Subway Movies

The Screening of Pelham One Two Three

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on September 30, 2010

As part of its series showcasing heist movies, Film Forum is taking everyone’s favorite subway caper out of storage. The arthouse will screen the 1974 original version of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three for two days starting tomorrow. The movie will go on at 1:30, 5:35 and 9:45 on Friday and Saturday and will be shown in rotation with Charley Varrick, another Walter Mathau heist film. The details are available here.

The original Pelham One Two Three, directed by Joseph Sargent and starring Mathau and Robert Shaw, remains a quintessential 1970s New York movie. The film captures the essence of living in the city during its decline and does a wonderful job skewering cops, the mayor and the MTA as well. If you’ve never seen it, check it out this weekend, and even if you have seen it, isn’t it time to watch it again?

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AsidesFare Hikes

Unlimited MetroCards expected to stay that way

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on September 30, 2010

The MTA Board will hold an official vote on the 2011 fare hikes during its special meeting on October 7, but agency CEO and Chairman Jay Walder expects the unlimited cards to remain unlimited. While speaking on the fare hike hearings during yesterday’s board meeting, Walder noted how public sentiment was firmly against the capped passes. “I think New Yorkers said they really like having an uncapped, unlimited monthly pass to go around the city,” he said said. “The likelihood is that you will see a monthly pass consistent with the monthly pass we have now…”It’s safe to say there wasn’t a lot an enthusiasm for a capped pass.”

The MTA had been toying with the idea of instituting a 90-ride cap on 30-day passes, and those MetroCards would have cost $99. With that plan seemingly off the table, the authority expects the 30-day cards to pass the century mark as a month of unlimited rides will soon cost $104. “It’s bittersweet,” said Gene Russianoff, whose Straphangers Campaign fought hard for the unlimited cards. “A $15 increase is a lot of money. It’s $180 a year that people are going to have to dig deeper into their pockets.”

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New York City Transit

ABC 7: MTA cleaners slacking on the job

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on September 30, 2010

When I spoke with then-New York City Transit President Howard Roberts nearly two years ago, he discussed his plan to improve station cleanliness through a reorganization of the system’s maintenance workers and cleaners. By spending enough, he wagered, the MTA could solve one of its customer service woes: dirty walls, grime-filled staircase and garbage-strewn stations. Cleaner stations would mean a more pleasant commute for us all.

As the MTA’s finances headed south though, daily station maintenance went with it, and 15 months ago, the MTA confirmed that less money led to dirtier stations. The MTA had to cut approximately 100 cleaners, and subway stations and train cars would inevitably be dirtier.

But what if it’s not the budget cuts that make our subway cars sticky? What if it’s the attitude of those tasked to clean them? In an undercover investigation, that’s just the question WABC set out to answer. As you might imagine, their camera crews found workers slacking on the job — jobs for which they get $23 dollars an hour. The story is embedded above, but I’ll excerpt:

Perhaps you have noticed the subway cars have been dirtier lately. Eyewitness News had been told, it is because of budget cuts and workers laid-off. However, our undercover cameras found another problem: from the #4 Line in the Bronx, to the N Line in Queens, to the L in Brooklyn, we found subway cleaners more interested in reading the newspaper, chatting with fellow workers or texting on the phone than doing their jobs. Jobs for which are paid $23 an hour.

At the end of the D-line in the Bronx, cars come all the way from Coney Island and are in need of serious cleaning. There is trash and spilled soda, shoe-sticking filth, yet Eyewitness News observed a team of four cleaners one afternoon and found most of them doing very little. A lot of them stand around talking to each other or to the engineer, while one worker cleans a car or two on each train. It meant the majority of train cars on the D-Line would head back out, having to never been cleaned.

We found similar examples on the 4-Line, where it seems for some cleaners, reading takes priority. One worker sits in the air-conditioned car reading for about 6 minutes before getting up and leaving. The car left exactly how it arrived with papers on the seat, trash on the floor, and mud and dirt by the door.

WABC’s video shows the workers not very hard at work, and those with whom the reporters spoke say the problem stems from a lack of adequate supervision. These cleaners generally are not well supervised, and management at Transit says it cannot monitor everyone.

“With the level of resources we have, we don’t have one-on-one supervision for every employee,” Transit president Thomas Prendergast said, later adding. “If you have cases where the train has not been cleaned and trash on floor and sitting down that’s a management failure and I’ll clearly state that and we will have to do things to control that.”

Subway cleanliness has been a decades-long problem for the MTA, but that investigative report gives them an opening to do something. The authority has been engaged in a year-long effort to improve worker efficient and cut back on waste. Convincing its high-paid cleaners to do their work should become a top goal. It should both save money and make the subways a more pleasant place for the MTA’s customers. No one, after all, wants to ride in a car with a sticky floor, but these days, what choice do we have?

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AsidesNew York City Transit

Arrests up for fare jumping as summons amnesty looms

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on September 29, 2010

New York City police officers have arrested over 15,700 people for fare evasion this year, the Daily News reported earlier this week. According to Pete Donohue, this total represents an 11 percent increase over the 2009 numbers, but police officials “refused to say” if the increase came about because of a decline in station agents or if the NYPD has ramped up enforcement efforts in light of fewer MTA employees manning the system’s entrances. Summonses for fare evasion has remained constant at approximately 50,000 this year, and fare evaders only for their fifth violation or if they have a criminal record.

Meanwhile in an effort to capture revenue from nearly three million unpaid summonses, the Transit Adjudication Board is offering a month of late-fee amnesty for the violators who have not yet paid their fines. As Tom Namako of The Post reports, from October 1-31, TAB will waive late fees and interest penalties in the hopes that more people will pay their fines. Usually, police officers issue approximately 125,000 summonses annually for quality-of-life violations ranging from graffiti to unruly conduct to seat-hogging, but only around 83,000 of those fines are paid in full. This year, says Namako, TAB expects cops to dole only 112,000 tickets.

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MTA Bridges and Tunnels

Why cashless tolling on the Henry Hudson matters

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on September 29, 2010

Throughout the debates surrounding both congestion pricing and East River bridge tolls, one spurious argument set forth by opponents of the plans considered the impact toll devices would have on traffic. Installing tollbooths on the East River bridges would create traffic jams on local streets in Brooklyn and Manhattan as drivers slowed to pay the toll, they said.

Now, this argument was clearly a flawed one at the time because new tollbooths simply do not have cash collectors or levered arms that raise upon receipt of the toll. Rather, new tollbooths rely on high-speed E-ZPass readers and license plate camera technology to capture revenue. New Yorkers aren’t familiar with this idea because the technology hasn’t been implemented within the five boroughs, but we need to look no further than the New Jersey Turnpike to see high-speed tolling in action.

Recently, though, the MTA announced that cashless tolls will be coming to New York. As part of a pilot program that may see the technology in use on every Bridges & Tunnels crossing, the MTA is beginning to ready the Henry Hudson Bridge for cashless tolling. As part of the plan, the authority is cutting the southbound bridge from four lanes to three and installing camera equipement, computer software and overhead gantries that allow for gateless tolling.

The gateless tolling, says the MTA, will begin late this year or early next, and according to Tom Namako of The Post, by 2012, the entire bridge will be gateless. “We can move 600 to 800 vehicles an hour with gates,” James Ferrara, head of MTA Bridges and Tunnels said. “This is not high-speed tolling.”

Namako fills in some details:

The speed limit at the new, gateless, E-ZPass lanes will likely be set at 15 mph, officials said. Ferrara said one of the goals of the pilot project will be to analyze the rate of traffic without the gates. “Presumably, we will move traffic faster without [them],” he said.

Then, by 2012, all of the toll-gate arms will be gone, and the bridge will go totally cashless. The lanes will either be E-ZPass or set up for video tolling. Video tolling means that drivers will be billed for the toll based on their license-plate information, which will be taken from video footage at the crossing. The move will allow drivers to pass though the toll without stopping — a speedier system currently used in Dallas, Denver and Sydney, Australia, Ferrara said.

It also will save money by eliminating the salaries of toll-booth clerks and costs associated with rehabbing and repairing aging toll plazas, officials said Still, the agency said no jobs would be lost during the pilot program. If successful, the test project — expected to cost between $10 million and $16 million — will spread to all of the MTA’s crossings, the agency said.

To many, this might seem like a minor move and one the MTA should have taken years ago. Cashless tolling, after all, can save on personnel costs and speeds up traffic as well. But for those who still harbor dreams of East River bridge tolls, the first cashless, gate-less operation in New York City is a small beacon of hope. If this pilot is successful, if traffic picks up across the Spuyten Duyvil, if New York’s drivers see how gateless tolling works, those who oppose tolling on these spurious grounds will see their argument dissolve right before their eyes.

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MTA Economics

A Comptroller’s report predicts the wrong kind of MTA doom

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on September 29, 2010

As New Yorkers awoke to their free daily newspapers on Tuesday morning, a poorly-done Photoshop along with an article predicting doom and gloom for the MTA screamed out from the cover of amNew York. According to a report by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, the MTA’s budget hole will expand to $2.1 billion by 2014, and everybody should panic! Or at least that’s what amNY’s take on the story was.

Now, this evening, I checked out DiNapoli’s report, and he paints a bleak picture of the MTA’s financial future. The authority, he says, “faces a budget gap of more than $1 billion next year, which could more than double to $2.1 billion by 2014 unless the MTA begins to drive more efficiencies in the way it does business.” While fares are going up and services eliminated, the MTA must reduce costs and improve worker inefficiency to stave off financial disaster.

“We’re seeing the effect of the recession and years of undisciplined bloat and inefficiency,” DiNapoli said. “The MTA’s current administration is working to close its budget gap, but commuters and taxpayers are demanding results. The MTA needs to change the way it does business. Repeated fare hikes and service cuts can’t change a culture of complacency. My office has identified more than $296 million in waste and savings opportunities over the last year alone, and we recently began a forensic audit of the MTA’s $600 million overtime budget. These are tax dollars. Inefficiency and complacency just don’t cut it.”

There’s only one glaringly obvious problem with DiNapoli and the report: The MTA has already acknowledged these funding woes and is already working to close the budget gaps both in 2010 and in the future. While it remains to be see if a bureaucracy famous for its bureaucratic bloat can truly become a lean — or at least a leaner — organization, DiNapoli’s reports are simply rehashing the MTA’s own financial statements and urging the authority to enact measures it already said it would enact.

The most obvious example of DiNapoli’s doomsaying tendencies comes on pages 2 and 3 of his report. Here, he highlights the deficit but also notes that the MTA is committed to closing the deficit. So despite the fact that his press release leads with the $2.1 billion figure, the MTA doesn’t anticipate a deficit of that size in reality. DiNapoli writes:

The MTA has moved aggressively to reduce the size of the projected budget gaps and has outlined a comprehensive gap-closing program for the next four years (see Figure 1). It is currently implementing actions (discussed below) that are expected to generate $367 million in 2010 and about $525 million annually thereafter. These actions, even if fully successful, would still leave budget gaps of $200 million in 2010, $500 million in 2011, $803 million in 2012, $1 billion in 2013, and $1.6 billion in 2014.

The MTA intends to close the remaining budget gap for 2010 mostly with actions that will generate only one-time savings. For subsequent years, the MTA has proposed raising fares and tolls by 7.5 percent in 2011 and in 2013, and has outlined additional management initiatives. In total, the MTA expects to generate more than $700 million in recurring savings through management actions by 2014. If all of these actions are successfully implemented, the MTA forecasts small positive cash balances in 2010, 2011, and 2013, and manageable gaps in 2012 and 2014.

Considering the MTA’s initial success in reducing overtime costs, there’s little reason to doubt that these actions will be at least partially implemented. Is it skeptical of me to say then that DiNapoli’s $2.1-billion figure is simply a creation of a man running for reelection and trying to gain headlines?

Despite my dismissal of this report, there are real financial concerns behind the MTA’s budget. As John Mancini reported tonight at NY1, the MTA now anticipates that it will have to raise its pension contributions by an unplanned $150 million next year, and its real estate tax revenues are “no better than last year.” The authority had hoped to see a boost in tax revenue as the economy improved, but that — a true deficit-reducing event — will have to wait for 2011 or beyond.

There is no doubt that, as DiNapoli charged, the MTA is “inefficient and bloated.” The authority has suffered this problem since the day of its founding in 1968, and after the authority suffered through this problem for 42 years, Jay Walder seems willing to confront it. Yet, threats loom large. A constitutional challenge to the payroll tax or political change in Albany could jeopardize $1.5 billion in MTA revenues, and until the authority is on sounder financial footing — whatever that might be — the threat of financial doom looms large while fares remain artificially low. If the state comptroller paid more attention to that reality, perhaps the right people would listen.

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High-Speed Rail

Amtrak unveils pie-in-the-sky plans for Northeast Corridor high-speed rail route

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on September 28, 2010

By 2040, travel along Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor could be among the pleasures of rail in this country. According to a report released by Amtrak today, if the agency has its druthers, high-speed travel between New York and Washington would take just 96 minutes, and the trip to Boston from New York would last just 84 minutes. It is the dream of rail planners throughout the region.

There is, of course, just one teeny tiny catch: This initiative would involve at least $4.7 billion in annual investments over the next 25 years for a price tag of over $117 billion. The project would involve new tunnels into and out of New York City, Baltimore and Philadelphia as well as extensive rights of way expansions in Connecticut and new station complexes from Washington to Boston. This Next-Generation High Speed Rail would improve speeds of commuter trains from today’s average of 75 miles per hour to 140 with a top velocity of 220 miles per hour, but the project remains unfunded. It’s future cannot be a bright one.

In an extensive planning document (linked above), Amtrak talks about the various routings and infrastructure that would be into such a plan. The rail company would have to build out various rights of ways to ensure that the train route from Washington to Boston is as straight as possible. The trains, says Amtrak, require approximately 5 miles of acceleration over 16 miles of straight, flat track to reach speeds of 200 miles per hour, and the alignment constraints are tremendous.

Despite the price tag, the economics, says Amtrak, would make a Next-Generation High Speed rail line profitable. The agency anticipates an annual operating surplus of $900 million as rail would overtake air travel as the fatest and most convenient form of travel between Washington and Boston. Construction over 25 years could generate 44,000 jobs and $33 billion in wages, and the line would see ridership increase from 12 million annually to 38 million. It would also help Amtrak meet capacity demands. Without a significant investment in rail in the northeast, Amtrak’s entire Northeast Corridor will be at 100 percent capacity by 2035. The routes from New York to Trenton and Baltimore to Washington, D.C., already are.

What next then for this ambitious plan? As this is just a “possible concept” for high-speed rail, much work needs to be done. Myriad environmental studies await, and planning meetings loom. The biggest concern, though, says Amtrak, involves identifying the funding sources. At a time when the public is wary of government investment, financial mechanisms must be identified that will lead to the funding of this integral project.

Over at The Transport Politic, Yonah Freemark is realistic about this project’s future as anything more than just a snazzy PDF. He writes:

But it is worth being skeptical of the political chances for the project’s implementation. The timing of the plan’s release could not be much worse. With anti-rail and austerity-focused Republicans likely to retake control of the U.S. House of Representatives in this fall’s elections and little serious talk of increasing funds for fast train projects in the immediate term at the national level, a vast increase in capital financing for Amtrak is hard to imagine…

The fact that the Congress has thus far only committed $10.5 billion total to high-speed rail projects across the country does not seem to have phased anyone in Amtrak management, though it may have resulted in the decision to propose spreading out spending over a 25-year period, rather than, for instance, building it all in ten years. Under the plan, the sections from Baltimore to Wilmington and from Philadelphia to New Rochelle would be completed by 2030, with the rest done by 2040.

Amtrak will need a massive and long-term commitment from the federal government to make this project possible. It will have to find a way to build a coalition between Republicans and Democrats on the matter, since each party will inevitably be in power at some point over the next thirty years. It will have to make a strong case for why investing in the system fulfills national objectives. In the report, it is clear that the agency hopes to portray the Northeast’s strong contribution to the overall U.S. GDP as one of the primary reasons to invest in infrastructure there.

Amtrak, Freemark says, has “basically no choice but to commit to the construction of an entirely new corridor…This will not be a simple project, either from a funding or construction standpoint. But for the nation’s densest and most economically productive region, it may be the best way forward.”

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AsidesMTA Economics

Overtime reductions set to reach $54 million

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on September 28, 2010

In late May, as the MTA unveiled its push to trim its massive budget gap, the authority pledged to control overtime costs. The authority’s financial gurus believed that the MTA could save $22 million in 2010 through better policing of overtime abuse and better oversight of sick day use. Yesterday, the agency announced it has exceeded its goal and then some as overtime reductions will reach $54 million in 2010 alone.

“Reducing overtime is a key part of our efforts to use every fare and taxpayer dollar wisely, and I am pleased that we have been able to achieve real results in just a few months,” MTA Chairman and CEO Jay H. Walder said. “We have a lot of work still to do, but we’ve shown that by focusing in key areas we can earn critically needed savings across our agencies.”

According to the MTA, various policies and operating procedures have led to these cost savings which will continue in the future. At Transit, for instance, the MTA saved $24 million by limiting overtime to critical activities and filling vacancies that were creating a high need for overtime. At the commuter railroads, the MTA worked to “rebalance workloads” to cut down on overtime, and at Bridges and Tunnels, employees must be pre-approved for overtime and can no longer accrue hours during vacation time. With overtime reductions already amounting to 11 percent, I wonder what more New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli will find in his upcoming forensic audit.

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Subway Security

A new intercom system, five years in the making

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on September 28, 2010

A rendering of the Help Point intercom system from 2005. (Via Antenna Design)

Earlier this summer, the city’s two free daily newspapers — Metro and amNew York — reported on a new initiative by New York City Transit that would bring high-tech intercoms into the subway system. Billed as a way to improve passenger safety while lending the subways the aura of security found on a college campus, the new Help Point intercom system received its formal unveiling yesterday. While Transit officials promoted it as a brand-new high-tech solution the long-standing problem of unobservable subway stations, it is actually a design five years in the making.

As anyone who has been on a tour of a college campus knows, these blue-light intercoms are exceedingly simple. One button — the red one — will connect passengers to emergency services while the green button will provide a direct line to a 24-hour information hotline. These intercoms are, said the MTA, “reliable, highly visible and easy-to-use.” The emergency calls will be routed to the authority’s Rail Control Center while information inquiries will be fieled by Travel Information personnel or station booth workers.

“We have designed the HPI to be a major step beyond the Customer Assistance Intercoms that passengers may see in stations now,” Transit President Thomas F. Prendergast said. “Make no mistake, this device represents impressive 21st century technology and it demonstrates our ability to incorporate it into a system that is more than 100 years old.”

During the presentation to the board on Monday morning, Transit officials stressed the so-called Help Point Intercom system’s unique appearance. These six-foot-tall metal poles feature a blue light on top and will placed on station platforms and mezzanines. The units can be mounted vertically on station walls as the rendering above shows or placed against a platform column as a free-standing device. They will be equipped with loop technology for the hearing impaired and will be “camera capable.”

As with every new technology, the MTA will introduce these intercoms via a pilot program later this year. The futuristic-looking devices will be installed at 23rd St. and Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall along the East Side IRT routes, and while the authority doesn’t know yet how much a system-wide installation would cost, NY1’s John Mancini says the pilot, which will place intercoms every 150 feet, is being funded with $10 million from the capital campaign. The pilot, says The Daily News, will officially launch before the end of 2010.

Now, ostensibly, these new intercoms are designed to make up for the decrease in station agents but also to supplement the existing agents’ ability to monitor their stations. Since the station agents cannot leave their booths, their visibility is limited to the fare control areas and any part of the platform in front of them. At many stations, nearly none of the platform then is visible, and riders are left without recourse in half-empty stations. These Help Point Intercoms are designed to alleviate those concerns, and it’s a project that’s been on the drawing board since the early part of the 2000s.

In fact, these Help Point Intercoms were at point an item of pride for designers and Transit officials. In 2005, Transit first contacted Antenna Designs to develop a Help Point intercom prototype, and the new version is materially similar to the first design. As Antenna Designs said then:

The Help Point Intercom (HPI) is a customer information and emergency intercom system for the New York City Subway stations. In case of an emergency, a customer can directly contact an agent at the emergency dispatch center twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Further, customers can talk to a live customer service agent for real-time transit related information.To further enhance security and discourage tampering, each HPI is equipped with a built-in video camera.

The HPI is a beacon in the station environment, making it easy to spot and instantly recognizable, not only in an emergency, but at any time when information is needed. With its careful mix of easy visibility and non-alarming appearance, it sends the right message about its dual function. Partly designed as an ambient light fixture, the HPI’s calming blue light provides a sense of safety and security during everyday activities, symbolizing the human presence that is always just a touch of a button away. Its clear identity avoids confusion with any other station or platform equipment (such as train related signals.)

The HPI has a modular design which allows it to be configured as a wall mounted, column-mounted or freestanding device. A simple interface makes it easy-to-use. When activated, buttons illuminate to indicate connection, and there is sound feedback. The HPI is ADA compliant and features high contrast, large type labels with Braille. Gesture, proportion and material finish make it an elegant piece of public equipment, yet it is durable, vandal resistant and easy to maintain.

This similar-sounding device won a Bronze medal at the 2006 IDEA Awards and has been a part of the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection since 2006. It was also included in an exhibit at MoMA in 2005 entitled SAFE: Design Takes on Risk.

So as we fast-forward to 2010, the MTA has the need, the will and the money to realize a design that garnered praise five years ago. The current MTA intercoms are seemingly broken more often than not, and with fewer station agents in the system, ensuring customer safety has become a paramount concern for Transit officials. As long as the new technology can work seamlessly, straphangers should be safe. “These HPIs,” MTA Chairman and CEO Jay Walder said, “are another example of how the MTA is using technology to fundamentally change the way that our customers experience the transit system each day.”

After the jump, a picture of the prototype Transit officials unveiled at MTAHQ on Monday morning.

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Capital Program 2010-2014MTA Economics

State transportation officials bemoan lack of funds

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on September 27, 2010

In an appearance in front of a construction industry event on Friday, New York’s transportation officials said, in the words of Streetsblog, are “so cash-strapped they don’t even have enough money to maintain existing infrastructure.”

Noah Kazis was on hand to hear this bureaucrats argue for better funding, and the picture for every agency from New York City Transit to the Port Authority to the Department of Transportation is a dire one. “How reliable do you think that is?” Transit’s engineer Frederick Smith asked of the system’s 70-year-old signaling system. The MTA, of course, has funding for its current capital program for only two years and is struggling to maintain a state of good repair underground.

Kazis’ piece explores some of the avenues available to the state that could generate revenue for transit. He mentions congestion pricing as a possible revenue stream, but with so many state authorities struggling to get by, the money generated by a pricing mechanism would be in high demand. Ensuring that the revenue from a New York City-based pricing scheme it goes toward improving New York City-based transit should be a primary concern for advocates.

At the MTA, officials are focused on trimming the fat. Kazis reiterates how the MTA wants to reduce its operating budget by $750 million annually, but while those cost savings could hypothetically be transferred to the capital budget, as Hilary Ring, the MTA’s director of government affairs, said, those cost savings will generally work to avoid future service cuts and fare hikes as the MTA comes face-to-face with increasing debt payments.

Kazis’s indictment of the entire event though highlights one of the problems that authority heads weren’t willing to consider on Friday. He wrote: “One cost-saving device that didn’t get mentioned, of course, was getting tough with the contractors sponsoring the conference. Instead, the too-close-for-comfort relationship between public agencies and the industry was on full display. Describing the head of the General Contractors Association, NYS DOT Director of Civil Rights Warren Whitlock said that ‘her leadership on behalf of her industry is advancing our agenda,’ as if there was no daylight between them.”

Without a serious commitment to cost reform from the construction industry, the state’s transportation infrastructure costs will continue to be prohibitively expensive. It shouldn’t cost $4-$5 billion to build two miles of the Second Ave. Subway, and yet, that price tag has remained too high for years.

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