MTA Technology

Anticipating real-time subway arrival data

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on May 1, 2012

A glimpse through the March MTA Board meeting materials revealed to the world a long-awaited development from the transit authority. The MTA had issued a procurement call for the technology to release a real-time data feed of available subway arrival information. The feed would cover the A Division lines that currently enjoy the benefits of countdown clocks and would open up a whole new world of transit data for app developers.

Earlier today, I spent the morning at an event at NYU’s Rudin Center for Transportation Policy & Management, and this upcoming data feed was a hot topic. The early a.m. event focused on technology and urban mobility. It featured panelists from the MTA and PATH and developers from Google Transit and OpenPlans (as well as Adam Ernst, a Second Ave. Sagas advertiser). Ernest Tollerson, the MTA’s Director of Environmental Sustainability & Compliance, opened the talk with a brief discussion on the real-time data feed.

According to Tollerson, the authority hopes to have the train arrival estimates ready to go later this year. At the time, app developers will be able to grab this information that covers 37 percent of all subway riders. It will be, he said, “a transformative moment in the life of the city and the MTA.”

Now, we’ve known about the looming public release of this data for a few weeks, but Tollerson let slip some additional info as well. After the real-time data streams are live, the authority will look for ways to push out real-time information for B Division lines that are elevated or at-grade. In other words, most lines out in Brooklyn and Queens would be in line to receive these feeds as well.

Tollerson and the rest of the panelists spoke about the ways in which transit technology can make trips more convenient. If we know what’s happening where and when before we leave our house, we are better prepared for delays or the need to find alternate routes. Making the voluminous train location data available to the public is a huge step for the MTA and for the millions of people who ride the subways every day. That moment cannot come soon enough.

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Paratransit

The trouble with Access-A-Ride, again

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on May 1, 2012

Over the years, I’ve touched upon the problem with the MTA’s Access-A-Ride offerings. Essentially, the paratransit service is in response to the unfunded ADA requirements, and the MTA estimates that the door-to-door service costs nearly $66 per ride. It is, in other words, a giant money suck for a cash-strapped agency, but one in which it must participate due to federal law.

Lately, the authority has begun to discuss ways to cut its annual expense — which grew to over $440 million last year. As The Daily News reported a few weeks ago, the MTA may just offer up free MetroCards for those who would otherwise qualify for Access-A-Ride service. The MTA says that just a fifth of all Access-A-Ride users are wheelchair-bound, and the rest should be able to use the bus or subway with the assistance of a caregiving who can ride for free. Allen Cappelli of the MTA Board said of the new plan, “There’s really no downside to it that I can see.”

Disabilities advocates and disabled riders see otherwise. “People don’t use use Access-A-Ride for the fun of it,” Edith Prentiss, a vice president of Disabled in Action, said. Still, as The News notes, agencies in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, have implemented similar plans successfully. It apparently does not run afoul of federal law and could save the MTA upwards of $96 million a year.

Yesterday, The News’ editorial board sounded off on the MTA’s plan. From the new plan, they claim, we can draw “two disturbing conclusions”:

The first is that thousands of people who are listed as eligible for Access-a-Ride service are not too disabled to use the subways and buses. The second is that Access-a-Ride service is so terrible that, given the slightest monetary benefit, even truly disabled people will mount herculean struggles to avoid it.

While MTA staff members say similar plans have cut costs in other cities, Chairman Joe Lhota should think more broadly and should do so in coordination with Mayor Bloomberg, who needs a hand to untangle the taxi mess his administration has created. Together, Lhota and Bloomberg should study moving toward shifting at least some passengers off the Access-a-Ride program’s clunky, unreliable vans and into wheelchair-accessible cabs and livery cars.

Provided it clamped down on eligibility — a most critical element — the MTA might well be able to deliver improved transportation at lower cost, Bloomberg might well be able to remake taxi service under an economically viable structure and the disabled might well be able to get around more conveniently.

The News has no better solution for the various stakeholders other than “work it out.” They want the MTA to work with the city and the Taxi & Limousine Commission to come up with a cost- and ride-sharing scheme that removes the some of the fiscal pressure from the MTA while providing adequate taxi service for the city’s disabled. In an ideal situation in which the city works well with state agencies, such a call may be heeded, but the MTA and New York City do not have the best track record when it comes to such cooperation.

The real eye-opener here though are the costs. Access-A-Ride service costs around $500 million annually, and the cost per rider are astronomical. A door-to-door taxi ride from most points in the city to any other doesn’t cost that much, and we can only imagine what the MTA could do to make its system more accessible if it could invest this money in physical upgrades rather than $60-per-person rides. This is one problem clearly in need of a comprehensive solution.

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East Side Access Project

A look at the East Side Access escalators

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 30, 2012

The escalators that will one day reach the East Side Acess Project terminal beneath Grand Central will the MTA's longest. (Image via WSJ)

Over the past few decades, the MTA has had a touchy relationship with its escalators. Those that exist in the subway system break down more often than we would prefer, and repairs take far longer to complete than initially expected. Some of the problem is due to the 24-7 pounding these machines take, and part of the problem is due to just about anything you could imagine.

Some time this decade, the authority will open its most escalator-dependent station yet. When the East Side Access terminal opens, 15 stories underneath Grand Central, the authority will be relying on 47 escalators traversing 180 feet into the depths. As Ted Mann wrote in The Journal on Friday, “The success of the new station is riding in large part on how well they work.” That may be a scary thought indeed.

Mann has more on the escalators:

Commuters might endure a short trudge up stairs, but few would have patience—or the stamina—for a heart-pounding slog to the surface that rivals a military workout. In public remarks about the East Side Access project, MTA Chairman Joseph Lhota has invoked the notoriously steep, and sometimes stalled, escalators of the Metro in Washington, D.C. With that in mind, the authority is leaving little to chance. Engineers have added extra capacity, so breakdowns won’t bring the station to a standstill.

And the MTA is experimenting with a first-of-its kind contract that will partially privatize the escalators. The company that designed the escalators and 22 elevators for the station won’t just install them, but also operate and maintain them in years to come. “The proof will be in the pudding,” one MTA official said, but the agency is counting on the arrangement to ensure its costly gamble to redirect commuter rail to Manhattan’s East Side will pay off.

Schindler Elevator Corp. won a $70.2 million contract to do the design, installation and long-term operation and maintenance of the system. “We’re putting the onus on the people who actually install them to operate them,” said Michael Horodniceanu, the president of the MTA’s Capital Construction division, which is building the project. The escalators will be the longest ever made at Schindler’s plant in Clinton, N.C., said Glenn Rodenheiser, the company’s project executive for East Side Access.

The key, of course, will be this privatization effort. Right now, commuters who know of the East Side Access plan have little sense of just how deep the terminal is, and the MTA will have no choice but to keep these escalators running. Otherwise, the traffic into and out of this deep terminal will suffer tremendously.

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7 Line Extension

Lhota: Let’s send the 7 to Chelsea

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 30, 2012

Joe Lhota would one day like to see the 7 line head south past 26th Street. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

As the MTA nears the 20 (or perhaps 24-month) countdown to mark the days until the 7 line extension is put into revenue service, the future of the agency’s megaprojects continues to make headlines. Once the extension to the Hudson Yards area wraps, the Second Ave. Subway will surve as the MTA’s only subway expansion project, and many in New York are eying ways to keep the ball rolling. We heard one dreamer’s plan in January to send the L train to the United Nations, but what of the current MTA head?

During Friday’s Regional Assembly hosted the Regional Plan Associate, MTA Chairman and CEO Joe Lhota, the person whose voice may count the most over the next few years, spoke about his dreams for the 7 train. Specifically, he wants to send it south to Chelsea. “As far as big projects are concerned, I can actually see the extension of the No. 7 train to other parts of New York City’s west side,” he said. The 7 could “go all the way down to 23rd Street, and the West Side Highway, so we can incorporate that portion of the west side that’s not receiving a whole lot of coverage.”

Transportation Nation’s Jim O’Grady was on hand at the Regional Assembly, and he had more from Lhota:

Lhota told planners…that the first project on his “wish list” is extending the Number 7 subway train down 11th Avenue to 23rd Street. “It’s something that I think would make sense because if you look at the demographics of the West Side, we shouldn’t just make one stop,” he told reporters after taking part in a workshop at the Regional Plan Association’s annual assembly, which was held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

Lhota said, “It’s important to have plans, to have a wish list.” But he cautioned there was no active push to send the 7 train from Times Square past its planned terminus at W 34th Street. “I’m not sure it can be done,” he said. “I’m not sure about how close you can get to the Hudson River.”

Lhota’s reference to the Hudson River concerns the technical side of any southern expansion. Because the new terminal with the tail tracks extending south to the low 20s is so close to the West Side, future tunneling would have to cut east. It’s not technically impossible to envision a connection to 14th Street, and furthermore, with the way the tail tracks are built out now, the MTA could add a stop without much more tunneling. A stop in the 20s underneath 11th Ave., however, would destroy the capacity and storage needs the trail tracks address.

On another level, though, Lhota’s discussion seems to be missing something, and that’s something that’s been largely swept under the rug over the past few years. If the MTA wants to add another stop to what has become a one-station extension of the 7 train, the logical spot can be found in the original plans. Before the 7 heads further south or curves around through Chelsea or goes anywhere else, the authority should figure out a way to build the long lost station at 10th Ave. and 41st St.

Ever since the city failed to pony up the dough for the station and both parties agreed to axe it, the station has disappeared from the discussion. It’s out of sight, out of mind. Yet, its absence will be felt for years in the rapidly growing area in the 40s west of 9th Ave. With high rises, a boat terminal and nightlife destinations, that area was primed for a subway stop, and the planned one never materialized. Provisioning for the station is in place, but the money isn’t. We may never see that station, but we should see it before we see a stop further south.

Of course, this entire discussion may be for naught as MTA officials stressed that Lhota wants to get the MTA’s financial house of cards in order first. The 7 extension, Lhota said, “may not necessarily be in the very next capital plan,” and Adam Lisberg, chief MTA spokesperson, called it a “very long term” plan in a note to Capital New York. We have to start thinking toward the future somewhere though, and 41st and 10th should get the attention it deserves.

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AsidesPublic Transit Policy

Lhota not so keen on the ferry fare idea

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 27, 2012

Yesterday, I wrote about the need to better integrate the East River ferries with the rest of the city’s MTA-run transportation network. Today, MTA head Joe Lhota splashed some cold water on that idea. While speaking at the Regional Plan Association’s annual conference — more on that on Sunday night — Lhota spoke broadly of supporting a MetroCard-based fare payment system with the ferries but stressed that a free transfer isn’t the way to go. “The MTA is in no position to share its revenue with the ferries,” he said.

So let’s amend the idea a bit: Instead of a free transfer, the ferries become another part of the MTA payment network akin to the express buses. These rides cost more than a regular fare, but you can still use a pay-per-ride card on them. Still, though a transfer has to be a part of the equation somehow to make sure riders are being encouraged to use transit without having to pay two fares. Somehow, the revenue and subsidies have to work out so that the MTA isn’t losing money, but riders shouldn’t be either.

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AsidesMTA Politics

Chris Ward: Next mayor must prioritize transit

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 27, 2012

It seems that I’m not alone in calling for someone with political might to better prioritize transit in New York City. Chris Ward, the former head of the Port Authority, issued a similar plea on New York 1’s “Inside City Hall” earlier this week. As Capital New York reported, Ward urged the next mayor to make the MTA a number one priority.

The region, he said, needs more rail capacity. “By not building that capacity into the lifeblood of this region, which is, for better or for worse, Manhattan,” he said, “we’re gonna get sprawl. You’re going to be seeing the city moving away from its core, you’re going to get inefficient development and the west side of Manhattan won’t get that strong demand for commuters to fill up the office space that hopefully Related will be building very quickly.”

He elaborated on the need for politicians to focus more on transit as well. “The people who rely on the MTA, the men and women who are coming into their job or going out to their job, they’re not taking a car, they’re not taking a limousine, they’re not taking a taxi,” he said. “They’re taking the MTA.”

Ward hits upon a key topic here. For better or worse, the MTA is transit in the New York City region, and we’re stuck with it. So we can either work against it or work to improve it. But the real issue is that while Ward is correct in issuing this call, New York’s mayor can’t do much about the MTA. As I mentioned earlier this week, it’s a creature of the state, and the state exerts far more power over it than the city can. Maybe it’s time to have a serious conversation about returning control over the subways to the city, but we can’t go down that path without fiscal assurances from Albany. Welcome to New York transportation politics.

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BusesService Advisories

Some bus schedule adjustments; some weekend work

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 27, 2012

Earlier this week during the MTA Board members, Transit put forward a plan, as they often do, to adjust bus service schedules along a series of routes. In July, 17 bus routes will see altered plans with 12 lines suffering from reduced service and five lines seeing added buses. As is often the case when the MTA cuts service, people are none too thrilled.

This short bit from The Post pretty much sums up the public reaction to the move. With an intentionally inflammatory headline, the article focuses on the popular routes — the M23 and Flatbush Avenue’s B41 — that will see longer headways at various times of the day. The changes themselves are cost-neutral to the MTA but will have an impact on riders.

According to the Transit materials, these schedule changes are “a product of NYC Transit’s continuing effort to review and revise bus and subway schedules to ensure that they accurately meet customer demand and are in compliance with with MTA Board-adopted bus loading guidelines.” Some schedule changes are due to surface transit conditions as well. According to the staff summary, the changes will add somewhere from one to five minutes of wait time on some lines while reducing it on others. Most buses will end up with capacity at around 95 percent.

So it this a service cut? In the past, I’ve always been very hesitant to embrace these scheduling changes. While we don’t want empty buses running along our streets, we also don’t want to reduce service, and by first establishing load guidelines that make buses more crowded than we would prefer, the MTA Board can then cut service to meet those new load guidelines. In 2010, they did so extensively to meet budgets.

Furthermore, by cutting bus service even just a little, buses become less convenient. Their riders are more willing to pursue alternate routes than subway riders are, and a longer wait will inevitably lead fewer people to take the bus. For the bus to thrive, in other words, it has run frequently and reliably. So a few lines will suffer with fewer buses at various times during the day. These buses will be more crowded and less frequent. If we want to encourage transit use, that’s not a desirable outcome at all.

For more on the specifics of the service adjustments, check out the section that starts on page 110 of this pdf. In the meantime, the weekly service advisories follow after the jump.

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View from Underground

Link: Stanely Kubrick photographs the subway

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 26, 2012

Stanley Kubrick. Life and Love on the New York City Subway. Passengers reading in a subway car. 1946. Museum of the City of New York.

Once upon a time, Stanley Kubrick wasn’t always an award-winning director. He was just a staff photographer for LOOK Magazine, and in 1946, he was assigned to capture the essence of the New York City subway. In a posting earlier this week, the Museum of the City of New York showcased some of Kubrick’s shots, and it’s well worth the click-through.

Dapper New Yorkers dressed for the times and many reading newspapers — another relic of another age — recline on rattan-covered padded seats while heading home. Canal St. looks hauntingly familiar, and even in a supposedly more chivalrous age, men would not surrender their seats for women standing above them.

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Public Transit Policy

Bridging the MetroCard gap with the East River ferries

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 26, 2012

For the past year, I’ve been a skeptic when it comes to the East River Ferry plan. The city is essentially forking over $9 million over three years for what I believed to be a novelty act. The city’s waterfront is too removed from population and job centers to provide an adequate route for most commuters. Furthermore, the ferries aren’t the speediest of vessels; the rides during the winter can be cold; and the fare system had nothing to do with the rest of the city’s MTA-run transit network.

After a mild winter that saw East River ferry ridership top expectations by over 100 percent — ridership last week cleared 19,000 vs. an estimated 8900 trips — the city is trying to solve that last problem. As DNA Info notes, officials are attempting to convince the MTA and ferry operators to find a way to make MetroCards work for ferry fare payments. Jill Colvin has more:

Advocates and council members said they believe the numbers would soar even higher if commuters could more easily transfer to buses and subways and pay their $4 fares with a simple MetroCard swipe, just like travelers on JFK’s AirTrain and the PATH trains.

Tim Sullivan, a senior policy advisor to Deputy Mayor Robert Steel, said the city is already exploring the MetroCard idea. “We’d like to see if we can apply that to the ferry system as well,” he said.

The MTA confimed it has been engaged in preliminary talks about integrating ferries with the rest of the city’s transit system, but it is not clear if it would work with unlimited MetroCards. Roland Lewis, president of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, agreed that allowing customers to pay for ferries with the same MetroCard as they can use to pay for other forms of public transportation would be a major boost.

The key here though isn’t just allowing riders to use their MetroCards to pay; it also involves integrating ferry service as a part of the free transfer system so that riders can pay to use the ferry and get a subway transfer out of it or vice versa. Such an arrangement would solve the problem of a two-fare system currently in place today.

Of course, such a transfer solve only one problem facing the ferries. Right now, despite a $3 million annual subsidy and higher-than-expected ridership, the operators are still losing money. Billybey Ferry Company asked for a higher subsidy late last year, and the owners are not expecting the same ridership bump every winter. With a goal of reducing the subsidy to $0, the company may need to raise fares precipitously over the coming years.

So then can we integrate the ferries in with the MTA’s fare payment system? It needs to happen, but it’s not as easy as just asking nicely.

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Public Transit Policy

Searching for a grand plan and its proponent too

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 25, 2012

It’s been a few years since Mayor Michael Bloomberg put forward his PlaNYC2030 vision, and by now, we’ve had a chance to see what has succeeded, what will move forward and what won’t. As the political fallout from an ambitious and, according to some, heavy-handed attempt to change New York has settled, I’ve been disappointed by the lack of cohesiveness and clarity in the city’s long-term transportation planning. We have only the bare minimum of expansion plans in place with a lackluster attempt to improve the bus network and no steady and dedicated funding scheme in place. Where did we go wrong?

A few days ago, while browsing through The Other Side of the Tracks, I came across a story out of Washington, D.C. The Nation’s Capitol, with less than 1/10 the population of New York City, is hoping to grow by over 40 percent over the next two decades. Mayor Vincent Gray wants to add 250,000 to the district’s headcount, and he has a comprehensive urban plan that would help D.C. usher in this growth.

On the one hand, the plan is an ambitious attempt to re-imagine urban life in a mid-sized East Coast city. He wants to cut waste, eliminate the need for people to use cars and turn the city into a hyper-local, largely self-sustaining ecosystem. On the other hand, city officials are hoping that 75 percent of trips will be by foot, bicycle or public transit, but they seem to be intent on promoting street cars over an expansion of the Metro system. We could debate the wisdom of such a move forever, but the truth remains that without a more comprehensive Metro system within the District of Columbia, the city won’t be able to absorb a 40 percent increase in population.

Still, that’s besides the point. D.C. has a plan, and a mayor willing to put his name behind the plan. Furthermore, the plan has a significant transportation component that aims to reimagine how city streets are used and how city transportation is prioritized. In New York City, we have a once-powerful mayor who fought one battle, lost and then gave up.

Bloomberg’s story focuses around congestion pricing, and it was a one-off battle. He made congestion pricing a centerpiece of PlaNYC 2030, failed to gather political support before unveiling the plan and then lost the fight in Albany. Since then, we’ve had ineffective state executives unwilling to pick this fight anew, a mayor who has recoiled from dealing with the state and a new and very powerful governor who is unwilling to push for congestion pricing. As Streetsblog noted on Wednesday, Cuomo sets the agenda right now; if he believed in a congestion pricing plan, it could become law within a matter of weeks.

Yet, even with congestion pricing, New York City has no plan. Our subway expansion efforts, due to a variety of factors including out-of-control costs, are meager. We’re getting a one-stop extension of the 7 line and a three-stop extension of the Q up Second Ave. The Triboro RX plan is often scorned as impossible, and those who dare to dream about it speak in decades rather than years. Beyond that, we have a Select Bus Service plan that fails to unite boroughs, neighborhoods and job centers, and no unifying goal. New York City has no transit champion.

Partly, the political structure of the MTA is to blame for this deficit. The MTA is a creature of the state, and thus no mayor can do too much to impact the direction of MTA-related transportation growth. We need the state’s approval to move forward and the state’s dollars as well. Anything the city wants to do then will either have to involve the state or have to escape the purview of the organization that runs our buses and subways. It’s quite the conundrum.

So we’re left spinning our wheels. We need that reimagining of our transportation priorities, and we need a plan to move forward and expand. Instead, we have incremental technological improvements, regular fare hikes, a legacy of service cuts and no champion. Who can step up to save and improve the city’s transportation network and its long-term future?

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