AsidesQueens

An expansive rail solution for Southeast Queens

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on February 25, 2010

Southeast Queens — the area of the city’s largest borough out beyond JFK Airport — currently sits in something of a transit dead zone. It’s served by subway lines on the north and south and has the AirTrain and LIRR tracks running through certain neighborhoods, but the rail transit options are not integrated in a way that promotes convenient or face commutes from the eastern edges of New York City into Manhattan’s Central Business District. While certain bus rapid transit/select bus service plans are on the table to address some Jamaica-area bus service improvements, rail options are rather mentioned by planners looking to improve access.

In an interesting and thorough piece at The Transport Politic, Yonah Freemark explores a few solutions to the Southeast Queens problem. He first proposes a city-subsidized fare for Long Island Rail Road that would keep intra-city travel costs the same as a MetroCard swipe. Doing so would allow for faster, better and cheaper commutes for residents in the Queens neighborhoods such as Rosedale and Queens Village that are serviced by LIRR but not New York City Transit. He then proposes a few additional stops in southeast Queens and urges a new Jamaica-to-Howard Beach AirTrain line that would serve as a connector between the A and E/J/Z with stops at Liberty Ave. and Linden and Archer Blvds.

Freemark’s plan is an interesting one in that it uses existing infrastructure and would require relatively low-cost investments by the city, state and MTA. For an area of New York City far from the job hubs of downtown Manhattan and long underserved by transit, implementing any aspect of this plan would go along way toward encouraging transit use in a car-heavy area of the city. [The Transport Politic]

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7 Line Extension

How the Olympics ruined the 7 line extension

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on February 25, 2010

With the winter games unfolding in Vancouver this weekend, I keep thinking about how, had the Mayor’s bid in 2005 to secure the Summer Olympics for New York City been successful, the next great gathering of international athletes would have been ours. And then I start thinking about how the 7 line project — one now destined to serve residents of a real estate complex not yet built or even paid for — got its start in Bloomberg’s desires to see the Olympics come to New York. It was that same desire and the subsequent loss of the games to London that has led to the downfall of the station at 41st and 10th Ave.

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

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

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

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

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

So far, progress along the 7 line remains on target. According to the latest update from Capital Construction, the tunnel boring machines have excavated nearly 40 percent of the planned 9500 feet. The two TBMs are mining north of the 34th St. station cavern, and northernmost machine has passed under all three Lincoln Tunnel tubes, the more delicate part of the drilling. By the end of next month, we’ll have an update on the projects budget and timeline.

Meanwhile, we can remember when the Olympics nearly came to New York. Enthusiasm amongst city residents was decidedly mixed, but the subways would have benefited once the athletes all went home.

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AsidesSubway Advertising

MTA dumps delinquent advertising contractor Titan

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on February 24, 2010

Earlier this month, in an effort to highlight ways in which the MTA can better maximize its revenue potential, I wrote on how Titan Outdoor Holdings, one of the MTA’s advertising contractors, had fallen $18 million behind in its payments to the transit authority. Today, the MTA announced that it has terminated its contract with Titan after the company failed to pay $20 million owed to the authority for 2009 and 2010. The MTA has draw on Titan’s bank to collect the money it is due.

CBS Outdoor will take over the advertising space inside and outside buses and on Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North trains and stations that Titan hard previously managed. This company has been managing New York City subway and Staten Island Railway advertising space for years, and the MTA noted that CBS Outdoors has paid all of its bills despite an economic downturn.

“The sale of advertising space is a critical revenue source, especially at a time when MTA is facing a budget shortfall of $750 million,” MTA CEO and Chairman Jay H. Walder said in a statement. “MTA can’t afford to bail out businesses that do not perform the contractual promises that were the basis for their selection. We’re pleased to be moving forward with CBS Outdoor.” All’s well that ends well.

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AsidesTWU

Bloomberg questions retirees’ free rides

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on February 24, 2010

If New York City’s students won’t enjoy the benefits of free MetroCards, Mayor Bloomberg wants to know why retired transit workers should too. As Tom Namako reported earlier this week, Bloomberg, on his weekly radio show, questioned why retired TWU members get to enjoy the benefits of free transit for life at a cost of nearly $16 million annually to the MTA amidst a budget crunch for the authority. “I’m just pointing that out. It turns out that MTA is required to give the TWU retirees a free MetroCard once they begin receiving their pension payments,” he said.

Both MTA and TWU leaders downplayed the costs. A Metro-North official noted that most did not use their free passes during peak hours and said that the MTA “[doesn’t] see it as a center of revenue loss.” John Samuelsen, head of the TWU, questioned the Mayor’s dollar figure. “We have retirees that live all over the county, like in Florida, and they certainly don’t ride the subway,” he said. “They worked their whole life in the transit system, and they earned those passes.” Considering how he campaigned on a platform of MTA reform, the Mayor, long silent on the MTA’s current financial crisis, is shooting blanks here.

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Service CutsTransit Labor

Walder vows layoffs in 60 days as unions protest

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on February 24, 2010

Following this morning’s meeting, Jay Walder spent a few minutes talking to reporters about the upcoming layoffs soon to impact the MTA. The personnel reductions will go into effect in 60 days, and the 1000 jobs on the chopping block will be the first in what could be a wave of layoffs this year.

The agency, said Walder, is now facing a $750 million deficit that has emerged since December, and the agency looks to save money both for its 2010 fiscal year and going forward, it will have to learn to operate as a leaner organization. “The reality is that the vast majority of our costs are labor,” Walder said at his press conference. “[The MTA’s savings] will come in the form of layoffs.”

For now, the first round of cuts for New York City Transit will target approximately 500 station agents and 600 administrative personnel. The Long Island Rail Road announced that it would shave 150 jobs as well. There, 90 administrative positions will go, and 60 engineers and conductors will lose their jobs as well. “My sense is that there will be additional staff reductions from consolidations that the MTA will be focused on,” LIRR President Helena Williams said to Newsday today.

During his press conference, Walder repeatedly stressed how the MTA will follow agreed-upon collective bargaining provisions for layoffs. “We will be following all of the negotiated arrangements,” he said more than once. According to a Pete Donohue article, the TWU’s agreement with the MTA once had a no-layoffs provisions, but it was “traded away” during the 2002 labor negotiations. The MTA does not have to offer severance to its unionized employees, and the severance package for the axed administrative personnel will be based on senior and will not exceed $20,000, Walder said.

The TWU, meanwhile, is attempting to evaluate its position. According to a report this morning in amNew York, the MTA offered to avert these layoffs in exchange for a pay freeze, but the TWU rejected that offer. After engaging in a legal fight for its raises — raises that are costing the MTA $100 million in money it doesn’t have this year — the TWU is not going to give those up so quickly.

Yet at a time when agency finances are sour and everyone else is paying the price, the TWU is celebrating its raises and vowing a fight. In a website announcement informing its members of higher salaries, TWU President John Samuelsen promised to combat the layoffs. “I realize that it has been a long and frustrating wait” for the raises, he said. “But the wait is over. We can now move on to devote our full attention to current battle to preserve transit jobs and service, and to prevent the MTA from balancing its self-inflicted budget wounds on the backs of Local 100 members and New York’s working families.”

Considering how the MTA is balancing its Albany-inflicted budget wounds on the backs of every single transit-dependent New Yorker, that’s a bold claim by Samuelsen. Still, I would expect nothing less from a union president who must protect his members’ interests, jobs and money.

These cuts, though, are just the first of many. During his press conference, Walder did not beat around the bush. As the service cuts are implemented, he said, the MTA will probably have to lay off more workers, unionized or not. The agency is planning to overhaul the way it does business administratively, and unless Albany is willing to step in and do what it must, we will soon see an MTA operating with fewer services and far fewer employees.

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MTA EconomicsMTA Politics

A student protest with the right message but wrong audience

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on February 24, 2010

Later this morning, at 9:30 a.m., the MTA Board will convene for its monthly meeting. Unlike previous months’ gatherings, February’s will be a fairly routine one. The service cut proposals are being digested, and while MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder will field some questions on yesterday’s announcement on job cuts, the big-ticket budgetary items won’t arise again until after next month’s public hearings.

Yet, the meetings will not be without some raucous controversy. Each month, the MTA begins its meeting with a public comment period, and today’s should witness some strident comments. TWU officials will speak out against the plan to lay off 500 union workers, and rider advocacy representatives will again bemoan the cuts. The biggest group there to present demands of the MTA will be the Students for Transportation Justice, an alliance of students seemingly organized with the help of the Working Families Party.

According to a release emailed out to writers last night, this coalition of student groups will attend the board meeting in an effort to gain an audience with Walder and to protest the planned elimination of the free Student MetroCard program. The students, said the WFP, “will attempt to deliver a letter to Chairman Walder signed by thousands of students, parents, and activists asking that the MTA hold an open meeting with student leaders and act to save student MetroCards.”

This isn’t the first time these students have tried to get Walder’s attention. Students for Transportation Justice sent Walder a letter in early February that went ignored, and the Working Families Party volunteered its services in a petition drive. As of this writing, the petition has received 13,391 signatures, and the WFP is trying to drum up support from a total of 50,000 New Yorkers.

There is but one problem with the WFP and its platform: It’s completely directed at the wrong people. Sure, these students can show up at MTAHQ later this morning and speak their minds during the opening minutes of the board meeting. They can also make a show of calling on the MTA to save Student MetroCards, but they will be preaching to the choir. It’s a matter of economics, and right now, the MTA does not have the money to fund free transit for students and shouldn’t be picking up the political slack on student transportation either.

The MTA said as much to me last week. “We agree that school children should not have to pay to get to school, but funding this service is the responsibility of the State and City,” Jeremy Soffin, agency spokesperson, said. “The MTA has been called the yellow school bus for New York City, and that’s a good analogy. All over the state school kids get picked up by yellow school buses, and they don’t pay to ride. But the bus doesn’t show up unless state or local government pays the bus company.”

Still, the Working Families Party, a pro-teachers union organization, is turning to the MTA and not to politicians who control the purse strings. Were the WFP to spend their efforts speaking out about Albany’s and City Hall’s dereliction of duty when it comes to funding for student transportation, attention would inevitably fall on the Department of Education. Why doesn’t the DOE fund student travel as DOEs do throughout the state and country? Eventually, pressure would build on the education officials, and the DOE would have to find more money for transportation. Pressure on the DOE would bring nothing but scrutiny to a beleaguered teachers union, and the Working Families Party can’t have that.

So we’re left with a movement with a message that winds up falling on the wrong ears. The WFP can rile up the crowd. They, as so many politicians do these days, can dump on the MTA. But it will be all for naught. Until activist groups and political parties put real pressure on Albany and City Hall, the MTA will be left flapping in the wind with empty pockets and no plans for free student MetroCards.

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AsidesSelf Promotion

SAS on CBS 2 news, again

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

A media alert: I’ll be on the WCBS 2 local news again this evening during the 6 p.m. broadcast. I’ll be talking about the MTA’s decision to eliminate 1000 positions in as put of the agency’s cost-cutting measures. For more coverage on that story, check out my posts on the station agent issue and MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder’s statement on the personnel reductions. I’ll link to the video when CBS posts it to their website.

Update 10:15 p.m.: The video is now available right here on WCBS’ website. It’s a rather even-keeled look at the service cuts and features what I think to be the most valid need for station against. If the MTA urges us to say something if we see something yet no one is there to whom we can say something, what are we do? Still, the costs of the station agents appear to far outweigh the benefits at a time when money is more than tight for the authority.

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New York City Transit

The cost of putting lipstick on a pig

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

The Chambers St. stop on the BMT Nassau St. line is in need of more than just a paint job. (Photo by flickr user ciamabue)

Last night, as I promoted my appearance on a CBS 2 story about the MTA, I wrote about the MTA’s new approach to station renovations. Instead of picking only a limited number of stations for State of Good Repair overhauls, the authority is also going to target 130 stations that need various repairs. This Target Component Program will focus on fresh coats of paint, station lighting and sturdier platform edges.

Meanwhile, other stations that have recently been overhauled will be entered into the Station Maintenance Program. Here, teams of contractors will fix defects that have emerged since the latest renovations and then MTA workers will regularly inspect these defects and other components in an effort to maintain the cosmetics of the stations. At the same time, approximately 24 stations will undergo complete overhauls over the next five years aimed at achieving a State of Good Repair and ADA compliance.

Today, the Daily News has the cost breakdown of this component-based repair approach. The MTA plans to spend $700 million overall on station rehabilitation efforts in the next five-year capital plan. The 24 station renovations cost on average of $15 million for a rough total of $360 million. The remaining 130 will see, on average, $3.38 million worth of upgrades per station. These repairs will shore up leaky ceilings, repair eroding staircases and generally make Transit’s stations more pleasant for straphangers as they pass through and wait for their trains.

So with that in mind, let me ask if this is a smart use of funds. As my hyperbolic headline suggests, it’s not an ideal situation. In a perfect world, the MTA would have the money it needs to overhaul all stations and not just some at an anemic pace. With 468 stations in the system, Transit can’t repair just 24 every five years to a State of Good Repair and expect to keep up with the wear and tear 7.4 million daily users exert on the system.

Yet, this new component-based program is exactly what the headline describes. The MTA is taking their ugliest stations and trying to make them look good without reengineering the problems that lead to these unsightly messes in the first place. Will Transit be able to repair leaky waterproofing at Chambers St. on the BMT Nassau St. line? Corroded pipes that have ruined the mosaics on the 2/5 platform at 149th St./Grand Concourse? Shuttered and crumbling platform staircases at 7th Ave. on the BMT Brighton line that are far from the eyes of station employees and now reek of urine and human waste? These are systematic problems that cosmetic upgrades can mask for a few years but cannot repair.

I can’t complain too much about the MTA’s approach here. Having pleasant-looking stations that aren’t grimy and don’t have tiles falling down and paint flaking off the ceilings will go a long way toward improving New Yorkers’ attitudes toward the subway system, their commutes and, hopefully, the MTA. But it’s a band aid for now. Transit may, as President Thomas Predergast said, be trying to get “more bang for its buck,” but it can’t hide the fact that the agency simply needs more money to maintain not only the aesthetics of its system but the structural integrity of it as well.

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AsidesService Cuts

Cuts made official as Walder pledges to reduce all costs

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

MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder officially announced plans to eliminate 1000 MTA jobs as part of the agency’s comprehensive cost-cutting measures designed to close a $761 million budget gap. As I reported late last night, the layoff plans will include 600 administrative jobs and 500 station agent positions. The station agent positions were slated for elimination through attrition, but the MTA’s dire financial situation has forced the authority to speed up the timetable for cutting personnel levels.

“The State’s economic crisis demands that the MTA move quickly and decisively to cut costs, and that is exactly what we are doing,” Walder said in a statement. “These layoffs are extremely painful, but we must live within our means and make the tough decisions that businesses and families across New York are making.” The agency noted that it would “comply with applicable statutory and collective bargaining obligations” for those unionized workers due to lose their jobs and that non-union workers would be offered severance packages.

Meanwhile, as part of his overall push to change the way the MTA operates and improve its financially accountability and efficiency, Walder promised more cost-cutting measures in the future. If he is successful, Walder could, despite having to inflict pain upon riders and workers, vastly improve the beleaguered authority. “This is just the beginning of a comprehensive overhaul of how the MTA does business,” he said. “We will be reducing overtime, consolidating redundant functions and working with suppliers to lower costs. We will not stop until I can say that every dollar the MTA receives is spent wisely.”

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Service Cuts

With personnel cuts on tap, the station agent debate arises

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

As the MTA looks to close an ever-widening budget gap, the agency will have to trim from every department, and everyone involved in the daily operations of our public transportation network will feel the pain. From those of us rely on the subways and buses to get to and from the office and school to those of us who work for the MTA, we all will pay the price. We’ve heard a lot about the authority’s plans to cut transit service, and today, the MTA will announce a sweeping set of personnel cuts designed to save $50 million.

The story is a big one. MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder is going to propose laying off more than 1000 workers. If all goes according to his plan, 450 of those workers fired will be unionized station agents. Another 600 — or 15 percent of the MTA’s non-unionized workforce — will be let go from various administrative positions. The major news outlets broke this story late last night, and many of the local 10 and 11 o’clock newscasts featured it at or near the top of the hour. For an agency saddled with what many believe to be an unmanageably and unnecessarily large workforce, these cuts are but a start in Walder’s fat-trimming efforts.

Of course, these cuts won’t go down easily. While Walder has the discretion to fire non-unionized MTA employees, the TWU has vowed to fight cuts no matter how small a percentage of the unionized workforce these cuts represent. Originally, these workers were to be let go via attrition, and the layoffs add a political element to the budgetary battles. “If they announce layoffs, they are going to be hearing from us,” TWU Local 100 President John Samuelsen said to The Times.

As always, Samuelsen, protective of his jobs, grabbed the upper hand politically and framed this debate as one involving the safety of the MTA’s riders. Focusing on the MTA’s decision to target station agents, he bashed the supposed safety aspect of person-less stations. “Their idea of customer service is digitalized signage, rather than a human being protecting you against crime or directing you when you’re lost in the subway,” he said.

This isn’t a new argument in any sense, and yet, it’s one with which I find myself continually fighting. From a safety perspective, the station agents serve one of two purposes: Either their presence alone is a deterrent to potential criminals or straphangers feel safer knowing that a station agent is present whether or not these agents do anything to increase subway safety. The real answer probably lies in the intersection between those two roles, but there is a problem with that assumption: The station agents are not legally obligated to do anything, and they can’t see the platforms beyond the fare control areas.

Over the last few years, we’ve heard a lot about the station agents as the MTA eliminated many of them in late 2008. Since then, the pro-station agent crowd has defended them on the grounds of safety. But in a landmark case a few years ago, a New York state court found that the station agents had no affirmative duty to act if they knew someone in their station was in trouble. They have no sidearms and can do nothing about a crime in progress. Meanwhile, vast stretches of these stations are invisible to the booth agents, and in those cases, the workers won’t prevent any crime at all except as they would serving as a potential deterrent. With subway crime at all time lows, continued enforcement, and not the presence of workers who can’t do much, is the key to keeping the system safe.

Meanwhile, these employees, who field an average of around four customer requests per shift, would help out in situations involving lost passengers or those with bulky luggage. Yet, as the numbers show, those occasions are rare indeed. The MTA won’t eliminate station agents in high-traffic areas with large numbers of travelers. The agents instead will vanish from stations that won’t frequently miss them.

The MTA is up a proverbial creek without a paddle these days. The authority is broke, and New York’s politicians are searching for any way possible to avoid funding transit. If these workers are the sacrifice the city must pay, until the politicians are willing to find a lasting solution, we will have to suffer through a system with fewer station agents.

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