MBTASubway Advertising

Dispatches from Boston: Location-based audio ads

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on July 7, 2011

Once upon a time in 2008, the MTA and its advertising partner Titan proposed GPS-based advertising for New York City buses. The idea was a simple one: By equipping buses with LED screens and GPS responders, Titan could feed location-based ads to buses around New York. In 2009, the authority even tested a few buses with these next-gen ads, but the idea has seemingly fallen by the wayside. Likely, the costs were too high to justify the technology.

Up in Boston, we receive word of a similar initiative with an auditory twist. The MBTA is thinking of selling location-specific audio ads on its buses. Ben Wolfrord from The Globe has more:

For the second time in four years, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is considering selling audio ads on public transit as a way to drum up new revenue for the cash-strapped agency. A new pitch calls for targeted ads on buses that would be triggered by GPS technology. When the bus passes a particular business, an ad for that shop could play over the vehicle’s loudspeaker. If the audio advertising idea can generate money for the MBTA without irritating riders, officials said they will give it a try.

In 2007, the agency’s T- Radio, a program that mixed music and talk on T station platforms was short-lived. Hundreds of complaints poured in, and the MBTA killed the initiative after two weeks, before ads were aired. The MBTA is not yet sold on the latest idea, general manager Richard A. Davey said. “We’re going to take a look at it. We haven’t made a decision, but it’s something I’m interested in.’’

Before the end of the month, MBTA officials will hear a pitch from Ohio-based Commuter Advertising, which has launched similar advertising with several transit authorities, from Toledo, Ohio, to suburban Chicago, since its founding in 2008. “The company was founded by two transit riders,’’ said Russ Gottesman, cofounder of Commuter Advertising. For that reason, he said, they have the riders’ interests and their tolerance levels at heart. If the ads are profitable, Gottesman said, it could help prevent fare hikes.

According to The Globe, Commuter Advertising has figured out how to exploit audio ads that don’t annoy passengers. These ads would be short — only 29-39 words — and would play “when a bus drives past a business whose owner has purchased air times.” Only a few minutes per hour would be devoted to ads, and other cities — including Champaign, Illinois, have deployed these successfully.

As Boston debates this potentially revenue-generating projects, I wonder how New Yorkers would respond to such an auditory intrusion. Already, our daily rides are saturated with noise. Announcements than range from the unhelpful to the annoying bombard subway riders, and advertisements seem to be the next logical step. After all, the FIND displays have a space for video ads that the MTA doesn’t currently exploit; why not use the public address system to generate revenue?

For some reason, we seem to be more sensitive to paid advertisements than to run-of-the-mill announcements, but if these measures can drive revenue into the pockets of cash-starved transit agencies, why not? The MBTA thinks it can avert fare hikes if it can just find alternate sources of revenue, but that seems to be nothing more than wishful thinking. Still, if the choices are some audio ads or service cuts, I’ll take the ads every which way ’til Sunday.

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AsidesFulton Street

MTA CC: (Most of) Cortlandt St. to reopen by 9/11

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on July 6, 2011

The saga of poor Cortlandt St. on the BMT Broadway line is a decade-long one. Seriously damaged by the collapse of the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, the station remained closed for a year before opening again in 2002. For three years, the station remained open as work at the WTC site stalled out. When the MTA began to prep for the Fulton St. project, the station closed in August 2005, and it has remained a work in progress since then.

With the tenth anniversary of those terrorist attacks just two months away, the MTA has vowed to reopen the two Cortlandt St. stations, and work on the R line is coming down to the wire. Christine Haughney examines the station in a Times piece today, and while workers are patching up the walls, the station may not be entirely ready by early September. “There are two pieces to the puzzle. Some of it is cosmetic and some of it’s structural,” Michael Horodniceanu, head of MTA Capital Construction, said. “This part of the work is much more time consuming because finishes always take longer.”

The station, Horodniceanu said, will be open to the public on the tenth anniversary of the attacks, but it won’t be finished. The Dey Street connector will not be ready until 2014, and escalator repair and elevator installation won’t happen until after the grand re-opening. Still, it will good for Lower Manhattan that passenger service on the southbound platform will be restored to Cortlandt St. Ever so slowly, the pieces are being reassembled.

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Transit Labor

Musings on the looming labor battle

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on July 6, 2011

As the hot summer days melt away, the MTA and its unionized workers are rushing headlong toward a labor battle. The authority, as we know, wants to keep labor costs steady, cap what it views as runaway pension spending and, if possible, halt or curtail wage increases. The union wants the polar opposite. While the two sides recently worked together to push Albany to approve a Transit Lockbox bill, the fall negotiations will be long and bitter.

In the build-up to these negotiations, battle lines are being drawn, and Monday’s Daily News featured the first salvo. In what was frankly an odd piece, Pete Donohue highlighted the perils of being a transit worker. Starting with the story of a 1995 station booth torching and mentioning a recent attack, he noted the incidents of violence perpetrated against transit workers by irate customers. These included token booth torchings in 1979 and 1988 as well.

Meanwhile, the article mentions some long-term statistics as well. Since 1947, 239 track workers were killed on the job, Donohue reports. It also, he writes without citing actual numbers, “seems a day doesn’t go by without someone jumping or falling in front of a train entering a station.” It all builds to one conclusion: “Straphangers shouldn’t be outraged that transit workers will at least ask for a cost-of-living increase. There should be outrage that the MTA will make a strong push to deny them one.”

If only it were that simple. This labor battle isn’t really about cost-of-living increases or worker safety. It’s going to be about worker productivity, job flexibility and personnel staffing levels. It will be about securing maximum efficiency from dwindling numbers of workers, and if the MTA is able to wrest the concessions it wants from the union, it will be far more likely to consider that cost-of-living wage that Donohue holds in such high esteem. (Anyway, as Larry Littlefield noted in the Streetsblog comments, it would help the argument to at least explore how transit workers’ wages have increased vis-a-vis other workers over the past few years. That’s an argument missing from the early discussions.)

So what then exactly are the real issues? Regular SAS readers will now them well. The lasting image of station agents is that of a worker fast asleep in a deserted station. The MTA will likely want to expand the role of those remaining station agents. Should they be required to leave their booths? On the flip side, what extra safety precautions can the MTA can guarantee? The overarching concern though is one of use: Do we even need as many station agents as we have?

Next come concerns over staffing levels. Do trains need a conductor and a driver? When will New York City embrace OPTO? Why have two people do the job of one? In a similar vein, why are the individual labor roles so limited? People who clean stations don’t clean trains and vice versa. The MTA will look to exact more productivity out of its labor force.

Finally, what of escalating pension costs? Should the MTA expect to sustain a slew of workers who can retire at 55 with full benefits but then live for another 25-30 years? The agency isn’t operating with much fiscal leeway, and if it has to pay a current labor force and a retired labor force, operating budgets are going to suffer.

In the right context, a cost-of-living adjustment and more safety precautions should be non-issues, and in that sense, Donohue is right on the money. Negotiations, though, are a constant give-and-take, and until both sides recognize that reality, the divide between them may be a deep one indeed.

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Second Avenue Subway

Photo of the Day: A cut-and-cover retrospective

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on July 5, 2011

Construction progress for the IND Crosstown line (looking east toward the Court Street Station, now home of the Transit Museum) on Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, NY. October 20, 1930. (Photo courtesy of the Transit Museum)

In honor of its 35th Anniversary year, the Transit Museum — New York’s must underrated playground for subway enthusiasts — published a photoset to flickr today of scenes from the past three and a half decades. As a tantalizing glimpse at what lies in its archives, it fronted the set with the above shot from 1930 of the construction of the IND Crosstown line at Court and Schermerhorn Streets in Brooklyn. Looks like a mess, eh?

This historic shot got me thinking about the complaints surrounding construction along Second Ave. Once upon a time in New York City, subway construction was the norm. For 35 years in the early decades of the 20th Century, New Yorkers expected torn up streets cutting through neighborhoods in various states of development, and the resulting benefits included a vast new subway system. Yet, now, the last time cut and cover construction was employed in New York City, residents protested when parts of Central Park were dug up to make way for the 63rd St. tunnel.

Today, the Second Ave. Subway has turned a once-vibrant commercial and residential strip into a dust bowl of noise and construction fences. The MTA is trying to work with community groups to minimize the impact, but the authority has, to put it charitably, been less than successful in doing so. Now imagine if the scene from Court and Schermerhorn were transplanted to Second Ave. at 85th St. in 2011. That’s an unpleasant image, to say the least.

Many advocates for subway expansion have pointed to the costs of a deep-bore tunnel as an impediment to those projects, but the truth is more complex than that. Deep-bore tunneling isn’t significantly more expensive than cut-and-cover to justify what would arguably be a neighborhood-destroying project. It’s politically infeasible to propose cut-and-cover right now, and these scenes from the past remind us why.

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AsidesEast Side Access Project

Concerns arise over East Side Access completion date

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on July 5, 2011

In its original incarnation, the East Side Access project was to be completed by the second quarter of 2012. As we well know, that timeline has been pushed back by over four years to September 2016, but according to an MTA report, the agency is concerned that they may need to further delay the projected substantial completion date for the Long Island Rail Road connection into Grand Central.

In a document presented last week at the MTA Board committee meetings, MTA Capital Construction officials said “our confidence level in meeting the September 2016 revenue service date is low without significant mitigation.” Because of “on-going contractor delays in Manhattan and Queens” as well as some back-and-forth with Amtrak over the Harold Interlocking work, the MTA has nearly exhausted its schedule contingency, and thus, without mitigation work, the project is in danger of missing the September 2016 date.

According to the brief report, available here as a PPT document, Capital Construction is going to work with the LIRR to reassess construction sequencing and timing for the final sections. The Capital Program Oversight Committee will hear the suggestions and potential cost impacts in September.

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Fulton Street

The billion-dollar transit hub, from above

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on July 5, 2011

A view of the Fulton Street Transit Hub from 19 stories up. (Photo courtesy of Jeremy)

Before the long weekend, SAS reader Jeremy sent me the above picture via his Twitter account. It is, as the caption says, a view into the Fulton Street Transit Center from 19 stories above, and it reminds me of the numerous photos of sports stadium construction that dot the Internet. Clearly, work has a long way to go, but the future $1.4 billion hub is quickly taking shape.

In its most recent update, the MTA still says the transit center will wrap in mid-2014, and the budget is still set for $1.4 billion. Even as the MTA struggles to keep the East Side Access project on schedule, it’s hard to believe it could miss the Fulton St. revenue date. After all, this is a project that was supposed to be completed years ago for $700 million, and it’s now talking twice as long and twice as much money to realize a glorified subway station amidst the streets of Lower Manhattan.

Every time, then, that I see images of this structure, I’m both impressed and disappointed. The Fulton St. hub will certainly be a pleasing addition to the downtown landscape, and the station rehabilitation at that location is a badly needed one. Yet, it’s a money sink. At a time when the MTA has to fight for dollars from Albany for capital projects that keep the trains moving, the feds are lavishing over a billion dollars on a glorified subway stop. This isn’t some regional hub that connects passengers entering and leaving New York; it’s a subway stop.

So what would I do with $1.4 billion? Adding a PA/CIS system along the B Division lines would greatly improve the rider experience. Pushing the CBTC program with more funding would allow for more trains at peak hours. Think about what $1.4 billion could do for the next phase of the Second Ave. Subway or how many basic station rehabs it could fund. The possibilities are endless.

Ultimately, the Fulton Street expenditure is a problem I’ve often highlighted. Politicians like to spend money on things that are living examples to their generosity. A Senator can’t point to a specific piece of equipment with pride when he or she starts to cull votes, but that same representative can discuss his or her efforts at securing federal dollars for a gleaming new downtown transit hub. The problem is that New Yorkers need more of those behind-the-scenes improvements that make the subways more pleasant or easier to ride. We don’t need a $1.4 billion subway stop at Fulton St.

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Service Advisories

Service changes abound for the weekend of the Fourth

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on June 30, 2011

In case today’s slow posting schedule wasn’t a dead giveaway, I’ve decamped from the city for a nice long Fourth of July weekend out of town. I’ll be back on Tuesday to round up any news I might have missed. In the meantime, here are the weekend’s service advisories. The MTA sends along the following note about Monday subway service:

On Monday, July 4, the New York City Subway will operate on a Saturday schedule with increased service following the Macy’s fireworks celebration. The fireworks display will originate from six barges located on the Hudson River between 20th and 55th Streets from 9:20 to 9:50 p.m. After the fireworks, there will be increased subway service on the 1, 2, 3, A, C, E, L and 42nd Street S Shuttle.

As a reminder, on Saturdays, B and Z trains do not operate. The M train runs between Middle Village-Metropolitan Av. and Myrtle Av. The Q terminates and 57th St. in Manhattan and the J terminates at Chambers St. in Manhattan.

Have a great weekend, and be safe.


From 3:30 a.m. Saturday, July 2 to 6 p.m. Monday, July 4, free shuttle buses replace 2 train service between East 180th Street and 149th Street-Grand Concourse due to track panel installation between Jackson Avenue and Freeman Street. 2 trains will operate in two sections:

  • Between 241st Street and East 180th Street
  • Between 149th Street-Grand Concourse and Flatbush Avenue


From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, July 2 to 5 a.m. Monday, July 4, 3 service is extended to New Lots Avenue during the overnight hours due to the suspension of 4 service south of Brooklyn Bridge.


From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, July 2 to 5 a.m. Monday, July 4, there is no 4 service between Brooklyn Bridge and Utica Avenue due to work at the Fulton Street Transit Center. The 3, N, and Q trains provide alternate service. Note: During this time, 4 trains run local in both directions between 125th Street and Brooklyn Bridge.


From 3:30 a.m. Saturday, July 2 to 6 p.m. Monday, July 4, 5 service is suspended between East 180th Street and Bowling Green due to track panel installation between Jackson Avenue and Freeman Street. A free shuttle bus is available between East 180th Street and 149th Street-Grand Concourse. Customers between 149th Street-Grand Concourse and Brooklyn Bridge may take the 4 instead. Customers at Brooklyn Bridge and Bowling Green may use the R (N overnight) at nearby stations.


From 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday, July 2 and Sunday, July 3, Bronx-bound 6 trains run express from Parkchester to Pelham Bay Park due to rail and plate renewal at Middletown Road.


From 11 p.m. to 5 a.m., Friday, July 1, Saturday, July 2 and Sunday, July 3, uptown A trains operate express between 59th Street-Columbus Circle and 125th Street. There is no uptown C local service at 72nd, 81st, 86th, 96th, 103rd, 110th, and 116th Streets this weekend. This is due to track work south of 110th Street. Customers traveling to these stations may take an uptown train to 125th Street and transfer to a downtown train. Customers heading to stations above 125th Street from these stations may take the downtown train to 59th Street and transfer to an uptown train.


From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, July 2 to 5 a.m. Monday, July 4 uptown C trains operate express between Canal Street and 59th Street-Columbus Circle due to work on the Broadway/Lafayette-to-Bleecker Street transfer connection. (Train traffic would be too congested to operate three services – A, F and C – between Jay Street and West 4th Street, so C will operate express.)


From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, July 2 to 5 a.m. Monday, July 4, Queens-bound F trains run local on the A line from Jay Street-MetroTech to West 4th Street due to work on the Broadway/Lafayette-to-Bleecker Street transfer connection.


From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, July 2 to 5 a.m. Monday, July 4, downtown F trains skip 23rd Street and 14th Street due to platform edge rehabilitation at 34th Street.


From 11 p.m. Friday, July 1 to 5 a.m. Tuesday, July 5, there are no G trains between Hoyt-Schermerhorn Sts. and Church Avenue due to track work north of Hoyt-Schermerhorn Sts. G trains operate in two sections:

  • Between Court Square and Bedford-Nostrand Avs and
  • Between Bedford-Nostrand Avs and Hoyt-Schermerhorn Sts. (every 20 minutes)

Note: The A provides connecting service between Hoyt-Schermerhorn Sts. and Jay Street-MetroTech.


From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, July 2 to 5 a.m. Monday, July 4, Brooklyn-bound N trains operate on the D line between 36th Street and Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue, in Brooklyn due to installation of track panels.


From 4 a.m. Saturday, July 2 to 10 p.m., Sunday, July 3, Brooklyn-bound N trains skip 30th Avenue, Broadway, 36th Avenue and 39th Avenue due to structural overcoat painting along the Astoria Line.


From 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday, July 2 and Sunday, July 3, Brooklyn-bound N trains run local on the R line from DeKalb Avenue to 36th Street (Brooklyn) and Queens-bound N trains run local on the R line from 59th Street (Brooklyn) to DeKalb Avenue due to structural overcoat painting along the Astoria Line.

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View from Underground

Further musings on prioritizing street space

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on June 30, 2011

The Wafels and Dinges truck, my personal favorite, parks outside of Key Food in Park Slope on Saturdays. (Photo by flickr user Adam Kuban)

I am an unabashed fan of New York’s burgeoning food truck scene. From the Wafels & Dinges stalwart to the cookies from the Treats Truck to Mexicue’s sliders and beyond, I find the food trucks to be a breath of fresh air amidst New York’s stagnant lunch scene, and I eye Los Angeles, Portland and the Bay Area enviously for their vibrant food truck and food cart offerings.

Unfortunately, though, while many New Yorkers agree with me, those with power — the restaurant and food services industry — don’t feel the same way. To them, the food trucks represent a threat. While no longer a novelty, they have remained popular by offering good, cheap food, and from Midtown to Park Slope, bricks-and-mortar stores feel threatened. They don’t want to lose their customers to better options and think that food trucks, which do pay taxes and do adhere to DOH standards, are leeching off of their businesses. Competition, of course, is good for everyone, but try telling that to someone with an insane rent on a mediocre deli on 48th Street.

To that end, restaurants and delis have often tried to get food trucks to move. They’ve complained to the cops and to City Council members; they try to get parking regulations changed or old laws enforced. It is, as The Times noted earlier this week, working:

In the last 10 days, the Treats Truck, which has sold cookies and brownies for four years during lunchtime at West 45th Street near Avenue of the Americas, has been told by police officers that it is no longer welcome there, nor at its late-afternoon 38th Street and Fifth Avenue location. The Rickshaw Dumpling truck, a presence for three years at West 45th Street near the Treats Truck, has been shooed away as well.

The police “have told us they no longer want food trucks in Midtown,” said Kim Ima, the owner of the Treats Truck, a pioneer of the city’s new-wave food-truck movement, who began cultivating customers on West 45th Street in 2007.

Also ejected from their customary Midtown locations recently were the Comme Ci, Comme Ça Truck at 38th Street and Broadway; the Desi Truck at West 50th Street between Seventh Avenue and Avenue of the Americas; the Eddie’s Pizza Truck, the Kimchi Taco Truck and the Wafels & Dinges Truck, all at West 52nd Street and the Avenue of the Americas; the Crisp on Wheels truck at West 51st Street and Seventh Avenue. Members of the ragtag fleet of generic soft ice cream trucks in the area have been cast out, too.

Few if any of these trucks have been ticketed, and few towed. Nevertheless, some vendors who tried to return have been shooed away again. Many, including the Treats Truck, consider themselves permanently displaced and are trying to find other locations. In some cases, they have been turned out of their new neighborhoods, too.

According to The Times, this drive to push food carts out of midtown stems from a recent New York State Supreme Court case that turned to an old law “believed to date from the 1950s.” The law bars any “vendor, hawker or huckster shall park a vehicle at a metered parking space” from offering “merchandise for sale from the vehicle.” In May, Judge Geoffrey Wright decided this law applied to food trucks, and cops in certain Midtown precincts where delis feel most threatened have ramped up the pressure to get food trucks to move.

Now, the problem here isn’t just one of a limited culinary palate. It’s one of street prioritization. Food trucks inherently encourage pedestrians to use the sidewalk space they have, and they turn road space otherwise taken up by either idle and empty parked cars or moving traffic into an economically beneficial activity. Food trucks should be encouraged, and laws leftover from the 1950s when no one had even heard of the Rickshaw Dumpling Truck should be discarded. Of course, that would require a City Council willing to face down the food services lobby, and that won’t happen. Somehow, food services are louder and more vocal than pedestrians.

One day, the city will better allocate street space based on use. Then, we’ll be able to enjoy our waffles, our cookies and our overpriced lobster rolls in peace. For now, the food trucks will be marginalized to neighborhoods that actually want them.

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MTA Technology

Report: Elevator warning system plagued by false alarms

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on June 29, 2011

The MTA’s love/hate relationship with its escalators and elevators has continued, according to a report from the MTA Inspector General. The Daily News provides the details:

Straphangers stuck in elevators may have been trapped longer than necessary because a new monitoring system was plagued by false alarms, the Daily News has learned. Instead, staffers on a control desk in the MTA’s Elevator and Escalator department waited for notification from trapped riders or other transit workers before sending mechanics to the scene… “Despite public concern, media attention and demands for improvement by the MTA Board, elevators and escalators remain a problem,” the report said…

Other findings include:

  • Some inspection and maintenance work reported as having been done may not have been performed.
  • In addition to the many false alarms, the automated monitoring and alert system sometimes failed to send a warning during true entrapments. There were 208 entrapments in the first six months of last year.
  • Managers didn’t know false alarms were a problem and wrongly thought staff was immediately dispatched. They weren’t aware that monitoring equipment was disconnected at some elevators – including some with the highest number of entrapments.

For its part, the MTA says it will create a position in charge of escalator and elevator oversight who can spearhead “maintenance and reliability.” “We know we have to,” Caremn Bianco, senior vice president of subways, said. “We know this is a huge source of frustration for our customers.” I think I’ll take the stairs.

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AsidesTransit Labor

Arbitrator upholds Meehan dismissal

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on June 29, 2011

Remember the story of Edward Meehan? He’s the bus driver who has been suspended 15 times by the MTA for a series of infractions including speeding and running red lights. The MTA finally moved to fire him two weeks ago after he was caught using a Staten Island express bus for less-than-wholesome meetings with local women, and of course, his union filed an appeal.

Well, the story ends well: Meehan’s firing has been upheld by an arbitrator. Meehan, says the arbitrator, engaged in “outrageous behavior.” “Discharge is the only appropriate penalty,” the decision says. Justice, after 15 suspensions. Seems like a sound process to me.

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