View from Underground

The platform at 7th Ave. on the Brighton line has seen better days. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

When the MTA warns you to stand back from the platform edge, it’s usually because the agency doesn’t want its passengers struck by oncoming trains. But an accident at Kings Highway gives a whole new meaning to that familiar phrase.

At the end of January, 14-year-old Avi Katz stepped to the platform edge to check for a Q train. The wooden planks gave way, and Katz fell onto the tracks. He narrowly avoided getting hit by a train. GerritsenBeach.net has the details:

Katz had been at the station around 6PM on January 29 and, per WABC 7, “stepped onto the edge of the platform to see if his train was coming.” The platform, made of wood, cracked and Katz fell three feet into the tracks. Katz, accompanied by his mother and Assemblyman Dov Hikind, spoke at a press conference, “I was laying on the tracks and I was really scared. My yarmulke fell off and I didn’t even care. I saw the train coming and all I could think was, ‘Get up, get up – this isn’t how I want to die.’”

Katz said it was hard for him to get up and after three attempts, he managed to get back to the platform. Though the MTA did patch up the platform, Hikind questioned the MTA’s commitment to maintenance; pointing to the decrepit conditions (per WCBS 2, “crumbling concrete, rotted wood, and burned-out lightbulbs”), he asked, “This is our transit system that we spend billions and billions of dollars for it to look like this, at one of the busiest transit stations?”

For many of us, Katz’s tale is a horror story that hits a little bit too close to home. I know I’m guilty of waiting close to the platform edge, peering into the tunnel trying to spy the approaching lights of an oncoming train. To me, Katz’s story is something of a wake-up call.

After reading about Katz’s ordeal yesterday, I inspected my own subway stop — the 7th Ave. station on the B/Q. I snapped the picture above on the Manhattan-bound platform, and it truly is an alarming photo. The wooden planks at the edge of the platform, that last barrier between passenger and track, are in a sorry state. The paint is mostly yellow, but the boards are rotting away. In many places, entire chunks have long since fallen off.

Hikind got it right at the press conference. What is the MTA doing to insure a secure infrastructure for the city’s aging subway system? We know they’re painting just 12 stations a year with another handful scheduled for complete renovations each budget cycle. But the system needs more than that. This example at 7th Ave. — a heavily trafficked station — is just one of many throughout the system. From midtown to Midwood and Inwood, the subway stations are falling apart. Katz escaped disaster, and the MTA can’t afford wait for a tragedy to befall the next person to suffer from a collapsing platform before repairing its stations.

At long last, the MTA is embarking on a much overdue public service campaign aimed as those beacons of journalistic integrity. After years of dealing with piles and piles of free newspapers littering the stairways (see right), platforms and subway tracks, the MTA is now urging riders to throw out their papers when they finished with them.

This new public service campaign — with the tagline “Your city. Your subway. Your station. Your LITTER.” — is spurred on by both customer relations and safety concerns. The MTA wants the subways looking clean, and they want to avoid track fires.

“Newspapers and subway tracks are not a good combination,”Steven Feil, senior vice president at New York City Transit’s department of subways, said. “The papers can cause fires when ignited by electrical equipment and, if it rains, can lead to flooding when they block drainage areas.”

These PSA’s however has created something of a mini-scandal. The new posters, shown here, feature none other than the Grey Lady herself, and the writers at The New York Times are none too happy about it. In a late-afternoon post on Cityroom on Friday, The Times’ transit writer William Neuman uncovered this scandal:

You’d think that when New York City Transit launched a new anti-litter campaign trying they might have shown someone tossing away one of the freebies…

A sharp-eyed producer magnified the image on the poster and discovered that it indeed shows Page A8 of the Oct. 24 edition of The Times, featuring an article and photograph from Baghdad.

For their part, the MTA was a bit red-faced. Despite earlier denials that the paper in question was not The Times, New York City Transit Spokesman Paul Fleuranges was apologetic. “I was told it was not The Times,” he said in a statement to Cityroom. “If you are correct, it was in no way meant to imply that The Times or its readers are responsible for an increase in litter within the system. We attempted to obscure the paper in the shot so as to represent newspapers in general. We obviously didn’t do a good enough job. Going forward we’ll have to redouble our efforts to make sure no paper or any other entity is depicted — no matter how blurry the photo. Be that as it may, it doesn’t diminish the message to readers of all papers — throw them in the trash.”

While we can get a good chuckle over this story, Fleuranges’ last point, and the overall message of the campaign, is a valid one. Too often, people treat the subway like one giant garbage can. I hope that most riders don’t treat their apartments or houses the same way. If someone is done with amNew York or Metro, that someone should dispose of those papers in the appropriate fashion.

A few weeks ago, I took a look at how the MTA deals with its garbage, and I think the problem is institutional. The MTA doesn’t provide recycling bins — as they do in Boston and Washington, DC — and the garbage cans in the stations are not right next to an exit as they are in Washington’s Metro. Furthermore, in Washington, police are fairly aggressive about ticketing passengers who litter, and a few high-profile tickets act as a deterrent for everyone else.

Now I’m not advocating criminalizing subway litter; in fact, I think it’s already criminalized. However, if the MTA were to make a concerted effort to draw attention to potential recycling bins or the current trash cans, people would be more inclined to throw out their newspapers, and staircases wouldn’t look as the one at the top of this post does. This PSA campaign is a start, but as most riders just ignore the posters in the subways, the MTA will have to overcome public resistance to the campaign’s presence first.

Photo Credit: The stairs at 16th St. and 8th Ave. are often covered with newspapers in the morning. (Photo by flickr user Second Ave. Sagas)

As the calendar turned from 2007 to 2008 a few days ago, a few transportation advocacy groups started doling out their end-of-the-year awards. The Tri-State Transportation Committee, a group with an impressive Board of Directors and dedicated to reducing car dependency in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, used the new calendar to look at how New York under Gov. Eliot Spitzer has dealt with transportation issues. Their overall conclusions are positive, but the MTA’s last 12 months could have been better.

TSTC’s premise plays off of Spitzer’s campaign promise that “on day one, everything changes.” Spitzer, they write, during his campaign try to “push smart growth and transit-oriented development.” The first part of their extensive essay deals with NYS DOT, and we’ll leave them alone. What we care about, of course, is the MTA. Highlighting five areas in which the MTA could improve, TSTC rated this year as a steady one for the MTA. Those areas please:

• Fare and toll increases
• A lack of a formal transit-oriented development program
• Integration between regional transit agencies
• Capital construction projects
• Customer service, transparency, and the public process

For the MTA, 2007 was truly a year of changes. As TSTC notes, it was their first year under a transit policy won — new CEO Elliot “Lee” Sander — and the agency should have seen more change. However, what TSTC fails to note is that the outgoing MTA Board Chair Peter Kalikow stuck around for most of the year. If things seemed to stall out in the early months, I think this can largely be attributed to the transitional period surrounding a change in leadership.

That being said, 2007 was indeed a year of ups and downs for the MTA. We know all about the fare hike drama. In the end, I think the fare hike will matter less than people thought, but I’ll have more on that later today. As TSTC notes, the fare hike is indeed hitting subway riders harder than it is hitting drivers, and that is not a step in the right direction for the MTA.

The next two items on the list — regional coordination and transit-oriented development — go hand-in-hand, in a way. The regional plan — something that could integrate PATH trains more smoothly into the New York City subways and provide a one-ticket ride from Long Island to Westchester or New Jersey is still in its nascent stages. For the MTA to truly achieve better vertical integration, they need to be able to overhaul their internal management structure and combine MetroNorth and LIRR operations into one unit. However, state legislation approval is required for such a change, and our representatives have been loathe to give it out. The MTA gets mixed reviews from me on these matters.

Transit-oriented development is one of the goals set forth by the MTA for the next five-year plan. The idea is to build transit vilages that minimize driving and maximize public transportation. This includes plans for densely-settled, centralized downtown areas with lush pedestrian spaces and various transit options. Reminiscent of the old Gardent city movement but with more common sense, this form of development could be beneficial if suburban dwellers are willing to embrace a city-in-the-suburbs mentality. It’s still too early to tell.

As we all know, capital construction projects are alive and well. The Second Ave. Subway is on the move, and the 7 is heading west. While Bus Rapid Transit plans — a topic I hardly touched upon this year — are on hold, these two extension projects are the city’s most ambitious subway construction efforts in decades.

And finally, the customer service efforts. They started with Rider Report Cards and ended with public workshops. While the MTA seems more willing to listen customers these days, the real test will come in 2008. Do they continue to respond to customer complaints? Do they continue to improve services and the overall presentation of the subway system or were these measures simply token gestures designed to curry favor with riders faced with a fare hike? Again, time will tell.

Now, my assessment here is a little more optimistic than TSTC’s. I like what I hear and see from Lee Sander’s MTA. Having a transportation export in charge can only bring about more positive changes. To me, the MTA had a good 2007 despite the fare hike and August flooding disaster. Things may be holding steady overall, but they are trending in the right direction. Hopefully, we’ll see more of that in 2008.

As part of their New Year’s extravaganze, the City Section of this Sunday’s New York Times asked 10 folks to look ahead to 2108 and predict what New York City will be like in the future. Based on an article from 1908 in which New Yorkers predicted 2008, the article featured its fair share of kitschy, flying-cars type predictions and two global warming doomsday scenarios. How creative.

What the article didn’t do — other than through the illustration that accompanied the piece — was give mention to the subway. One of the global climate change folks predicted archeological digs in what would be our flooded subway system, but other than a visual reference of a U and X train — as part of the Sixth Ave. line based on the orange — nary a word of the MTA’s future was at hand.

Well, luckily, you all have me, and I’m going to correct that oversight. So let’s delve into five things that I hope New Yorkers in 2108 can enjoy as they ride New York City’s subways. That is, if they’re still riding the subways. Maybe by then, we’ll have transporter technology. That would be the cure for the rush hour blues.

1. Technology Upgrades: Train-Arrival Boards That Work — In a way, this should have been on the list for 2008. London has it; San Francisco has it; Washington, DC, has it. But New York with one of the biggest and oldest subway systems in the world can’t seem to find a way to get train-arrival boards that work into subway stations. The test run on the L line has gone for nearly a year now, and the signs themselves have popped up in random places — Bergen St. on the Flatbush IRT local, for example — but the MTA isn’t much closer to a system-wide rollout today than they were a year ago. By 2108, I fully expect to know when the next train is coming, and here’s a hint: If I’m waiting on a downtown platform, I don’t really care when the next uptown train is coming. Just ask L riders traveling west from First Ave. about this one.

2. Service Upgrades: Second Ave. Subway — Eighty years in the making, the Second Ave. subway is no sure thing. Yes, we will be getting a Q extension up to 96th St. sometime around 2014, but beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess. The MTA has yet to secure funding for the rest of the line and than 2020 completion date could end up being rather fluid. By 2108, I hope that the Second Ave. subway would run from 125th St. down to Hanover Square and, hopefully, beyond. But as its tortured history has shown, the Second Ave. subway is never a safe bet.

3. Technology Upgrades: Automated Trains — Right now, the MTA is dealing with plans for automated subway cars. The L train test run didn’t go as smoothly as they planned, but as the technology improves and the subway systems are retrofitted with 21st Century technology, I full expect the MTA to go with automated trains. These communications-based train control systems allowed for more track volume and a more efficient level of service. Yes, by 2108, robots will, in effect, be driving our subways.

4. Service Upgrades: Airport Raillinks — Can you tell me how to get, how to get to LaGuardia Airport? Sure can. Take the subway and then a bus and hope you make it to your flight on time! While the least likely of my subway dreams, a subway connection to LaGuardia is certainly something this city in its fight to cut down on automobile traffic could use. I know some subchatters have suggested running the N/W past Astoria Boulevard to the airport, but right-of-way concerns in the densely-settled regions of Queens between the airport and Astoria present some major obstacles. With the nearest lines in Queens all elevated, construction of such a spur would be quite the battle.

5. Technology Upgrades: Wireless Service — Yet again, this one’s rather obvious as it’s in the works right now. But in 100 years, whatever wireless services people are using will be readily available in the subways. ‘Nuff said.

So that’s my list. Maybe it’s too inside-the-box. Four of these proposals are in various stages of development but all four feature significant barriers to implementation. In 100 years, the subway system should run faster, smoother and cover more ground. We should see more Brooklyn-Queens-Bronx connections that bypass Manhattan and more reliable service for the Outer Boroughs as they undergo another century of population explosion. We’ll see advances in payment technology, and two more generations of subway cars will come and go.

Make no mistake about it: If New York is still a thriving, prosperous, international city in 2108, it will have a very modernized, 200-year-old subway system.

Illustration from The New York Times by Bob Scott.

Today’s View from Underground comes to me from a reader Matt who saw the Culver Express sign on the F train earlier this week. An F Express train has long been a pet project of Second Ave. Sagas, and this sign represents what the future holds for riders along the Culver Line once the Gowanus Viaduct rehabilitation project is complete after 45 months of construction. It will be a welcome addition indeed.

Subway trash sits idly at Coney Island. (Photo by flickr user Martin Deutsch)

I find the two cleanliness categories to be among the more amusing aspects of the Rider Report Cards. Riders have continually ranked station cleanliness concerns as the fifth or sixth most important issue, and the grades are repeated C-minuses or D-pluses.

Of course, no one bothers to note that we only have ourselves to blame for the issue. The MTA isn’t responsible for the fact that subway riders seem to be unable to figure out that garbage should go in the garbages cans and not on the ground, on the benches, on the stairways or anywhere else really. But, hey, who needs to take personal responsibility for something when we’ve got the MTA to blame?

While cleanliness itself may be problematic, the MTA recently came under fire from the Governor’s Office for its lack of recycling. In a very interesting story on WNYC a few weeks ago — you can listen at right — Beth Fertig literally followed the trash. The MTA, you see, doesn’t have recycling bins in their stations. Instead, the trash is gathered as one and shipped out to All American Recycling in New Jersey where it is manually sorted. A full 40 percent of all subway garbage ends up getting recycled. Who knew?

The Governor’s Office doesn’t like this program. “Recycling is not rocket science,” Judith Enck, Deputy Secretary for the Environment, said. “But it is essential that we have good source separation programs right at the outset and not these questionable programs where you try to pull out newsprint that’s stained with coffee grinds, and mustard and broken glass that’s just not the efficient and effective way to do it.”

Enck went on to claim that, with an at-source separation program similar to the ones found in the D.C. Metro and Boston, to name a few, would save the MTA money because their recycling wouldn’t be corrupted with the ever popular “mustard and coffee grinds.” What is it with that woman and her mustard-flavored coffee?

For their part, the MTA disagreed. Mike Zacchea, the man at NYCT responsible for the artificial reef program, noted that the MTA would have to overhaul the way it collects trash and that yield would actually be lower. The systematic changes would negate any savings brought about by the higher grade of recyclable materials recovered. “If the paper product that was coming out of the transit system, the subway system, were a better quality his marginal ability to make another dollar would be small,” he said. “Transit’s cost to produce that cleaner grade would be in labor, infrastructure improvements, operational impact and also we believe, based on experience, a lower volume.”

I’m siding with New York City Transit on this one. If the MTA starts employing dedicated recycling bins, I would give those containers about ten minutes before getting corrupted. Subway riders can’t throw our trash into the garbage cans as it is now. Are New Yorkers really going to take the time to make sure they throw their coffee cups in one container and newspapers in another? I doubt it.

The system right now, while not 100 percent perfect, works better than many of the other MTA programs under scrutiny these days. Let’s not mess around with a good thing. The governor should just leave well enough alone.

On Thanksgiving, it’s always nice to recognize those things for which we are thankful. As an regular reader of this site knows, I am at all times thanksful for New York City’s subway system. But why?

Presented below are a few of the reasons why I’m thanking the MTA and New York City Transit today. Feel free to add you own.

I’m thankful for…

• 24-hour subway service. The ability to take the train at 4 p.m. and 4 a.m. makes this subway system great and is the prime reason why New York is the City that Never Sleeps.
• The MTA’s efforts at reaching out to the public. While I think we should question the recent changes to the fare increase proposals, I certainly appreciate the way the MTA is trying to engage its riders in discussing long-term planning.
• The Shuttle. The various shuttle trains in New York are the unsung heroes of our subway system. Whether they’re connecting Times Square to Grand Central or the C stop at Franklin Ave. to the 2 and the 3 further south on Franklin Ave. or the Q and the B at Prospect Park, these shuttles help integrate the system and make daunting walks or crosstown trips manageable. If only we had some more in northern Manhattan.
• The 18th St. stop on the West Side IRT. Because people along 7th Ave. couldn’t walk five blocks north to 23rd St. or four blocks south to 14th St. Gotta save those legs. (Hint: I’m being sarcastic with this one.)
• The view of the city from the Manhattan Bridge. Except for the brief glimpse of the Statue of Liberty from the F train on the cursed Culver Viaduct, nothing rivals that journey over Manhattan Bridge with Brooklyn to the east, the Manhattan skyline to the west, the East River snaking north and the harbor to the south. It’s sightseeing from a subway.
• The Transit Museum. If you’ve never been there, check it out. It’s a must-see for fans of the subway.

Happy Thanksgiving, folks. Remember: Trains are running on a Sunday schedule, and enjoy that turkey.