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Second Ave. Sagas

News and Views on New York City Transportation

BusesManhattan

Lappin: SBS good, over-enforcement bad

by Benjamin Kabak March 22, 2012
written by Benjamin Kabak on March 22, 2012

A November report showed how popular the M15 Select Bus Service had become.

City Council Member Jessica Lappin and her East Side constituents like what they see out of the Select Bus Service along First and Second Ave., but they all wish the MTA and NYPD weren’t so heavy handed with fine enforcement. In her second annual report card for the city’s latest efforts at speeding up buses, Lappin gave the service a solid B, up for a B- last year, but she urged the MTA to better fix its fare payment machines and ease up on enforcement in the meantime.

“More East Siders are onboard with Select Bus Service, and want to see it expanded to other locations,” Lappin said. “But the MTA still needs to do a better job with fixing broken ticket machines and other inconveniences.”

Lappin’s report card breaks down the service into four categories based on responses from her constituents. Overall, 98.3 percent of the 1155 respondents who took the survey said they have used the Select Bus Service. This number may be skewed a bit as a transportation survey will attract those who use transportation, but these are the folks who are most attuned to the good and bad of it all.

By and large, Upper East Siders seemed content with the speed of service. Most wait times are between five and ten minutes, and nearly 70 percent of respondents said speeds were good or excellent. Lappin rated speed an A, and while fare payment was problematic, according to MTA studies, the time saved by eliminating the painfully slow MetroCard dip is the driving factor there.

The biggest issue arose with ease of use of those fare payment machines though. While 55 percent of respondents rated the pre-board machines as good or excellent, nearly 45 thought them to be fair or poor. The Council Member offered up her take: “Council Member Lappin’s office frequently receives complaints about broken Select Bus Service ticket machines. When the machines are broken or out of paper, it is impossible to buy a ticket. Without a ticket, riders risk being issued a $100 summons. Constituents have also complained that ticket machines are dangerously close to the street.”

Hand in hand with this concern are complaints over enforcement. Twenty respondents were ticketed when SBS payment machines failed to produce receipts, and riders complained that buses were stopped during fare inspections, thus defeating the purpose of a faster commute. One East Sider’s tale highlights these concerns. “Last September I received a $100 summons even though the SBS ticket machine wasn’t working,” an Upper East Side resident who declined to be named said. “When I called the MTA & Transit Adjudication Bureau to explain what happened, they made it impossible to get answers. It wasn’t just the ticket machine that was broken—the entire SBS fare collection system is broken and it needs to be fixed.”

DNA Info offered up more tales of fare-payment woes and the subsequent summonses that so plague the new system. We’ve heard these complaints for years, but the stakeholders in the Select Bus Service system have yet to respond to them. Machines are repaired often enough, and enforcement is often overzealous. It’s what works though to keep the buses moving.

So Lappin gives the buses a better grade in 2012 than she did in 2011. It’s an incremental step up, but as Select Bus Service becomes more pervasive, and the MTA and NYC DOT more adept at respond to complaints, those marks should only rise. If they don’t, something has gone wrong.

March 22, 2012 26 comments
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View from Underground

Video: The sounds of the subway

by Benjamin Kabak March 22, 2012
written by Benjamin Kabak on March 22, 2012

This one comes to from Tim Sessler (by way of Gothamist). Sessler is a DC-based freelance video editor, and he explains his video, “Shot within a couple hours on a sunny Saturday afternoon, ‘Bending Sounds’ is a test/experiment to capture the inspirational sounds and visuals of the NYC subway.” It’s a little bit haunting, a little bit creepy and a little bit romantic. Give it a watch with some headphones on for the full aural experience.

March 22, 2012 2 comments
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AsidesBrooklynMTA Construction

Business owners, residents bemoan Smith-9th Sts. delay

by Benjamin Kabak March 22, 2012
written by Benjamin Kabak on March 22, 2012

As I mentioned briefly on Friday, the MTA does not anticipate reopening the Smith/9th Sts. station stop until the fall. Originally slated to open this month, the 78-year-old station has been the host of “especially challenging conditions,” according to a Transit spokesman, and its reopening will have to wait. Business owners and residents who are effectively cut out of from their subway stop are not happy, The Daily News reported today, and I don’t blame them.

“I really might have to close my whole business down because of this,” Abdul Zaokari, the owner of the deli that sits beneath the viaduct, said. “I’ve asked MTA to give me a break since I pay them for my rent, but they don’t listen. And even worse, they don’t realize how many customers used to come here in the morning, for lunch and even for a quick dinner. I’ve lost 80 percent of those customers. I really don’t know how my business can survive until November when they say the subway will be finished.”

Other shop owners say the crowds that used to accompany the F and G trains at the closet station to parts of Carroll Gardens and Red Hook are completely gone and won’t return for six to eight months. Now, I want the Viaduct to last another 75 years, but at a certain point, it’s understandable when people get upset. It is routine practice for the MTA to say a rehabilitation project will cost a certain amount and go on for a fixed period of time. In the end, the project usually costs more and takes longer than the MTA first promises, and people dependent upon the subway for travel and its crowds for a livelihood are the losers.

Had Zaokari known the full extent of the outage last year, he could have better prepared for it. Instead he has to weather another six unanticipated months of this storm while Red Hook residents will have to hike to the nearest open stop or continue to rely on one of Brooklyn’s least reliable bus routes. The wait continues.

March 22, 2012 9 comments
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View from Underground

Subway stations we love and the ones we hate

by Benjamin Kabak March 22, 2012
written by Benjamin Kabak on March 22, 2012

The J and Z's Chamber Street stop is one that many vote as their least favorite in the system. (Photo by flickr user ciamabue)

A few weeks ago, my work offices moved from the Grand Central area to Times Square, and my morning commute shifted as well. Instead of exiting the East Side IRT through the southern bowels of the ugly 42nd St. stop, the end of my morning commute involves a walk over the platforms that connect the Shuttle at Times Square — the original IRT 42nd St. stop — to the West Side line. The Track 4 platform continues to the north, and a small area of the original platform remains unused.

Despite the hustle and bustle of that Times Square station, seemingly at all hours of the day and night, it’s one of my favorite in the system for its history and complexities. It’s a labyrinth of passageways that stretch from 44th St. and 8th Ave. to 40th and Broadway. It connects the IND, the BMT and the IRT lines at the center of the city, and it features a great vantage point for watching the West Side IRT trains stream past the shuttle platform and into and out of its station.

For every Times Square, though, there’s a Chambers St. underneath 1 Centre St. For every well-maintained and recently-renovated station, there’s an equally dingy one that needs more than just a little TLC. Unfortunately, decades of deferred maintenance means those in need of attention far outnumber those that look passably well maintained.

In my neck of the woods, for instance, Grand Army Plaza is the only station in good shape. The two 7th Ave. stations — one at 9th St. and one at Flatbush — need work, and the Union St. stop at 4th Ave. just is. It’s not in awful shape, but it’s not particularly nice. That’s the public perception of our vast and vital subway system.

Last week, I posed a random question to my Twitter followers: “What’s your least favorite subway stop?” The answers were creative. Let’s look at a sampling.

@SecondAveSagas Bowery should’ve been condemned on sanitary reasons over 30 years ago. It’s perpetually disgusting.

— skormos (@skormos) March 13, 2012

@SecondAveSagas Canal Street on the J/Z. Dirty, creepy, narrow, and difficult to get to from the other Canal platforms.

— Chaim Dauermann (@notclam) March 13, 2012

@SecondAveSagas Herald Square. It’s always a zoo, poorly designed and filthy.

— Will Davidian (@willDavidian) March 13, 2012

@SecondAveSagas Court St on the R. Deep underground, narrow platform, rickety elevator, feels dank and a little dangerous.

— Phil Catelinet (@PhilCatelinet) March 13, 2012

@SecondAveSagas west 4th street in the summer, excruciatingly hot and smelly

— Dumb Yankees Cat (@leokitty) March 13, 2012

I posted the same question on Facebook and received a similarly varied response. Of course, a few stations stick out. The West 4th St. stop is generally in terrible shape, and the lower level platforms are indeed hot and smelly during the summer. Canal St., despite a recent renovation, shows the wear and tear of constant use and abuse. The Chambers St. and Bowery stations along the BMT Nassau Line are creepy and decaying. The unused set of tracks at Canal St. and the Bowery add to the seediness of it all.

These stations are the public faces of the subway system. It’s what daily straphangers live with and walk through every day during their commutes, and it’s how tourists come to view the New York City subway system. It’s a seemingly impossible task, with money tight and time working against it, to keep the system looking clean, but so much of it is in bad shape. Without the political support, it won’t get better, and we’ll be left with only a glimpse of the history and progress at crown-jewel stations while the rest of the system suffers.

While in this post, I’ve highlighted a few responses to my query, I’d love to hear more. Feel free to chime in with your least favorite subway station (or your favorite, for that matter). We all have our various reasons for liking and hating some of those 468 stops out there.

March 22, 2012 70 comments
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AsidesMetro-North

Metro-North set to expand Quiet Calmmute program

by Benjamin Kabak March 21, 2012
written by Benjamin Kabak on March 21, 2012

Quiet Calmmute, Metro-North’s punny quiet commute program, is coming soon to a peak-hour train near you. Beginning April 2, all inbound AM and outbound PM peak trains on the Hudson, Harlem & New Haven Lines will feature one quiet car. For AM rains inbound to Grand Central, the last car will be a designated quiet car, and for PM trains outbound from Manhattan, the first car will be the serene one. For those violating the rules, conductors will pass out polite “reminder” cars.

According to Metro-North’s own surveys, a whopping 83 percent of passengers said they support the quiet cars. “Quiet cars are a hit,” Metro-North President Howard Permut said to LoHud.com. “With very few exceptions, people have quickly adapted to the new etiquette.”

While the quiet car is a concept that won’t see the light of day in the subway, I am particularly enamored with one aspect of the program. Among the things commuters in the quiet cars must do are: (1) disabling the sound features on electronic devices; and (2) using headphones at a volume that cannot be heard by fellow passengers. These are basic concepts in mass transit etiquette that are, more frequently than not, forgotten by the straphanging public in the subways.

March 21, 2012 9 comments
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MTA

Lisberg, City & State editor, named chief MTA spokesman

by Benjamin Kabak March 21, 2012
written by Benjamin Kabak on March 21, 2012

On Friday, Jeremy Soffin served his final day as Director of Media Relations for the MTA, and today, MTA Chairman Joe Lhota named Adam Lisberg as the new Director of External Communications. Lisberg, currently the editor of City & State and once the City Hall bureau chief of The Daily News’, will head up press office while setting the “communications agenda” for the MTA. He will serve as Lhota’s chief spokesperson as well.

“Adam is an award-winning journalist who is joining us at an exciting time as we attempt to change both the operation and the image of the MTA. His talents and experience will be instrumental in shaping our message as we move forward,” Lhota said in a statement.

Lisberg, a current Brooklynite with Chicago roots, has covered mass transit and the MTA for a good portion of his career. After all, state and city politics and our massive transit agency are often intertwined, not always for the better. With, as Politicker NY notes, a salary of $150,000 coming his way, Lisberg is saying all the right things.

“I’m excited to join an agency that plays such a crucial role in the New York City region, and to help the MTA deliver its message to the millions of people it serves across a wide range of media,” he said. “Mass transit is the lifeblood of New York City and the surrounding counties. As the MTA tackles enormous construction projects at a time of financial strain, I’m looking forward to helping the agency explain its challenges and its achievements to the millions of people who rely on it.”

Lisberg’s immediate challenge is to overcome both a skeptical public and media prone to superficial transit coverage as he shapes and reshapes the MTA’s image. He should also serve as a set of ears for the agency with his pulse to the ground. It can’t just be about telling about change; it must be about showing a response as well.

“The MTA has a good story to tell and I see my role there as telling it,” he his Twitter account.

March 21, 2012 0 comment
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Brooklyn

To petition or to ride, that is the G train question

by Benjamin Kabak March 21, 2012
written by Benjamin Kabak on March 21, 2012

Will the G train extension remain once the Culver Viaduct rehab is completed?

A few weeks ago, when the MTA opened up the northern staircase at 4th Ave. and 9th St., a few Brooklynites grew concerned over the state of the Culver Viaduct rehab. With over a year still left on the work — and the reopening of Smith/9th Sts. delayed until the fall — these folks grew concerned that the MTA would take away the very useful five-stop G train extension that’s been in place since 2009. Keep it, they rightfully argued.

Now, I know the value of this extension quite well. I live a short walk away from the 7th Ave. stop at 9th St. in Brooklyn, and ever since the G train has been extended through my station, trips to Williamsburg, Greenpoint and beyond have been much, much quicker. I don’t have to wait interminably for an F train only to have to wait interminably a few stops later for a G train. A one-seat ride, especially late at night, makes all the difference, and the crowded G train as it snakes through Brownstone Brooklyn is a testament to the success of this extension.

That the viaduct work won’t wrap until 2013 and that the G train extension has been successful, though, will not stop New Yorkers for getting all up in a tizzy. Since it appeared as though the end of the work was at least in sight if not actually around the corner, local leaders found a transit issue they could exploit. That, at least, is my pessimistic take on the issue.

The Straphangers along with Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz joined together to form the 5 Stop Fan Club, an advocacy group with a mission to convince the MTA to keep the G train extension alive. They started a petition drive, garnered front-page coverage in New York’s free dailies and earned a few brief TV and public radio spots. It’s a pro-transit campaign getting mainstream press coverage!

The comments came fast and furious. “Ending this service will have a profound effect on the community and the mom and pop stores along these five stops,” de Blasio said. “I encourage every New Yorker who wants to see the G train service preserved to join the 5 Stop Fan Club and let your voices be heard.” A Carroll Gardens resident echoed this concern. “The extension is a minor inconvenience for them to keep open, but it’s a major convenience for the public, especially on the weekends when service is slower,” George Luis Cordero said to The Daily News.

Something about this petition drive rubbed me the wrong way though. When I expressed my doubts via Twitter, Cate Contino of the Straphangers parried with me. I think the politicians signed on are just looking to garner constituent favor and that the G train extension will be saved if lower-case-s straphangers actually use it. The Straphangers, rightfully so, seek to raise awareness of a useful subway extension that will cost the MTA the operating budget equivalent of 3-4 extra train sets.

Yet, the MTA never said ti would axe the G train extension. At the start of the Culver rehab, the authority said the extension would be temporary with an evaluation to be conducted at the end of the work. That’s the line they’re still pushing today. As I’ve said, if the ridership warrants it, the G train extension to Church Ave. will become permanent, and so far, ridership appears to warrant it.

So here’s my proposal: Sign the petition; raise awareness about it. But in the end, as the folks petition over the M8 back in 2010 showed, if the ridership isn’t there, no amount of petitioning can save a doomed transit route once the MTA puts it under the cutting knife. So ride, ride, ride, and the G train won’t be going anywhere.

March 21, 2012 36 comments
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View from Underground

Video: The N train as a sleeper car

by Benjamin Kabak March 20, 2012
written by Benjamin Kabak on March 20, 2012

From the folks who bring us the annual No-Pants Subway Ride comes “The Sleeper Car.” Improve Everywhere, as part of an exhibit sponsored by the Guggenheim Museum, recently took over one car on the N train and turned into, well, not quite a classic sleeper car. The group explains:

For our latest mission we converted a New York City subway car into a “sleeper car,” giving New Yorkers the chance to rest their heads during a late night commute. We set up three beds, each outfitted with a comforter, pillow, and sheets. Pajamas, sleep masks, and earplugs were also provided as part of this unauthorized free service. The project took place on the above-ground N train in Astoria, Queens around midnight on a Sunday evening.

With the overly bright lighting and often-deafening volume of the pre-recorded announcements, sleeping on the R160s can be a bit of a challenge, but with the help of some sleep masks and beds, a few intrepid commuters managed to pull it off here. While I’ve pooh-poohed the No-Pants ride lately, I’m entertained by this one.

For more on this mission, produced as a part of the stillspotting nyc exhibit, check out Improv Everwhere’s blog post. They say they believe it isn’t against NYC Transit Rules of Conduct to bring a seat (or bed) on the subway, but I’m a bit skeptical of that claim.

March 20, 2012 8 comments
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AsidesSecond Avenue Subway

Second Ave. Dust Sagas: OSHA finds silica

by Benjamin Kabak March 20, 2012
written by Benjamin Kabak on March 20, 2012

The Upper East Side is all aflutter this week on the heels of a report released by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration concerning carcinogen levels underneath Second Ave. As The Post first reported yesterday, OSHA found found higher-than-acceptable levels of silica in the Second Ave. Subway work area, 70 feet beneath street level, and fined three contracts a total of $8500 for “serious” health violations. The full report is available here.

Of course, with this news, Upper East Siders already complaining of Subway Cough and skeptical of the construction efforts, launched a new round of complaints. “My office is two doors down, and I don’t really trust the people who give out the information in terms of the safety of people who live here,” said Robert Allen said to NBC New York’s Andrew Siff. News cutaways during primetime shows on TV last night highlighted residents expressing similar sentiments.

The MTA, meanwhile, defended its claims that the air above ground is safe and noted that silica couldn’t be reaching the avenue anyway. “The levels of silica underground noted in these preliminary findings under no circumstance impacts air quality at street level,” Kevin Ortiz, agency spokesman, told The Post. “Silica does not float in the air but rather drops to the ground, so it is essentially impossible for it to impact the air quality at the street level 100 feet above.”

March 20, 2012 2 comments
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View from Underground

Transit coverage that’s for the birds

by Benjamin Kabak March 20, 2012
written by Benjamin Kabak on March 20, 2012

Covering the ins and outs of transit news isn’t necessarily a sexy business. The vast majority of New Yorkers couldn’t care less about safety regulations, debt financing, bond issuances or the behind-the-scenes politics of the MTA Board. The stories that sell rather focus on MTA waste and bloat, fare hikes and infrastructure expansion. It’s far easier to understand and cover a story about a bunch of seemingly altruistic politicians who are trying to save something that likely doesn’t need to be saved — in a recent case, a successful five-stop extension of the G train into Brooklyn — than it is to explain how a decades-long pattern of divestment has led the MTA to be up debt’s creek without a paddle.

Lately, as I’ve tried to understand why transit isn’t more of an issue in local New York politics, as I’ve tried to understand how a small cadre of anti-transit folks, some NIMBYs, some not, have dominated the storylines, I find myself routinely looking at media coverage of transit. It’s been, in a word, disappointing.

Let’s take a story that appeared in the Monday New York Times. As we’ve heard on and off, the MTA often has to fight pigeons that like to roost in its open infrastructure. Some of the old el structures make for comfortable birds’ nests, and the droppings can be both disgusting to people and corrosive to metal. The street-level area on Roosevelt Island is particularly prone to pigeons, and the MTA has deployed a bird whistle to keep these flying rodents away.

The $375 whistles are a creative use of resources that could solve a quality-of-life and subway cleanliness problem. The Times decide it was worth a 700-word article in the New York section. Meanwhile, State Senate Republics are threatening to deny the MTA enough state funding to qualify for a billion-dollar loan for the federal government, thus jeopardizing the future of the Second Ave. Subway and East Side Access project. Plus, the head of the MTA promised fare hikes in 2013 and 2015 simply so the MTA has enough money to pay off its future pension and health care obligations. Those happenings have warranted zero words of coverage in the so-called paper of record.

Of course, once The Times picks up something, it spreads like wildfire. WABC and WNBC both re-reported the news about the bird whistle as though it weren’t something the MTA had been trying for months. It’s not a big story; it’s not going to impact riders; but it’s getting attention because The Times can drive the dialogue.

So should the Grey Lady be a driver of the news? Does The Times have a responsibility to report the news and distill complicated stories into items casual readers can understand? I think they do, and I also think that one of the reasons why New York voters aren’t as clued into transit issues as they should be rests with the stories that get coverage. Print journalism is a business, after all, and headline-grabbing tales of overtime abuse or kitschy bird whistles sells better than a diatribe on bond finances and the history of MTA debt.

Ultimately, though, the transit system is too important to go ignored. We can’t just cover the news when a fare hike looms or when the MTA is forced to cut service. The tales emerging out of Albany concerning GOP Senators playing Russian Roulette with the MTA’s capital funding warrant front-page stories. It impacts everyone from the transit-devoted among us to the person who needs the Q train to get from Midtown to Midwood. But New Yorkers can’t view transit as a major political issue because it isn’t covered like one. So how do we change that dialogue? It can’t all be about bird whistles.

March 20, 2012 18 comments
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