View from Underground

Photo of the Day: A ghost from service cuts past

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on February 3, 2011

(Benjamin Kabak/Flickr)

Where: Above the stairway leading to the Rockefeller Center station complex on the southwest corner of 50th St. and 6th Ave.
What: The V train bullet, a remnant of the June service cuts, still lives while at this entrance, the M doesn’t stop here.
When: Monday, January 31, 2011, seven months after the V’s last run.

I’ve been interning twice a week in Midtown this semester, and the nearest entrance into and out of the Rockefeller Center complex is the on on the west side of 50th St. As I bounded down the staircase Wednesday evening, I saw a ghost — the V train lives. This Monday, I snapped a better picture of this rather ornate station entrance with our dearly departed V train bullet in all of its glory.

In a sense, this photo is all about nostalgia over lost train lines. While the name has changed — the M now runs on the V — the service pattern is actually better for the city. The rapidly expanding populations in Middle Village and South Williamsburg now have a direct route to midtown, and the new M train service over the Chrystie St. Cut has been a resounding success even as it represents a service cut along Brooklyn’s 4th Ave. and West End lines.

On the other hand, though, this photography is about the tension between the MTA and those private companies with which it contracts. For many entrances within buildings, the landlord is in charge of maintenance and upkeep. Those duties include updating fanciful signage, keeping escalators running and clearing the staircases of snow and ice. Yet, oftentimes, landlords don’t do what they must do. Entrances — such as the one at 52nd and 8th. Ave. — remain closed, and escalators remain closed forever, a fact to which anyone who uses Union Square can attest.

At Rockefeller Center, the system’s 14th busiest station and a tourist destination, this sign still says a train that hasn’t operated since June still stops there. Anyone expecting the V will be waiting a long time indeed.

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New York City Transit

Pondering the meaning of being on time

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on February 3, 2011

A new report questions the MTA's current on-time performance metrics and suggests a passenger-based approach instead.

One of the biggest complaints New Yorkers have with the MTA and an oft-heard excuse early in the morning is one of the more mercurial aspects of transit operations. “Sorry I wasn’t on time,” we’ll often hear. “The B train was late this morning.” What exactly does that mean?

When I head from Brooklyn to Manhattan every day, I use the B train at 7th Ave., but I don’t really leave at the same time any day of the week. When I had two early classes last semester, I could time my trip to catch a B train at approximately the same time every morning, and when there was a problem, the train wouldn’t be there. To me, that’s the traditional definition of on time.

But there are other ways to measure on-time performance. One that the MTA uses internally is a wait assessment. Intuitively, this one makes some sense. If the B train is supposed to run every eight minutes, it matters less when the B trains arrives as it does when the next B train after that arrives. As long as the interval is eight minutes — or in the MTA’s case, eight minutes plus 25 percent — the trains are still on time, and people won’t be left with empty tracks when they expect a train.

Finally, we can judge a train based upon when it’s supposed to get to the end of the run. This is another metric Transit uses to judge on-time performance. If a train is at its terminal within five minutes of the scheduled time, it is still considered on time. Anything worse means delays or one sort of another along the route. But are these any good?

In a report released yesterday, the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA examined the authority’s wait assessment metrics and found them rigorous but lacking. The committee praised the MTA for being among the most transparent transit operators in the country in providing wait assessments but determined that the rankings did not help passengers evaluate on-time performance. The wait analyses, in other words, are geared toward internal evaluation and not improvements for the customers.

“A schedule is a promise,” PCAC Chair Ira Greenberg said. “A late train or bus breaks that promise and the impact is lost time for the riders. People depend on the MTA’s service for their livelihood. We want the MTA to think of the rider first, before trains and buses, and we look forward to working with them to achieve this.”

The report — which I’ve embedded below — presents an extensive evaluation of the MTA’s three rail divisions and a comparison with other U.S.-based transit providers. Passengers, it finds, are left in the dark, and ultimately, PCAC urges the MTA to develop a passenger on-time performance metric that can identify the number of passengers delayed and which ones are delayed most frequently.

Most vital is the report’s recommendation that the MTA start promoting capital expenditures as a way to improve on-time performance. PCAC highlights the countdown clocks as an example of a technology that can lead to more satisfied customers even if they don’t improve the wait times. “While countdown clocks do not create performance measurements,” the report says, “they serve to moderate the rider’s expectation of performance with real time knowledge.”

It takes a stronger stance on capital improvements viewed as disruptive by passengers. “The average rider doesn’t necessarily understand what new interlockings, switches and signals are, let alone appreciate how their improvement will enhance their commute. Historically, the use of performance metrics at the MTA began as an effort to secure needed capital funds. That linkage, as a tool to promote capital programs to the riding public and elected officials, has weakened over the years,” it says. “Specific information on how an item in the Capital Program will reduce the number of delayed and canceled trains, increase track speeds, and improve the ability to recover from a major service disruption is relevant to the riders.”

Now, that just makes sense. If the MTA can convince anyone that their work will make trains run on time, shouldn’t that be a prime selling point for a project? I would think so.

Keeping people moving and making sure they get somewhere on time should be a paramount goal for any transit provider. While wait measurements and delay assessments are more important for commuter rail riders who see transit only every 30 minutes at peak times instead of every five, subway riders like to know they’ll get to their jobs and appointments on time without egregiously long waits. By presenting that information to the public in an easy-to-understand fashion that directly addresses the wait, the MTA could improve the way customers impatiently wait for trains. Time might be on my side after all.

After the jump, read the PCAC’s full report.

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Public Transit Policy

Can regular ferry service save the city?

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on February 2, 2011

A Times graphic shows the proposed route for the city's new regular ferry service. (Via)

Pardon the hyperbole in the headline atop this post, and if anyone chuckled at the recycled idea of ferry service acting as the city’s transportation savior, I wouldn’t blame them. Politicians have been trying to bring regular, affordable ferry service to the city’s waterfront for decades, and now, the Mayor is at it again.

Michael Bloomberg will announce today that, beginning in June, BillyBey, a part of New York Waterway, will begin operating regular ferry service between Brooklyn, Queens and the East Side from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. during the week and from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays. During peak hours, the ferries will operate every 20 minutes — a move the city hopes will help attract potential customers — and the boats will run every 30 minutes off-peak and once an hour during the winter. The ride, subsidized to the tune of $9 million a year by the Economic Development Corporation and with a three-year commitment, will cost $3 or $5.50 depending upon the departure point.

According to Michael Grynbaum’s coverage in The Times, the ferries will “travel along a seven-stop route that stretches from Long Island City, Queens, to the Fulton Ferry landing by the Brooklyn Bridge, and includes Manhattan terminals at Pier 11 in the financial district and East 34th Street.” New stops include India Street in Greenpoint and North Sixth Street in Williamsburg. On the Manhattan side, the operator will run a free bus down 34th St.

“If we want every part of Brooklyn, every part of Queens, to be as attractive to businesses and residents as Midtown Manhattan is,” City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn said, “we have to make it as easy as possible to get to and from in an orderly, affordable fashion. That is what ferries can do.”

For the city, the key to this new service is the use of the word “regular.” In the past, efforts to bring ferry service to the East River have foundered due to, as Grynbaum puts it, “infrequent service, outsize operating costs and low ridership.” By enforcing a frequent schedule and subsidizing the route, the city hopes that residential growth along parts of the waterfront in northern Brooklyn will help make ferry service viable. “Consistent and dependable service will be a magnet for potential users,” Robert K. Steel, a deputy mayor, said. “Development has occurred along this corridor. You’ve got more people who would potentially find the service attractive.”

When the city first floated this idea back in June, I supported it, but the caveats about ferry service in the city remain. The biggest problem is one of access. New York’s waterfront — and Manhattan’s especially — is rather isolated from the city and not that close to the major job hubs. To make the ferries more dependable than, say, the subway, the trips will have to take less time, and it’s tough to see that happening especially when connecting bus rides are involved.

The other issue is one of demand. Does the demand exist to run ferries every 20 minutes? Do enough people live near the East River waterfront to fill up the boats? Pier 6 at the Brooklyn Bridge Park, for instance, is far from everywhere, and even though bikes will be allowed on board the boats, it’s probably faster just to ride over the bridges. Even in Williamsburg where waterfront development has been most pronounced, boats every 20 minutes seems aggressive.

Still, the city is trying, and that’s what counts. If the ferries lighten the load on the L train in the morning and take a few more cars off the road, perhaps they can work out after all.

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Metro-North

Metro-North to scale back New Haven service

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on February 2, 2011

The M-8s were first ordered in 2006 and unveiled in 2008, but they have yet to enter revenue service.

For the past four years, Metro-North and the Connecticut Department of Transportation have tried to ready the new M-8s for rollout along the New Haven line. After a 2008 announcement from then-Gov. Jodi Rell that promised a prototype by the end of 2009 and ten cars a month after that, things went wrong. The cars failed a stress test in June of 2009, and last month, reports surfaced of delays in testing the new rolling stock.

Now, the New Haven line is starting to buckle under the weight of train cars in dire need of replacing. As Michael Grynbaum reported this morning in The Times, Metro-North is cutting service on the New Haven line because half of the current fleet has been “knocked out by weather-related repairs.” As of this upcoming Monday, commuters from Connecticut will see their regular weekday service greatly reduced, and Grynbaum says these changes will “stay in effect indefinitely, at least until engineers can muddle through a steep backlog of repairs on the railroad’s aging, exhausted fleet.”

“We are not able to run a stable operation on the New Haven Line,” Metro-North President Howard Permut said to The Times. “The trains are overcrowded, and the trains are so unreliable coming into the Bronx that they are now delaying Harlem and Hudson trains.”

Grynbaum has more:

For weeks, the line’s 67,000 riders, who hail from commuter enclaves like Greenwich, Conn., and Larchmont, N.Y., have had to squeeze into rail cars with barely enough room to stand. Many trains are too packed to board at all. Delays and cancellations are commonplace, and confused crowds have mobbed Grand Central Terminal at rush hour, trying to decipher train schedules that seem to have run amok. “This is a significant step which we almost never do,” Mr. Permut said of the new schedule, which is still being drawn up. “We’ve never had this amount of cars out of service.”

Nearly half of all New Haven line trains have been relegated to repair yards for problems like frozen brakes, broken motors and malfunctioning doors, and Mr. Permut described the railroad’s facilities as “inadequate” to handle the needed maintenance.

Most of the trains were built in the 1970s, and their electronic systems have proved ill equipped to handle the storms and icy weather affecting the region. High-tech replacement cars have been delayed for years because of manufacturing problems and a lack of financial support from the Connecticut government, which covers part of the costs for the line.

The breaking point, as Grynbaum noted, appeared to be a YouTube video that showed a New Haven Line train riding into Grand Central with a door wide open. Passengers acted as though this malfunction were a routine occurence, and from the sound of things, it just might well be.

Now, I don’t want to read too much into this announcement. After all, this winter has been particularly rough on infrastructure, and January saw record snowfalls across the region. But on the other hand, this is a clear sign of what happens when we simply stop investing in rail infrastructure. Connecticut has dragged its feet for years when it came to funding the M-8 project, and now, the MTA has no choice but to cut off a part of the country’s most reliable commuter line. Investment patterns have to change, and we as a region must do more to ensure that the modernization of our rails moves ahead as it should.

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High-Speed Rail

Should high-speed rail focus on the northeast?

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on February 2, 2011

Some politicians believe the federal government should invest heavily in high-speed rail in the northeast.

When Amtrak unveiled its $117 billion plan to bring high-speed rail to the Northeast Corridor, I was highly skeptical of the project’s ever seeing the light of day. To build this corridor, nearly 500 miles long, would take 25 years and a ridiculous amount of commitment and cooperation from forces too skeptical of widespread rail expansion. It is, however, an idea that won’t and shouldn’t die.

When Mayor Bloomberg spoke of the region’s transportation crisis last week, he did single out only airports. “The Northeast is approaching a transportation crisis,” the mayor said at a House hearing in Grand Central. “Our airports are among the most clogged, our highways are among the most congested, and our train corridor is the most heavily used in the country. And all of that is just going to get worse, as the region’s population is expected to grow by 40 percent by 2050.”

Bloomberg isn’t the only one pushing for transportation expansion in the area, and many politicians representing both sides of the aisle up and down the corridor have begun to urge the Obama Administration to focus its high-speed rail investments in the northeast and along the Northeast Corridor. This is, after all, the densest region of the nation and the one that stands to benefit the most from high-speed rail.

During his testimony last week, the mayor criticized the government’s current investment plan. With projects in Florida, California and the Midwest garnering headlines, the Northeast Corridor has taken a backseat in Washington with only one percent of federal HSR funds coming our way. “That simply just doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “What we need is a new approach to spending transportation money — one that is not dictated by politics, but based on economics.”

This area is in fact the biggest economic hub in the country, and without a solution to the congestion and transportation crisis, the U.S. economy could begin to feel a strain. As Crain’s New York noted, “The northeast corridor is an ideal place to invest in high-speed rail because its 50 million residents produce 20% of the nation’s gross domestic product.”

Others at the hearing, as Transportation Nation reported, took up Bloomberg’s calls. Kate Hinds wrote:

[Transportation Committee Chair John] Mica Mica had harsh words for Amtrak, saying that federally-funded rail provider is not the entity that will bring America to the promised land of a fast train that will bring passengers from New York to Washington in under two hours.

“Let me tell you — this is my 19th year of following Amtrak — (it will) never be capable of developing the corridor to its true high-speed potential,” he said. “The task is too complex and too large-scale, and can only be addressed with the help of private sector expertise…and also (Amtrak) will never get the funding for it with the plan they’ve currently proposed.”

…It seemed like everyone was on board with prioritizing Boston-to-Washington. As Governor Rendell said: “Making significant investments in the Northeast Corridor to achieve true high speed rail must be our number one priority. No other corridor in the country has the population density and ridership as well as the economic wherewithal to result in successful and likely profitable, high speed rail line….The Northeast Corridor will demonstrate the value of these investments to our entire nation.”

If anything is going to get this project off the ground, it must be a concerted effort from D.C., Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island too. High-speed rail requires immense space; for instance, it needs 16 miles of straight, flat track to reach 200 miles per hour, and routes must be as straight as possible. Considering the density in the areas, it’s a tall order indeed.

Again I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for this route to materialize, but much like addressing the airport problem should be a regional concern, so too should high-speed rail. It’s a part of the package of upgrades that must be made to keep the northeast running smoothly and to keep our economy competitive with nations currently investing heavily in this technology. It would be stimulus spending at its best, but does the political will exist to fund something of this magnitude?

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MTA Economics

Cuomo removes $100M in dedicated transit dollars

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on February 1, 2011

Click the image to see Gov. Cuomo's proposed budget.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has, as feared, removed $100 million in dedicated funding from the MTA’s budget as part of his effort to close a state spending gap that reaches the billions. For the authority, this is the second year in a row that the state’s chief executive has striped money intended for downstate transit, and while the MTA says it will not raise fares this year, history is not on the agency’s side.

Basically, the net losses to the MTA will be $100 million overall but such a relatively slim cut was accomplished only through an accounting sleight-of-hand. Essentially, Cuomo is removing $200 million in dedicated operating funds and granted the MTA’s capital fund — with its $10 billion gap — a meager $100 million in economic development money. The loss to the operating side far outpaces the $143 million Gov. David Paterson removed from the budget in late 2009.

John Petro from the Drum Major Institute has some analysis. Despite the potential for another $194 million infusion in capital funding only, Petro warns of the looming spectre of future service cuts if operating dollars aren’t restored. He writes:

Essentially, Cuomo’s budget transfers money from the operating to the capital budget. Of the $200 million being cut from the operating budget, $165 million will be used to pay down the state’s past borrowing on transportation bonds. The remaining $35 million will go to the state’s general fund.

While it is essential that the governor and legislature find ways to fully fund the MTA’s capital program, which has a nearly $10 billion hole, taking critical funds used to maintain good service is not appropriate. Nor is $100 million, or even $294 million if the Bond Act funds are included, enough to begin plugging the capital budget hole.

The governor has repeatedly insisted that he would not raise taxes or implement new taxes. But without a new source of revenue for the capital program, there will be more pressure placed on the MTA’s operating budget. The MTA can trim its costs only so much before more service cuts or fare hikes are on the way. Some of these service cuts will only be slightly perceptible—dirtier train cars and stations, abandoned bus runs. If this trend of cutting operating funds continues, more severe service cuts will need to be considered.

In its own statement, the MTA pledged to avoid service cuts or fare hikes. The authority had said the same thing a few years ago, but in mid-2010, it was forced to axe two subway lines and countless bus routes. Here’s their statement:

We understand that the State’s fiscal crisis requires sacrifice from every area funded by the State, including the MTA. Because the MTA has already taken unprecedented measures to reduce costs, finding an additional $100 million in 2011 will be very painful, especially with sizable deficits still projected for 2012 and 2014. As we continue cost-cutting, further reductions become harder and harder to achieve.

But we must fill this gap, and we will fill it without resorting to fare and toll increases or service cuts, because our riders have already been hit with these painful measures over the past year. Instead, we will work to find additional cost-savings through efficiencies and improved productivity throughout our company. We are hopeful that this year we can work with our labor unions to find productivity improvements that protect jobs even as we reduce costs.

Making these cuts will be painful, but we can only spend as much money as we have. Given the financial pressures facing the State, local governments, and every New Yorker, our only choice is to manage the MTA so that every dollar counts.

The Straphangers Campaign, meanwhile, applauded the MTA for avoiding service cuts and fare hikes — or at least promising to — and urged the state to use dedicated transit money only for transit. “In the view of the Straphangers Campaign and many other groups, those funds should be used to meet transit needs. However, the MTA says it will not have to turn to service cuts or fare increases to make up the shortfall. That’s very welcome after an unprecedented three years in a row of higher fares – as well as last year’s service cuts, the worst in memory,” Gene Russianoff said in a statement. “The MTA says that it will have to take ‘painful’ actions. The Straphangers Campaign and other groups will monitor the agency’s response closely to see that the transit system has adequate resources to provide safe, reliable, well-maintained, secure and clean service.”

Transportation Alternatives was even more direct in its statement. “Governor Cuomo campaigned on restoring honesty and ethics to Albany, but when it comes to transit nothing much has changed,” Paul Steely White, the group’s executive director, said.. “Cuomo is taking dedicated funds away from the riders.”

It’s hard to take this as anything other than bad news. It’s not a surprise, and every agency in the state is suffering under Cuomo’s budget. But the MTA has had it bad lately, and if stations get even dirtier and personnel begin to disappear from those stations again, we’ll know why. This is Albany’s doing through and through, and now it’s up to the MTA to minimize the impact of these cuts.

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BusesMTA Technology

B63 BusTime pilot officially live

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on February 1, 2011

A screenshot of the landing page for the B63 BusTime pilot shows the buses along the route.

New York City Transit has officially flipped the switch on its own in-house real-time bus tracking project. A few hours ago, its pilot program around the B63 — which I discussed in an in-depth exclusive this morning — went live. It’s now available at the MTA’s BusTime site, and the Developer API is ready to go as well.

“Today, the transit system is quickly catching up with our 21st century expectation that real-time information is available on the go for all New Yorkers,” MTA Chair and CEO Jay Walder said in a statement. “That means knowing if your bus is on time before you leave home, getting updates on delays while you’re out and about, and unlocking opportunities for better service across our entire network. MTA BusTime is a big part of this new vision for bus service in New York.”

By clicking on a bus, users can see how far away the vehicles is from its next stops.

As I explained this morning, the new tracker, developed with OpenPlans, uses an open-source software program along with a GPS device with dead reckoning, an on-board wireless modem and an internal computer to keep tabs on the buses along the B63. The MTA is offering web- and text message-based tracking for buses and is working with merchants to install LCD signs displaying bus locations in real-team along the route. For customers used to frustratingly long waits for buses and glances down busy avenues, this should take the guess work out of waiting for buses that sometimes don’t show up at all.

“We are working hard to provide up-to-the minute travel information for both bus and subway customers,” Transit president Thomas Prendergast said. “There are few things as frustrating as having to guess when the next bus is going to show up at your stop. With MTA BusTime, next bus arrival times are right in your hand.”

If all goes well with the pilot, this system will be installed in all Staten Island buses later this year. For more from OpenPlans, check out their posting on the project.

Selecting a particular bus stop shows how far away the nearest buses are.

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MTA Technology

Transit exploring glass doors for platform edges

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on February 1, 2011

Platform screen doors, such as those seen here at London's Westminster station, could soon come to New York's subway system.

Transit is exploring the possibility of installing glass doors on its platforms to keep passengers safe, tracks clean and stations climate controlled, the Daily News reported today. With a recent spate of high-profile accidents involving straphangers who have fallen or were pushed into the tracks as well as concerns over debris in the tracks, the MTA is trying to focus more sealing off the station edges and are soliciting expressions of interest for plans to install platform screen doors, platform edge doors or a platform edge gate. They want, however, to find a project that involves “little or no upfront costs” to the authority, according to the Request for Information.

“We are very early in the process,” Kevin Ortiz, Transit spokesman, said to the News, “of looking at the possibility of installing platform doors that would go a long way toward enhancing passenger safety and station appearance.”

According to the RFI, Transit is looking for vendors who can a proposal with a variety of attributes. First, the authority wants something that won’t require service diversions to install, and they want a system that can be controlled remotely and opened in case of emergency. Due to varying car lengths on the B Division, Transit wants a system that can detect and respond to door placements.

Learning from previous mistakes, Transit is searching for a system that requires “minimal preventative maintenance” that can withstand an “extreme operating environment.” The doors must be tamper and vandal resistant and must have space for informational displays and advertising posters. It must integrate well within the existing infrastructure and station technology and should be compatible with the various signaling and CBTC systems. The authority also said it will consider only venders whose systems that “have been proven in large-scale applications” in a “heavy-rail environment.”

It’s hard to dislike this project. Doors would keep passengers safely away from tracks, allow for a more temperate station environment and keep garbage on the platforms where it is easier to clean. For the MTA, though, the key is cost. As I mentioned, the authority wants to pay as little as possible and could pursue revenue-sharing plans with the chosen vendor. Otherwise, this project, as previous MTA officials have warned, will be too expensive. Still, any excitement over this project may be a bit premature. The response to the RFIs are due in March, and the authority will then evaluate whether or not it wants to proceed with an RFP process.

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BusesMTA Technology

Along the B63, an in-house real-time tracking solution

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on February 1, 2011

The real-time tracking solution for the B63 has been developed in house by the MTA. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

Within its 2011 agenda, the MTA promised to bring real-time bus tracking to every single bus under its purview on Staten Island. For those who have been charting the MTA’s bus-tracking project, this is a seemingly bold promise to put to paper. After fits and starts due to GPS compatibility issues, the authority had managed to install Clever Devices’ costly Bus Tracker program on only the M34 and M16, but the costs for that project proved too great for city-wide adoption. And so the MTA turned in-house for a solution.

This week, Transit will unveil that in-house solution, as the agency’s bus time tracking system will be live on the B63 in Brooklyn. The new system will follow buses as they run from Pier 6 at the Brooklyn Bridge Park to the southern terminal near the Verrazano Bridge and back. While the signs in the buses say the debut will be today, the official launch is still a few days away, and when the project is ready, it will be live on the MTA’s website at http://bustime.mta.info/.

Last week, I took a tour of a bus at the Jackie Gleason depot with Michael Frumin, a senior strategic analyst with the MTA. Frumin, known for, among other things, his subway spark lines, has been working to develop an open-design approach to real-time tracking that comes at a lower cost than the Clever Devices’ implementation and allows the MTA more freedom with its data. He and I had a talk about the new bus tracking equipment and the MTA’s thinking behind an open source approach.

The main problems with the Clever Devices’ system concern its proprietary nature and its cost. For the MTA to install Clever Devices’ computer, it must either upgrade old buses as a relatively high cost and maintain a closed computer network. At one point, the authority had estimated that it would take at least $140 million and five years just to install Clever Devices’ system through the city, and even then, the software and hardware handcuff the agency. Only Clever Devices can run software on its own hardware, and only Clever Devices can control the data flow. We’ve seen the limitations of the MetroCard technology, and the MTA wasn’t keen on pursuing a lengthy and expensive contract with another proprietary company.

So the MTA instead went the open-source route. Working with OpenPlans, the non-profit behind Streetsblog, on a $265,000 software-development contract, the MTA went about setting up its own system. On the hardware side, the set-up is simple. Using much of the same technology that will one day be installed as card readers for the next-generation fare payment technology system, the bus tracking uses a wireless moden, a power conditioner, a highly-secure on-board computer and a GPS device with dead reckoning to track the bus.

A glimpse at the technology behind the MTA's new BusTime set-up. The GPS device, right, hooks into an internal computer with a power conditioner and wireless modem. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

At the outset, the device relies on the driver to input data that he must input at the start of every route and when the bus turns around. By hooking the computer up to the bus route sign, the bus’ initial direction is sent to the software. For example, when a B63 leaves the Jackie Gleason Bus Depot and the driver arrives in Ft. Hamilton, he’ll set the sign to say that the B63 is Cobble Hill-bound. The internal computer will read the direction, and with data from the GPS, it can calculate the direction and location of the bus as it travels its route. The Clever Devices’ system relies on schedule data and other complex calculations to derive location.

Of course, as with any less expensive and open system, the data won’t be as complete as that offered by Clever Devices. With its in-house bus tracker, the MTA can present at the outset how far away the bus is from its location but not how many minutes away from a certain stop the bus will be. Frumin told me that it is a goal to develop an accurate prediction algorithm for travel times.

Meanwhile, because this new system is open-source, the MTA can open it up to developers. It will issue an API and allow New York’s myriad transit programmers to take a crack at the data. Frumin spoke to me about possible uses. Someone could develop an SMS alert system or a do-it-yourself countdown clock that auto-refreshes based on the BusTime information. CEMUSA, the owner of the bus stops, could, for instance, install its own timers even as the data remains available online. Essentially, with this open source approach, when you need to add features or want to borrow what others are doing, it’s quite easy.

A screenshot of the B63 BusTime tracker as it will appear online. At press time, a larger image was not yet available.

So what’s next? It seems clear that while the internally developed BusTime will make its debut in Brooklyn, Staten Island will be the real testing ground. Can an entire borough’s bus fleet be viewed at one time? Will the MTA run into GPS-based problems as it eyes Manhattan? Dead reckoning should fix that problem, but it’s much easier to implement location-based technology along 5th Ave. in Brooklyn than along 5th Ave. in Manhattan.

For now, though, we’ll see in-house development in action. The MTA will have the chance to show us that it can develop real-time tracking for cheaper than a closed-source market leader. For a giant transit provider seemingly afraid of technology five years ago, that is a step in the right direction.

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ARC Tunnel

With ARC in limbo, a hazy future for Stewart

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on January 31, 2011

Airspace conflicts are but one of the many problems plaguing the region's airports. (Via)

While speaking at a House Committee hearing on transportation and infrastructure last week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned of an impending crisis in the northeast. “The Northeast is approaching a transportation crisis,” the mayor said. “Our airports are among the most clogged, our highways are among the most congested, and our train corridor is the most heavily used in the country. And all of that is just going to get worse, as the region’s population is expected to grow by 40% by 2050.”

On the heels of that committee meeting, the Regional Plan Association issued a report on the state of our airports. The tale they tell is not a new one; we’ve known for years that the metropolitan area’s three major airports are well above capacity. Yet, the numbers they throw out — a need for an additional 78 peak-hour flights per day — are staggering. The need to expand is one that could have dire economic consequences.

“The crucial link between air travel and economic prosperity is threatened by a lack of adequate capacity in our aviation system. We need to start planning now for future growth,” Robert Yaro, president of the RPA, said. “The cost of building airport capacity, while significant, must be weighed against the even greater toll on the region’s economy if we do nothing.”

Enter Stewart Airport. Located just 60 miles outside of Manhattan, Stewart has been the go-to airport for saving the region from air congestion for as long as I can remember, and the plans to use it have never made much sense. In 2007, the MTA announced a study to explore a rail link between Manhattan and Stewart. For $600 million, the authority would have provided a 90-minute ride to the tiny airport, and I long believed this to be a waste of money. Stewart is just too far away and adds too much time to a trip to be as popular as it must be to alleviate the pressure at Laguardia, JFK and Newark.

As ARC hit the ground running, though, it seemed as though Stewart would be eligible for a rail link via the new tunnel, but now that ARC is dead, so too seems Stewart Airport’s future. The RPA study doesn’t believe Stewart is a viable fourth airport, and they believe the Port Authority is overplaying the importance of its upstate property which is on pace to draw only 400,000 passengers this year. Patrick McGeehan of The Times has more:

Jeffrey M. Zupan, an analyst with the Regional Plan Association who led the study, said he forecast that Stewart would draw only about half the traffic the Port Authority hoped for. By the time the four airports controlled by the Port Authority are drawing 150 million passengers a year, only about 3.5 million of them, or just over 2 percent, will be using Stewart, Mr. Zupan said….

The best prospect for luring travelers from the city and close-in suburbs to Stewart is an express train, Mr. Zupan said. But elected officials, most notably New York’s senior senator, Charles E. Schumer, had pinned hopes on running trains from Midtown Manhattan through a new tunnel under the Hudson River and up the west side of the Hudson.

Now that New Jersey’s governor, Chris Christie, has scrapped the plan for that rail tunnel, the idea of direct trains to Stewart appears to be fading. Senator Schumer said, however, that a rail link to Stewart was still more feasible than some of the ideas for airport expansion laid out in the study last week, like filling in part of Jamaica Bay to add a runway at Kennedy.

“Stewart will still be a needed airport, but without the rail link, the chance of its really alleviating the overcrowding at the other airports is minimal,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview. “It will be a secondary airport — important but secondary.”

Ultimately, the airport issue is part of a wider problem. New York needs better access. Uniquely situated on an island, the city’s central business district is choked by a lack of expansion. We haven’t added roads, rails or airport capacity to the area in decades, and the economy will begin to suffer as congestion and delays worsen. Stewart won’t be and never was the answer, but something will have to give.

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