AsidesWMATA

In DC, more fresh coats of paint in less time

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

A few weeks ago, a regular SAS reader sent me a link to an article on Progressive Railroading about the WMATA’s plans to spruce up their stations. Over the next 18 months, DC-based authority will restore 42 Metro stations. The work includes “cleaning masonry surfaces, painting interior and exterior surfaces, repairing interior masonry, installing or repairing signs, and refinishing platform shelter benches” and is part of the four-year maintenance-and-restoration the WMATA has implemented for its stations.

In New York, station repair and beautification efforts move at a rather slower pace. The MTA is currently amidst a 39-year program in which just 12 stations a year get a fresh coat of paint. By the time this program wraps up in 2047, most stations will be decades overdue for a new coat of paint. Of course, this program is probably going to be discarded in favor of the new component-based maintenance efforts the authority has proposed, but the two projects’ estimated durations are alarming.

On the one hand, the WMATA enjoys the benefit of five hours a day when their stations are not open. Trains do not run, passengers aren’t in the way. Furthermore, in 2008, the MTA said that its painting efforts were delayed by the need to remove old lead-based paint. Still, public acceptance of the MTA would be higher if our stations weren’t so dingy and in need of beautification. If DC can tackle 42 stations in a year a half, the MTA should be able to paint more than 2.5 percent of its stations per year.

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MetroCard

Seven years after its death, the token lives on

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

In April 2003, the MTA ended a 50-year era. For five decades, New Yorkers had to load up their wallets and pockets with tokens if they planned to spend a day out on the town, but on a mid-April day seven years ago, the agency ceded ground to the MetroCard and ceased token sales. It was a death nearly a decade in the making and seemed to represent the death knell for something straphangers had come to love and hate.

There’s only one hitch in this plan to phase out tokens: They won’t go away. In amNew York yesterday, Heather Haddon focused on life after death for the token, and this once-ubiquitous piece of New York life is still kicking. From refunds to jewelry, tokens live on.

By way of framing the story, Haddon spoke with Ward Wallau, head of a California-based company that turns tokens into collectibles. She writes:

Last year, straphangers turned in 27,000 tokens to NYC Transit, up 13 percent from the year before. Those who redeem the predominantly brass discs receive what they were worth when decommissioned, from 20 cents to $4 for express bus tokens.

About 12 million tokens are still out there, with some straphangers known to hoard the coins in the event of a fare hike. Last year, the MTA got back more than 1,000 of the 20-cent token, which haven’t been used since 1970, according to agency figures. “It’s something everybody had to use. It was like the, ‘I belong to New York City badge,’” said coin expert George Cuhaj.

Wallau has tapped into the MTA’s mountain of old tokens, which are stored in a Queens warehouse. Since 1991, he has bought the tokens in bulk at a 40 percent discount to turn into jewelry, with the MTA pocketing about $35,000 a year from the deal, a spokesman said.

I’m struck by the first item in Haddon’s piece. At what point does the statute of limitations on tokens expire? I’m surprised to hear that those of us who hoarded tokens can still turn them in for cash. It’s not surprising that in a bad economy, New Yorkers are trying to milk every last dollar out of the pieces of history left in shoe boxes around the city.

I find Wallau’s jewelry great for subway aficionados. The cuff links with the 1970s-era NYC tokens evoke a particular nostalgia. But this token-oriented renaissance made me reflect back on the death of the token. In March 2003, when the MTA announced the end of token sales, Richard Pérez-Peña of The Times offered up an obituary. Dead at 50, said The Times, the end came via “technology and economics.”

As Pérez-Peña noted though, it was not a surprising death. “The death of the token has been a planned, gradual demise, conceived in the 1980’s and set in motion in 1994,” he wrote, “when the first electronic turnstile was installed and the first MetroCard sold.”

The end was nigh on January 7, 1994 when the MTA introduced fare cards to riders at select stations along the East Side IRT and BMT Broadway lines. By April, transit officials were wrangling over future discounts, and New Yorkers were slow to accept the MetroCard. Not until May 1997 were every bus and subway station equipped with the new electronic fare technologies, and the last station to receive its MetroCard readers was Myrtle Ave. in Bushwick. Even then, the new fare payment system was marred by unpopularity and confusion. The more things change…

In 2003, as token booths became a thing of the past, only eight percent of all subway riders were paid for via those familiar bronze coins. Today, the MetroCard may be on the way out. Jay Walder wants to make the technologically-obsolete MetroCard a thing of the past and bring fare payment systems that allow for quicker entry and cheaper collection to the system. And yet, somehow, the token lives on, a reminder of a bygone era and a fashion statement for subway-loving New Yorkers.

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Subway Maps

A view of the map with sunglasses

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on January 20, 2010

Have you seen the latest sunglasses in Ray-Ban’s Wayfarer line? The latest rare edition of Ray-Ban’s top-selling frame features an iconic image on the inside. We’ve seen dresses with the Vignelli map, and now sunglasses with our familiar schematic of the New York City subway system are available as well. Between the boxers for sale by the Transit Museum, the dress and these stylin’ glasses, a savvy New Yorker could don the subway map as an outfit.

The rare “NYC Subway” edition of these popular frames retail for just under $145, and they’re going fast. Bloomingdale’s has them for sale in blue, but most places are already sold out. Act quickly before they’re all gone. After the jump, another view.

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MTA Absurdity

In case of emergency, do not pull the emergency brake

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on January 20, 2010

To pull the emergency brake in a new subway car today requires some thought and some action. While the picture at right shows the pullcord simply dangling at the end of a subway car, today’s emergency brakes are incased in a box so that people don’t accidentally latch onto them as the subway car lurches forward.

But that’s not the only notable part of the emergency brake, that oh-so-tempting way to stop a train car. Rather, as Michael Grynbaum noted yesterday, in case of emergency, subway riders are not supposed to pull the emergency brake. As Grynbaum notes, the cards — often ignored by most riders — that discuss the emergency brake include Rule No. 1: Do not pull the emergency brake. Reminiscent of Fight Club, this makes little sense.

Grynbaum continues:

So what emergency, exactly, does this emergency brake refer to? The explanation, transit officials say, is simple. If someone gets caught between the train’s closing doors, or between subway cars, and is about to be dragged to an unenviable fate, pull the cord. The train will stop, possibly saving a life.

But in case of fire, crime or a sick passenger — in fact, any other situation that could fairly be described as an emergency — the cord should be left alone. Stopping the train between stations will make it harder for help to arrive. The explanation is on the agency’s Web site, albeit accessible only after several clicks.

“We think that it is clear,” said Charles Seaton, a spokesman for New York City Transit.

The Times transit writer goes on to speak to a few straphangers who have no idea when to use the emergency brake, and he highlights last fall’s Murder on the D Train as a prime example. Sensing an emergency, riders in the car where the murder occurred pulled the brake. Some people say that action helped catch the suspected killer while others say it delayed police response to the scene of the crime and trapped innocent bystanders in a car with a killer. Either way, it made sense even if Transit officials urged riders to eschew pulling the cord.

In the end, the problem, as a psychologist explains, is one of messaging. The MTA expects its passengers to read signs that explain the emergency brake when most people just assume that an emergency brake should be used in case of any emergency. In reality, people should pull the brake only when someone is in danger of getting struck or injured by a moving train car, but that changes the concept of the emergency brake to one with which we the straphanging public are not familiar.

And so we’re left right back where we started: In case of most emergencies, please do not pull the emergency brake.

Above: Emergency Break photo courtesy of flickr user adotmanda.

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MTA EconomicsTransit Labor

For Walder, labor costs an 800-pound gorilla in the room

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on January 20, 2010

When MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder pledged last Friday to reform the way the MTA does business, he stressed the redundancies inherent in the way the transit organization is set up. There are, he said, 92 different public phone numbers and five call centers fielding complaints from the public. Over 5000 workers perform administrative tasks, and many of those jobs overlap. “There will,” he said, “be layoffs.”

Since his speech on Friday, Walder has received qualified phrase from those watching. The Daily News urged every government official to strike a similar tone, and transit activists were equally enthusiastic about Walder’s priorities. “The speech,” Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign said, “was a candid assessment of the financial challenges the MTA faces and of the agency’s commitment to tackling them, such as lowering hundred of millions in administrative, inventory and overtime costs.”

At the time, Walder skirted around the issue of the MTA’s labor relations. “Our unions must be active partners,” he said but refrained from going into detail. After all, at a time when the MTA could least afford it, its largest union had just been awarded a three-year raise, and the agency’s decision to appeal the arbitration result had left many at the TWU bitter toward the authority.

Yet, some would prefer to see Walder, with proper political support, tackle the union and the MTA’s labor cost problem head on. Nicole Gelinas, who has made exploding pension costs her fight, is one of those people, and in yesterday’s Post, she offered up her take on the MTA’s cost problem:

Here are some specifics. The MTA spends $6.4 billion a year on current-worker wages and benefits. A unionized city transit worker earns nearly $94,000 a year, including more than $26,000 in benefits. The unionized commuter-rail worker earns even more — well above $120,000.

Nor is it just union jobs. The average white-collar worker at NYC Transit and Metro-North earns well above $120,000, too. And LIRR administrators beat them by a mile, topping $142,000 each. (Patronage, anyone?)
MTA labor relations aren’t white-collar vs. blue-collar — but everyone against the taxpayers.

The savings Walder laid out are worthy. But cutting, say, 10 percent from administrative personnel would yield just $90 million — a rounding error in the authority’s $12 billion budget. Saving 10 percent in union labor costs, on the other hand (including pensions over time), would yield a much heftier $546 million, because the union workforce is much bigger.

The MTA has long tried doing this in the cooperative “let’s work with our labor partners” way for years — and we’re still waiting for results. What riders need is for Walder to call for full support — from Paterson and the Legislature — for a full labor overhaul. Workers must pay more for health care, and future workers must pay more for pensions, saving hundreds of millions. (Instead, the new contract for subway and bus workers has them paying less toward retirement.)

Gelinas’ basic point is a sound one. From top to bottom, from management to track workers, from blue collar to white, the MTA’s compensation scales are crippling the organization. It’s bureaucratic flow chart makes no sense, and its willingness to give away perks have driven up labor costs in every sense. Cutting from MTAHQ will save some money, but the rising tide of pensions and health care costs will sink all ships.

So what is to be done? In this pro-labor city, it’s tough to tackle the unions. They enjoy public and political support, and workers’ rights shouldn’t be eroded as is. But as some point, the MTA will be unable to pay, and everyone — the riding public, the train workers, the desk jockeys — will lose.

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MTA Economics

Early state budget cuts MTA revenues by $104M

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on January 19, 2010

As the first step in New York State’s complicated budget process, Gov. David Paterson unveiled his executive budget for fiscal year 2010-11 this afternoon, and the news is not good for the beleaguered MTA. The Governor will, on paper, increase the overall value of subsidies by approximately $161 million from FY2009-10, but in real dollars, the MTA may be short $104 million in 2010.

Basically, it comes down to a matter of projections. When the MTA planned its 2010 budget and when Albany passed the funding plan earlier in 2009, state tax officials projected certain revenue totals for the MTA based upon estimated tax intakes. Now, the state is saying these revenue totals will be $104 million short, and the MTA will face yet another year of fiscal crises.

MTA CEO and Chair Jay Walder issued a statement this afternoon:

The proposed Executive Budget Governor Paterson presented today reflects a further deterioration in the tax revenues dedicated to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. This continued erosion of the MTA’s revenue base amounts to $104 million in this calendar year. We continue to be very concerned about the impact of current economic conditions on the revenues dedicated to the MTA, including the recently enacted payroll mobility tax. The continued uncertainty about the economy underscores the necessity of the course I’ve set for the MTA.

As I have often said, MTA must use every dollar that it receives from taxes, fares and tolls as efficiently and effectively as possible. That is why we are undertaking a fundamental restructuring of the way that the MTA does business. To that end, we have begun to dramatically reduce our administrative costs. We are renegotiating contracts with suppliers. We are re-evaluating how we provide service.

I know that the Governor and the Legislature are acutely aware of the MTA’s importance to the economy of the New York City region and the MTA’s positive economic impact on the rest of the Empire State. I appreciate that the Governor’s Executive Budget does not repeat the MTA cuts enacted in the Deficit Reduction Plan in December. During this budget process, we will continue to work with the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance to better understand the issues related to the dedicated taxes that support the MTA.

Meanwhile, the restoration of some subsidies seems to be a victory for the MTA, but even that is just spin from Paterson. Paterson is proposing to fund just $25.3 million of a Student MetroCard, and while that includes a restoration of $18.9, that’s barely half of the $45 million the state contributed in 2008 and prior years. MTA officials say the agency can reap over $200 million by charging fares and expects that much from the state and city to continue the free student transit program.

All in all, this is yet another transit funding mess. Last year’s funding package hasn’t delivered the funds lawmakers promised, and the MTA is left dangling from a fiscal cliff with no Richard Ravitch to step in and save the day.

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AsidesTWU

MTA to appeal year three of TWU arbitration award

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on January 19, 2010

According to the Daily News, the MTA is giving up on part of its appeal of the TWU arbitration award while keeping another part of it — the third year of raises — alive. Pete Donohue reports that the MTA will honor two-thirds of the arbitration award, and TWU workers will now enjoy a retroactive four percent raise for 2009 and a four percent raise in 2010. The agency, however, will seek to have an appeals court overturn the third year of raises which guarantee a 3.5 percent increase in 2011. The agency will also seek to quash part of the award that lowers employee contributions to health care and raises the MTA’s obligations. According to Donohue, this decision to pay will cost the agency approximately $100 million this year.

As expected, labor union leaders were none too pleased with this development. John Samuelsen contined to bluster about this appeal and said that workers, who are getting eight percent in raises in a bad economy and at a time when few private-sector employees are enjoying raises, aren’t happy with the news. Still, if MTA Chair and CEO Jay Walder is serious about cutting costs, addressing the MTA’s rising tide of labor and pension obligations must be a part of that effort. The workers won’t like it, but the agency will continue to be hindered by those costs without some sort of compensation reform. More on that later.

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Staten Island

Fare-collection at SIR’s Tompkinsville starts Wed.

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on January 19, 2010

Since the MTA eliminated fare-collection agents on the Staten Island Railway as a cost-measure in the 1990s, the agency has seen its SIR-related revenues dry up. That will change tomorrow when the agency begins collecting fares at Tompkinsville as part of a $6.9 million program designed to turn around the SIR’s money-losing ways.

For years, the SIR has been unique among the city’s transit options. The MTA has collected fares at only the St. George Ferry Terminal and the Staten Island Yankees’ ballpark stops. Tompkinsville is but a half-mile away from the northern end of the line, and many customers are more than happy to hoof to avoid paying the fare. The MTA launched this project in 2008 with an eye toward completing it during the summer of 2009, but tomorrow — a few months late — the free ride will end.

As part of the Fare Collection Project, the agency has beefed up the Tompkinsville stop. Riders will now have a station house in which to wait as well as turnstiles to serve as the fare gates, cameras for safety and enforcement efforts, and fare vending and communications equipment. The agency says this move is expected to bring in approximately $702,000 annually, a 15 percent increase in total SIR fare revenue and will cut the estimated $3.4 million in operating losses incurred on Staten Island by more than 20 percent.

Staten Island residents looking to evade the fare could still choose to walk yet another three-quarters of a mile to the Stapleton stop. If a 25-minute walk from the ferry terminal is a better use of your time than simply paying a fare that is, at most, a $2.25 MetroCard swipe, then, time isn’t always money.

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Subway History

Dreams of taking the N to LaGuardia

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on January 19, 2010

The Fiorello H. LaGuardia Airport in Queens is one of the nation’s most infuriating urban airports. It is so close to midtown and Manhattan’s Central Business District that a commuter in a hurry could make the trip in 30 minutes. Yet, it’s so far away because congestion frequently creates trips to Queens that last an hour and 30 minutes. The only public transit option to the airport is a packed and slow bus that, on a good day, goes from 125th St. and Lexington to the airport in a half an hour.

Over the last few decades, city officials have become quite intimate with the problems plaguing LaGuardia, and many have tried to fix it. The N train, whose northern terminus is less than three miles away from the LaGuardia terminals, is so tantalizing close to the airport and yet so far away.

Last week, in his “Why Train” segment, NBC 4’s Andrew Siff posted just this question. “What about the train to LGA?” asks Siff. In a one-minute piece, he mentioned how, 12 years ago, city and MTA officials were heavily invested in a plan to extend the N to LaGuardia, but in the face of other pressing transit needs and widespread community opposition, the agency eventually shelved this much needed link to LaGuardia.

So what then were the plans that engendered widespread community outrage and still cause politicians to chime in now and then, nearly a decade after the MTA discarded the idea? Let’s hop in the Wayback Machine and explore some Giuliani-Era transit developments.

The plans to extend the N to LaGuardia first came to light in 1998 as city officials recognized the need to build better access to the airports. As part of a $1.2 billion package with funding coming from the MTA, the Port Authority and the city, Giuiliani put forth a plan to build an airtrain to JFK and extend the subway to LaGuardia. The JFK line — built over preexisting rights-of-way — survived. The LaGuardia plans, obviously, did not.

The first and biggest problem the city faced in Queens came about because of the proposed routes. The preferred route would have extended the N along 31st St. north onto Con Edison’s property at the edge of Astoria and then east along 19th Ave. to the Marine Air Terminal. The MTA also considered an eastward extension along Ditmars Boulevard, a plan to reroute LaGuardia-bound N trains from Queensboro Plaza through the Sunnyside rail yard and along the eastern edge of St. Michael’s Cemetary to what Newsday called “elevated tracks parallel to the Grand Central Parkway.” A barely-acknowledged fourth route would have seen trains head east via Astoria Boulevard.

On the surface, these plans seem no worse than building the Second Ave. Subway through densely populated neighborhoods on the East Side. In Queens, however, the MTA would have had to build a spur line off a pre-existing elevated structure, and all of the plans called for the train to LaGuardia to run above ground through significant portions of Astoria. So while airport access ranked tops amongst Queens residents transit expansion wishlist, no one wanted to see Astoria further scarred by elevated structures.

The Daily News termed the opposition response NAMBYism — Not Above My Backyard — and nearly every single Queens politician opposed the idea. Some preferred the Sunnyside alternative, but at the time, NYCDOT said plans to widen the Grand Central Parkway would interfere with the train proposal. Others called upon an extension from Long Island City to skirt the borough from 21st St. along the East River to the airport. Still others preferred a longer Willets Point extension of the LIRR to the airport.

Peter Vallone exemplified the opposition. “Extending the elevated track will cause unnecessary hardship to residents and businesses in the area,” the City Council member said in 1999. “The MTA wants to go their way, not our way.”

In the end, despite opposition, political support for the plan from City Hall continued well into the 21st Century. With the backing of Mayor Guiliani and Queens Borough President Clare Shulman, the MTA’s 2000-2004 Five-Year Capital Plan included $645 million for the LaGuardia subway link, and even though a $17 million planning study was the project’s only expense, in late 2002, Mayor Bloomberg threw his weight behind the LaGuardia extension as a key post-9/11 revitalization plan.

Finally, in mid-2003, the Queens communities won the battle as the MTA announced plans to shelve the airport extension. With money tight after 9/11 and Lower Manhattan on the radar, then-MTA Chair Peter Kalikow said that the agency’s attention had turned to the JFK Raillink from Lower Manhattan, another plan that never materialized, and that the agency was prioritizing the 7 Line Extension, the East Side Access Plan and the Second Ave. Subway over the LaGuardia N train extension. “LaGuardia is a good project, but you have to prioritize,” Elliot Sander, then at NYU, said. “In terms of political support from City Hall, Albany and Washington, it’s moved back in the queue.”

And so in the end, we sit here in 2010 with the same travel options to LaGuardia as we have always enjoyed (or suffered through). The M60 remains the best public transportation option, and the MTA is in no position to take another crack at sending the subway to the airport. Oh, what could have been.

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7 Line ExtensionAsides

At Hudson Yards, waiting for Related

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on January 18, 2010

As workers continue to forge ahead with the 7 line extension, the new stop at 34th St. and 11th Ave. remais on target to open in 2013, but will there be anything above ground besides the Javits Center? That’s long been the hot button question surrounding the city’s efforts at developing the Hudson Yards land. This weekend, Crain’s New York tried to answer it. The business trade took a look at six key projects, and among them are many transit-related developments. Moynihan Station and Atlantic Yards have garnered the headlines, but what of the Far West Side?

As Crain’s reminds us, February should witness a major milestone in the future of this project. That month, Related’s first $43.5 million payment of its $1 billion deal with the MTA is due after the two sides agreed on a one-year extension in 2009. “We’re working diligently with the MTA and expect to meet the deadline,” a company spokeswoman said to Andrew Marks. Meanwhile, others with vested interests in the area believe something will happen but not until after the 7 line opens. “The opening of the subway means that something will get built there,” Jon McMillan, whose company TF Cornerstone Inc. owns development rights along West 37th St., said. “Once we’ve got the 7 line here, it will be, ‘If you build it, they will come.’”

In the past, I’ve called the 7 line work the Subway to Nowhere because of the costs and nature of the project. The city dropped plans — which factored heavily into Mayor Bloomberg’s PLANYC proposal — to build a stop at 41st St. and 10th Ave. where residents actually need subway access and are banking on substantial development to make this costly subway extension worthwhile. Still, if developers in the area are optimistic, that’s reason for hope for Manhattan’s last frontier.

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