Service Advisories

Amidst a fire, seeking alternate routes

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on August 15, 2012

Making heads or tails of this mid-fire service change announcement requires an advanced degree in, well, something.

When I swiped through at Times Square on the way back to Brooklyn a little after 7 p.m. last night, I didn’t know what to expect. A two-alarm cable fire in a manhole near the DeKalb Ave. subway station — and the Manhattan Bridge bottleneck — snared subway service along the B, D, N, Q and R lines right as the evening rush began. For my route home, only the IRT lines were providing reliable service from Manhattan into Brooklyn, and I feared a slow, sluggish, crowded ride home.

Ultimately, I lucked out and had none of that. My 3 train was no more crowded at that hour than it ever was; we didn’t really stop for long stretches; and the conductor made nary an announcement about service outages as we rode through Lower Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn. In fact, had I not seen word of the delays on the outdoor dynamic signs at Times Square or online, I wouldn’t have known about the service outages, and that’s a problem. But more on that later.

When I got to Brooklyn and had a chance to speak with some friends and read reports from the mayhem, it seemed that I missed quite a bit by taking the IRT. Platforms in Manhattan were packed, and the situation in Brooklyn was even worse. The MTA couldn’t scramble enough shuttle buses to meet demands, and riders were either had to walk or shove themselves onto packed buses. A parade of potential straphangers walked down 4th and 5th Aves. in Brooklyn as New Yorkers, always resourceful, took their commutes into their own hands.

Meanwhile, at Atlantic Ave., the scene was manic. Police officers were instructing confused subway riders to platforms with no service. Some officers said the R train was running when it wasn’t; others said a B or Q would arrive to ferry passengers toward Brighton Beach and Coney Island. Confused crowds built up, but eventually everyone got home.

The fire cleared up a few hours later, and the morning commute won’t be impacted. Yet, there’s another part of this story that warrants a closer examination. The MTA’s ability to deliver real-time status updates on a changing situation was again tested, and again, it didn’t really earn passing grades. On Twitter, I tried to follow along, but at various points in time, the MTA’s website featured a jumble of information. One page — available here — seems archived for posterity, and it’s not even the worst.

On the surviving page, nothing really makes sense. D trains are running along 4th Ave. in Brooklyn, but Transit also says to take the B63 to 36th St. Meanwhile, here’s a gem. Kudos to anyone who can decipher this:

Brooklyn bound N, Q and R train service will terminate at the 57 Street- 7 Avenue Station, 34 Street- Herald Square Station, the Canal Street Station and the Whitehall- South Ferry Station.

At other points, the live page said N and Q trains were running along the R from Canal St. while also saying there was no service in between Brooklyn and Manhattan on the BMT lines. It took a while for anyone at the MTA to even acknowledge the fact that service to Bay Ridge seemed nonexistent, and even after Transit announced bus routes from Downtown Brooklyn, it was still unclear if any part of the R was running out to Bay Ridge or points south. I had to ask @NYCTSubwayScoop to clear the whole thing up, and while acknowledging the mess, Transit’s official Twitter account said, “It’s a fluid situation.”

If it’s fluid for the people in charge, it’s fluid for riders too, and someone has to be able to communicate changes in real-time or as close to it as possible to riders, especially during rush hour. We’ve come along way since the MTA’s website crashed amidst a system-wide flood in August of 2007. With Twitter, a text message service and a better website, the MTA can keep its passengers informed amidst problems, but the system still isn’t perfect. If those of us who pay too much attention to the inner workings of the New York City subway system have a hard time following along, where does that leave the average rider just trying to get home from work amidst massive at 6 p.m.?

45 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
AsidesService Advisories

Cable fire torpedoes Brooklyn subway service

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on August 14, 2012

Update (6:30 p.m.): Due to a two-alarm cable fire near the DeKalb Ave. subway station, service to and from Brooklyn is seriously snared right now. According to the latest from Transit, there is no service between Lower Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn on the B, D, N, Q or R lines right now, and customers traveling between the two boroughs are being urged to take the 2, 3, 4 or 5 trains.

As of around 5:30 p.m., B and D train service is running Manhattan north of 34th St., and D trains are running south of Atlantic Ave. to Coney Island. Q trains are operating in Brooklyn only between Prospect Park and Coney Island, and Brooklyn N trains are running between 36th St. and Coney Island only. Some downtown F trains are running along the G from Queens Plaza to Jay St.-MetroTech. Bus service too in the Downtown Brooklyn area is delayed as well.

In other words, it’s a mess, and the MTA doesn’t expect service to be back to normal any time soon. Be prepared for a messy evening commute. I’ll try to update this as more information becomes available, and in the meantime, keep an eye on the MTA’s service advisory page.

19 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Brooklyn

On the connectivity of subway lines

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on August 14, 2012

Even as we’re debating shuttering some subway stations, it’s easy to overlook how subway line routing can impact neighborhood development. A recent piece in The Wall Street Journal brings that point home though. On Friday, Melanie Lefkowitz profiled Kensington, Brooklyn. Surrounding the Church Ave. subway stop, the area is undergoing gentrification, and many in the neighborhood attribute new development to not only the F train but the G as well.

The B and Q aren’t too far away, but real estate watchers think the IND Crosstown extension is playing a key role. “Having the G train going over to Church has made a huge difference,” Kyle Talbott of Corcoran Group. “It’s cross-pollinated different neighborhoods that before were a little more separate; it has given people who work in different parts of the city access to Kensington, where before it was a little harder to get to.”

Anecdotally at least, this piece underscores the importance of diverse and divergent routing. Kensington, due to its proximity to Prospect Park, may have been alluring because of the F train alone, but by offering two service options that connect to geographically diverse regions of the city, the neighborhood is even more desirable. That’s how transit should work.

33 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
View from Underground

Thought Experiment: Closing 25 subway stations

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on August 14, 2012

Franklin Street on the 1 train on a particularly busy day. (Photo by flickr user NYCUrbanScape)

Dotted throughout the subway system are a series of shuttered subway stations that pop up now and then as ghosts. They are reminders of an era when subways were shorter and stations even more plentiful than they are today. Many people don’t know these stations exist, and as trains fly past 91st St. and Broadway or Park Ave. and 18th St., astute straphangers can espy glimpses of a past when the city closed subway stations.

Today, we are set in our ways with 468 subway stations, and in a few years, we’ll see that total creep up by four to 472. Closing a subway station, even temporarily or overnight, is pretty much a non-starter as community groups and politicians who otherwise look down on public transit or ignore its needs entirely throw a fuss whenever the MTA threatens service. Still, it’s probably possible to argue that, in some spots, we have too many subway stations.

Yesterday, in the comments to my post on the city’s ever-growing wishlist for transit maintenance prioritization and improvements, a few SAS regulars and I got to talking about station closures. The challenge: Identify 25 stations to close that would cause minimal disruption to those who rely on transit. Challenge accepted.

In essence, it’s a thought piece. With staffing levels on the decline, shuttering 25 stations wouldn’t make much of a dent where it counts in the MTA’s budget. Sure, the MTA wouldn’t have to rehab these stations every three or four decades or paint and clean them more regularly. But the jobs saved would add up to maybe a few million dollars while a lot of people would be both upset and angry at the MTA for failing to provide an adequate level of service.

Still, thought pieces can be fun, and as I toyed with the idea, a few obvious stations came to mind, many of them along the same few routes. First, Rector St. and Franklin St. on the 1 are ripe for closures. Neither provide transfers to other lines, and entrances to both are around 0.3 miles away from the next closet station. A five- or six-minute walk is hardly a major disruption. With fewer than 6000 riders per day, Franlkin is the 240th most popular stop in the system.

Other 1 train stops were prime culprits as well. Up in northern Manhattan, barely 2000 riders per day use 215th St., and 18th St., a relatively popular station, is not even a quarter of a mile away from 14th St. In Brooklyn, Cortelyou Road and Beverly Road are 0.2 miles away from each other, and in Queens, 21st St. on the G averages 1123 riders per weekday. While those folks would argue for their stations, it’s easy to see a rational argument against keeping these stops open. Subway rides would be faster, and expenditures on stations less.

Of course, we can’t just cut willy nilly. We can’t leave neighborhoods without subway stations, and we can’t discourage system-wide use. We need to maintain regular service while allowing for it to be fast, reliable and comprehensive at the same time. So here’s my own challenge should you choose to accept it: Help me develop those criteria for assessing stations. I’ve looked at exit coordinates, distance to the next nearest subway and ridership as potential indicators of a station’s value. What do you think? I’ll develop a full list with some explanations on the stations we pick for a post early next week.

215 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Subway Maps

In London, a new approach to wayfinding

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on August 13, 2012

A distorted sense of geography is a hallmark of the London Tube map.

New York City has, for obvious reasons, a close tie with the now-completed 2012 Olympics. Our Mayor wanted it for the city while many New Yorkers fought against it, worrying about costs, security and added mayhem that hosting the global competition for two weeks would bring to the city. Ultimately, the Mayor still managed to secure his 7 line extension, and the city received two new baseball stadiums, a basketball arena and potentially a new soccer stadium as well. What we missed besides the Games themselves is hard to see.

Meanwhile, London just wrapped up a compelling spectacle of competition but managed to scare away many residents and tourists. The economic bump expected from the Summer Games may not materialize, but the presence of tens of thousands of foreigners making use of London’s transportation infrastructure may help Transport for London readjust the way it presents itself.

As we know, London has entirely eschewed a subway map that nods to geography. The famous Harry Beck map presents a schematic of the system with notoriously famous results. Riders unfamiliar with the complex geography of London streets often find themselves wasting time on the Tubes when walking a few blocks would be more efficient. The Olympics apparently laid this to bare, and Joe Peach at This Big City penned an amusing and insightful column on it:

With millions of visitors in London for the 2012 Summer Olympics, the city’s transport network is under more pressure than ever before. If you want to head to the Olympics, chances are you’ll get the next tube to Stratford, even though there are countless other stations that link to Olympic sites. Aware of the challenges of dealing with millions of extra riders, most of whom won’t be local and will be relying on geographically flawed signage for directions, TfL have made some temporary updates…

Route maps on underground carriages are now littered with pink boxes pointing out which stations can be used to access Olympic events. This photo shows what you’ll find if you take the Jubilee Line, and London’s 12 other lines are all looking pretty similar. Though relatively minor additions, they represent a pretty radical development for a map that has barely changed its visual approach in eight decades…

London’s underground network is the oldest in the world, and as a result many stations are named after once-significant local features (in fact, much of London is named after once-significant local features). The effect of this is the present-day destinations they largely exist to serve rarely get prominent placement on signage, with obvious potential for confusion among travellers. Though investment in technology and improved infrastructure is critical for the London Underground to remain efficient (and TfL is doing both of these things), improving the design of the network’s wayfinding tools also plays a key role. A functional city needs citizens and visitors that are well-informed, and with TfL rethinking its underground map and signage, London has become that little bit easier to get around, for locals and visitors alike.

Peach’s last paragraph above is key, and it’s something map designers often lose sight of. As I discussed last week, Massimo Vignelli’s controversial New York City subway map was to be used in conjunction with two other maps, but the MTA never embraced the Verbal Map. Thus, Vignelli’s diagrammatic map never caught on and annoyed many who tried to use it. In London, Beck’s diagram has ruled for decades, but the city seems willing to embrace some added information.

I’ve written a lot over the years about the search for the right map, but it seems more and more likely that the one right map doesn’t exist. The proper approach to directional wayfinding involves making sure riders have the right information in the right format at the right point. London is working its way toward a better solution. I wonder if New York needs to do the same.

14 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
MTA Construction

A never-ending wishlist for transit improvements

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on August 13, 2012

Early last month, the MTA announced their latest customer feedback initiative. With the promise of free rides for a few lucky participants, the agency launched a customer survey initiative designed to help the MTA better understand their riders’ opinions of existing services and their priorities for improvement. Three to five times per year, the MTA will approach those who sign up, and as a carrot for completion, some participants will receive a free pass good for 10 rides somewhere.

“We need a larger customer sample to drive our understanding of customer priorities down to finer levels of operation, such as individual subway lines or groups of stations,” Peter Harris, MTA Director of Market Research, said last month. “Our goals are to increase public participation while providing MTA planners with more in-depth, actionable information faster and at no extra cost, which we can do by adding well-designed online surveys to our existing research program.”

The few public responses to the survey announcement show the never-ending litany of suggestions and complaints. An article in The Poughkeepsie Journal highlighted practical and mundane areas of improvement. These suggestions ranged from doing away with a controversial $10 refund processing fee to better identifying Metro-North’s quiet cars to making sure fare vending machines aren’t reflecting the sun. Suburban commuters, it seems, have less to complain about on a day to day level than subway riders.

Within the five boroughs, complaints are endless. Gripes about delays are less indicative of systematic failures than they are of the daily ebb and flow of subway commuters. The louder complaints though concern the infrastructure. As pulsating LED lights have debuted at Bleecker St., riders from outside the core of the system are less than thrilled with station upgrades that seemingly never arrive.

One SAS reader complained of conditions at 191st Street, and I’ve heard similar complaints regarding the stations at 168th and 181st Sts. that are literally falling apart. Chambers St. on the BMT Nassau St. line sits underneath the building that houses much of the New York City bureaucracy, and it too is in shambles.

Venturing outside of Manhattan, we find recent coverage of conditions along the Sea Beach line. From the photos, you would never know some of these station elements date only from the 1980s as stairwells are eroding, and retaining walls at risk of giving out. Station conditions are grim, and it may be still be anywhere from two to six years until the MTA gets around to fixing up these stops. Subchatters are concerned with the structural integrity of the trench walls, and politicians are calling for emergency repairs.

All of which is to say that the list for improvements is endless, and then the cycle starts all over again. Even if the MTA can rehab every single station, they’ll eventually have to start over again as stations that were renovated within the past 15 years start to show their age. It’s the wear and tear of the daily commute played up against a backdrop of an agency that doesn’t have enough money to do what it needs to do and isn’t trusted with the dollars it has.

So the list will grow. Everyone wants his or her own local station to look the nicest, to be well lit, to have less water damage and fewer falling tiles, and when those renovations come, they cost too much and take too long. Just ask anyone waiting endlessly for the Bleecker St./Broadway-Lafayette transfer to finally open.

60 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Service Advisories

Weekend work impacting six lines

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on August 10, 2012

Today, we wind up in a situation where pre-printed posters are wrong. While the service advisories hanging in stations says there will be changes to the 4, 5, 6 and J trains, Transit officials inform me that the work on those lines has been canceled. The trains will operate as usual. Meanwhile, we have other changes, and don’t forget to check out the new Subway Weekender.


From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, August 11 to 5 a.m. Monday, August 13, Bronx-bound D trains are rerouted via the N line from Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue to 36th Street in Brooklyn due to station and line structure rehabilitation south of 9th Avenue.


From 12:01 a.m. to 6:30 a.m., Saturday, August 11 and Sunday, August 12 and from 12:01 a.m. to 5 a.m., Monday, August 13, Bronx-bound D trains run express from 36th Street to Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center, skipping DeKalb Avenue, due to track maintenance and replacement at DeKalb Avenue.


From 11 p.m. Friday, August 10 to 5 a.m., Monday, August 13, 205th Street-bound D trains run express from 145th Street to Tremont Avenue due to repair and replacement of corroded steel between 161st and 167th Streets.


From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, August 11 to 5 a.m. Monday, August 13, 205th Street-bound D trains skip 182nd-183rd Sts due to column base and steel repairs.


From 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday, August 11, Manhattan-bound E trains skip Briarwood-Van Wyck Blvd due to stop cable replacement along the Queens Blvd line.


From 12:01 a.m. to 5 a.m., Sunday, August 12, Manhattan-bound E trains run express from 71st Avenue to Roosevelt Avenue due to scraping and painting track ceilings at Grand Avenue and Elmhurst Avenue stations.


From 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday, August 11, Brooklyn-bound F trains skip Sutphin Blvd and Briarwood-Van Wyck Blvd due to stop cable replacement along the Queens Blvd line.


From 10 p.m. Friday, August 10 to 5 a.m. Monday, August 13, uptown N trains run express from Canal Street to 34th Street-Herald Square due to electronic security system installation.


From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, August 11 to 5 a.m. Monday, August 13, Manhattan-bound Q trains are rerouted via the R from DeKalb Avenue to Canal Street due to track replacement and maintenance at DeKalb Avenue.


From 6:30 a.m. to 12 midnight, Saturday, August 11 and Sunday, August 12, uptown R trains run express from Canal Street to 34th Street-Herald Square due to electronic security system installation.


From 12:01 a.m. to 6:30 a.m., Saturday, August 11 and Sunday, August 12, and from 12:01 a.m. to 5 a.m., Monday, August 13, there are no R trains between 59th Street and 36th Street in Brooklyn due to track replacement and maintenance at DeKalb Avenue. Customers should take the N instead. R trains run between Bay Ridge-95th Street and 59th Street in Brooklyn.

2 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Manhattan

Getting closer on a Bleecker St. transfer

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on August 10, 2012

Leo Villareal's Hive brings LED colors to the Bleecker St. station. (Photo by Matt Kroll/@TheRealKroll)

A few weeks ago, long-time SAS reader Matt Kroll sent me the photo above of Bleecker St. It’s a glimpse of the station’s newest art installation — a honeycomb of LED lights that change color above the new staircase. By Leo Villareal, “Hive” adds a touch of playfulness amidst the new transfer.

Of course, all of this may leave a curious New Yorker wondering how the MTA can go about installing a complex piece of modern art before completing a four-year renovation on a single subway station. To that end, I can provide no help, but it seems as though that elusive opening is moving closer to reality. Today, a reader informed me that the automatic announcements on the uptown 6 trains now announce a transfer to the B/D/F/M at Broadway-Lafayette, and another reader tells me that the station will open this month.

We’ve heard it all before, and so I asked Transit today for an official confirmation. They could not give me one. They have a date in mind, but it’s not yet ready for public announcement. So they’re getting closer and closer and closer and closer and…

44 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
MetroCard

An ode to ‘Please Swipe Again’

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on August 10, 2012

An all too familiar message no one likes to see.

Earlier this week, when we learned that subway turnstiles have started to show the expiration dates for unlimited ride MetroCards, I thought of it as a parting gift from Cubic. The MTA has repeatedly stressed plans to phase out MetroCards by 2015, and straphangers had been clamoring for such information on the turnstile screens for upwards of 15 years. So for the next two or three years, we’ll enjoy a piece of information that’s been available on buses nearly since the beginning.

While having an expiration date reminder in front of us sure will be convenient, it got me thinking of the other pearls of wisdom subway turnstiles display on a regular basis. Tops among those are a message to keep swiping. “Please Swipe Again.” We’ve all been done that path, sometimes on the receiving end of the message and sometimes in a growing line as an out-of-towner or just an unlucky sap can’t quite swipe fast or slow enough for the card reader to pick up the bits of information it needs to process the transaction. It’s an annoying and tedious part of life with MetroCards.

It’s also been a part of the post-token world we live in since the beginning. Take a ride into subway news past with me. Our first stop is in 1998 as New Yorkers are still adjusting to these strange things called MetroCards. City Council Speaker Peter Vallone alleges that the MTA’s new system is seriously flawed. Nine out of ten straphangers report problems with their MetroCards, he says. It’s a number that seemingly defies logic, but I’d wager a guess that every single one of you reading this has, at one point or another, gotten that dreaded “Please swipe again” message.

At the time, Vallone railed against the tendency of a MetroCard reader to double-charge riders. That “Please swipe again” message often meant that the turnstile had deducted the fare but not yet properly waved the passenger through. Moving to another turnstile would cause a second fare to be culled from that card. “The transit authority needs to do much more to educate people about the Metrocard,” Vallone said. “Riders should be warned that they can be bilked out of an extra fare and told how to avoid it.”

In response, we are now told to “Please swipe again at this turnstile” when applicable, but the problems didn’t stop there. A year later, politicians and subway riders were again bemoaning the same problem. In a City Council survey from 1999, over 60 percent of riders said they had to swipe again after receiving an error message. The card readers weren’t going to get any better with age.

Over the years, the same complaints kept creeping up. A 2005 story in The Times noted that service calls to turnstiles had been holding steady at around 2000 per month. The most frequent culprit were dirty heads that couldn’t read all four of the MetroCard’s data points, thus delaying customers trying to get to their trains. Even then, seven years ago, as Cubic worked to replace the aging card readers, the MTA said it would “study” smart card technology but was “nowhere close to making the leap.” We’re still waiting.

These days, swipe failures are a fact of life. The Wall Street Journal tried to teach its readers how to swipe properly in a 2010 article, and a 2011 report from the MTA found that 20 percent of all swipes were misread. Straphangers have simply come to accept a certain number of error messages, and regular commuters pick up on the prickly turnstiles and card readers at their local stations. We adapt because we have to.

Within the next few years, MetroCards will go the way of tokens, and with them, hopefully, the never-ending exaction to please swipe again. The contactless fare card should cure these swipe-related woes. We won’t suffer through people who don’t dip properly on the buses, and it’s much harder to mess up a tap than it is to mis-swipe. That’s one element of the MetroCard no one will miss.

13 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Second Avenue Subway

Photo: A larger 63rd St. station, semi-revealed

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on August 9, 2012

A few days ago, I found myself in the 63rd St. station at Lexington Ave. I don’t often end up there and hadn’t swung by to check in on the Second Ave. Subway construction in a while. With trains rumbling through a station stripped bare of its finishes, it’s quite a sight to see. Gone are the red faux-walls that hid the two-track platforms. Gone are the dropped ceilings that hid the arch of the tube. It is a subway station in progress.

I’d imagine a lot of riders are mystified as to what’s going on there. It was never immediately evident that the northern side of that station hid another set of functional tracks, but with the arrival of Phase 1 of the Second Ave. Subway, that station will have a radically different look. Q and F trains will stop across the platform from each other, and the platform levels at least will have a new look. The deep bore, as well, gives us a sense of the depths of the other SAS stations as well.

If subway work is your thing, stop by that station. With the bored walls out for all to see and gaps in the blue fence providing glimpses into the unused platforms, it’s the closest straphangers can get to a station in progress.

17 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Load More Posts