AsidesSelf Promotion

A few site upgrades

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 24, 2008

As some of you may have noticed, the look and functionality of the comments here on Second Ave. Sagas changed early this week, and I wanted to take a second to formally introduce those changes. SAS now features threaded comments with live comment preview. The preview function means that, as you type your comment, you’ll see how it displays in a box underneath the comment box.

The threads, as you may have seen, allows readers and commenters to respond to each other. If you wish to respond to someone else’s comment, simply hit the “Reply to this comment” link underneath that comment, and, voilà, your comment will appear right below the one prior. Take a look here for an example. You all should also become fans of Second Ave. Sagas on Facebook.

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View from Underground

Keeping to your own 2.3 square feet

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 24, 2008

Personal space is tough to find in the Shanghai Metro during rush hour. (Photo by flickr user Marc van der Chijs)

I am perennially about a week behind when it comes to reading the New Yorker. They arrive in my mailbox too frequently, and there’s always too much to read. So this afternoon on the way home from work, I wrapped up Nick Paumgarten’s technically adept look at elevators.

The piece spends a lot of time looking at the science and technology behind elevators while focusing on Nicholas White’s harrowing tale. White was, in 1999, stuck for 41 hours in an elevator in the McGraw-Hill building, and he’s never been the same. (On YouTube, you can find the rather harrowing security camera footage from White’s ordeal.) During the course of the technical details about the elevators, Paumgarten dropped in an interesting passage about how the folks behind our urban conveniences figure out how much space is enough space. It, of course, relates to the subway:

If you draw a tight oval around this figure, with a little bit of slack to account for body sway, clothing, and squeamishness, you get an area of 2.3 square feet, the body space that was used to determine the capacity of New York City subway cars and U.S. Army vehicles. Fruin defines an area of three square feet or less as the “touch zone”; seven square feet as the “no-touch zone”; and ten square feet as the “personal-comfort zone.” Edward Hall, who pioneered the study of proxemics, called the smallest range—less than eighteen inches between people—“intimate distance,” the point at which you can sense another person’s odor and temperature. As Fruin wrote, “Involuntary confrontation and contact at this distance is psychologically disturbing for many persons.”

Moving beyond the technical — I would love to meet a proxemics expert — this brief passages lets us in to a dreadfully obvious secret about the subway: Packed train cars are psychologically taxing on the vast majority of people because there just isn’t enough space. Worse still is the fact that schizophrenic people prefer fifteen times more space that non-schizophrenics. No wonder the subways seem packed with crazy people sometimes; we’re in their space.

Day in and day out, New Yorkers choose to subject themselves to the psychologically taxing demands of a subway ride. We cram ourselves into cars that are too hot or too cold, cars that have annoyingly whiny PA systems (the old R40 Slants on the B line come to mind), cars without enough space to move without jostling or, worse yet, smelling the person who’s just too close to us.

Even in subway cars with space, we still feel the encroaching others in our personal space. Everyone knows that familiar feeling of resentment when a passenger stands just a step or two too close to you in a half-empty car. That’s your touch zone coming under attack. Tell them to back it up to the persona-comfort zone.

This psychological disturbances are why people in the New York City subway systems seem generally unfriendly. It’s why people won’t make eye contact with each other and why two people attracted to each other won’t attempt to strike up a conversation. It’s also why subway riders get a rush of calmness and serenity upon leaving a crowded train and finding their ways aboveground at rush hour. There’s just not enough space.

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LIRRMetro-North

The fare hike was one thing, but beer prices too?!

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 23, 2008

At Yankee Stadium, 24 ounces of Heineken will run you about $12.50. At the corner bodega, a six-pack of Heineken can be yours for around $8-$10. And on the Long Island Rail Road, that same beer will cost a measly $2.50. For now.

But bad news awaits those commuters who enjoy a relaxing beverage on their train rides home. For the first time in over ten years, the MTA is considering raising concession prices on board their trains. It was bad enough they raised the fares, but the beer prices also? Where will the madness end?

Steve Ritea of Newsday has more:

“We haven’t raised beer prices in four years and there has been no across the board price increases since 1996,” said LIRR spokesman Joe Calderone. “This price increase will help us offset higher labor and product costs for beer, wine, liquor and snacks. The increase also is in line with prices charged by other vendors at Penn Station.”

On the LIRR, domestic beers would increase by a quarter, to $2.25 and imported beer from $2.50 to $3. Top shelf liquor would go from $4.25 to $5.50 while house spirits jump from $4 to $5.25. A glass of wine goes from $3 to $3.50. Soda and water would increase from $1.25 to $1.50 and peanuts from 75 cents to $1.

Prices on Metro-North also will be higher, with top shelf liquor increasing from $5.50 to $6.50 and wine from $4.50 to $5.50.

In 2007, the MTA’s various subdivisions didn’t profit as much as one would expect from the sale of booze on board the trains. Despite grossing $2.5 million in concession sales, for example, LIRR took home a net profit of just $500,00. In this day and age of grossly overpriced beers at bars and ballgames around the city, the MTA is showing curious restraint in keeping their prices low.

I’m sure the commuter-rail passengers will grouse about this move. Those bar cars I know are popular around 6 p.m. But $3 for an import is a better deal than most happy hours, and the MTA is in revenue-capture mode these days. Personally, the next time I want a good deal on a drink, I’m hoping on the train. White Plains, anyone?

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Asides

To celebrate Earth Day, MTA’s green MetroCards on sale today last weekend

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 22, 2008

To celebrate Earth Day, as I noted last week, the MTA has released a limited number of green MetroCards with environmental fun facts on the back. The MTA says that these MetroCards, limited to five million in number, were first put on sale today, but I found one at the 96th St. stop on the West Side IRT on Saturday. My card tells me that “public transportation cuts fuel consumption by 1.4 billion gallons every day.” [MTA HQ]

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Congestion FeeMTA Economics

East River bridge tolls could fund MTA capital program

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 22, 2008

These bridges won’t be free for much longer if DOT has its way. (Photo by flickr user SheepGuardingLama)

While those of us in the pro-congestion pricing camp were busy slamming Sheldon Silver and mourning the death of Mayor Bloomberg’s radical and potentially revolutionary congestion pricing plan, the New York City Department of Transportation had other plans.

Speaking on Friday at the Regional Plan Association’s annual conference, DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan let slip that congestion pricing in name may be dead, but the ideas and certain proposals are far from dead. “I really don’t think that we should be in the business right now of eulogizing congestion pricing. The way I prefer to think about it,” she said, “is that perhaps we are in little more of a hibernation mode.”

DOT, you see, is trying to return to an idea dropped during the build-up to congestion pricing: tolls over the East River bridges. Furthermore, these tolls could potentially be used to fund the MTA’s capital campaign and its currently-projected multi-billion-dollar funding gap. Pete Donohue from the Daily News has more:

“At the end of the day, the failure on congestion pricing that occurred last month was just a setback,” said a fellow panelist, former Deputy Mayor Marc Shaw. “I think it will be reconsidered in the near future.”

He predicted congestion pricing would come back in a somewhat different and “purer” form: tolls at the East River bridges and across 60th St.

Shaw chaired a commission that recommended charging $8 to drive below 60th St. It largely would have affected drivers who do not currently pay to enter lower Manhattan because they use free East River bridges. The goals included reducing traffic and generating funds to improve the mass transit system.

Furthermore, Donohue notes, the new MTA commission on funding led by former MTA head Richard Ravitch will consider both the East River tolls and congestion pricing plans as sources of revenue for the beleaguered transportation authority.

I am all in favor of tolling the East River bridges. Right now, four bridges — Brooklyn, Manahttan, Williamsburg, Queensboro — feed into Manhattan south of 60th street for free. Users of these bridges have myriad public transportation options, and yet these drivers still get a free ride into and out of the city. If tolling these bridges would provide the MTA with funds while reducing congestion and automobile use, DOT should make it happen. The city and its public transit advocates could use a big win, and it’s comforting to see DOT keeping this hope alive.

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7 Line ExtensionAbandoned Stations

With the 7 on the way, a swan song for a Times Square platform

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 21, 2008

The old platform on the lower level at Times Square will soon be lost to the 7 Line Extension. (Photo by Tyler Hicks/The New York Times)

Astute subway buffs know where to look for the tell-tale signs of the mysterious lower level underneath the 8th Ave. IND platform at 42nd St. Stand on the northern edge of the uptown platform and look all the way across the tracks. If you look closely, you can see another level of subway tracks beginning a mysterious descent seemingly to nowhere.

Well, it’s not quite nowhere. Those tracks lead to the long-abandoned lower level platform that, for a few decades from 1959-1981, was home to the Aqueduct Express. The tunnel feeds into the lower level E platform at 50th St. and terminates with a merge, now out of service, in between 42nd St. and 34th St. on that IND line.

In Sunday’s Times City Section, Alex Mindlin writes about the waning days of that lower level platform. It is currently in the way of the 7 line extension and will soon to lost to the ages:

But the platform endures, gathering dust and grime. And it has seen more activity this year than in the previous few decades. Workers are preparing to demolish part of the platform so that the extended No. 7 line can cut across the space on its way westward. Other sections of the platform will be turned into electrical and hydraulic rooms; the rest will be walled off. The work should be complete in about four years…

Several films have been shot here; the track walls bear some “47-50” signs that, at this 42nd Street station, must have been intended for a movie. In the best-known scene shot at the location, from the 1990 film “Ghost,” Patrick Swayze stands on the empty platform and learns from another ghost how to move objects with his mind.

This great photo at NYCSubway.org shows how the station signage was cannibalized by Hollywood for those movies.

What Mindlin’s article misses is the amusing story behind the origins of the platform and its original purpose. After it was built during the construction of the IND lines in 1932, this lower level platform sat idle and unused until those Aqueduct trains started running 27 years later. Joseph Brennan’s abandoned station page for the platform speculates that the platform could have been used to hold Queens-bound trains at 42nd St. without impeding other trains along the 8th Ave. line.

But I prefer the theory set forth on the station’s NYCSubway.org page:

An oft-repeated story offers this as a reason the lower level was built: The Independent subway was being built by the city to compete directly with routes owned by the IRT and BMT companies. The #7 crosstown IRT line terminates at Times Square; it is said that the bumper blocks of the #7 are directly against or very close to the eastern wall of the lower level of the 42nd St. IND station. The construction of the lower level therefore blocked any potential extension of the #7 line to the west side of Manhattan. If this is true, it would have been done only in the spirit of crushing the competition, for the IND had no plans to construct a competing crosstown line.

This now-decaying station won’t impede westward progress any longer, and as the 7 line inches its way west, this platform will be lost to the annals of New York subway history. While the West Side 91st St. station and the famous City Hall stop exist through subway windows, this lower level platform will end up a legend of the subway, perhaps built to stop progress and now destroyed in the name of progress.

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Service Advisories

Pope, service changes make for a rough Passover commute

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 18, 2008

So apparently the Pope is snarling traffic everywhere, and it’s only going to get worse before it gets better this weekend. Stay away from the Upper East Side; stay away from the Yankee Stadium area. And if you’re heading to a Seder tomorrow or Sunday night, leave plenty of time for travel.

You all know the drill. Service alerts are here and below.


From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, April 19 to 5 a.m. Monday, April 21, Manhattan-bound 24 trains run express from Franklin Avenue to Atlantic Avenue due to hydraulics work at Atlantic Avenue. – This is bad news for people like me going from Grand Army Plaza to the Upper West Side for a Seder.


From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, April 19 to 5 a.m. Monday, April 21, uptown 2 trains replace the 5 from Nevins to 149th Street and uptown 5 trains replace the 2 from Chambers Street to 149th Street. These changes are due to several projects, including station rehab work at Chambers Street and Wall Street and tunnel lighting work in the Clark Street tunnel.


From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, April 19 to 5 a.m. Monday, April 21, there are no 3 trains running between New Lots Avenue and 14th Street due to tunnel lighting work in the Clark Street tunnel. Customers should take the 4 train instead.


From 4 a.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday, April 19, Bronx-bound 4 trains skip 170th Street, Mt. Eden Avenue, and 176th Street due to track panel installation between 167th Street and Burnside Avenue stations.


From 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, April 19 and Sunday, April 20, Bronx-bound 6 trains run express from Hunts Point to Parkchester due to track panel installation.


From 4 a.m. Saturday, April 19 to 10 p.m. Sunday, April 20, Flushing-bound 7 trains skip 82nd, 90th, 103rd, and 111th Sts. due to track panel installation.


From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, April 19 to 5 a.m. Monday, April 21, there is no C train service between 145th Street and 168th Street. Customers should take the A instead. Free shuttle buses replace A trains between 168th Street and 207th Street. Transfer is available between the Broadway or Ft. Washington Avenue shuttle buses and A trains at 168th Street. These service changes are necessary due to tunnel lighting between 168th and 207th Street and roadbed replacement at 175th Street.


From 8:30 a.m. Friday, April 18 to 5 a.m. Monday, April 21, there are no G trains between Forest Hills-71st Avenue and Court Square. Customers should take the E or R trains instead.


From 4 a.m. Saturday, April 19 to 10 p.m. Sunday, April 20, Queens-bound J trains run express from Myrtle Avenue to Broadway Junction due to track panel installation.


From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, April 19 to 5 a.m. Monday, April 21, Brooklyn-bound NR trains are rerouted over the Manhattan Bridge from Canal Street to DeKalb Avenue due to structural work between Whitehall Street and Canal Street and station rehab work at Lawrence Street.

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MTA Politics

Handicapped riders navigate a limited subway system

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 18, 2008

Midtown is rather devoid of subway stops for handicapped riders. (Source: Smorgr)

A few months ago, the urban life Website Smogr posted a heavily-edited subway map showing the limited options available to riders of the subway who are faced with limited staircase mobility. Disabled riders have long tried to get their voices heard, and it is only as old stations undergo renovations that they must be made ADA-compliant.

At the beginning of last week, the MTA announced a long-term elevator outage at the World Trade Center-Chambers Street E station due to Port Authority construction. For the vast majority of us, this news goes in one ear and out the other; what does an out-of-service Port Authority elevator that provides access to the subway platforms have to do with us? But for a significant minority who can’t depend on stairs to get underground, this is big news. Here’s how the MTA presents it, in part:

Beginning Friday, April 11, 2008, customers who rely on elevator service at the WTC-Chambers Street E Station will no longer have access to elevators at this location due to ongoing construction at the World Trade Center site…

The West 4th Street and the 14th Street-8th Avenue stations are the closest ADA accessible stations along the E line to the World Trade Center-Chambers Street E station. Customers traveling uptown from the WTC site to West 4th Street ABCDEFV lines should board the uptown M6 bus on Church Street at Vesey Street and get off on 6th Avenue at West 3rd Street. Customers traveling downtown from 14th Street-8th Avenue to the WTC area should board the downtown M20 bus on 7th Avenue at 14th Street and get off on Chambers Street at Hudson Street.

For customers traveling between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m., please note that the M6 and M20 bus routes do not operate during these hours.

So basically, the MTA has said that the nearest ADA-accessible stop to anyone trying to reach Lower Manhattan on the E is nearly a mile and a half away. Put yourself in the shoes, then, of the disabled. I know I wouldn’t be too happy finding out that my regular station is closed, and the nearest one is a mile and a half away. And, hey, the closest buses don’t operate for five hours each day.

As the MTA confronts a budget crunch, disabled rider complaints will have to compete with a plethora of other subway issues. While you and I may not think of them too often, these are real concerns for a lot of subway-riding New Yorkers.

After the jump, a broad — and small — overview of the subway map with only the handicap stations listed. Sadly, there is no larger version of this map, but as you’ll see, ADA-compliant stations are few and far between in the Outer Boroughs. In fact, after the Atlantic Ave.-Pacific St. stop on the D and N, the next accessible station is Coney Island.

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Buses

NYC Transit, DOT working on BRT plans for 34th St.

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 17, 2008

Manhattan’s 34th St. could be a harbinger of transit-related things to come.

In a few short weeks, New York City will mark a milestone. June 29th will witness the debut of the city’s first true foray into Bus Rapid Transit. This first experiment into a program that could revolution New York’s bus system is called Select Bus Service and will run along the Bx12 corridor from 207th Street in Manhattan down Fordham Road and Pelham Parkway in the Bronx.

While this Bronx-based project is a start, New York’s BRT efforts seemingly took a huge hit last week when congestion pricing failed. Over $112 million of the $354-million federal grant heading New York’s way had congestion pricing passed was earmarked for BRT implementation along various corridors in all five boroughs.

But the city is plowing ahead anyway with their BRT plans. They think they can finagle some other funds from the funds, and this week, NYC Transit President Howard Roberts and DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik Kahn announced the next round of BRT plans. These plans are centered around a complete repurposing of 34th Street from river to river. Brad Aaron at Streetsblog has more:

DOT will repave and restripe for five lanes between Third and Ninth Avenues by the end of this year, with painted bus lanes on the north and south sides and three auto lanes in the center. Service hours will also be extended. Phase 2 calls for a 34th Street Transitway, closing the street to cars between Fifth and Sixth and installing pedestrian plazas. On either side of that block, there would be two lanes for cars heading in one direction — toward the rivers — while on the other half of the street, buses would have two extra-wide lanes separated from traffic. In other words, buses would constitute the only through traffic on 34th Street. According to Sadik-Khan, 34th Street BRT will eventually tie in to new East River ferry service (details to be announced next week)…

NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly has pledged a unit dedicated to bus lane enforcement, Sadik-Khan said. But she added that the city needs Albany to approve bus-mounted cameras as well. Though the program lost $112 million in funding with the defeat of congestion pricing, Sadik-Khan said the city has applied for federal funds to expedite BRT build-out. While the timetable for some projects is still undetermined, Bx12 Select Bus Service will launch in June as planned, and Phase 1 of 34th Street will be completed this year.

To view Sadik-Khan’s 34th Street presentation, check out this PDF presentation.

I am a big proponent of this plan on numerous levels. First, the city is not giving in to the anti-congestion pricing advocates. We may not have won that battle, but we can still win the war against unnecessary car traffic and congestion by making it tougher for cars to get around the city. Thirty-fourth street, one of Manhattan’s busiest thoroughfares with the Javits Center and Hudson Yards on one side and Herald Square in the middle, will be a great testing ground.

From a transit perspective, any effort the city and NYCT can make to beef up bus service is a welcome addition to the transportation landscape in New York. Buses right now are insanely efficient; the Straphangers, after all, hand out awards for the slowest buses. Once the city can begin to implement a true Bus Rapid Transit system, bus service can emerge as a real, viable alternate to people looking to cover long distances via public transit.

While car advocates will not like these developments, BRT along 34th St. alone has the potential to impact commutes for tens of thousands of people. Imagine what this city could look like with viable BRT service all over.

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