Capital Program 2010-2014

A five-year capital plan, reevaluated and resubmitted

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 23, 2010

When last we saw the MTA’s 2010-2014 five-year capital plan, it had just been rejected by the state’s Capital Review Board with the lone and costly nay vote coming from Gov. David Paterson’s representative on the board. Today, authority CEO and Chairman Jay Walder reissued a revised draft of the five-year plan that has trimmed $1.8 billion from the initial requests and does not ask Albany for any additional funding right now.

“We are overhauling every aspect of our business here at the MTA, and we’ve taken the same approach with the Capital Program,” Walder said in a statement. “The revised program reduces costs, generates operating savings and takes an entirely new approach to our critical investments. The economic crisis dictates that we use every dollar wisely, but it also demands that we move forward as soon as possible to stimulate the economy with the funding available right now.”

By and large, the big-ticket items and overall goals of this next five-year plan remain as they were this past fall. The MTA will still explore a Smart Card fare-payment system with a six-month pilot between the MTA, New Jersey Transit and the Port Authority set for this summer. (After all, as Walder said today, why should the MTA stick with the MetroCard, a 1980s technology, when most people don’t rely on anything from the 1980s at home or work any longer?) The agency will continue to refine and promote its component-based repair program while discarding with its unattainable state-of-good-repair approach. And, of course, the capital plan still has a funding gap that approaches nearly $10 billion.

The authority, however, isn’t worried about the funding gap. The first two years of the capital plan are appropriated through last May’s Albany funding package, and Walder stressed that he will be more than willing to work with the city and state to find the money for the plan as the economy recovers.

The revised plan, Walder explained to reporters this afternoon, has taken a four-pronged approach. First, the MTA has set forth a few money-saving provisions based around the idea of One MTA. To shore up capital investments, the authority is looking to see how it can share resources across subagencies. For example, a new repair plant at Harmon will service both Metro-North and Long Island Rail Road locomotives at significant cost savings for the MTA. “Are we making the best use of our physical plant?” Walder said the MTA asked while developing the revised plan.

Second, Walder explained how he won’t approve a capital expense that isn’t designed to reduce operating costs. If, for example, a $120 million facility is proposed to replace a 100-year-old structure but doesn’t reduce the MTA’s overall costs, it won’t get the OK. On the other hand, a new Smart Card system should improve operating efficiency. “There is no reason,” Walder said, “why the financial return should be separated from the service returns.”

Third, Walder talked about how the MTA analyzed its capital plan to insure targeted investments. In non-industry speak, this basically meant promoting the component-based plan. As Walder has toured the station and spoken with riders, he’s come to understand that straphangers were prefer to see incremental immediate upgrades that fix a glaringly obvious problem with their stations than renovations that won’t arrive for two or three decades. If a station is leaking, if it needs paint, the MTA can address those problems today and make the ride nicer for everyone. “The idea that we’ll ever get there,” he said of the elusive state of good repair, “is a bit of an illusion.”

Finally, Walder said, the last approach involved embracing the maxim that “the best is the enemy of good.” Instead of planning for state-of-the-art countdown clocks long the B Division by 2025 as the original timeline dictated, Walder said the authority will look to for in-house solutions that are good enough and can be online sooner. “We must accept the concept of getting the technology out there that provides value to people,” he said. He wants innovation in a time frame that “makes sense.”

In the end, much of the plan remains the same (and you can find the Executive Summary of the revised proposal right here as a PDF). The authority will continue to work on the East Side Access project and Phase I of the Second Ave. Subway. It will continue to work toward ADA compliance, and it will explore designs for LIRR extensions. It will order more rolling stock and build out its bus rapid transit plans. But the authority knows it must convince the state the capital investment is vital to the future of the MTA, the city and the state.

The new plan goes to the MTA Board on Wednesday for a vote, and a final draft will then be sent to the CPRB. The MTA says it will create 20,000 jobs for the state and generate $37 billion in economic activity. Hopefully, this time, the governor will approve, and investment in the system can continue.

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AsidesMTA PoliticsPANYNJ

Senate declines to approve Hemmerdinger for PANYNJ post

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 23, 2010

After Dale Hemmerdinger was ousted from his role as the MTA Chair as part of last summer’s funding package, he resurfaced in November when, in a fit of cronyism, Gov. David Paterson nominated him to join the Port Authority board. Well, apparently, that nomination isn’t going too smoothly. As Eliot Brown of The Observer reported earlier this week, the State Senate has so far passed on the Hemmerdinger nod because the transportation committee hasn’t given its approval yet. And why the hold-up? State legislatures still believe that Hemmerdinger, despite meeting with anyone who asked, was not, in the words of Andrew Lanza (Rep. – S.I.) “forthcoming with information about the policies of the MTA or responding to the riders or elected officials.” What a bunch of buffoons.

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New York City Transit

From Transit, a new attempt at cleanliness

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 23, 2010

Garbage Cans

At Nevins St., low-hanging rafters are often used as makeshift trash cans. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

As a route down Second Ave. has remained the city’s seemingly unattainable subway line expansion project for over eight decades, so too has subway cleanliness been considered an illusion. The New York City subways — open 24 hours and covering hundreds of stations in five boroughs — are just dirty and always will be no matter how many times MTA officials say they want to change that state of underground being.

Well, no, really, for real, this time it’s going to happen. At least, that’s what Transit’s senior vice president for subways told the New York City Transit Riders Council yesterday afternoon. Heather Haddon has the report:

“We’ve got to ensure that those stations are getting cleaned,” Carmen Bianco, NYC Transit’s senior vice president for subways, told the New York City Transit Riders Council. “We are going to maintain them at a higher level going forward.”

As amNewYork previously reported, transit has increasingly left cleaning shifts unfilled to save on overtime when workers callout. Dozens of shifts for day-to-day cleaning and deeper scrub downs have been skipped at major hubs like Herald Square, Times Square and 14th Street, transit documents show. “I’ve noticed lately the stations I’m in are noticeably trashier,” Sharon King Hoge, a riders council member.

Bianco said he recently happened upon a station that wasn’t cleaned for 18 hours on the weekend after shifts were missed. “We’re talking about the bottles, the paper … That’s not a standard I want to live to,” Bianco said. “We’ve got to be able to cover that job.”

As an approach to station cleanliness, Bianco, as Michael Grynbaum noted earlier this week, will help oversee a reshuffling of personnel assigned to clean stations. With the line manager program nearly on the way out, cleaners will be under the purview of one division in charge of station appearances. “Daily cleaning will be the responsibility of almost 1,000 station cleaners who were previously assigned to the operating groups,” NYC Transit head Tom Prendergast wrote in a memo.

Still, haven’t we heard it all before? In 2008, then-Transit President Howard Roberts pledged to clean the stations before he ran into budget cuts that saw numerous cleaning shifts unfilled. The stations, anecdotally, remain as messy as they ever are.

If Transit is serious about keeping stations cleaner, I see three distinct approaches ranging from the easy to the extreme.

  1. Change the messaging — Currently, Transit announcements tell people to put their trash in the “trash receptacles” and urge people to “can it for a green planet.” While the sentiments are positive ones, those messages go well beyond the problem. Receptacle is an unnecessary 10-cent word, and an appeal to environmentalism doesn’t jibe with cleanliness. Just tell people, in no uncertain terms, that trash should go in the trash cans. The simpler, the better when it comes to messaging.

  2. More in-station trash cans — I realize adding more trash cans to train stations will result in more work for an already over-taxed cleaning staff, but this move would go a long way toward making stations more pleasant. I ride the B train from 7th Ave. in Brooklyn every morning. That station features an entrance toward the front of the train with trash cans at the bottom of the stairs and a very long platform with no other garbage cans. By the time I get to the back of the train, I’ve passed numerous discarded coffee cups and newspapers lying on the ground. When the nearest trash can is the equivalent of a city block away, it’s no wonder people start to litter.

  3. Enforce litter laws or ban food entirely from the subway — It’s an extreme proposal to a quality-of-life problem, but it has worked elsewhere. The D.C. Metro earned some bad publicity when a young girl was ticketed for eating on an escalator, but the draconian enforcement efforts go the point across. D.C. trains and stations are far cleaner than ours in New York, and although the stations are routinely cleaned as the system shuts down at night, during the rush hours, the platforms just aren’t nearly as messy as ours.

Until boorish subway riding culture changes, trash will always be a problem in New York City. The MTA can’t shut down the system to clean it, and so we’re left with millions of people at all hours of the day leaving garbage behind. A concerted effort may make marginal in-roads in keeping platforms litter-free, but only the most drastic of behavioral attacks will lead to real changes.

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Second Avenue Subway

The MTA takes us inside the launch box

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 22, 2010

Last night, the cutterhead for the Second Ave. Subway tunnel boring machine arrived on site, and thanks to Ben Heckscher from The Launch Box, I was able to post a series of photos from the big moment. Just a few minutes ago, the MTA posted its official release on the symbolic arrival of the cutterhead, published the video, above, to its YouTube page and posted the images — many of which I’ve embedded in this post — to its Facebook page.

“The arrival this week of the TBM at Second Avenue is a clear indicator that the MTA is delivering on a major expansion project that will have a dramatic impact on Manhattan’s East Side easing overcrowding within our transit system and serving as an economic driver for the region as a whole,” MTA Capital Construction President Dr. Michael Horodniceanu said via the release.

When fully assembled, the TBM will 450 feet long, and the cutterhead will feature 44 rotation disks designed to cut through the Manhattan Schist. In May, the TBM will make its first of two trips through the rock, and when the boring is completed, two 7700 foot-long tunnels will be ready for further work.

In its release this afternoon, the MTA offered up some vital information about the Second Ave. Subway. When Phase I is completed, it will serve at least 213,000 riders per day who currently use other subway lines, buses taxis or private cars to get around down. Transit believes it will decrease crowding on the Lexington Ave. subways by as much as 13 percent or 23,500 fewer passengers per weekday. Those who live along the far East side will see travel times reduced by up to 10 minutes. The western-most of the two SAS tubes, says the MTA, will be the first mined by the TBM.

As this shot shows, the cutterhead is truly immense. It measures 22 feet across and is painted yellow in honor of the fact that these new tunnels will extend the Q train northward from 57th St. And now we wait the 6.5 years until the first phase of the Second Ave. Subway is ready for revenue service.

All images courtesy of the MTA. For more, check out this gallery.

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AsidesStaten Island

Transit to host SI North Shore rail planning open house

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 22, 2010

The borough of Staten Island and the MTA, as I reported last October, are interested in reactivating the North Shore Rail line in order to bring more transit capacity to the underserved island. To further this project, New York City Transit is hosting a planning alternatives open house this evening. According to a press release from the agency, the Alternatives Analysis Study process begins with the identification of a list of alternatives that will then be narrowed through a series of detailed cost, impact and ridership analyses. This phase is expected to last 12-14 months, and the MTA will then issue a report recommending the locally-preferred alternatives for further development.

The open house tonight runs from 7:15 to 9 p.m. at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center and will allow the public to comment on the various alternatives as well as the goals and objectives of the project. The alternatives, says Transit, include “heavy rail, such as the SIR; light rail, such as Hudson-Bergen Light Rail; and Bus Rapid Transit service, among others.” At some point, as the economy approves and demand dictates, Transit will improve its Staten Island offerings, and this planning meeting is a positive first step.

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AsidesMetro-North

Metro-North’s bar car heading the way of the Dodo

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 22, 2010

Once upon a time, commuter rail lines offered a “bar car” for weary commuters heading home after a long day at work. As seen these days in Mad Men, the bar car would fill up with those who just wanted a beer before returning to their suburban enclaves. Although Amtrak has kept their cafes in order, over the last few decades, Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road have slowly eliminated the bar cars from their trains. Instead, passengers brown-bag it at Penn Station or Grand Central, and the extra space provides for more seating on crowded trains.

Currently, the final routes that still have a bar car run on Metro-North into Connecticut, but those might be on their last legs. As Michael Grynbaum related earlier this week, when Metro-North introduces the M8s this year, the bar car will probably not be included. Due to monetary concerns, transit officials aren’t sure if these relics will be included in the new train sets. “A decision was made early on that more seats on the trains was our top priority and that bar cars — as popular as they are — could wait,” Judd Everhart, a Connecticut DOT spokesman said. “It was about that simple.”

While bar car nostalgia enthusiasts are dismayed by the news, most passengers Grynbaum spoke with didn’t seem to mind. They’d prefer the extra sitting anyway. Meanwhile, the bar cars turned a profit of $1.5 million last year, but I have to believe more seats would easily cover that deficit if the MTA and Connecticut’s DOT are to do away with them on the new M8s. The beer in the terminals will, after all, continue to flow as smoothly as ever.

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Second Avenue Subway

SAS Update: The TBM cutterhead arrives

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 22, 2010

Work crews prep the TBM cutterhead. (All photos via Ben Heckscher/The Launch Box)

Throughout the week, various parts of the tunnel boring machine that will soon start to dig out the Second Ave. Subway tunnel from 96th St. to 63rd St. have arrived at Second Ave. Last night, at approximately 9:30 p.m., the centerpiece arrived as the cutterhead, the part of the machine that will do the heavy lifting arrived.

For the project, this arrival was largely a symbolic one. After all, digging out the tunnels is relatively easy and inexpensive. Building out the stations and the infrastructure that supports the subway are the two expensive and time-consuming aspects of the project. Still, for a subway route with a such a long and tortured history, just the arrival of the TBM cutterhead is enough for a celebration.

A few weeks ago, I profiled the TBM the MTA will use underneath Second Ave. This particular machine is a 30-year-old veteran that most recently dug out the Fall River CSO in Massachusetts. It last churned beneath the streets of New York when it burrowed its way through the 63rd St. tunnel and has been reconditioned to be “like new.”

I couldn’t make it up to the Upper East Side last night for the drop, but Ben Heckscher from The Launch Box was on hand for the big moment. He published a comprehensive photo timeline with commentary. He notes that, as you can see in the photo at right, the cutterhead is missing the cutter disks. Those will be installed in the launch box. The cutterhead too has been painted yellow and marked with giant black Qs to demarcate how the TBM will be extending the Q train north from 57th St. underneath Second Ave. Despite the upcoming service changes, the MTA still intends for the Q to service Phases I and II of the Second Ave. Subway.

By 10 p.m., the cutterhead had been dropped below street level, and the crowds with their cameras dispersed for the night. The ceremony was over, and the hard work — assembling the TBM and starting the digging — will beg in earnest. One day, our subway line will arrive.

* * *
In other Second Ave. Subway news, the MTA this week released its latest quarterly update on the project. The full report — available as a PDF by clicking on the image at right — covers the last quarter of 2009, and as expected, the MTA still believes the Second Ave. Subway will be in revenue service by December 2016.

The most interesting slide from the report is the timeline on page 16. While some of the execution dates for the contracts have been pushed back, the authority doesn’t believe these delays will impact the overall completion of the project. In general, construction on the actual station structures at 96th, 86th and 72nd Sts. won’t commence until late 2011 at the earliest, and utility relocation and demolition continues apace.

The 63rd St. station, however, is due for more immediate upgrades. According to the MTA’s timeline, the design process wrapped up last week, and work on the station will begin this December. This will include the destruction of a temporary wall that seals off the now-unused tunnel that will one day provide a stop for the northbound Q trains and a transfer to the F. The unused portions of this station are visible on this track map.

Service on the Second Ave. Subway may still be over five years away, but it’s seemingly going to happen this time around. Can the fourth time be the charm?

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Second Avenue Subway

Cutterhead Support arrives at the SAS launch box

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 21, 2010

As the Second Ave. Subway tunnel boring machine is slowly being assembled in the project’s launch box, today’s photo — again courtesy of Ben Heckscher and The Launch Box — is of the Cutterhead Support. This piece will go in between the Main Beam and the Cutterhead. It arrived on site last night after crossing the George Washington Bridge at 8 p.m. and was lowered underground shortly before 11:30 p.m. According to my sources, the Cutterhead itself will be arriving tonight at around the same time, and although the weather isn’t the greatest, I’m sure the shutterbugs will be lining up for a chance to capture the moment on film.

For more from the delivery of the support piece, be sure to check out The Launch Box. I’ve embedded another great shot after the jump.

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Public Transit Policy

The MTA’s own green dividend

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 21, 2010

As New York settles in to celebrate Earth Week, the buzzword of the week is, of course, “green,” and New York City’s transit options are taking center stage. We heard yesterday how the fact that New Yorkers drive much less than other Americans makes the citymore livable, environmentally friendly and economical and has lead to over $19 billion in auto-related savings. (The full report — called New York City’s Green Dividend — is available here as a PDF.) Today, the MTA gets in on the act.

According the MTA in conjunction with the Climate Registry and the American Public Transportation Authority, the city’s network of subways, buses and commuter rails helps New Yorkers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17.4 million metric tons. “We now know how much carbon MTA operations emit each day,” Ernest Tollerson, the authority’s director of policy and media relations, said. “But more importantly, we also know how much carbon is prevented from entering the atmosphere when 8.5 million people per day choose to ride the train or the bus instead of drive their cars.”

Based upon a report issued by the Climate Registry and methodology developed by the American Public Transportation Association, the MTA used a three-part test to evaluate the its carbon savings. The non-profit collaboration of states, provinces and territories takes into account, according to the MTA’s release “1) car trips avoided each time someone leaves his or her car at home and chooses to ride a train or bus; 2) congestion relief and therefore increased fuel efficiency of those cars that remain on the road; and 3) public transportation’s role in fostering compact land-use patterns that encourage walking and bicycling for some trips and shorter trips overall.”

Based upon these calculations, the MTA allows New Yorkers to avoid 8.24 units of carbon emissions for every unit the MTA emits via its operations. The numbers say New Yorkers avoid emitting 19.8 million metric tons of Carbon a year, and the MTA knows, via a study from the Climate Registry, it released 2.4 million metric tons of carbon annually for a net savings of 17.4 million metric tons.

“This is proof positive that New Yorkers are avoiding the release of a very large volume of greenhouse gas emissions by riding the region’s trains and buses,” APTA’s President William Millar said. “It demonstrates how important public transportation is in combating climate change and reducing carbon emissions. Clearly, it is one more important reason for everyone to support the expansion of public transportation services throughout the country.”

The MTA used these findings to argue for a share of carbon revenues in an emissions cap-and-trade system, — a goal of the authority since 2008 — and this report goes hand-in-hand with the city’s Green Dividend release. Without a vibrant and comprehensive public transit system, New York City would be a pollution-choked parking lot with congestion and unbreathable air (or, as I like to call it, Los Angeles). With the MTA, the city is greener, cheaper and less congested than nearly any other urban area in the country. If only Albany would recognize this reality.

Above: Emissions diagram courtesy of the MTA.

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AsidesSecond Avenue Subway

SAS eminent domain may torpedo an UES Fairway

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 21, 2010

Bad things happen when the government gets between Manhattanites and their gourmet grocery stores, and the MTA is about to see, first hand, what happens during those battles. Last night, during a hearing on the MTA’s request to use eminent domain to take some properties it needs for Second Ave. Subway infrastructure, the news came out that a planned Fairway for 86th St. may be in jeopardy. According to Gabriela Resto-Montero of the news site DNAinfo, the MTA has requested some property that would “cut into a loading zone at the 240 East 86th Street location,” a spot Fairway has been eying for an Upper East Side store.

As Resto-Montero recounts, the MTA has proposed taking some of Fairway’s planned loading space and allocating it to other Second Ave. businesses that have suffered a loss in curbside access due to subway construction. Fairway, on the other hand, has requested an expanded loading zone and an exemption to delivery hours to compensate for their losses. “They don’t want to get into a situation where they can’t operate properly,” Richard Levin, the grocery store’s lawyer, said of Fairway last night. The grocery chain’s planned UES expansion may yet be another business casualty of the ongoing Second Ave. Subway construction.

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