View from Underground

In case of emergency, go around. (Photo by flickr user rlboston)

For reasons unknown to me, this summer has been one of ethics underground. We started it off with a brief post on the emergency exit debate, and we will end it there as well.

This time, WNYC’s Matthew Schuerman provides us with the source material. Schuerman recently went underground to talk to straphangers about their views on the emergency exits and those who ignore the whole “emergency” part of the exit. His results and analysis of the various types of riders reveal a lot about New Yorkers’ approaches to subway riding. Mostly, it seems, we are a selfish bunch when it comes to following the rules. As long as I get home faster, many think, I don’t care what the signs say.

The NPR story — embedded at right — focuses on the “ear-splitting” emergency exit alarms and the three categories of people who use them. Schuerman starts with what he terms Trailblazers, those who use the emergency exits with little regard to anyone else. “Quite frankly when I’m leaving the subway it’s always an emergency because I need to get home,” Kasia Reterska, a PR officer at the International Center for Transitional Justice, said to him. Selfish much?

The second group of people Schuerman calls Pragmatists, and I’m sure we’re all a little bit of a pragmatist. These are the folks who will go through emergency exits as long as someone else has opened it. It’s even more pragmatic if the station attendant has disabled the alarm.

Finally, Schuerman arrives at the Moralists, those who think it wrong no matter what. The sign says “Emergency Exit,” and unless it’s a real emergency, that exit will remain closed. “You know,” Nicki Garcia said, “it’s not an emergency to leave here.”

As for Transit’s response to those Trailblazers and Pragmatists, well, it is against subway rules to use the emergency exits in non-emergency situations. As of mid-August, cops had handed out 871 emergency exit-related $50 tickets, but that total is but a drop in the bucket compared with the total number of violators. Andrew Albert, the transit riders representative to the MTA board, believes that Transit should eliminate the emergency exits in favor of more HEETs or turnstiles. After all, most New Yorkers, he says, are too impatient to wait at emergency exits. Still, Transit has no plans to do so.

In the end, I am left wondering if Jose Ponce and Reterska are indicative of the attitude of subway riders. “Sometimes it’s too packed and you’re in a rush and the alarms go off and it gets annoying,” he said. “You gotta get somewhere, man, everybody has to gotta get somewhere, just turn them off, that’s what I think – turn them off.”

We all have to get somewhere, and the rules should not apply to me. These are the people in your subway car.

Earlier this week, lost amidst the brouhaha over the MTA’s capital plan and the TWU arbitration victory, was an internal MTA study on the state of the subways. While the Straphangers Campaign offers up its own take on our transit system, the MTA conducts an annual survey of riders to get their opinions on the underground.

While people love to complain about the state of the MTA and the subway, according to amNew York’s Heather Haddon, the grades weren’t all that bad. On a scale of 10, New Yorkers ranked the subways a 6.4.

According to the report, the MTA is improving in some areas while declining in others. Stations seem safer and subways faster than they were ten years ago. Transit, however, is suffering in areas concerning crowding, buses in general and, of course, fares.

Haddon reports that 75 percent say they were “satisfied overall with subway system.” Twenty years ago, fewer than half expressed that level of satisfaction. The investment efforts are paying off.

Of concern, though, was one category: station smells. Ten years ago, straphangers rated the odor of the system at a mediocre 5.6. Today, the subways are stinkier with a 4.8 rating. This is of course the never-ending problem with operating a 24-hour system. Keeping the smell out is nigh impossible.

While these ratings are generally in line with my views of the subway system, some of the rider opinions expressed in Haddon’s article are patently absurd. One rider — Shawn Kelloway of Brooklyn — had this stupid comment: “Give me a break man. It’s a rip-off.”

The subways are far from a rip-off. With average fares lower than they were 15 years ago and fare-discount options widely available, I think the subways are a good deal. How else can you get from Inwood to Rockaway for less than the cost of a slice of pizza?

Over the next few days, I’m going to delve into some in-depth analysis of transit plans, proposals and projected spending. Both Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to reform mass transit and the MTA’s own proposed $25.5 billion capital plan for 2010-2014 will dominate this week’s coverage on Second Ave. Subway.

Before we begin that journey, though, it’s important to remember just why transit matters. It’s easy to toss out numbers and platitudes: Subway ridership is at 50-year highs; numerous subway lines are operating at — or even above — capacity. What though would New York City look like without a subway system?

In a thought-provoking post on his blog Frumination, Michael Frumin explored a New York City without a subway system. If the city were laid out the same but we all drove cars instead of riding the rails, life in the city would resemble a Big Parking Lot instead of a Big Apple:

From 8:00AM to 8:59 AM on an average Fall day in 2007 the NYC Subway carried 388,802 passengers into the CBD on 370 trains over 22 tracks. In other words, a train carrying 1,050 people crossed into the CBD every 6 seconds. Breathtaking if you ask me. Over this same period, the average number of passengers in a vehicle crossing any of the East River crossings was 1.20. This means that, lacking the subway, we would need to move 324,000 additional vehicles into the CBD…

At best, it would take 167 inbound lanes, or 84 copies of the Queens Midtown Tunnel, to carry what the NYC Subway carries over 22 inbound tracks through 12 tunnels and 2 (partial) bridges. At worst, 200 new copies of 5th Avenue. Somewhere in the middle would be 67 West Side Highways or 76 Brooklyn Bridges. And this neglects the Long Island Railroad, Metro North, NJ Transit, and PATH systems entirely.

Of course, at 325 square feet per parking space, all these cars would need over 3.8 square miles of space to park, about 3 times the size of Central Park. At that point, who would want to go to Manhattan anyway?

At Transportation for America, Stephen Lee Davis noted that Frumin’s post highlights “the invisible benefits” of a transit system. I’d call that a slight to public transportation.

There is nothing invisible about the New York City subways and its tangible positive impact on the city. The subways may be under ground, but we see them every day. We see density and a compact central business district. We see less sprawl and smaller carbon footprints. We see fewer cars per capita, fewer miles driven and less gas burned than any other city in America.

As we debate the merits of Mayor Bloomberg’s call to restore more control of the transit system to the city, as we look at the MTA’s request for tens of billions of dollars over the next five years, we can’t lose sight of the importance of the subway system. Without it, New York would be a car-choked city with nowhere to go and no character. With the current one, underfunded and under-maintained as it may be, the city moves and at a good pace too. As we look to the transit future, we can’t forget that reality or the threat of a city without a subway.

It’s the end of the week and time to wrap up my guest stint here at Second Avenue Sagas. Thank you to Ben for the opportunity to share my work with other people who are interested in what I consider one of the greatest public transportation systems in the world.

I missed this story in the Daily News about the NYC Transit auditions for new station announcers. According to the article, potential ethereal voices are being culled from among subway conductors and motormen to cover fifteen posts throughout the system, and there is money in the budget for 14 additional posts down the road. A followup article reported that an unemployed chauffer, not even employed by NYC Transit, decided to audition as well.

In my interviews with passengers over the past several years, one of the foremost complaints that I have received about sound in the subway is the difficulty of understanding announcements in the trains and on platforms. Although the occasional tourist has a hard time understanding service changes because of the accent of the transmitted voice, most breakdowns in communication can be chalked up to technological malfunctions. Broken speakers, overpowering electronic buzzes, or crackling sounds due to a short in the wiring can all get in the way of clear communication if the public address system is not sufficiently maintained.

The introduction of automated, pre-recorded service advisories, voiced by Bloomberg Radio personalities, in the new R142 trains that have been running on IRT lines since 2000 are certainly an improvement. But even in those trains, sudden changes in schedules require the interjection of live announcements, often susceptible to the same issues mentioned above that other cars and station PA systems face. Although most planned service changes are announced with signs posted in stations, trains are regularly delayed or diverted from their normal routes for a variety of reasons, and in these instances the only way for passengers to know what is happening is to listen to the announcements. To make things worse, some stations – a whopping 35% of them as recently as 2005 – still don’t have PA systems installed.

I’d like to hear from you. Does your station have announcements? Do you have a hard time hearing them? Have you seen NYCTA workers walking through the trains taking decibel measurements of car speakers? Leave your thoughts in the comments, and if you’re really interested or opinionated about the issue, please take this survey on sound and the subway to contribute to my research. Thank you, New York!

Bill Bahng Boyer splits his time between Brooklyn and New Hampshire, where he is a visiting fellow at the Dartmouth College Leslie Center for the Humanities. He’s currently completing his dissertation, titled “Public Hearing: Sonic Encounters and Social Responsibility in the New York City Subway System,” for a Ph.D. from NYU. In his free time, Bill plays the sanshin in HappyFunSmile, a New York-based Okinawan and Japanese pop band.

Since I take the subway instead of driving, I don’t get road rage – but, occasionally, I get ‘subway rage.’ I’m going to list a couple of the things that make me the most crazy on the subway, and I want to hear from you guys in the comments about your own mass transit pet peeves:

• People having loud, TMI phone conversations when the train is above ground.
• When a crowded rush hour train is pulling into a busy station and someone in the middle of the car starts shoving his or her way toward the door, seemingly unaware that many other people will be getting out at the stop as well.
• People who have their iPod turned on so loud other people can hear it, despite the whole “headphones” thing. There’s an extra demerit for anyone who sings or raps along with what they’re listening to.
• Perfectly healthy adults who don’t give up their seats for a pregnant woman or disabled person.

What about you guys?

Yesterday, as part of my ongoing series focusing on improperly rolled roll signs, we looked at the now-defunct Grand St. shuttle. Today, we look at another shuttle with an odd designation.

Tucked away in a relatively quiet corner of Queens, past Howard Beach and the JFK Airport stop, are the Rockaways. Made famous by the Ramones, the Rockaways feature some beaches, some great surfing and a long ride back to Manhattan. The strait also features an odd subway configuration. Some A trains hit Broad Channel and then go north to Far Rockaway while other A trains and a shuttle train head south to Rockaway Park.

On the map, that Rockaway Park shuttle is gray, similar to the Franklin St. and 42nd St. shuttles. But out there in the far reaches of Queens, the shuttle is known as the H train. A few weeks ago, Mike Kocurek was waiting at Jay St. when an escaped H train rolled by. He snapped the above picture, and we were reminded of a train that runs but not far in a place most New Yorkers never visit.

On another note, this is my last post on Second Ave. Sagas for about a week and a half. I’m traveling out of the country with limited access to the Internet. I have a great slate of guest columnists lined up. Be sure to stop by and give them your support. I’ll be back at the end of next week.

For nearly twenty years between the 1980s and the early 2000s, various sides of the Manhattan Bridge were closed to train traffic. While I take my Q and B trips over the bridge for granted, Brooklyn residents know the pain of a closed bridge. What many do not realize is why the bridge was closed.

When the Manhattan Bridge was first built, it contained a huge engineering flaw. Because the four subway tracks — two on the south side and two on the north — were built on the outside of the bridge as opposed to the center, the bridge would sway as the heavy trains drove back and forth between Brooklyn and Manhattan. As trains — and people — grew heavier, so did the stress on the bridge.

In the early 1980s, as New York City Transit was busy restoring its degraded system to a state of good repair, an examination of the Manhattan Bridge revealed some serious structural damage. In 1985, the north tracks were shuttered for three years. In 1988 through the summer of 2001, the south tracks were closed. From 2001 through early 2004, the north tracks were closed again. Finally, in February 2004, nearly two decades after repairs started the bridge reopened.

We are still feeling the effects of this design flaw. Every few months, the MTA closes the bridge to train traffic and examines the structural integrity of the nearly 100-year-old bridge. The above video underscores the problem. It is a stop-motion video shot from the Brooklyn side of the bridge, and it underscores just how much the bridge sways as trains go across it.

So the next time you find yourself on a B or Q making the scenic trip across the East River, don’t think too much about the bridge beneath. You might find yourself swaying along with it.

At the end of May, a loyal Second Ave. Sagas reader sent me a picture of the 13 train. The photo was one of an erroneously rolled roll sign on the 1 train. The 13, we discovered, was there to provide the MTA with some flexibility in terms of service along the West Side IRT (1/2/3 trains).

Over the last few weeks, I’ve received pictures of a few other incorrectly labeled trains. This one comes to us via reader Mark Krotov. While at the Broadway/Lafayette station a few weeks ago, Mark witnessed a rare spotting of the once-common orange shuttle.

Today, the Grand St. shuttle is but a memory for New Yorkers, but for long stretches of time in the 1980s and 1990s, the B and D were disrupted due to extensive work on the Manhattan Bridge. At various times the shuttle ran from as far north as 57th St. along Sixth Ave. to Grand St. in Chinatown. The final shuttles rolled down the line in 2004 after being in service for parts of the mid-1980s, the mid-1990s and the early 2000s.

The Manhattan Bridge, with the train tracks on the outside, required extensive repair work, and the shuttle would come to symbolize the frustration of traveling into and out of Brooklyn and around Lower Manhattan. With work completed, for now, on the bridge, the parts of Brooklyn along the BMT Brighton Line (B/Q) have seen a population explosion, and the orange Grand St./Sixth Ave. Shuttle is but a memory in the minds of the straphanging public.

Every day, my morning commute exposes me to countless noises. According to a recent study, those noises could be very damaging to everyone’s ears.

My commute starts out at 7th Ave. on the BMT Brighton Line in Brooklyn. If I have to wait, inevitably a Coney Island- or Bright Beach-bound train will idle in the station with its air conditioner humming. When my ride arrives, the brakes squeal as the train pulls into the station. As the train heads north to Manhattan, it rumbles through tunnels at various speeds, and after leaving Atlantic Ave., the train curves its way to De Kalb Ave. with metal-on-metal screeching through the tunnel.

This noise doesn’t even count the various on-car noises. The PA systems on the B train are in a terrible state. Constant high-pitched feedback has become the norm, and on-board announcements run the gamut from inaudible to deafening. Personally, I don’t listen to my iPod in the morning, but plenty of people do. I know this because I can hear the loud, loud music leaking out through shoddy headphones. In the end, that’s a lot of noise.

Just to drive home the point, though, a bunch of academics have verified that, yes, the subways are very loud. A survey conducted last month by a bunch of students at the University of Washington and Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health founds that subway rides expose us all to “high enough to potentially increase the risk of noise induced hearing loss.”

The release about the study had more:

Using sensitive noise dosimeters, the team of researchers…conducted hundreds of measurements of noise levels at platforms and stations, as well as inside of vehicles on New York City subways (MTA and PATH), buses (MTA), ferries (Staten Island), commuter railways (LIRR, SIRR and Metro North), and the Roosevelt Island tramway.

The scientists found that on average, the MTA subways had the highest noise levels, at 80.4 decibels (dBA), followed by the Path trains, at 79.4 dBA, and the tram, at 77.0 dBA. The lowest average levels measured, 74.9 dBA and 75.1 dBA, were obtained from the LIRR and Metro-North trains, respectively. The very highest levels measured in the study were found on an MTA subway platform (102.1dBA) and at a bus stop (101.6 dBA).

In contrast, the noise level of a whisper is 30 dBA, normal conversation is 60 to 70 dBA, a chainsaw is 100 dBA, and gunfire is 140 dBA.

In general, noise levels were significantly higher at platforms compared to inside vehicles for all forms of mass transit, except for ferries and the tram. The borough with the highest mass transit noise levels was Manhattan, followed by Queens and the Bronx. Major hubs were noisier than local stops and underground trains and stations were significantly louder than those aboveground.

The researchers warned that their findings were alarming. “At some of the highest noise levels we obtained, 102.1 dBA on the subway platforms, as little as two minutes of exposure per day would be expected to cause hearing loss in some people with frequent ridership, based upon the International Organization for Standardization models for predicting hearing impairment from noise,” Robyn Gershon, a Columbia scientists, said.

Experts have urged New Yorkers to use ear muffs and ear plugs, but the vast majority of commuters do not. As the MTA replaces its rolling stock, the more modern cars are quieter with better brake technology. As the ancient track beds are modernized, the MTA is trying to implement infrastructure that will dampen the noise.

Still, though, are commutes are loud. As we wait for trains in the morning and bury ourselves in newspapers, books and iPods, the trains fade into the backgrounds. But the truth remains: That is one very loud background.

The BMT Canarsie Line L train covered in graffiti in 1976. (Photo by Ed McKernan/NYC Subway)

For the better part of three decades, the debate over subway graffiti has consumed New Yorkers. As I explored in April, some feel graffiti is art while others believe graffiti exhibits simply glorify vandalism. No matter the outcome, New York City Transit and the NYPD are hard at work combating these markings.

Just two weeks after famed graffiti artist Iz the Wiz passed away, Transit and the NYPD say that graffiti hits are down by 46 percent this year over 2007. Pete Donohue has more:

Police patrols and Transit surveillance teams have slashed the number of subway graffiti attacks nearly in half, officials told the Daily News. Between January and May 2007, vandals trespassing in dark subway tunnels and railyards ringed with razor wire carried out 98 major spray-paint “hits.” They have managed just 53 graffiti raids this year – a 46% drop – according to NYC Transit statistics.

“The word is getting out,” NYC Transit Vice President Vincent DeMarino said. “It’s not so easy in New York anymore. You have a good chance of getting caught.”

After a dramatic spike in vandalism, NYC Transit launched the “Eagle Team,” a surveillance outfit comprising mostly retired police detectives and supervisors, two years ago. The agency also struck a new arrangement with city police: The agency would focus on the far-flung railyards while NYPD squads would target tracks between stations, where some trains are parked overnight. With increased cooperation and manpower, they have been able to cover more ground and get results, DeMarino said.

No matter anyone’s personal views on graffiti in the art-vs.-vandalism debate, it is no doubt expensive to maintain graffiti-free cars. As part of an effort to deter graffiti, Transit will not put vandalized trains on the tracks until they are clean, and it can take the agency up to three hours to clean the outside of a car. According to Donohue’s sources, the MTA spent $350,000 in 2007 and just $125,000 in 2008 to clean up the trains.

Over the years, the agency has tried to combat another form of more destructive graffiti — scratchiti, the use of acid to etch glass windows — with less success. As Donohue reminds us, Transit unveiled a pilot program of scratch-resistant ads late last year. That program, according to Transit spokesman Paul Fleuranges, is too expensive to implement throughout the MTA’s rolling stock.

In the end, combating graffiti will always be a battle. Those who perpetrate the crime think it a victimless one and will not stop while those fighting it will have to stay one step ahead of artists who have the run of a wide open system. The fight goes on.