisure, rather than essential, travel. But it doesn’t have to be this way. As the vaccine effort ramps up, Cuomo and the MTA have a very easy way to gracefully usher in the return of passengers to the subways on a 24/7 by tying it to access to vaccination hubs.
This is, of course, not a novel idea. In fact, a group of City Council representatives penned a letter to the MTA last week saying as much. “Not only has the suspension of late-night service and frequency reduction caused a great strain on the commutes of essential workers who every day have been putting their lives on the line, but the subway is now going to play an important role in bringing the City through to the other side of this pandemic crisis,” the letter notes. “With the creation of 24 hour vaccine hubs and, hopefully, accelerated supply from the new Biden Administration, New York City is working hard to ramp up its vaccine roll out. If these Vaccine hubs are going to be operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, the city will need its public transportation infrastructure to be operating at the same time and capacity…It is of the utmost important to address the limited subway service immediately and restore 24-hour service.”
The political opening is there for the governor, but it’s not quite as easy as removing the chains blocking the stations at night. It requires some careful public messaging that explains how the MTA will keep cleaning and why the risk of viral transmission on transit remains low, two approaches few leaders in American government have taken throughout the pandemic. In a recent internal survey, the MTA found out that over 75% of current customers believe cleaning and disinfecting efforts make them “feel safe” when using transit. The same percentage has noticed that trains are cleaner since the overnight shutdowns began in May, and 55% of lapsed riders say cleanliness of trains is very important to them as and when they return to the subways.
Even though the virus is largely airborne and surface transmission is rare, keeping the trains clean is important for maintaining public trust in transit. Thus, if the MTA restores overnight service prior to the nebulous end of the pandemic, the agency must continue to stress that cleaning continues, as it does during the day, even if surface cleaning is more about perception than actual risk.
This of course puts the MTA in between a rock and a hard place. While the CDC has told the MTA to continue to disinfect surfaces while combating aerosol-based transmission, the MTA will have to keep spending a lot of money on surface cleaning to insure adequate faith in the system. And the issue of homelessness looms large. The MTA is not a housing agency nor are agency staffers experts in housing policy, but by denying passengers access to the trains overnight, the MTA has temporarily solved the problem of people remaining in the way on trains that need to be cleaned. Restoring 24/7 passenger service will force the MTA to reconsider this approach to removing homeless New Yorkers from the trains.
I don’t have a good answer here; it’s ultimately up to the city and state to house their unsheltered residents. But it shouldn’t be an excuse to deny essential workers a fast ride home or a city itching to escape quarantine access to 24/7 vaccine hubs. Allowing passengers on the trains overnight shouldn’t wait until the end of the pandemic when nightlife returns and things are moving back to normal. Once the vaccine supply is in place, Gov. Cuomo should allow passengers back on the subway overnight as a recognition of the way people need to travel and a symbol of a city on the rebound.
An APTA study led by Sam Schwartz found no link between virus cases and transit usage.
It’s been hard to resist starting every post focusing on the MTA’s current ridership situation and budget woes with the sentence, “It’s been a rough few months for transit,” but it’s been a rough few months for transit. Often associated with the hoi polloi and dirty masses, most transit systems didn’t have reputations for cleanliness before the pandemic and whether fairly or not, quickly become associated with the spread of disease as the pandemic descended on the world.
After a spring in which a spurious MIT study that relied heavily on a correlation/causation error drove the conversation, a group of pro-transit researchers are fighting back, and in a new study released by the American Public Transportation Association, they report no known links between coronavirus cases and public transit.
“As of August 2020, no outbreaks have been traced to public transit in the United States,” the report, authored by New York’s own Sam Schwartz, said. “Based on our data review of case rates and transit usage in domestic cities, the correlation between infection rates and transit usage is weak or non-existent.”
Schwartz’s survey of current pandemic experiences is part of a larger report on transit-related best practices for the COVID-19 era, and you can access the report here as a PDF. It’s very much yet another attempt to change the narrative. The MIT study came out early in April, and despite debunking by Alon Levy and Aaron Gordon, two well-respected voices within the transit community, it set the stage for months of American fears over transit.
Nearly immediately, many one-time transit riders relied upon the MIT study to reinforce ideas that transit isn’t safe and is a source of spread. Even now, seven months after New York started working from home en masse, subway ridership is only around 1.7-1.8 million per day, approximately 30% of normal, and many New Yorkers have said their commute is the biggest barrier to returning to work. The problem is one of psychology and one of science. I understand why people may be hesitant to ride the subway or hop a bus where they may have less control over everyone around them, but sitting in a poorly ventilated office with other people for 8-10 hours a day is more dangerous than the ride shorter to get there. Schwartz is trying to prove it.
Schwartz has to overcome the challenges of proving a negative, and he makes a compelling case. He looks at transit agencies large and small, from NYC to Hartford to the Quad Cities to Northern Kentucky. In each case, after lockdowns eased, increased transit ridership hasn’t corresponded to an uptick in coronavirus cases. Since the spring at least, when mask mandates were instituted and social distancing became the norm, careful transit usage coupled with disinfectant procedures haven’t led to an uptick in positive tests. Here’s Schwartz’s conclusion:
COVID-19 rates appear to be independent of ridership: in Northeast cities such as Hartford, Connecticut and New York, New York where the pandemic has been largely controlled, ridership has grown since peak pandemic low points, but case rates have been significantly reduced. Meanwhile, in Southern, Southwestern, and Midwestern cities, ridership has remained consistent while cases have skyrocketed. These areas are experiencing serious community outbreaks primarily attributed by public health experts to the reopening of bars and restaurants, large gatherings, nursing homes, prisons, and community fatigue of physical distancing practices. In fact, of the fifteen metro areas with the highest cumulative case rates as of August 2020, not one had a typical commuter transit share more than 5%, and most have minimal transit services with very light usage.
What Schwartz cannot ascertain and what will always remain unanswered is whether transit had a role in community spread before we had a better understanding of the science behind COVID-19. It’s generally accepted that the virus was in the U.S. long before the middle of March, and 5.5 million people were riding the subways each day well into early March and long before we knew how effective masks were at slowing the spread. Schwartz even admits as much, noting that “public transit has some characteristics associated with higher COVID-19 transmission risk, including the potential for crowding in enclosed environments on trains, buses and indoor stations.” Ultimately, though, masks, a lack of talking, frequent air replacement and a steady flow of passengers mitigates against risks today whether or not the trains helped spread the virus in March. Based on what we know now, so long as most riders are masked, it’s safe to ride transit.
But will this report matter? That is a question I can’t answer. People’s fears about COVID-19 are fairly baked in right now, and while mayoral candidates are making a show of riding trains, neither Bill de Blasio nor Andrew Cuomo have issued full-throated defenses of subways lately. For better or worse, potential transit riders take their cues from leadership, and leadership is wavering. Still, Schwartz’s study and overview reinforces what many of us have been saying: With proper precautions and a smart approach to personal and communal care, transit trips are no more riskier than any other activity these days.
The final wild card in this psychological battle for the minds of transit riders is, of course, the Trump Administration. Hardly allies to cities and transit riders, the White House has blocked a national order requiring face masks on all transit hubs. Instead, it’s up to localities to approve and enforce these orders. At a local level, the MTA is also prohibited from applying for a federal grant to study how to combat coronavirus spread on transit, as Politico reported late last week.
MTA, the largest transit agency in the country, will be barred from applying for a new federal transportation grant supporting coronavirus research because the Justice Department declared New York City an "anarchist" jurisdiction. @TSnyderDC reporting pic.twitter.com/YxiekkDN9R
We’ll know more about this development on Monday, but this is the heigh of petty politics. Despite its flaws, the MTA is best suited to understand how to combat COVID on transit, and the fact that they can’t apply for this grant because the Trump Administration is playing politics with public health three weeks before the election is a travesty. Still, we know the answers — masks, constant service, less talking, ventilation and high-quality air filters. That’s how transit is safe, and that’s why you could ride the subways today without worrying too much about putting your health at risk.
MTA Chairman & CEO Patrick J. Foye, Interim NYCT President Sarah Feinberg, LIRR President Phil Eng, and NYCT Chief Customer Officer Sarah Meyer hold a press conference at Atlantic Av-Barclays Center on Mon., September 14, 2020 to launch a new public service campaign to encourage mask usage along with the new $50 fine policy for those who refuse to wear face coverings on public transit. (Photo: Marc A. Hermann / MTA New York City Transit)
For those New Yorkers venturing onto the subway these day, it has become a hobby of sorts to track mask compliance. Jose Martinez of THE CITY runs Twitter scorecards tracking mask compliance using the terminology from the MTA’s own ad campaign, and while mileage may vary by line and time of day, mask compliance on transit in New York City is generally very good with 90-95% of riders properly masked up, according to MTA figures. For public health purposes, that level of mask usage is sufficient to significantly slow the spread of an airborne virus.
Still, compliance – with a mask over both one’s nose and one’s mouth – may have been slipping in recent weeks, and even 90% compliance isn’t good enough for the governor. Why? I’ll get to that shortly, but to that end, earlier this month, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced a new executive order “directing the MTA to develop a plan to bolster mask compliance across public transportation system’s subways, buses and railroads.” The MTA, in turn, announced a $50 fine for any rider who refuses to wear a mask. In a sense, that’s an academic recitation of events. As Cuomo controls the MTA, he’s the one imposing the $50 fine, and the agency is simply serving its purpose as political cover for the governor’s decision.
“While mask compliance in the MTA system remains very high, we want to make sure that people feel comfortable coming back to public transportation,” Governor Cuomo said in his press release last week.
On Monday afternoon, MTA officials gathered at the Atlantic Ave. subway stop to discuss the enforcement effort and $50 fine. Enforcement of rules in the subway has turned into a bit of a hot-button issue in recent years as the MTA has faced criticism for heavy-handed fare enforcement efforts that seemingly target minorities and a ramp-up of NYPD expenditures at a time when transit budgets are crashing. Yet, during the press conference, MTA leaders took pains to stress the public health effects of wearing a mask and de-emphasize punitive punishment, especially when asked about the impact of a $50 fine amidst an ongoing economic downturn. “We’re not,” NYC Transit’s interim president Sarah Feinberg said, “looking for the police to fine people. We‘re looking for compliance.”
MTA CEO and Chairman Pat Foye echoed this approach. “This is not about revenue,” he said, “and we have no interest in issuing fines and summonses.” Rather, MTA officials said, agency employees and cops will first request that maskless passengers don a proper face covering, and if these riders do not comply, they could face a $50 fine.
On the surface, this seems pretty straightforward: In an effort to drum up confidence in transit, whose reputation has unfairly taken a hit during the pandemic, the MTA is enforcing the state’s mask mandate. The health behind wearing masks is clear: They are one of the single best ways to protect yourself and other people from the spread of COVID-19, and the MTA, which has drawn criticism for resisting permitting its workers to wear masks early on during the pandemic, is trying to be responsible to the riding public and its workers as New York City reopens.
But the intricacies are worth probing because this appears to be a tacit attempt at luring Manhattan desk jockeys back to their offices. Time and again, surveys have indicated that transit rides are a point of contention. Even though sitting in an enclosed office for 8-10 hours a day is far riskier than the 25-35 minute subway rides people take to get there, New Yorkers seem to fear those subway rides – where socially distancing is tough, if not impossible – more than anything. They fear unmasked passengers; they fear buskers and candy sellers. They fear an environment they cannot control, and if even those fears aren’t borne out by the science of the pandemic, they are legitimate psychological fears that politicians and bureaucrats should attack. By mandating masks and making a show of enforcing the mandate, the governor is trying to negate those public fears – and perhaps generate a push to get people back to work. He should ride the trains too. “We have to be able to say to the riding public that everyone will be wearing masks,” Cuomo said, “and if they refuse to wear a mask they will be penalized.”
It’s not quite that easy though, and the pitfalls are obvious. For instance, in late August, when I took a 2 train from Grand Army Plaza to Borough Hall, every passenger on my train was properly masked, but when the doors opened at Atlantic Ave., two cops without masks were patrolling the platform. In fact, some of the most egregious mask violators in the city are cops. Pictures abound online of officers gathered without masks, and a Twitter account tracks those incidents. Mayor de Blasio routinely claims he has spoken with NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea about mask compliance, but cops wear masks only for official press events (and even that’s not a given). Shea says his cops will be a part of the enforcement effort, but will they be wearing masks? MTA officials said only that they’ve requested as much from the police, but they have no authority here. Recently, I have seen an increase in masked cops in the subway, but they still seem to the most egregious and frequent offenders.
Just saw three NYPD officers on a subway platform, two maskless.
Me to one of them: “excuse me officer, are masks required on the subway?”
Officer [glaring at me, gritting his teeth; long pause]: “yes.”
The second issue concerns enforcement. When asked by Dave Colon of Streetsblog how the MTA planned to avoid targeting vulnerable communities, Foye said he disputed the premise of the question and declined to offer an answer. Will the enforcement effort focus on everyone? Will the cops target minorities as they often do with quality-of-life enforcement in New York City? Or will the cops pull back when video emerges of an escalated altercation as happened in the spring? Policing transit spaces in New York remains a prickly subject, and tensions are high.
Ultimately, as ridership inches toward 1.7 million per day, still just 31 percent of a normal weekday in 2019, and city politicians and business leaders make more noise about getting office workers back to their desks, comfort with transit will become a key issue. That’s why Cuomo and the MTA are going to enforce this mask mandate. Whether this leads to better compliance with public health orders or more flashpoints between the cops and New York’s citizens is an open question, but persuasion first and fines only after refusals is the path to follow. The MTA and the cops instructed to serve as enforcers should adhere to this approach carefully, and politicians should show their faith in the system by making a show of riding. Otherwise, transit will stagnant amidst public health concerns, and the city’s recovery will be that much slower.
Today’s post is an op-ed piece from Mysore Nagaraja, Bob Previdi and Howard Sackel, a trio of New York City-area transit veterans. These post reflects their views, opinions and recommendations. If you would like to contribute your voice to Second Ave. Sagas, you can always contact me here.
Displays showing train car passenger loads could help riders better plan their trips in the age of social distancing. The one shown here is in use in London along the Overground.
The post-COVID 19 world poses a very particular challenge for transit: How do we meet the challenge of balancing the physical capacity of the transit system and its trains and buses with the new safety guidelines calling for proper social distancing?
As the economy slowly reopens and transit riders return, wearing masks in public and keeping six feet of separation will remain in place for the foreseeable future. The MTA must figure out how to manage rush hour and its historic crowding. The solution should include not only maintaining equipment and stations to a new standard of cleanliness but also working cooperatively with riders and businesses to stagger work hours and flatten the peak rush hour curves to meet the social distancing guideline.
Governor Cuomo recalled the challenges posed by the post September 11th and Hurricane Sandy periods and how New York was able to successfully meet these challenges. He suggested a plan to “build back better,” finding ways to use this tragic situation as a means to change how things are done and make them better than before. Nobody likes rush hour crowding, and perhaps NYC can use this situation to eliminate crush loads which would certainly be met favorably by the public.
Key to the return of both customers and employees is giving them confidence that their return is being safely managed. Deploying wash trains, more visible cleaning of stations and buses as well as a broad customer information program to continually reinforce the public awareness of these proactive actions will provide customers and employees with the confidence that they can still get where they need to go, with reliable service, in a healthier environment and with real time information about service status.
Data collected by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council shows that 1.1 million people travel into the Manhattan Central Business District between 7:00 and 10:00 a.m. using public transit trains and buses and the same number leave in the evening. To be able to adhere to the six-foot guidelines without doubling the number of train cars or buses (which is not possible) will therefore require using the existing fleet of buses and trains more efficiently.
The UITP, the International Association of Public Transit, reaffirmed the guidelines for social distancing and is actively advising their members to ask the public to change the time they travel to reduce peak volumes. As the MTA expects 60% of riders to return by September, there is no time to lose.
The interagency task force for transit put together by the governor should use this time while ridership is still only 10 to 15% of normal volumes to work closely with the business community and employers to reduce the passenger load during the morning and evening rush hours, by finding ways to stagger the rush hours to allow a reduction in peak congestion.
Other cities around the globe monitor crowding by subway car and advise passengers where to stand to get seats. The MTA is already testing similar technology on a few Staten Island Express buses. The MTA is also looking into technology that would report crowding conditions in a real-time way so that riders can make their own decision to stay away if crowding is becoming an issue. Working with technology leaders, solutions should be developed now to better monitor patron loading and crowding and provide real-time information to the MTA’s customers.
Another way to inform the system’s patrons about crowding and foster reduced loads is to provide information using social media and entry-point real-time information using existing monitors and new video screens above entrances to enable customers to make adjustments in their trips. Simultaneously feeding this information to social media and all media outlets can allow for real-time updates of conditions, informing customers where to enter the system or where to avoid unsafe conditions.
Transit must find a way to manage its way out this crisis or New York City risks overwhelming traffic if even some people choose to drive instead. According to US census data, 57% of those working in NYC use public transit and only 27% drive. With two million people making work trips to Manhattan each day, New York has to find a way to make transit adapt to this new world where less crowding is paramount. There is no perfect solution here, and the issue should not just be the MTA’s to solve, but the MTA can determine what level of ridership they can manage safely given the new distancing guideline. Using data about rush hour travel to help the business community and riders reshape how crowded the trains and buses get could be a long-term benefit from this horrible crisis.
About the Authors:
Bob Previdi is a transportation planner, and former Superintendent of Subway Car Assignments at NYC Transit.
Mysore Nagaraja is a transportation consultant and the former president of MTA Capital Construction and Senior VP, Capital Programs at NYC Transit
Howard Sackel was senior VP at PACO Technologies and a former director for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Very quietly last month, the MTA released their 2019 ridership tallies, and last year was a good year for the subways. After three years of declining ridership, annual subway ridership hit 1,697,787,002, a jump of nearly 18 million or a hair over 1 percent above 2018’s total. Usually, the MTA would celebrate increased ridership and increased fare revenue, but with things being as they are right now, the release of these numbers was a muted one.
Ultimately, the L train work that reduced weekend service frequency along the 14th St. corridor likely cost the MTA a shot at 1.7 billion passengers, and if fare evasion was really as prevalent as the MTA has tried to claim it is, the subways last year may have been more crowded than they’ve ever been. I’m not quite sure that passes the smell test, but I digress. All in, 2019 was a positive step forward for the MTA, a rare spot of good news amidst the onslaught of bad these days. Whether the city will ever get back to these lofty subway ridership numbers in the COVID Era depends upon more than just the development of a vaccine.
2019 In Review
As subway ridership has cratered amidst the coronavirus pandemic, it feels weird to talk about crowded trains and increased ridership, but let’s take a look at the numbers. The gains were fairly evenly split between weekdays and weekends, a positive sign for Saturday and Sunday service which had been bleeding riders for years. An average 2019 weekday saw near 5.494 million riders, up from 5.438 million in 2018 while combined weekend ridership was slightly above 5.494 million, up also from 5.438 million a year before. Saturday gains outpaced Sunday with an average Saturday witnessing an increase of 40,000 riders while Sundays saw an increase of just 14,500 riders.
Outside of the way the L train rejiggered ridership across the G, J and M trains, the city’s newest subway stations saw some of the largest gains. The 7 train’s terminal at 34th St. and 11th Ave. saw ridership jump by 75% to 18,875 per day as the Hudson Yards development took shape and the Vessel and mall opened. Total weekday entrances at the three Q stops along Second Ave. increased by around 2500 per day as well, gains that outpaced the overall jump in subway ridership by a few percentage points.
The L train work, meanwhile, cut into the MTA’s push for 1.7 billion riders, but declines weren’t quite as steep as I would have expected. Average weekend ridership for the L train stations at 1st and 3rd Avenues in Manhattan declined by approximately 50% while stops through Williamsburg and Bushwick saw declines between 40-50 percent. Straphanger traffic into Bedford Ave. dipped by only 36 percent, and it was still the 39th busiest weekend stop last year, an impressive showing considering the paltry headways. Meanwhile, the Lorimer/Metropolitan L/G station saw a decline of only 3.7 percent, and G train stops in South Williamsburg and Greenpoint saw increases in weekend ridership of around 25 percent.
Other lines expected to carry the L train’s slack did indeed do so. Nearby station along the J and M lines saw weekend demand in excess of 50% above 2018 levels, and all in, the various mitigation efforts worked. Overall, the subways lost around 20,000 weekend entrances due to the L work, but nearby lines certainly saw an uptick in usage. (The L train worked formally wrapped in late April, and I wrote a postmortem on the L train project.)
2020 In Preview: A Spike Before the Cliff of the Pandemic
After this rosy 2019, things were looking up to start the current year as well. As the MTA reported in its board materials and on the release trumpeting last year’s ridership, “This upward trend in ridership continued in January and February of 2020, with both months outpacing January and February in 2019.” But nature in the form of COVID-19 is having its way with the world right now, and as shelter-in-place orders have slowed down the pace of life in New York City, only around 400,000-500,000 riders per day are using the subways, a 90% drop in ridership hard to contexualize. In a letter released last month calling for an additional $3.9 billion in federal aid, the MTA included a report prepared by consultants at McKinsey & Company detailing expected ridership levels over the remainder of 2020. The chart is an ugly one:
The MTA has yet to release an updated version of this chart, and already, even these pessimistic assumptions look too optimistic. The New York City area isn’t likely to see a loosening of the state’s PAUSE restrictions until early June, and the “delayed containment and recovery” track where ridership reaches 40 percent feels far more likely than the trend line anticipating 60% of riders returning by September. Whether we’ll be back at 5-10 percent of ridership and in another lockdown situation by the end of the year will depend upon a second wave. Even without another wave, the MTA is looking at a lost year of ridership, and even if everything breaks right for the city, the optimistic trend line contemplates only around 55% of riders will return this year. What if, as The Times speculates today, few people go back to work? While I am skeptical of the long-term trend, in the short term, Manhattan offices are going to be empty, and the days of 1.7 billion annual riders are going to be nothing but fond memories for the foreseeable future.
The question lingering over all of this involves the future. What happens next? Even the McKinsey analysis punts on that question as projections include a wide range of options and end in December. Subway ridership isn’t going to come back on January 1, 2021, and after receiving $3.8 billion last month and asking for an additional $3.9 billion, the MTA now says it will need at least $10.4 billion by the end of 2021 to stay afloat. Forget the $51 billion capital plan and the long-desired federal contribution; the MTA needs these dollars to stay solvent during a prolonged period of low ridership. Without it, they – and the city – are sunk as the bills pile up.
“Our request has garnered substantial bipartisan support as it did in the first round,” MTA CEO and Chairman Pat Foye said this week. “This is not a red or blue state issue; it’s a no brainer. The COVID-19 pandemic has made clear the importance of public transportation, during the pandemic and as part of the economic recovery when the pandemic subsides.”
But the recovery isn’t just economic. The MTA has to make people feel that transit is a choice that will not jeopardize public health. Already, the agency has had to contend with spurious claims such as those put forth in an MIT report that the subways spread coronavirus. Both Alon Levy and Aaron Gordon burned plenty of pixels debunking and contextualizing the argument. I don’t buy it either, but while we learn more about the transmission of coronavirus via droplets spread in contained spaces without sufficient ventilation, the subways can seem daunting. That is, in part, why the Governor ordered the end of 24/7 subway service (though we should be skeptical of those claims as well, as I wrote in a Patreon post last week).
Still, making the subways appealing is going to be costly. The MTA will have to maintain the appearances of cleanliness, through an aggressive cleaning and disinfecting program currently underway. This program has no price tag yet, and the agency hasn’t released any sort of scientific assessment indicating how long trains stay clean or disinfected after customers board to touch everything. We’ll have to get used to masks, gloves and a lot less singing on the subways. A contact-less fare payment should help too, but the OMNY rollout is still on pause due to the response to the virus. Until there is a vaccine, most New Yorkers are likely to view transit with skepticism, and I can’t say I blame them. The geometry of cars and the geography of New York City will likely help avoid the carmageddon we fear, but the MTA’s rider-dependent finances won’t improve unless and until ridership climbs and ridership won’t climb if New Yorkers aren’t comfortable on crowded subway trains.
Glimmers Of Hope Down The Line
Left unsaid in my ramblings today about the ridership figures is the impact of New York City’s most popular British import. The 2019 and early 2020 numbers were a testament to Andy Byford and the results he produced. By focusing on improving subway service and by focusing the public conversation on the actual improvements, riders returned to the system. The one percent increase during a prolonged period of L train service diversions is a true success story, and the building blocks are in place for the MTA to build on that success in a post-COVID Era. The problem will be one of revenue, from the feds who can rescue the MTA and save the economic lifeline of the city as the riders start to trickle back, and one of time. A year from now, when the MTA releases the 2020 ridership numbers, the picture will be grim, but we can hope now that things go up from there.
The MTA’s latest digital ad campaigns honors workers who have been on the front lines of COVID-19 pandemic.
Monday marked the one-month anniversary since my last subway, and it’s been a strange, surreal 33 days since I last took the 4 train from Manhattan to Brooklyn after one final day in the office before I fully embraced my firm’s “work from home” policy. Nothing in particular jumps out about that subway ride. The 4 leaving Grand Central was slightly emptier than normal, and straphangers seemed a bit jumpier than usual. But it was nothing compared with the last bus ride I took two days later, and little did we know what the next month would bring.
The bus ride, for what it’s worth, was much worse. Since my wife and I had to move at the start of a pandemic, I had to take a last-minute trip to Home Depot on Sunday night, and I couldn’t fit the large roll of bubble wrap in a Citi Bike basket for the trip back home. So my last transit trip of 2020 was a B44-SBS on Sunday, March 15. A guy with visibly red eyes and sniffles boarded at Fulton St., and everyone on the bus skirted out of his way while we all collectively visibly flinched.
At around 9:05 p.m., I got off that bus at Nostrand Ave and St. Johns and haven’t taken a transit ride since then. I’m not an essential worker, and now isn’t the time for subway joy rides. I’ve spotted the Franklin Ave. Shuttle a few times, running without many riders. I’ve heard the IRT locals travel between Grand Army Plaza and Eastern Parkway during my late-night runs through Prospect Park. I’ve seen buses, sometimes empty and sometimes not, continuing to criss-cross the streets of Brooklyn, those blue and yellow lumbering vehicles the unsung workhorses of our transit infrastructure.
It’s profoundly weird, this feeling of disconnect from transit, a part of everyday life in New York City, as it feels to be disconnected from every other part of New York City life. I hear more ambulances than airplanes, even though my new place lines up with one of the approaches to Laguardia, more 7 p.m. applause than traffic. Only when I’m out of the city do I go weeks between subway rides, and I can confidently say I’ve never gone this long in my life without a transit ride. Even when I had a broken bone in my foot a few years ago, I had to hobble to the subway to get to a few doctors appointments. These days, most New Yorkers hardly go anywhere, and the subway feels more like a concept than the lifeblood of the city it was just a few weeks ago.
But the trains must go. In a city of 8 million, hundreds of thousands of people still need the trains to get to their essential jobs everyday, and even during a pandemic, around 500,000 people per day are relying on the MTA to get them to their patients, to their shifts at the post office, to their jobs maintaining the city’s food supplies. These are the folks who are keeping the city going even as everything else has involuntarily ground to a halt, and the transit system is getting them there. It could not be more vital.
It hasn’t been an easy few weeks for our transit system since my last post, and the podcast I recorded with Nicole Gelinas feels like a lifetime ago. At the time, it was clear that the pandemic had shot a multi-billion-dollar hole in the MTA’s budget, and the agency was reeling financially from the hit.
But now the agency is more than reeling in very personal ways. As of Tuesday afternoon, 59 transit employees have died due to COVID-19. These are the front-line workers who move the city, and they have been constantly under attack by the coronavirus since Day One. Toward the end of March, the MTA instituted an “essential service” plan that basically matched up subway service with available crews. With so many MTA workers quarantined after exposure to the virus, the MTA simply couldn’t run full service. With with ridership down approximately 93-95 percent, per MTA Chair Pat Foye’s confirmation on Tuesday, the agency can’t save money cutting service immediately amidst a crisis, and they need to maintain service to adhere to social distancing guidelines. Still, gone for now is the B train and the C, the W and Z and the 42nd St. Shuttle. Even still, these workers have fallen ill.
The MTA hasn’t escaped criticism for these deaths. At the start of the pandemic, the MTA, taking its guidance from the CDC and federal officials, barred the use of face masks, and only recently did the agency finally lift this restriction. MTA officials have defended the early guidance to me and have pointed to the CDC’s words. It’s hard to argue with that; after all, the MTA isn’t known for being ahead of any curve, and the CDC is supposed to be the be-all and end-all of pandemic response in America. But a few weeks later, the words in a recent post on The LIRR Today ring true:
Another point of contention has been MTA’s sluggishness towards the use of face masks (by supplying masks to all employees and strongly recommending/requiring their use by riders on the system) as more became known about the communicability of this virus. After originally not providing or even prohibiting the use of mask by frontline workers, the MTA relented on March 27—weeks into the pandemic—announcing that they would begin distributing tens of thousands of masks to frontline workers. MTA officials have tried to lean significantly on the notion in recent days that CDC guidance did not shift towards recommending asymptomatic people wear masks until very recently, but that doesn’t really pass muster… CDC guidance is just that, guidance—and guidance from the federal government has to be reasonably applicable to the entire country, and doesn’t account that the effects and rate of spread in places like New York might be different than in places like Topeka. Granted, the MTA should [not] be left to determine public health policy all on its own, and state and local health departments should have been more up to speed on this—but the MTA probably should have realized that having a hundred or more people crammed into small metal boxes in an already hostile environment, and then having employees sit in those boxes and breathe the same air for hours a day presented a risk level that is a fair bit beyond the norm and taken stronger precautions. And it was also the MTA who conflated CDC guidance against asymptomatic people wearing masks and turned that into a prohibition on mask use for many frontline employees. The MTA is ultimately responsible to provide a safe workplace, by protecting the health and safety of its employees, in any circumstance.
The MTA this week agreed to a $500,000 family benefit for any transit worker who died due to COVID-19. It’s the right thing to do, and my sympathies go out to every family grieving a loved one these days.
A March 27th fire that started in car 6347 claimed the life of TO Garrett Goble. (Photo: Marc A. Hermann / MTA New York City Transit)
These coronavirus deaths weren’t the only underground tragedies in recent weeks as a fire — suspected as arson — tore through a 2 train near 110th Street a few weeks ago. Seventeen riders were injured and a train operator who helped rescue his passengers succumbed to his injuries. The fire was one of the more horrific intentional subway crimes in recent years, and it added to the sense of chaos and helplessness and detachment that has enveloped New York City. (Garrett Goble was later commemorated in graffiti.)
The fires and the deaths and the detachment from the regular pace of city life seem par for the course these days, and we’re months away from any return to normalcy. The MTA, as Gelinas wrote this week, is going to need a massive infusion of cash to power the city as our rebound occurs, and I’ll have more thoughts on the fiscal edge the MTA is teetering upon shortly. It’s not easy to make sense of much that happens these days, and who knows when any of us who aren’t essential workers will next ride the subway again?
As this surreal week has slipped by and New York’s response to the COVID-19 threat evolves every few hours, a lot of people have asked me the same questions: Will the trains keep running? Is it safe to ride them? I thought it would be useful to summarize where we are right now.
Transit Is Not Shutting Down
Will the trains keep running? That’s the question I’ve been asked the most, and the answer is clear: Right now, there are no plans to stop running subways, buses or commuter rail services. Rumors circulated throughout the day on Thursday that a shutdown — in effect, a quarantine-in-place for the city — was to be implemented, but the MTA and governor’s office vehemently denied this rumor. My sources within the agency did as well. For now, everything is running, and transit is not shutting down.
Could the state order a transit shutdown?
This one is tougher. The answer is yes; we’ve seen Governor Cuomo halt subway service in the face of a serious blizzard forecast. But for now, the monitoring is simply following available guidance. In an appearance on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show on Thursday morning, interim New York City Transit President Sarah Feinberg explained that the MTA is watching the governmental response closely (and of course Gov. Cuomo could order implementation of the agency’s contingency planning). Ultimately, shutting down the transit system means cutting off health care providers from their jobs and patients from medical care so it’s not a decision the MTA and New York will ever make lightly.
“If the CDC or New York City Department of Health at some point tells us to completely change the way we’re operating the system, we will do that. We take our guidance from them,” Feinberg said. “But for now, we’re running a normal service. We have a lot of people who are using the service, obviously. We’ve seen ridership tick down a bit in the last week or so, but for now, a lot of people are using the system, and we will continue to execute on that.”
How is the MTA cleaning the system?
The MTA has upped its cleaning frequencies. Contact points in stations — Metrocard and ticket machines, benches, turnstiles, and handrails — are now being disinfected twice per day. All subways, commuter rail cars and buses are cleaned at terminals, and the entire rolling stock is disinfected every 72 hours. It’s a Herculean task that lays bare the deficiencies in the MTA’s pre-COVID-19 cleaning practices, and that brings me to the next question.
Is it safe to use public transit?
This isn’t an easy question, and there is no easy answer. As Aaron Gordon explored at the start of the outbreak in New York last week, most epidemiologists felt the subways were safe, but we’ve learned more about this novel coronavirus in the past few weeks. The underlying analysis is the same, but right now, to the extent possible, those who can should stay home. Those who have to travel should try to avoid rush hour crowds (though the crowds are getting smaller), and those who are at high risk should absolutely not be waiting on crowded platforms for crowded trains.
Otherwise, the advice is the same for the trains as it is for any other circumstance right now: Do what you feel is best for yourself and those with whom you’re in constant contact. Practice good hygiene and always wash your hands before touching anything else after you’ve ridden transit. Read on for more about the challenges to adding service and some statements from our political leaders that didn’t fill my with confidence last weekend.
What is happening to transit ridership?
It’s down and precipitously. Earlier in the week, the MTA had reported a “high single-digits” decline, but by Wednesday, the numbers showed a massive slowdown. Ridership on the subways was down nearly 19% vs. March 11, 2019, and the buses saw a dip of 15%. On Thursday morning, Metro-North and LIRR ridership was down 48% and 31% respectively from a comparable Thursday in March. Again, though, the MTA does not plan to curtail service in response to demand. At some point, all of this extra spending and huge dip in fare revenue will put extreme pressures on the MTA budget, but that is a bridge we will have to cross later once the pandemic has subsided. We may need to discuss an MTA bailout far earlier than anyone expected.
Could the MTA run more service to disperse crowds
This is a question I had considered earlier in the week before the city and state started implementing social distancing by fiat and transit ridership started to nose-dive. It’s an academic question at this point as nearly everyone expects transit ridership to decline steeply over the next few days and weeks.
I started thinking about this question last weekend when both Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio started telling people to avoid crowds. At press conference on Sunday, Cuomo said, “If citizens are taking mass transit, if you can move to a train car that is not as dense, if you see a packed train car, let it go by, wait for the next train, same with if you’re taking a bus. It’s the density to proximity that we’re trying to reduce.”
The mayor echoed the governor’s sentiments. “If you are traveling by subway and the train that comes up is all packed and you can possibly wait for the next train in the hopes it might be less packed,” Bill de Blasio said, “please do.”
At first, I didn’t really know what to make of these statements. At their roots, the advice — try to take trains when they aren’t as crowded — is sound, but practically, it’s foolish. Rush hour platforms would be as crowded as trains and thus just as likely to be hot spots for transmission and contagion. On Tuesday night, before the worst of the week settled in, Feinberg went on NY1 to add some much-needed context to these remarks. It’s not, she said, “not possible for everyone” to change their commuting patterns. “People have different schedules, she said. “The thing to know is.. avoid crowded trains when possible…So if you can telecommute, fantastic. If you can walk to work great. Now is a great time to do that. But most people can’t. Most people depend on the subways and the buses. We’re here to provide safe and efficient transportation for them.”
Feinberg’s point is the right one; most people can’t simply change their commuting patterns. Telling people to do something is far different than creating incentives for them to do so. And so, as I said, before many companies started enforcing work-from-home policies on Wednesday, this got me thinking about ways to mitigate crowds. Could the MTA extend service during rush hour? Could the agency create a longer period of peak-hour service frequency in an effort to spread out rush hour commutes and reduce crowding?
In an ideal world, the answer would be yes, but we live in a less-than-deal world with real-world constraints. While not every train line is at capacity, due to the availability of rolling stock, some key bottlenecks and crew availability, the MTA can’t add rush hour service. In the post-peak periods, adding service runs up against FRA requirements limiting the number of hours train operators can work and union regulations. As much as we would love to snap our fingers and add a few hours of frequent service after 10 a.m. or 7 p.m., it just isn’t that easy.
So to avoid crowding underground, we’ll have to again listen to the mayor. “If you have the option of walking to work or taking a bike to work,” he said, “please do.” That, of course, would be far easier and safer had the mayor shown a true commitment to building out a bike lane network or if the mayor had immediately ordered DOT to implement temporary bike priority lanes covering popular commuting routes. It took until Thursday night for the mayor to order city workers to stay at home or come in later, a move that should remove around 100,000 people from the subways at rush hour. This should have happened on Sunday, but better now than later.
Do you have anything to comfort us through this stressful time?
The end of a decade comes around only once every ten years, and despite what some folks on the Internet would have you believe, the 2010s are drawing to a close this week. No one considered 1920 part of any decade other than The Twenties, but I digress. Despite a lot of frustration surrounding the state of transit investment and expansion efforts in NYC as the 2010s end, the past ten years have seen a plethora of transit and transportation happenings and some real progress. It hasn’t always been smooth sailing, and city leadership over the past six years has been sorely lacking. But it hasn’t been a quiet decade.
So as 2019 and the Twenty Teens wraps up, I thought I would run down the biggest stories of the decade and a sneak peek at what’s on tap for the early 2020s. Some stories were good; some were bad; and some have yet to draw to a conclusion. So without further ado, it’s the official Second Ave. Sagas non-comprehensive review of transit and transportation in the 2010s.
Most Anticipated Subway Opening: The Second Ave. Subway
Gov. Andrew Cuomo and then-MTA Chair Tom Prendergast celebrate the December 2016 opening of the Second Ave. Subway.
On December 31, 2016, Gov. Andrew Cuomo opened the Second Ave. Subway after over 85 years of anticipation. Cuomo stepped in late in the game to push forward on an opening, and his streamrolling the opening showed what an engaged state executive could accomplish. Little did we realize how Cuomo’s MTA involvement would evolve over the subsequent three years, but after decades of stops and starts, New York City had its first three stations along Second Ave. A transit tourist attraction from Day One, it was and remains the most expensive subway construction project in the world. Phase 2, the northern extension connecting to 125th St. and Lexington Ave., is scheduled to open before 2030, but the $6 billion cost remains a key concern. (Fire code excuses, anyone?)
A Decade of Ribbon-Cutting: Fulton Street and the 7 Line Extension
The 7 line extension to Hudson Yards opened in September of 2015. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)
A 2010 blizzard stranded some A train passengers overnight as snow built up in the subway’s open trenches, but that was nothing compared to the underground devastation wrought by 2012’s Superstorm Sandy. The storm surge flooded eight subway tunnels and destroyed the recently-opened South Ferry station. Billions of dollars and seven years later, repair work is still ongoing (and the L train’s not-a-shutdown shutdown is the latest in recovery work), and it’s not clear if all of the preventative work is sufficient to avoid another catastrophic flood. Water, after all, seeks the lowest ground, and the subways, with thousands of access points in low-lying areas, are New York City’s lowest ground.
Most Effective Use of Gov. Cuomo’s Lapels: The L Train Shutdown That Wasn’t
Gov. Cuomo tours the L train’s Canarsie Tunnel before torpedoing years of planning in a few weeks.
No one really knows why Governor Cuomo took an interest in the L train shutdown a few weeks before it was scheduled to begin. He has claimed multiple times that someone — he won’t say who — approached him on the street, grabbed him by the lapels, and begged the governor to find a better way. This mysterious lapel-grabbing New Yorker has never been identified nor, as far as we know, has Cuomo dismissed members of his security detail who failed to protect the governor from some guy threatening him with physical harm. But Cuomo took a coterie of academics into the L train tunnel three weeks before a shutdown that was years in the works was set to begin, and he just canceled the dang thing. The MTA’s careful planning and mitigation coordination with NYC DOT were thrown out in the window in a crisis of confidence. Instead, the L train kept running while the scope of work was scaled back and new technologies and approaches to construction attempted.
It’s hard to call this good, and it’s hard to call this bad. We won’t know for decades if encasing a collapsing concrete benchwall in polymers is a better solution than just rebuilding the thing, but the governor forced the MTA to try something new. So far it’s worked, and New York can thank or scorn the apocryphal lapel-grabbing constituent whoever he is.
Worst of the Decade: Mayoral Disengagement
A few other entries on this list focus on Bill de Blasio’s lack of vision on transit, but he has truly been MIA since 2014. He doesn’t ride the subways or buses or understand what they mean for the people of New York City. Thus, despite his Vision Zero rhetoric, progress on limiting private vehicle use on busy city streets has stalled, and measures designed to promote a more livable city for people have stalled. He hasn’t been a forceful advocate for his constituents on matters relating to the MTA and has been played like a fiddle by the governor. His signature transit initiative is a low-capacity ferry system, and he hasn’t used his powers to help speed up buses or improve surface transit. The next mayor will be able to set a different agenda for the 2020s.
Best 1990s Technology Installed In The 2010s: Subway Countdown Clocks
It’s a long wait for this A train, but the longer wait for countdown clocks ended this decade. (Photo by Joe Cutrufo)
Though the rollout started with a trial along the 6 train in late 2009, countdown clocks were a child of the 2010s as the MTA finally caught up to its peers. The numbered lines of the A Division came first, and it seemed as though the lettered lines would never get their countdown clocks. But after some prodding by the governor, the last of the B Division countdown clocks went online in very early 2018, thus providing real-time train information (or something close to it) across the entire subway system. Sure, the B Division clocks relying on Bluetooth beacons aren’t as accurate as we’d all hope, and some clocks are notoriously blocked by other signs. But gone are the days of peering into dark tunnels hoping for a glimpse of an arriving train, and the app-based offerings mean New Yorkers have access to city-wide train arrival information at the tap of a button, something we could not say ten years ago.
Honorable Mention: BusTime. Though the city’s bus stations do not have real-time arrival displays, the MTA’s in-house app-based BusTime service allows bus riders to glimpse the location of every bus on the road at any time. Taking the mystery out of waiting for the bus removes a huge source of rider frustration.
Best 2010s Technology Installed In, Well, The 2010s (And Beyond): OMNY
After a decade of talking about replacing the MetroCard, the MTA finally committed to an open payments, tap-based system called OMNY or One Metro New York. You can pay with your phone; you can pay with your credit card; you can pay with a proprietary MTA card. The OMNY rollout started in 2019, but it won’t be until the early part of the next decade when we see how and if OMNY unites fare payment across subways and buses and the commuter rails; how all-door bus boarding succeeds in NYC; and if fare-capping and other benefits are introduced. For more on OMNY, check out my podcast interview with Al Putre, the very New York personality pushing forward on OMNY.
Best Sign NYC Can Exist With Less Space For Cars: Times Square Pedestrian Plazas
Though installed in 2009 as well, the Times Square pedestrian plazas were made permanent in the 2010s, and it’s now hard to imagine the crossroads of New York without them. The Times Square sidewalks were always too flooded with people, and the plazas showed that the city wouldn’t grind to a halt if a few lanes of traffic were repurposed for people. The plazas proved spectacularly popular, and though a few more have opened in isolated spots around the borough, a city leader with a true vision for people in NYC should be able to bring a rapid expansion of the program to all five boroughs.
Best New Advocacy Group of the Decade: Riders Alliance
As Gene Russianoff, the godfather of transit activism in NYC, has dealt with increasingly serious health concerns over the past few years, the Riders Alliance has filled the void. Overseen by former Daniel Squadron staffer John Raskin, the group uses grassroots organizing to pressure politicians to support transit and has been instrumental in pushing for the governor’s support for transit, congestion pricing, and Fare Fairs. Raskin is leaving the organization soon, but the Riders Alliance will be a loud voice for better transit throughout the next decade as well. Disclaimer: I am a board member of the organization and have consulted with John Raskin since before the group’s founding.
Best British Import of the Decade: Andy Byford
NYC Transit President Andy Byford greets passengers at the reopened 168th St. station in December. (Photos: MTA NYC Transit / Marc A. Hermann)
It’s been nearly two years since Andy Byford arrived in NYC with a mandate to fix the subways after a steep decline, and he remains the best thing brought to the U.S. from Britain this year. His tenure has a rocky one politically as he’s faced meddling by a governor who can’t share the stage (or credit) with anyone, and he did threaten to resign at least once. But under his leadership, the subways are getting better. If Cuomo and Byford can co-exist into the next decade, and if Byford is allowed to see the job through, the hiring of Andy Byford will be viewed as a seminal transit moment of the 2010s.
Best Political Victory The Mayor Barely Acknowledges: Fair Fares
After a decade of constant fare hikes, anti-poverty advocates in NYC secured the passage of Fair Fares, a subsidized subway rate for city residents below the poverty line. The program launched in early 2019, but despite his rhetoric regarding the two New Yorks, the mayor never really embraced the campaign. It’s part of his larger disinterest in transit, but Fair Fares should be treated as an unqualified success for the Community Service Society of New York and City Council Speaker Corey Johnson. In early 2020, the program will expand so that a total of approximately 700,000 will be eligible for the discounted rate.
Best Sign That NYC Is In Fact Amsterdam: Citi Bike
More daily users than the ferry gets in a month, and neighborhoods are clamoring for docks. Now if only the e-bikes would return.
The Lawsuits We Won Along The Way: Prospect Park West bike lane; 14th Street Busway
It’s fitting that the decade was book-ended by two of the more impactful lawsuits regarding street space allocation in recent NYC history. In 2011, Prospect Park West bike lane opponents lost in court, and in 2019, Arthur Schwartz and his motley band of obstructionist NIMBYs saw their efforts at stopping the 14th St. busway thrown out. (I wrote about 14th Street and its impact in a piece for Curbed New York this past summer.) While the city still spends too much time and effort placating NIMBYs who will never be placated, these lawsuits paved the way for a reimagining of city streets that prioritizes pedestrians, bus riders, bikers and safety above the demands of private car owners.
Biggest Waste of Taxpayer Money on Water: NYC Ferry
Mayor de Blasio’s boats are one of the bigger stories of the 2010s, but I haven’t been a fan. Despite the mayor’s myriad boat-based press conferences, the low-capacity ferries are not, as I wrote for Curbed New York last year, a true transit option for NYC, and with ridership on par with the 55th busiest bus route in the city but a subsidy of $10 per rider, they’re a heavily-subsidized giveaway to New Yorkers wealthier than average. While the boats have their fans, the city should stop subsidizing the fares so heavily during the next decades.
Biggest Waste of Taxpayer Money on Land: The Santiago Calatrava-designed WTC Transportation Hub
The $4 billion mall with a subway stop in its basement was a lesson in infrastructure failure. Costs ballooned from a starting price tag of $1.4 billion, and a devastatingly brutal New York Magazine deep-dive was just one of many articles highlighting the inept process and poor Port Authority oversight. In fact, when all was said and done, the Port Authority didn’t even bother with an opening ceremony when the PATH station/mall opened in 2016.
Best Vaporware of the Decade:The BQX
In early 2016, the mayor announced a waterfront streetcar connecting Red Hook to Astoria, and since then, nothing has happened. Sure, we’ve all burned a lot of pixels debating the relative merits of a project that won’t be self-funded as initially proposed and provides dubious transit benefits, but it doesn’t actually exist and likely never will. In its current form, the BQX won’t be ready for passengers until 2028, and the next mayor is likely to pull the plug on a project that remains on life support. Whether the mayor even remembers its part of his city transportation platform is an open question, and as of my writing of this post, BQX.nyc, the website for Friends of the BQX, the only group fighting for the project, was offline*. While the city needs a way to control its transit destiny and a surface light-rail network is long overdue, the BQX’s legacy will be simply as this past decade’s transit vaporware.
*The Friends’ website was available approximately 20 hours after I published this post. A spokesperson told me the site was offline “temporarily…for maintenance.”
(Hopefully) The Best of the 2020s:Congestion pricing, busways, free parking and a streets master plan
A handful of stories began their sagas during the waning years of the 2010s, but we won’t know how these tales play out until well into the 2020s. Chief among these is congestion pricing which finally passed in 2019 but won’t be implemented until early 2021. Advocates are worried about the lack of transparent planning as the clock ticks closer to implementation…The 14th St. Busway has been an unqualified success, and politicians throughout the city are clamoring for more. Hopefully, in ten years, I’ll write about how the 2020s were the decade of busways as the the city finally got serious about combatting declining bus ridership and slow travel speeds. For now, though, the mayor hasn’t committed to more busways…I wrote an ode to Corey Johnson’s Streets Master Plan for Curbed New York this fall. The next mayor, whether Johnson or one of his competitors, should take this plan and run with it, turning NYC into a city that prioritizes people over cars…And finally, will NYC start to eliminate free on-street parking during the 2020s? I sure hope so.
Dishonorable Mention: The fares kept going up and up and up
The fare on January 1, 2010 was $2.25 with a pay-per-ride discount of 15%, and a 30-day card cost $89. New Yorkers could buy a one-day unlimited ride “fun” pass. Today, the one-day card is a relic of history, and the pay-per-ride discount are gone too. The per-swipe fare is $2.75, and a 30-day card costs a whopping $127. The biennial increases from the past decade have helped the MTA close an inflation-based fare gap left over from the mid-1990s, but the hikes throughout the 2010s outpaced inflation.
Dishonorable Mention: Who’s The Boss?
Turnover atop the MTA lead to an unsteady course. Jay Walder, Joe Lhota, Tom Prendergast, Jay Lhota (again) and Pat Foye all served as MTA Chair over the course of the decade, and a hiring freeze has led to a talent drain within the MTA. The constant turnover is a symptom of the tenuous relationship between the MTA Chair and Andrew Cuomo, and the leadership churn creates continuity problems that make true MTA reform nearly impossible.
Dishonorable Mention: The MTA’s construction cost crisis
When The Times ran a big expose on the MTA’s cost problems in late 2017, I had hoped politically-motivated reform would follow. Instead, Albany has largely steered clear of an examination of the MTA’s capital cost crisis, and no one from, say, the state DA or the DOJ has looked into possible corruption. Although the agency claims to be working on reducing costs, the next phase of the Second Ave. Subway will, as I mentioned, cost $6 billion, a figure so far out of line with international standards that it nearly defies belief. Janno Lieber recently pointed to the fire code as one driver of costs, but no one really bought that excuse.
Dishonorable Mention: Where have all the bus riders gone?
In early 2010, around 2.45 million New Yorkers rode local buses on a daily basis. Today, that figure has fallen all the way to around 1.95 million per day. This 25 percent decline in ridership should be spurring on some serious soul-searching, but neither the MTA nor the city appears to be in a rush to stem this tide. With Uber and Lyft flooding the streets with cars, bus speeds are slow and service unreliable, leading to a death spiral of cuts and worsening service. Hopefully, congestion pricing and more busways can return New Yorkers to the bus and the bus to New Yorkers.
Dishonorable Mention: The Churro Lady goes viral
The debate over increased police presence in the subway came to a head when a video of a Churro Lady getting arrested went viral. The arrest spurred a mass protest and increase resentment aimed at the MTA and its attitude toward adding cops in the subway. It wasn’t, as I wrote, only about the Churro Lady, and this is one debate that will not end any time soon.
Dishonorable Mention: The Governor absolutely controls the MTA
Transit activists and commentators had to spend far too much time in the mid-2010s reminding Gov. Andrew Cuomo that he was in charge of the MTA. He still tries to hide this fact behind obfuscations, half-truths and lies, manipulating the political structure of the MTA to suit his whims. But Gov. Cuomo is very much in charge, and as MTA transformation takes off, the agency carries his fingerprints from top to bottom.
I’m sure I forgot a few things along the way, but what a ride it’s been.
With apologies to Bob Dylan for the headline, the wildest subway story in months kicked off innocuously enough with a Tweet from the MTA on Tuesday night. A recent spate of trains delayed because someone pulled the emergency brake seemed to be intentional.
We suspect someone has intentionally disrupted thousands of commutes on the 2/3 lines today by activating multiple trains’ emergency brakes. If you see any suspicious behavior, please @ or DM us details ASAP, including car #, so we can get trains back on schedule.
Since then, we’ve learned, thanks to reporting by Aaron Gordon that this targeted attack has been happening for months and has delayed more than 740 trains since March. We’ve heard MTA officials speak out forcefully against this behavior during yesterday’s Board meeting while admitting they’re not sure what criminal penalties the culprit (or culprits) may face. We’ve learned about near-misses, and we’ve heard from a few passengers who may have unknowingly spotted the culprit in the act.
I got a video of a dude hopping on the back of the Q train, undoing the security lines… train pulled off before I could see more. Could this be him? pic.twitter.com/WP1onB9iK5
It’s possible, in fact, that one person in New York is single-handedly responsible for the subway’s just missing out on Andy Byford’s performance improvement metrics for the past few months. So even as subway service slowly but noticeably improves, one New Yorker has taken to intentionally disabling trains and disrupting the commutes of thousands of people. It’s straight out of a movie.
This person has an established M.O., the source said, and Jalopnik confirmed this by reviewing internal incident reports. There are at least three so far.
The suspect disrupts service primarily on the 2 and 5 lines from Flatbush Avenue in central Brooklyn to midtown Manhattan. He climbs aboard the rear of the train as it departs a station, unlocks the safety chains, somehow gets into the rear cab, and triggers the emergency brakes. Then, he disappears, most likely through the subway tunnels and out an emergency exit.
Despite striking on average once a week for several months, the person has not been caught.
On Thursday, we learned that a culprit — it’s not clear if there are more than one — was nearly caught. Gordon reports:
Jerrylee Heath almost caught him. He was standing right there. It was 3:51 p.m. last Sunday. Heath, a train supervisor on duty at Times Square, got a call from Rail Control Center, the operational brain of the New York City subway system, according to an incident report from that day. Someone waiting for a Brooklyn-bound train at Fulton Street in lower Manhattan alerted staff that they had seen someone riding along the back of a departing uptown express train. Maybe Heath could make it to the platform in time, if the person was still clinging to the back of the train.
Two minutes later, Heath was on the platform. As the train edged into the station, he spotted someone just inside the rear cab. The safety cables were detached, and the rear door to the train was open. It was him, the person who had been nefariously triggering emergency brakes for months with the sole intention, apparently, of being a pain in thousands upon thousands of butts.
Before Heath could take any action, the person pulled the emergency brake—even though by that time the train would have been either barely in motion or at a complete stop—jumped onto the track, and dashed from the direction the train came, back towards 34th Street. Without police present and Rail Control Center’s approval, Heath was not allowed to follow him, per New York City Transit work rules. For the next 18 minutes, Heath rode downtown, then uptown again, to see if he could spot the culprit. But at 4:11 p.m., he radioed to Rail Control Center to deliver the bad news. “The unruly person,” as he was called throughout the incident report, got away. Again.
I’ve seen the incident report from an April 19 occurrence. For around 30 minutes starting at 4:17, the culprit rode on the backs of a variety of northbound 4 and 6 trains before triggering the emergency brakes of a northbound 4 train near 59th st at 4:48. The person, the MTA has said, did not just pull a rip cord in a car, but rather cut the safety chains on the back of a train, used a key to open the doors to the operator room and set off the brake valve before running down the tracks. This is someone with knowledge of train operations, and some have speculated this person is halting service in order to tag the tunnels. The April incident alone resulting in 75 delayed trains along the IRT lines.
It’s hard to write fiction this wild, and while it’s not the first time vandals have pulled subway emergency brakes for sport, this is a specifically targeted attack by someone with some expertise in train operations. What happens is anyone’s guess, but subway riders know to look out for someone riding the backs of trains. It’s only a matter of time before he’s caught, and we’ll find out exactly why what Jalopnik is calling a subway supervillain is targeting our commutes. It’s a special kind of New York crime designed to inflict maximum annoyance on a lot of people; crowd justice for this culprit seems almost too kind.
Help us find this guy- he’s wanted for reckless endangerment after riding on the outside of a subway car then activating the emergency brakes on the 2 train at 14th St & 7th Ave- Recognize him? ? @NYPDTips at 800-577-TIPS with any info pic.twitter.com/TLDgLuPr0k
