Fare Hikes

As fare hike hearings begin amidst protests, Albany considers more money for the MTA

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on November 6, 2007

“I understand once again you want to raise the price of admission to wait for trains that hardly ever run. This is no way to run a system. The service stinks.”

With those words, Martin Gangerksy, a 60-year-old resident of Brighton Beach began what amNew York’s David Freedlander and Marlene Naanes described as a public firing line aimed at the MTA officials trying to defend the upcoming fare hike. While I couldn’t attend the public hearing in Brooklyn last night, I will be going to the November 17 workshop. In the meantime, we’ll have the other news outlets reporting on the series of hearings taking place this week and next.

The night, according to the report, was chock full o’ anti-fare hike folks. Mr. Subway Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign chimed in. “Riders are just getting by financially and this is a real blow to their ability to make it in New York,” he said, and Brooklynites from across the borough joined in the chorus with their alloted three minutes of speaking. The event, in other words, contained few surprised and a lot of disgruntled straphangers.

But it was not all bad news for straphangers looking for fare relief. While MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin and CEO Elliot “Lee” Sander continued to speak as though the hike is all but inevitable, a few politicians in Albany are hoping to deliver enough money so the financially-strapped can scuttle the hike. Will it be enough though?

Annie Karni of The Sun reported yesterday on the happenings in Albany:

State lawmakers today are announcing new legislation that would increase city and state aid to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority by $660 million, a boost they say could help stave off the fare hike scheduled for February…
“The state has not been giving the MTA its fair share of revenue to operate the system,” state Senator Thomas Duane of Manhattan, who is introducing the bill today, said…

The bill would allot $305.5 million for subway and bus operating expenses from the state budget, as well as $32.3 million for the commuter railroads. The totals would be matched by the city. “I don’t know what the MTA’s thinking is, but this would make a fare hike not inevitable,” Mr. Duane said.

On behalf of the MTA, Soffin continued to state that the MTA needs a $2 billion commitment from New York in order to avoid the fare hike. Astute readers may wonder why the MTA needs so much if they projected a deficit of just a few hundred million next year. The reason, you see, lies in debt payments and perpetuity deals.

The MTA has a series of debt payments it must make over the next few years and a series of ongoing capital construction costs it must meet that extend well past 2008. To meet the various parts of the debt payment and its standard operating budget, the MTA must ensure a steady cash flow for more than just one year. That’s why the MTA wants to institute a fare hike. Higher fares are a reliable stream of steady revenue whereas a one-off bill from Albany with no promise of future commitments simply serves to avoid the inevitable.

I am no fan of the idea of a fare hike, but I am a fan of fiscal stability and prosperity for the MTA. New York’s current growth and future health as a vibrant city depend on it. Until the MTA can find that money in other places — Student Metrocards and overtime pay would be good starting points — carrots from Albany are nothing but half promises and fare hikes deferred.

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Fare HikesMTA Economics

As fare hike loom, MTA doles out more for overtime

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on November 5, 2007

The New York Post discovers that, yes, some MTA employees are paid. (Source: The New York Post)

Ah, the fare hike. It’s that one time every few years when the MTA’s finances are scrutinized by everyone under the sun.

With the public hearings starting today (register here), The New York Post takes a look at what the MTA is paying its employees. Rupert Murdoch’s paper has found a rather large amount of overtime landing in the pockets of those MTA workers.

In an article detailing the escalating salaries of MTA workers, The Post has also discovered that the number of workers earning above $100,000 a year has risen as well. Bruce Golding reports:

As the MTA fights for a fare hike, the number of agency workers who took home more than $100,000 last year jumped 37 percent – as the agency paid a total of $397 million in overtime…

The number of MTA employees with base salaries exceeding $100,000 rose to 1,793 last year from 1,403 in 2005, a 28 percent jump. By comparison, the number of New York City workers with salaries over $100,000 rose only 6 percent during the same time.

Overtime payments helped push the number of employees taking home more than $100,000 to 4,382 in 2006, up from 3,209 the year before – an increase of 37 percent. At the LIRR, overtime pay boosted 656 workers past $100,000 in earnings, compared with 205 who made that much in straight salaries. At Metro-North, the numbers were 240 through overtime and 226 from salaries.

Now, I can’t fault workers for earning more than $100,000. While a lot of people on the Internet who write about the subways have a very low opinion of some subway workers and Flickr is chock full of pictures of MTA employees sleeping on the job, if their seniority and work ethic demand it, then these workers should be fairly compensated. While the article in The Post seems to be more concerned with the $100K figure than anything else, I’d like to focus on overtime.

According to this article, the MTA doled out a whopping $397 million in overtime last year. Now, that $300 million sure does sound familiar. Ah, right, it’s the amount of money the MTA needs next year to avoid the fare hike, according to MTA CEO Elliot “Lee” Sander.

I doubt it’s reasonable to expect the MTA to cut out all of that overtime, but I would have to believe that they could half the amount of money they pay out in overtime. Something in the organization culture of the MTA has led many, many employees to work overtime and expect pay for it.

As the MTA’s finances come under the fare hike microscope for the next two months, the MTA should start to cut some of that fat. Evening saving a quarter of this overtime money — $100 million — brings the organization that much closer to avoiding a fare hike or, if the fare hike is inevitable, paying for more service upgrades. Let’s see it happen.

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Service Advisories

As weekend service delays hit, time nears to discuss the fare hike

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on November 3, 2007

Monday marks a big day in the run up to the impending fare hike. Just two days from now, the MTA will conduct its first public hearings at which you, the subway-riding public, can speak out about the fare hike. To register to speak, find out more information here, but you get only three minutes to speak.

But Monday is only the start of the public hearings. Today, I got word of a new hearing designed to open up the floor a little bit. The MTA and the Empire State Transportation Alliance will co-host what they are calling an interactive forum at NYU on Saturday, November 17 at 10 a.m. Here’s how it works, courtesy of the MTA’s press release:

The forum will provide MTA customers with another opportunity to weigh in on proposed fare and toll increases as
well as ideas for the future of the nation’s largest transportation network. While the traditional, mandated public hearings that begin on November 5 allow MTA customers to make a brief public statement, the November 17 forum will provide more information and an extended conversation that will inform the MTA Board before it considers the budget in December…

Participants will be seated at tables of ten, and will receive presentations on the MTA financial plan and long-term goals before taking part in discussions with other participants. Each table will include an impartial facilitator to ensure a productive dialogue and to take notes that will share each table’s findings with MTA Board members and staff. Senior MTA staff will be on hand to answer questions and give presentations.

This forum really is your chance to be heard. So sign up and get your voice out there. Remember: Without more money — either from a fare hike or from other sources — the MTA would seriously have to consider making some of these weekend service changes permanent.

Without further ado, your weekend service advisories are after jump.

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Rider Report Cards

At least the D did better than its line letter

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on November 2, 2007

Five of the New York City subways up for grading could land a letter grade on its Rider Report Card that corresponds with its line letter. While riders can currently submit grades for the A, C and F trains, the B and the D saw their grades collected a few weeks past. Today, the D received its grade, and it exceeded the D bullet that adorns all the trains.

That’s the good news. The bad news: 4084 riders gave the D line – which runs from the north Bronx, past Yankee Stadium, down Eighth Ave. and Central Park West, over the Manhattan Bridge and all the way out to Coney Island along the West End line – another C-minus grade.

And what did these riders say were the D’s biggest problem areas? Take a look:

  1. Reasonable wait times for trains
  2. Minimal delays during trips
  3. Adequate room on board at rush hour
  4. Station announcements that are easy to hear
  5. Train announcements that are easy to hear
  6. Cleanliness of stations
  7. Sense of security on trains
  8. Sense of security in stations
  9. Cleanliness of subway cars
  10. Comfortable temperature of subway cars

Now, I’m a veteran of the D train. For more then twenty years, I’ve ridden it up to the Bronx for Yankee games, and these days, I often take it home from West 4th St. to the Brooklyn. I can attest that those top problems are pretty much dead-on accurate.

For a train as popular as the D, wait times are most unreasonable. It’s not rare to stand around for 10 minutes at rush hour until an overly crowded train with inadequate room shows up. The trains creep through tunnels at certain points, mysteriously delayed when there is no train in front of them.

And forget about the announcement. With D trains sometimes stopping at Yankee Stadium and sometimes running express from 145th St. past 161th St., listening for announcements requires Superman-type hearing abilities. I’d also say the cars are a mess and run either too hot or too cold.

While I’ve questioned some of the previous C-range grades, I’d say this one is spot on. Complete grades after the jump.

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MTA ConstructionSubway HistoryView from Underground

Subway history rests behind some not-so-old walls

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on November 2, 2007

This plaque sat behind the walls at Columbus Circle for over 100 years. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

In mid-October — Saturday the 13th, to be precise — I found myself on the uptown IRT platform at the Columbus Circle platform. Now, as anyone who ever travels through that station is well aware, the reconstruction of the station, due to last until 2009, makes walking through that station rather unpleasant. Dust, debris and closed staircases and passageways are everywhere.

But for New York City history buffs, certain parts of the renovation provide glimpses into the long-forgotten past of the city’s 103-year-old subway system. So there I was, three weeks ago, walking on the platform when I happened past a rather white wall that hadn’t been there the last time. I did a double-take, saw an interesting plaque and shot the picture on display above.

Clearly, I had discovered something — and an Art Nouveau something to boot — that had been there the last time I was in Columbus Circle, but I didn’t know it. This decorative plaque had been hidden over the decades by a new (and uglier) wall on the platform. This something was an old tile that read, “The tiles in this exhibit were the product of the American Encaustic Tiling Co. Limited.” The American Encaustic Tiling Co. Limited had its offices in Zanesville, Ohio, and New-York, New York, the hyphen serving as a throwback to another age.

Not knowing much about the tile, I turned to Kevin Walsh’s excellent Forgotten-NY site where Walsh had recently posted a piece on the history on display at Columbus Circle But he didn’t know much about the tile either. And then l I opened today’s New York Times to find this article about a tile long lost to history that dates from 1901. The American Encaustic Tiling Co. Limited, a 1935 victim of the Great Depression, installed this plaque as part of a larger exhibit. William Neuman writes:

It turns out that the 59th Street station was a kind of proving ground for the architects Heins & LaFarge in 1901, three years before the Interborough Rapid Transit Company trains began running through it.

“The architects used its walls as an art gallery, experimenting with decorative ideas in various colors of tiles and other materials,” Philip Ashforth Coppola wrote in “Silver Connections: A Fresh Perspective on the New York Area Subway Systems” (Four Oceans Press, 1984). “When the real decorating of Columbus Circle began, all these preliminary experiments were covered over and forgotten.” That is, until this fall.

The plaque and the tiles surrounding it, which were also experimental, are cemented into an 18-inch-thick original structural wall, said Paul J. Fleuranges, a New York City Transit vice president. That wall is being removed to provide more passenger space. Complicating an already complex job, Mr. Fleuranges said, “the historical find has presented project managers with another set of problems to solve.”

How cool is that? Hidden behind the formerly ugly and nondescript walls on the IRT platform at Columbus Circle was a laboratory for Heins and LaFarge, designers of the subway stations we see today.

Now, while the old white tiles and long-lost plaque are slated for removal, worry not about their fates. Fleuranges said that this plaque, an 106-year-old glimpse back into another era, will be carefully dismantled and retired to the Transit Museum for the enjoyment of transit buffs and NYC history mavens.

But until that date, Columbus Circle, for the price of a Metrocard swipe, is a living history exhibit. Straphangers of all stripes have the chance to take a look back at the subway as it once was in the early days of the Twentieth Century. So the next time you find yourself at 59th St. rushing through the subway, slow down, take a look at this plaque, and wonder what other long-forgotten pieces of subway history are hidden behind the walls of the New York City subway system.

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AsidesFare Hikes

Fare hikes galore

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on November 1, 2007

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the good folks who run the Hudson River crossings, yesterday announced that they are seeking to raise the tolls by up to 33 percent on some bridge and tunnel crossings. Lincoln and Holland Tunnel tolls could reach $9. With these toll hikes and the MTA looking to raise the fares, the New York area is in for its largest round of toll and fare hikes in its motor vehicle history. [The New York Times]

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MTA Absurdity

The rules weren’t made to be broken

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on November 1, 2007

Some guy (right) is clearly breaking the law. Arrest him! (Photo courtesy of flickr user veyone)

When last we discussed the New York City Transit rules, it was Tuesday, and Jeremy Olshan had been detained during his Metrocard Marathon because his bus driver didn’t know if photography was allowed on NYCT vehicles. As I noted, the vocal folks on Subchat had a concurrent conversation about how many MTA employees enforce their own version of the rules. So let’s delve into the rules.

Submitted for your approval are five excerpts from the Rules of Conduct that you didn’t know existed. Not all of them ban activities; in fact, some allow certain things you would never guess to be permissible underground. And, by the way, photography, as Section 1050.9 (c) details, is permitted, but “ancillary equipment such as lights, reflectors or tripods may not be used.”

1. While Section 1050.6 (c) states that non-transit uses of NYCT property are expressly prohibited, the section allows some exceptions. Did you know that public speaking and political campaigning are allowed provided they adhere to a whole set of rules limiting where in a station the activity occurs? The same holds true for voter registration drives, artistic performances and donation solicitation for religious or political causes. While the distance regulations make it exceedingly difficult to find space in the subways for this activity, those Scientologists in Times Square aren’t actually violating any laws. Damn.

2. It is illegal and punishable by criminal prosecution for you to put your feet on another subway seat. Section 1050.7 deals with disorderly orderly conduct, and clause j is fairly strict. A person may not occupy more than one seat on a station, platform, bus or subway if he or she is interfering with the comfort of other passengers. A person may not place his foot on a seat in a station, bus or subway, and a person may not lie on any NYCT floors (ew) or “block free movement” in a station stairway. Don’t believe me? Just ask Crystal Rivera, the pregnant teen who, in 2003, got a ticket for resting on a staircase. And no, you can’t use this rule to make that person next to you sit up straighter. I wish.

3. Just as it’s illegal for a person to take up more than one seat — and people too large for the Japanese-style bucket seats do not count — get your stuff off that empty seat. Anyone placing bags or other items on an empty seat in such a way that it interferes with other riders will be subjected to a ticket and the Evil Eye. If the train is empty, you can spread your stuff out a bit and then talk your way out of a ticket when an uninformed uniformed cop shows up.

4. Section 1050.9 (f) contains a bit of NYCT legalese: “No person shall enter or leave a subway car, bus or other conveyance operated by the Authority except through the entrances and exits provided for that purpose.” In layman’s terms, the rules states that anyone traveling between cars is subjecting themselves to a ticket. Every day, I get one or two blog hits from straphangers searching for information on just those tickets, and these tickets do seem to lead to arrests for more pressing criminal matters. Only outlaws ride between subway cars.

5. Selling swipes just isn’t worth it. Wait, you say to me, of course it is. I can buy my Unlimited Ride Metrocard and sell a swipe at the other end. I can buy five rides, get my sixth free and still charge $2 a swipe at the nearest turnstile, right? No way, says Section 1050.13, added to the code in 2005. If you’re in the subway at the turnstile and someone offers to sell you a swipe, it’s illegal. The Good Samaritan in you can do it for free as long as the swipe is not part of an “exchange for value.”

So those are just a smattering of the subway Rules of Conduct. While lots of people lay claim to the phrase “rules were made to be broken,” I wouldn’t recommend testing that old adage on NYCT property. You could end up facing civil penalties such as a $60 ticket or criminal prosecution with a fine up to $25 or ten days in jail or both. You also could be ejected from the subway. Imagine that; kicked out of the train just for kickin’ back after a long day.

Now, if only the cops would enforce Section 1050.7 (a). The subways would be litter-free. I can dream, right?

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MTA Technology

Service alerts now available for mobile browsers

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on October 31, 2007

After a few false hopes focusing around the MTA’s communication gap, how, we’re talkin’. Just two days after the MTA announced the new Know Before You Go! program, New York City Transit has unveiled a mobile version of its popular trip planner site. This mobile version, which is available online at http://tripplanner.mta.info/mobile/ and still in beta, comes with an added bonus: real-time service alerts.

The new Trip Planner, first reported byNY1’s Bobby Cuza last week and officially announced yesterday by NYCT, allows riders with PDA’s or web-enabled cell phones to tap into the MTA’s trip planner system. While on the go, a rider can choose from any combination of local buses and subways and express buses to get from point A to point B. The service includes handicapped access information and offers users a variety of itineraries. Much like those old Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, t’s up to you to pick the right one.

NYCT VP for Corporate Communications Paul Fleuranges expounded on the popularity of this service. “Every day more than 5,000 customers plan their trips using our on-line service,” he said in a press release, “and we expect that number will grow now that users don’t have to be sitting at a desk top in order to tap into the Trip Planner data base.”

But the best part as far as I’m concerned is the service alert information. As I’ve mentioned over and over again, the massive problems in August originated from the lack of communications between the MTA, its employees and riders. But the new service will offer real-time service alerts for unplanned service delays and changes. That is, in a word, fantastic news for riders who often feel stranded at subway stations and confused by MTA employees who, for example, may be found telling people to travel three stops in the wrong direction instead of walking five blocks to the nearest express stop when local service is unexpectedly out.

According to NYCT’s Internet Technology Group, this service should work on most WAP-enabled phones. “A majority of all smart phones – those that are browser enabled, and PDA’s, all of which are browser enabled – can support the application, which does not use a lot of Mobile device memory,” Sohaib Mallick, senior director of NYC Transit’s Internet Technologies group, said.

For his part, Fleuranges said that NYCT is rather excited to be offering the service and decided to offer it even as a program still in development so that riders could enjoy the new system. “Neither President Roberts nor I could see withholding the application from our riders given that it could provide them with system status information,” he said to me in an e-mail. “In a nutshell, it is a start. Does it solve the problem entirely? I’ll be the first to admit it doesn’t. But again, it is a start.”

It’s a start I can wholeheartedly support. Now that we can access this information while on the go, the next step — and I’m confident we’ll see it sooner rather than later — is a text message alert system that doesn’t require riders to actively search out service alerts. But for now, let’s celebrate this step forward.

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