Queens

For convention center, Genting will fund A train ‘improvements’ only

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on February 3, 2012

When Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced plans for an Ozone Park Convention Center, funded solely by Genting and with transportation improvements as well, Queens transit advocates had hoped for the best. With dreams of the Rockaway Beach Branch dancing in their heads, rail enthusiast reimagined the borough’s connections with hope. Alas, it is not meant to be.

We heard rumblings in early January that Genting would fund a Train to the Plane-type service, and this week, the company confirmed as much. In an interview with Crain’s New York, the company’s senior V.P. for development spoke about the company’s needs if they are to operate at a profit. Essentially, they would require a larger slice of the revenue pie from the convention center and an expected boost of traffic to the racino next door. They also won’t do much for transportation.

Jeremy Smerd reported:

Genting will pay for upgrades to the Aqueduct subway station and for direct A-train service to take passengers from Fulton Street in Manhattan to the site—with a stop in downtown Brooklyn—in half the 35 minutes it takes now. The company won’t fund a new AirTrain spur from John F. Kennedy International Airport. It also will not pay for street upgrades.

That simply will not cut it. Based on past experiences without new trackage, such a service won’t cut travel time from 35 minutes to 17 minutes. Rather, these super-express trains will end up stuck behind regular express trains, and straphangers who live along the IND Fulton will find their service less frequent.

Genting won’t like the reality of this situation, but they’re going to need to find a better transit solution that doesn’t rob service from areas with rapidly growing populations and transportation needs. If increasing capacity is not in the cards, this convention center, already a fairly bad idea, will just look worse.

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TWU

CBC: Net-zero wage increase ‘fair and appropriate’

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on February 3, 2012

A net-zero wage increase for TWU workers would be “fair and appropriate” considering the totality of the circumstances, the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission said this week. In a report analyzing what could and should happen were the MTA and TWU face arbitration to resolve their ongoing labor dispute, the CBC said a compensation package should not cause fare increases, and the Commission explained in detail how TWU workers have enjoyed prosperity in a poor economic climate and should not expect to earn across-the-board wage increases.

The report, released on Monday and available here as a PDF, is framed as a grand what if. What if, as has routinely happened between the two sides, the MTA and TWU must go to arbitration in front of the Public Employment Relations Board to settle their differences? How would the PERB decide in a binding case?

Using the same five criteria PERB members must consider, the CBC analyzed the TWU’s current situation and the MTA’s financial crisis. Overall, they found the heavy rail operators and bus operators and maintenance staff are already the highest paid in the country and are often better off than New York City’s private employees when it comes to wages, health insurance and pension benefits. As TWU employees enjoyed raises of over 11 percent from 2009-2011, New York’s private employees saw, on average, pay bumps of barely one percent.

Furthermore, TWU compensation has “consistently exceeded inflation.” Since 1999, TWU raises have risen by 47 percent while inflation has increased by 38 percent. Over the past three-year contract, the raises have outpaced inflation by nearly 100 percent.

To compound the problem, the MTA is not in a position to suffer through more wage increases, the CBC notes. “Failure to achieve this [net-zero] target will widen the MTA’s operating deficit: each one point increase awarded to the TWU would increase costs by $42 million, if applied to setting wages elsewhere in the system. “An award along the lines of projected inflation – 2.2 percent in 2012 and 2 percent thereafter – would open a budget gap of $92.4 million in 2012, $176.4 million in 2013, and $256.4 million in 2014, approximately 2.25% of operating expenses,” the report says. “Since the MTA does not have the financial ability to pay any wage increases awarded with a greater cost than ‘net zero,’ riders are likely to bear the burden in the form of increased fares or reduced service.”

The net-zero wage increase then may be in the public good, the Commission believes. The MTA must, they write, have resources to “provide reliable service, preventing fares from becoming burdensome to riders, and securing decent compensation and work conditions for worker.” Efficient operations can accomplish this goal, and to that end, the CBC says, the TWU and MTA may have a serious discussion on one-person train operations. Ultimately, something as bare as work rule reform must be accepted by both sides.

In the end, the CBC issues a call for a net-zero wage increase. They write:

The findings indicate that awarding “net?zero” wage increases is fair and appropriate given the current economic climate, the fiscal outlook of the MTA, the burdens recently placed upon riders, and the high relative and overall compensation level of TWU employees.   State and City governments have set a three?year wage freeze, with added employee responsibility for health insurance costs, as the pattern for settling expired public employee contracts.  Applying this pattern to the TWU contract would not compromise the standard of living of TWU workers; the inflation rate is projected to be about 2 percent, and a three?year wage freeze will not undo the real wage growth that TWU employees have realized over the last decade.  Increasing employee responsibility for health care costs, through increased premium?sharing or salary contributions, is also appropriate given the relatively modest contributions made by TWU employees as compared to other public and private employees.

Can it happen though? The TWU has not shown a public willingness to accept a net-zero increase in labor spending. Union leaders know such a plan would lead to stagnant wages or a work-force reduction, and that’s a tough pill for union members to swallow. For the public though, affordable and reliable subway service may just depend on it.

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AsidesTWU

Courting controversy as TWU/MTA talks begin

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on February 2, 2012

When the TWU accused the MTA of “negotiating through the media,” union leaders staged a public walk-out from the negotiations and refused to sit down with their authority counterparts for two weeks. Today, as talks were due to start up again, the authority had a chance to respond to union press leaks, and respond they did.

The New York Post reported this morning that the TWU had “won” a key concession from the MTA. Subway drivers may receive three days off following any incident, fatal or not, in which their train strikes a person. Furthermore, conductors could get time off if they observe someone fall between cars or slip between the subway and platform edge. In the past, conductors did not receive such time off, and drivers had to be behind the wheel of a fatal accident to qualify. “Protecting conductors and operators from these horrible incidents underground was one of the main goals,” The Post’s source said.

As TWU President John Samuelsen reacted to an MTA leak, so too did the authority react to a TWU leak. “It is the MTA’s policy not to negotiate through the press,” MTA Chairman Joe Lhota responded in turn. “However, we will not allow inaccurate or leaked statements regarding negotiations to stand as fact. Today’s New York Post story is harmful to the collective bargaining process.” It is unclear if The Post report is accurate or what the TWU may give up in return for these protections, and despite the tense war of words over media reports, sources confirm to me that neither party anticipates a strike even if a deal is not yet on the horizon.

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Straphangers Campaign

Straphangers: Subway station conditions need some work

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on February 2, 2012

Water damage and missing tiles mar the walls at 7th Avenue on the IND Culer Line. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

As far as transit services go, subway stations are caught amidst a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, it’s far more important for the MTA’s offerings to ensure that tracks, its signal system and the rolling stock are in top shape than it is to gussy up its subway stations. On the other hand, though, subway station appearance sets a tone for the level of care the authority gives its outward-looking infrastructure. Decrepit stations with rats and garbage indicates a level of inattention to passenger environment.

Today, the Straphangers Campaign released their assessment of subway station conditions, and the report attempts to quantify what we see on a daily basis. Their team observed 250 station platform at 120 randomly selected stops. That figure, they say, represents 28 percent of the system’s 909 platforms. During the survey, conducted last year, they found some good, some bad and some ugly.

As they highlight it, the good is a bare qualifier. Every station they saw had garbage cans present, and somehow, only one of the 250 suffered from overflowing trash cans. Furthermore, only six percent had visible garbage bags lying about. The bad included rats in 15 out of 139 underground stations — a figure that seemed low to me — missing tile, exposed wiring and cracked floors and staircase. The ugly though was ugly. Nearly 80 percent of stations had substantial peeling paint while 53 percent suffered from water damage.

Yet, despite these findings, I am inclined to think that the Straphangers over-rate the state of the stations. It’s the subtle things that matter. Sure, every station may have a trash can or two, but as I’ve noted in the past, at 7th Ave. on the Culver Line for instance, the last garbage can is a few hundred feet from the end of the platform. Thus, garbage piles up far from the trash receptacle.

Meanwhile, while recently renovated stations alleviate the underground blight, those that haven’t gone under the knife in decades, if ever, look worse for the wear. In the Bronx along the IRT lines, in Brooklyn both above and below ground, throughout Queens, stations are literally falling apart. Walls are bare, floors are grimy, benches are just flat-out gross. Franklin St. in Tribeca might look great, but the 149th St.-Grand Concourse subway station has needed a substantial amount of work for at least two decades, if not longer.

It’s hard to maintain over 468 subway stations, many of which suffer from decades of deferred maintenance. It’s costly and time-consuming to keep up with the seemingly unattainable State of Good Repair, and painting over leaky walls and cracked ceilings is akin to putting make-up on a pig. But between rats and water damager, dark corners and garbage bags, the city’s stations need some help. This report is just another voice calling out for better repairs.

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MTA EconomicsMTA Politics

The Great New York State Bond Swindle

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on February 2, 2012

When the MTA announced last week that it was hoping to refinance its debt, the Bloomberg News reporters who covered the story let slip an oft-overlooked fact. Because of an obscure provision at the end of the New York State Public Authorities Law, the MTA must pay to the state $8.40 for every $1000 it borrows through the sale of government-backed bonds. In other words, if the MTA borrows $1 billion, it owes the state $8.4 million.

When we actually stop to think about that, it seems a bit contradictory. Public Authorities exist, to some degree, to allow states to escape constitutionally-bounded debt limits. States are often banned by their founding documents from taking out too much debt, but public authorities, quasi-state entities, can avoid those debt limits. Thus, the MTA can become one of the nation’s largest debtors while the New York State books are technically clear of these debt obligations.

On the other hand, the state is charging the MTA for its own ineptitude. Why is the MTA looking to issue another few billion dollars in debt? Because the state hasn’t come up with a better funding scheme and is happy to put paying for today’s upgrades on the shoulders of tomorrow. In a way, then, the MTA is paying double: It has to pay this so-called “cost recover” fee now while paying down debt later.

In The Daily News today, Pete Donohue reveals a shocking figure: The MTA has paid $105 million to the state in debt issuance fees since 2006. That’s enough to fund the 2010 service cuts and restore bus service for millions of New Yorkers. “These unnecessary fees add to our total debt and strain our ability to provide bus and subway service,” Allen Cappelli, an MTA board member, said. “Our riders deserve relief so that this money could be used to provide restorations and improved service.”

Donohue has more:

In the last fiscal year, the MTA paid the state nearly $20 million in bond issuance fees, according to data provided by the state controller’s office. In the fiscal year ending in April 2009, the MTA paid the state more than $30 million. Since 2006, the MTA has paid $105 million in fees. But the agency borrowed extra money to cover the cost of those fees. That debt adds up to $6.5 million in interest payments annually, authorities said.

The MTA this year plans to sell an unusually large amount of bonds to raise new money and refinance existing debt. It potentially could wind up paying the state another $75.4 million in fees. MTA Chairman Joseph Lhota has asked the state budget director to grant a waiver lowering that amount by tens of millions of dollars.

State controller Thomas DiNapoli said the bond issuance fee also is “an issue for other public authorities that issue debt. As the State moves toward greater fiscal discipline, this is a practice that should be reviewed.”

That’s a rich one: Not only must the MTA pay these unnecessary fees, it also has had to borrow additionally money to pay the state to borrow more money. If you think about it for too long, it becomes a blackhole of terrible and irresponsible fiscal policies.

This is a broken system. The state won’t adequately fund transit maintenance and improvements, and in fact, the state is levying a penalty on the MTA for trying to do so. The authority can ill afford to see Albany remove another $20 million from its budget, but without reform of this law, straphangers will continue to pay for political mismanagement by and from those we continuously send to Albany.

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Queens

From Queens, a call to reactivate the Rockaway Beach Branch

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

A schematic shows the Rockaway Beach Branch service from 1955 until it was shuttered in 1960. (Courtesy of Railfan.net)

Before Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced plans to build a convention center in Ozone Park, Queens residents were gearing up to square off over a decommissioned bit of former LIRR tracks. Park advocates with some vague stirrings of NIMBYism wanted to turn the rail right-of-way into a park while rail advocates rightly objected. The convention center proposal, complete with a vow by the developer to fund transit to the area, has thrust this small section of rusted rail tracks back into the spotlight, and now the trail advocates are fighting back hard.

In The Daily News today, Carl Perrera, David Krulewitch and John Rozankowski put forward a compelling argument for reacativating the Rockaway Beach Branch line, and they put forward various solutions for such a reactivation. Krulewitch and Rozankowski are no strangers to this issue, and Perrera has been advocating for rail use for years. Now, they offer up this argument:

Some have suggested the revival of the JFK-Super Express service. Since there are more A trains running today than in the 1980s, a service conflict would be created and the needs of the convention center would not be met. Fortunately, there is a better alternative: the revival of the northern section of the old Long Island Rail Road Rockaway branch. The Regional Rail Working Group Rockaway Subcommittee and other transit advocates have studied this line and offer the following options:

The Railroad Option would have the LIRR resume operations between Penn Station and Aqueduct. Two stations would be built — at Rego Park and at Aqueduct. The latter would allow transfers to the A train and to the Air Train (if it were extended from Howard Beach). If rail cars are developed with the ability to operate on both lines, a one-seat ride from Midtown to JFK would be created.

The Subway Option would divert the M or R subway line east of 63rd Drive (via an already built connection) to the northern section of the Rockaway line. The subway would converge with the A train north of the Aqueduct Station and continue into the Rockaways. At Rego Park, two stations would be built, one for the subway and one for the LIRR mainline to permit transfers between the two services.

This would allow Rockaway riders a quick trip to Midtown or to eastern points in Long Island. Under both options, additional stations can be added after consultation with the affected communities.

The trio note that, if the MTA is not interested in such a proposal, the city could, as it has done with the 7 line, foot the bill since it is the legal owner of the right-of-way. In fact, for any rail development along the Rockaway Beach Branch to see the light of day, someone else — the city, the state or Genting — will indeed have to foot the bill.

Furthermore, the three authors parry with neighbors who claim a rail line would have a negative impact on their quality of life. Perhaps noise for a few would be an issue, but an electric train line would not impact pollution levels. Plus, the increased transit access would lead to a jump in property values as well.

They end with a call for a Rockaway Line Reactivation Task Force: “Does CB9 want to be the spoiler conducive to the inundation of Ozone Park with traffic, thus continuing transit misery for Rockaway riders and to block a chance to link Queens in an effective crosstown service? Or does CB9 prefer to be a good neighbor and support a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to improve mass transit for everyone’s benefit?” The choice, to me, is an easy one. If the state is going to build a convention center in Ozone Park, they must do everything right, and that includes rail access.

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AsidesSelf Promotion

Event Tonight: SAS presents ‘Problem Solvers’ the Transit Museum

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

A final reminder: Tonight is the first event of my “Problem Solvers” discussion series at the Transit Museum. The event starts at 6:30 p.m., and you can find directions to the Museum right here. If you’ve never been, it’s a great spot in the decommissioned Court St. subway stop. The event series will take an intimate look at the people who are working behind the scenes to change the face of our transit system as the subway approaches its 110th birthday. My first guest will be Sarah Kaufman, currently with NYU Wagner’s Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management and formerly the MTA’s open-data guru.

While with the MTA, Kaufman created a conference and online exchange between the MTA and software developers and assisted in developing the agency’s social media program. She specializes in the use of cutting-edge technologies in transportation, particularly mass transit, and the opportunities for community involvement in transportation management through interactive technologies.

Sarah and I will talk for a bit about her work and the problem of access to transit-related information she has worked to solve before we open the floor to audience questions. The program kicks off at 6:30 p.m., and doors to the museum will open at 6. Guests are invited to walk through the museum and to explore the collection of old trains as well. Light refreshments will be available as well. Hope to see you there.

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View from Underground

Improving commutes through communication and headways

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

During a recent weekend, West Side IRT headways were a bit tighter than they should have been. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

Last night, I enjoyed one of those typical nights where the MTA communications network broke down. I was coming back home from the West 4th area to Park Slope and had hoped to take a B train. According to the MTA’s schedule, I had two B trains left to catch before the route shut down for the night, and all things being up to snuff, I would have had no problem.

Of course, things weren’t up to snuff. I wanted a few minutes past the scheduled B train arrival time, and the D showed up. Luckily, to coincide with the D train, an announcement noted that B service had stopped for the evening. The PA voice offered no reason for the shutdown, two trains and ten minutes earlier than it should have been, and it wasn’t until the D was crossing the Manhattan Bridge that I had a chance to learn of a “rail condition” impacting B and Q service.

Ironically, the first notification of a problem came via a tweet from OEM. The city’s Office of Emergency Management claimed that “normal B train service” had been restored following an “earlier rail condition.” That seemed to be at odds with Transit’s in-system announcement that B service had stopped for the evening, and I wasn’t about to wait around for 15 minutes trying to assess which agency was telling the truth. Something had happened, and passengers weren’t informed of the fact.

When I arrived at Pacific St., I just missed an IRT local train that could have taken me to Grand Army Plaza, and the countdown clocks told the story of a wait. The second train out was, properly, 12 minutes away, but the next train was still nine minutes away, approximately three minutes behind schedule. By the MTA’s own internal metrics that give trains five minutes of leeway, that next train was on time. By my own metrics, I was on the verge of waiting nine minutes for a train at 10:45 p.m. with another train just three minutes behind it. That is not good service.

Were this an isolated incident, I would be more willing to overlook it. Rail conditions happen. That’s the price we pay for a 24/7 underfunded system that features significant outdoor mileage. Yet, this is also a matter of information. I had to wait at West 4th St. for too long before any announcement concerning downtown express service filtered into the station, and even then, it conflicted with the most recent information I could access. Transit still hasn’t figured out a way to transmit real-time status alerts to customers who are in their system and have no access to cell service. That’s been a gripe of mine for years.

The headway problem is another issue entirely, and it’s one I see with increasing frequency along the IRT routes. At rush hour, there is often a six-minute gap between East Side express trains before two arrive nearly on top of each other. Late at night, when the downtown 3 makes only two stops before merging with the 2 line, these uneven headways are even less explicable, and yet, they happen all the time. The photo atop this post is an extreme example I observed two weekends ago.

Tiny operational efficiencies — better communication, regular headways, shorter waits — can lead to less agitated customers and a more pleasant commute. It’s often tough to realize that in a complex system, but later, it seems as though these small improvements are just flat-out missing.

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AsidesTWU

‘Slowdown’ on tap as labor talks resume

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on January 31, 2012

This morning, it took my 4 train a whopping ten minutes to go from 14th St. to 42nd St., and as the announcements kept blaring about “train traffic ahead of us,” my mind wandered to this Daily News article. In the wake of a series of gruesome deaths a few weeks ago, the TWU has told its train drivers to “use extra care” when entering stations due to safety concerns. It’s a perfectly legal move employed during labor negotiations that tend to drive straphangers nuts.

Meanwhile, after two weeks of stewing over “bad faith negotiations” brought about when the TWU objected to an apparent leak of the MTA’s demands, the two sides will resume formal talks on Thursday. While the TWU’s outrage over the MTA’s supposed negotiating tactics has stalled forward progress, MTA Chairman Joseph Lhota says that he and TWU president John Samuelsen have maintained an open line of communication over the past few weeks. A deal though is still not on the horizon, but neither is a strike.

For a full glimpse at the MTA’s demands, check out this pdf. They range from benefit reductions to operational improvements, but OPTO, sadly, is not among them.

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7 Line Extension

Archive: How the Olympics ruined the 7 line extension

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on January 31, 2012

On Saturday afternoon, I walked the High Line, and as I stood at the fence at the northern end of the park’s reach, I pondered the Hudson Yards area. Had Mayor Bloomberg secured the 2012 Olympics, that expanse of future development would have been bustling with activity as crews would have been hard at work finishing up the stadium that would have played host to the Summer Games. Instead, we’re waiting on the future of the Javits Center, eventual mixed use development above the rail yards and a one-stop extension of the 7 line that won’t open until early 2014.

In London, the city is trying to finish various infrastructure improvements and Olympics-related construction projects. The city has spent $10 billion on transportation improvements, but they are still urging commuters to change their travel patterns during the games. The Olympics crowds across the pond will make the East Side IRT at 6 p.m. seem downright empty.

As London’s expenses for the games spiral well above budge, I wanted to revisit and revise an old post on the 7 line extension and how the failed Olympics bid changed the project. What would have happened, I asked, had the city secured the Olympics. Let’s find out.

The 7 line project — one now destined to serve residents of a real estate complex not yet built or even paid for — got its start in Bloomberg’s desires to see the Olympics come to New York. It was that same desire and the subsequent loss of the games to London that has led to the downfall of the station at 41st and 10th Ave.

We know the project’s recently history fairly well. The project’s design phase started in 2002 when Bloomberg launched his plan to develop Manhattan’s last great frontier, the Hudson Yards land. At the time, the Mayor hoped to lure the Jets from New Jersey with a stadium that would also serve as the home for the 2012 Summer Olympics. In June 2005, amidst massive public protest, the state legislature failed to guarantee financing for the stadium, and a few months later, the IOC, citing that failure, awarded the Olympics to London.

Still, the 7 line extension did not die with the Olympics. Originally, the project’s timetable was an aggressive one. Project Design Completion was due to be wrapped up by December 2006 with construction beginning that year and revenue service in time for the Olympics in 2012. Today, the MTA still lists TBD as the Project Design Completion date. Construction started on December 15, 2007, over a year later than originally anticipated, and revenue service is right now scheduled to start during December of 2013. The MTA will miss those Summer Olympics by a good 17 months.

Over the course of project’s history, the City and MTA have fought over nearly every aspect of it. The City, the primary funding partner for this extension, refused to fund cost overruns and an expensive station stop at 41st and 10th Ave. The MTA has had trouble securing a deal for the land rights to the Hudson Yards area, and the current $1 billion offer from Related is on borrowed time, already one month past the anticipated closing date.

What though would have happened if the Olympics had come to New York? For that, we hit the maps. Take a look at the map below. It is an excerpt from a special map the MTA printed in 2005 showing the potential locations for all of the Olympics events. (To view the map in full, click here.)

Any Olympics plan for the city included heavy usage of the Far West Side. The Javits Center would have hosted six key events, including weightlifting, fencing, wrestling and table tennis, and the planned West Side stadium would have featured some track-and-field contests and the soccer matches. To ensure capacity for those events, the city would have needed a subway stop at 34th St. and 11th Ave. and probably would have paid to build the one at 41st and 10th as well. Instead, the costs skyrocketed, and we’re left with REBNY’s protests, years too late.

Today, progress along the 7 line may be slightly delayed. MTA Capital Construction will release an update within the next few months, but revenue service may not start until the first quarter of 2014. Michael Horodniceanu, head of the unit, has said the Mayor will ride the subway he views as his legacy whether it is a test train or not. No one though is surprised at the delay. Meanwhile, we can remember when the Olympics nearly came to New York. Enthusiasm amongst city residents was decidedly mixed, but the subways would have benefited once the athletes all went home. The station at 41st St. would have been a reality instead of a lost opportunity.

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