The New York City Subway

[TonyO]

NYSun

Crisis in New York's Subways Comes Into Focus

BY JEREMY SMERD - Special to the Sun
March 23, 2005
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/10967

Four major subway service disruptions in the last week, including a fire yesterday that sent five people to the hospital, have highlighted a crisis in the New York subway system. Critics say the transit system is reeling from years of neglect and politican manipulation.

Three power outages crippled the overcrowded Lexington Avenue line last Wednesday. Some 750 riders of the 7 line were trapped in a smoke-filled tunnel a day later. Yesterday a fire at Atlantic Avenue and a police investigation at Columbus Circle sent commuters scrambling for alternative routes to work at the height of the morning rush hour.

While not every service disruption can be blamed on the vast decline of the system, piecemeal repairs have not addressed the overarching problems facing the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a New York-based think tank.

"We're now at the point where we have several generations of problems piled on top of each other," Steven Malanga said. "The problem is you can never catch up. New York can only operate on a crisis basis. Once the crisis passes, the legislature exploits the system."

Mr. Malanga points to debt, which consumes 60 cents of every dollar of revenue, pension obligations, and the sheer size of the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority as problems that require the active attention of the state Legislature and the governor, which jointly oversee the authority.

"There are no easy solutions," he said, citing the fixed costs for pension and debt obligations.

Seven major subway disruptions since a fire at the Chambers Street station crippled the A and C lines for 580,000 riders eight weeks ago has brought out public fears of a return to the decrepit subways of the 1970s, said a spokeswoman for the Straphangers Campaign.

"This is the typical stuff that used to happen in the late 1970s and early 1980s until investment started," Neysa Pranger said. "I think the bottom line is: these things are going to happen more frequently unless we invest in the sytem."

Transportation officials fended off criticism yesterday, telling customers that things are not as bad as they seem.

"We certainly apologize. That is about all we can do for this unfortunate series of events," a spokesman for New York City Transit, Charles Seaton, said. "What has happened in the last couple of weeks has nothing to do with funding or lack of maintenance."

The fire on the tracks near the Atlantic Avenue subway in Brooklyn station yesterday created enough smoke that authorities suspended service for the 2/3 and 4/5 trains.

While its cause remains under investigation, officials said debris on the tracks and a spark from the third rail at 7:06 a.m. may have set the wooden railroad ties on fire. Five people were taken to Long Island College Hospital with minor injuries from smoke inhalation. Full service was restored at 8:42 a.m.

Police investigating a robbery halted subway service between 164th Street and Columbus Circle beginning at 8:05 a.m. The delay for downtown trains lasted an hour. Police said they did not catch the suspect.

For commuters north of Columbus Circle, piling onto the 1 and 9 trains, it was an unwelcome reminder of the subway fire at Chambers Street on January 23 that crippled the A and C lines for several weeks.

"I've lived here all my life and every other day it seems some train line is out of service," Tonya Garcia, 27, said as she stood on the overcrowded platform of the 1/ 9 train at 137th Street. "I try to give the MTA credit where other people don't but they are getting on my nerves actually right now. It's a horrible inconvenience."

Like other New Yorkers, Ms. Garcia expects crowds in a city of 8 million, but her tolerance for the disruptions is wearing thin, especially in light of the fare increases.

"I'm very tolerant but then again I haven't purchased the new Metrocard at the higher rate," she said. "Once I have to shell out that money for the monthly card I'll probably get progressively more upset."

Riders, especially those who have paid the increased fare, feel caught in a system that has become too politicized.

"It seems that no one wants to take the blame," one commuter from Brooklyn, Jesse Levin, said. " I'm really upset that I pay so much money for the train and it seems the MTA is not run well. I think a lot of people feel that way."

The recent disruptions are unrelated, Mr. Seaton said, but because they follow so quickly after each other, the appearance of disrepair belies statistics that show a subway that has improved tremendously since the first capital plan was introduced in 1982.

Trains are on time 98% of the time, ridership reached a record 1.4 billion last year, and the average distance between subway car breakdowns is up from 8,000 miles in 1982 to 150,000 miles last year, he said.

"We may be victims of our own success," Mr. Seaton said of the criticism. "As problematic as these events have been, the system is running better than it has in our entire history. Twenty years ago, events like these were nearly daily occurrences."

But comparisons to the past mean very little to riders today, said a transportation consultant who worked for the MTA until 1998.

"The question isn't whether it's better than it used to be," Bruce Schaller said. "The question is: are they meeting the needs of people using the system today."

STRAPHANGER STRESS

A logbook of major service disruptions since the January 23 subway fire at Chambers Street.

* March 22: A subway fire of unknown origin fills the tunnels near the Atlantic Avenue station with smoke during the morning rush hour, injuring five passengers. The 2, 3, 4 and 5 lines were shut down for an hour and a half until 8:45 a.m. The Long Island Rail Road shut down service for almost an hour, stranding 3,000 commuters.

* March 22: A police investigation shuts down the A, B, C, and D trains for an hour at Columbus Circle during the morning rush hour. Thousands of riders switch to the 1 and 9 trains, overwhelming the trains and platforms. Police do not catch the suspect.

* March 17: Smoke detected in the tunnel connecting Manhattan to Queens shuts down the 7 train at 6:45 a.m., trapping 750 riders for an hour. Officials said an improperly secured metal plate became dislodged and hit the electrified third rail, creating a smoke condition.

* March 16: Three power outages shut down the Lexington Avenue line during morning and evening rush hours, wreaking havoc for about 350,000 commuters. A mysterious breach at the base of a manhole allowed brackish water to seep onto wires, causing them to short-circuit.

* February 28: Grand Central Shuttle derails after it hits a bumper, injuring three people.

* February 15: Three-alarm blaze at a Bronx apartment building disrupts rush-hour commutes for riders on the 2 and 5 trains.

* February 1: Subway fire on D line in Brooklyn disrupts service for an hour.

* January 23: A fire spreads to a control room at Chambers Street, destroying cables and wires that run the track signals. Service for the A train was disrupted and C train service was suspended until February 2, affecting 580,000 commuters daily. Officials initially misstated the service delay on the C line, estimating it would be out for five years.

[TonyO]

NYSun

Leadership Needed

New York Sun Staff Editorial
March 23, 2005
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/10970

At the rate things are going, it's not going to be too long before New Yorkers start demanding new management at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority - either in respect of Governor Pataki at election time, for the governor has authority over the MTA, or the appointed chairman of the agency, Peter Kalikow. We have no particular gripe with these individuals personally, but if they can't manage to run this railroad, maybe someone else should be given a crack at the job.

Certainly that thought must have occurred to commuters forced to evacuate the Atlantic Avenue station yesterday morning because a track fire was filling the subway with smoke. Some 30 people sustained light injuries, and four required treatment at Long Island College Hospital. Many more faced delays as the nos. 2, 3, 4, and 5 trains stopped service during rush hour. The Long Island Rail Road also shut down, which left some 3,000 commuters stranded.

This, moreover, is fast becoming an all-too-regular pattern. On Thursday morning, the no. 7 line went down, suspending service between Hunters Point and Times Square. Some 1,000 passengers, riding two Queens-bound trains, found themselves trapped in a smoke-filled tunnel and had to be evacuated. Just a day earlier, on Wednesday, a series of separate power failures shut down the Lexington Avenue line no fewer than three times in a single day.

The 350,000 riders who use the train regularly were out of luck during the morning and evening rush hours and, indeed, for most of the day. Apparently, salt and water had been seeping through a mysterious hole in the roof of the subway tunnel - over the course of several years, evidently - and short out a signaling box.

All of that happened just in the last week. In February, we saw the Grand Central Shuttle derail and a subway fire halt the D train in Brooklyn. And on January 23, a fire - which started in a homeless man's shopping cart - spread to a signal-relay control room at Chambers Street and shut down the A and C lines for days. The 580,000 New Yorkers who ride those trains daily must have had the same thought: "What is going on here?"

The chairman of the City Council's Transportation Committee, John Liu, plans to hold an emergency hearing. "Things are getting out of control and no one is taking responsibility," Mr. Liu, a Democrat of Flushing, told Newsday yesterday. In 2002, the MTA refinanced its outstanding debt, which provided short-term savings to fund its 2000-2004 capital program. But now the MTA faces annual debt service payments of over $1 billion a year through 2031. According to the MTA's July budget projections, debt service will consume 20% of the authority's operating revenues by 2008.

Even after fare hikes and service cuts, the MTA faces a $696 million shortfall in 2006, which will grow to $1.2 billion in 2008, according to a study by the New York City Independent Budget Office. The MTA's pension and health-benefit costs are expected to grow at an average rate of 10.2% through 2008. By contrast, New York City's spending on those benefits for its employees will grow about 6% a year in the same period.

Now the MTA wants to embark on a new $27.8 billion capital plan for 2005-2009 that contains a shortfall of $16.2 billion, including a shortfall of $11.3 billion for maintenance and repair projects. In December, Mr. Kalikow encouraged Mr. Pataki to raise taxes and fees on businesses, utilities, and mortgages to fund the MTA. The governor included two hikes in his budget: raising the mortgage recording tax and motor vehicle fees. He's offering Mr. Kalikow about $8 billion less than what he wants. Some in the state Senate have suggested a new tax on businesses in the MTA's service area as a way to fund the system.

With the prospect of all this debt and taxes, the MTA was still willing to submit to binding arbitration over the Hudson Yards site after the Jets signaled their unwillingness to pay anything close to appraised value. It can't be lost on voters that they had to pressure the railroad to look for the best price. Mr. Kalikow and his agency are still out stumping for tax increases and new state aid to cover the yawning gap between the MTA's spending and its revenues. So people are going to start to think about demanding leadership that will finally get the MTA's fiscal house in order instead of relying on ever-greater taxes and fares - and keep the tunnels clean and get the trains to run on time.

[ZippyTheChimp]

With the prospect of all this debt and taxes, the MTA was still willing to submit to binding arbitration over the Hudson Yards site after the Jets signaled their unwillingness to pay anything close to appraised value. It can't be lost on voters that they had to pressure the railroad to look for the best price. Mr. Kalikow and his agency are still out stumping for tax increases and new state aid to cover the yawning gap between the MTA's spending and its revenues. So people are going to start to think about demanding leadership that will finally get the MTA's fiscal house in order instead of relying on ever-greater taxes and fares - and keep the tunnels clean and get the trains to run on time.

At a Feb hearing of the NY State Assembly public authorities committee, there was the following exhange between committee chair Richard Brodsky and MTA chair Peter Kalikow:



BRODSKY (addressing the issue that the MTA land must be rezoned before the stadium can be built, or excess development rights can be sold off): How soon could you get a rezoning if you sought it?



KALIKOW: I don't know.
BRODSKY: Is there a ULURP [land-use procedure] component to the zoning process?
KALIKOW: I don't know.
BRODSKY: Has anybody tested the market for the transfer of development rights in that amount in that area? Does your appraisal do that?
KALIKOW: I don't know.
BRODSKY (later): Whose idea was it to go to arbitration?
KALIKOW: I actually don't know. It just kind of came up.
BRODSKY (later): Suppose the arbitrator comes back with $35 million, which is what the Jets think [the parcel is worth]. ... You'd take the $35 million and go home?
KALIKOW: I wouldn't be happy about it, no.
BRODSKY: I didn't ask you if you'd be happy about it. Would the board be bound by the arbitrator's decision?
KALIKOW: The board has to decide what it will and will not be bound by.

[TonyO]

That's an outrageous exchange and highlights the disconnect from common sense. I think the Sun's editorial also spells out why things only get accomplished during a crisis.

[TonyO]

NYObserver

What’s Taking So Long? The MTA’s Security Plan

by Marcus Baram

It’s a nightmare scenario that haunts subway riders: A dirty bomb is detonated on a crowded train, killing thousands and injuring even more in the ensuing panic.

Most security experts describe the city’s subway system as one of the most likely terrorist targets and stress that its sheer size and openness make it particularly vulnerable to attack. And yet the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has spent only $115 million on mass transit throughout the country, while giving $15 billion to the airlines for security needs.

“Mass transit carries 16 times more passengers than the airlines,” said Linton Johnson, a spokesman for San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit subway system. “Yet transit systems and commuter rail lines get a fraction of that Homeland Security money. If there was an attack, then they’d find out. It’d be a shame if someone has to die for us to get the money we need.”

Since 9/11, subway systems around the country have scrambled to help secure their systems through a combination of federal aid and by dipping into their own operating budgets. Yet while many of these transit agencies have already exhausted those limited Homeland Security grants and are pleading for much more funding, New York’s sprawling Metropolitan Transportation Authority has only spent a portion of the $591 million it has budgeted for security.

That revelation came to light during a routine budget hearing at the City Council on March 18, when Gregory S. Kullberg, the M.T.A.’s grim-faced director of capital program budgets, said that the agency had spent $25 million to $30 million of the allocation so far, sending local politicos and editorial writers into a frenzy. “It’s shocking to hear that so little progress has been made toward securing our transit system from terrorist attack,” fumed Council member John C. Liu, who chairs the Council’s transportation committee, shaking his head in disbelief. By the end of the year, the agency vowed to spend about $200 million in security-related work and an additional $100 million in security consulting and design contracts awarded last year.

Other municipal transit agencies don’t seem to have had such trouble spending their smaller allocations.

In Washington, D.C., the Metro has gone through the $49 million it was allocated by the federal government soon after 9/11. “It’s all been spent,” said Steven Taubenkibel, a Metro spokesman. “We spent it on additional explosive-detection canine dogs, ID systems at entrance locations, bomb-resistant trash cans, a pilot program for additional cameras, automatic vehicle locators, chemical sensors in train stations, closed-circuit TV.” The agency, which also spent several million of its own funds to purchase video equipment in buses and explosive-containment trash cans, is seeking $260 million in federal money to help build a backup operations control center. “If we had resources like [the $591 million allocated to the M.T.A.], we would be spending it immediately. New York and D.C. are two areas where security is critical and you need to act.”

In San Francisco, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system spent $20 million since 9/11 to improve security for the heart of the system, the Trans-Bay tube. “We’ve bought security cameras, police overtime, hardware to improve security, detection devices, alarms, anti-terror training,” said Mr. Johnson, who identified nearly $200 million in immediate security needs for the BART. “We’ve worked with Laurence Livermore labs. And yet once they develop these products like detection devices, they’re too expensive and we don’t have the money.”

In Los Angeles, transportation officials have spent $6.8 million in federal funds to harden the city’s new subway system with closed-circuit TV, barriers and emergency-response training, in addition to $40 million in local funds on security guards and other enhancements. “Before we got the money, we knew how we were going to spend it,” said Paul Lennon, director of intelligence for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. “All this pot of money, you get bogged down in discussing how to spend it. New York isn’t comparable. They have layers of management and layers of politics—they all want their particular cows to be considered.”

So what’s taking so long in New York? The M.T.A. asserts that it would rather take the time to make the right choices than throw the money at every proposal that comes its way. “Could we go through the $500 million?” asked M.T.A. spokesman Tom Kelly. “Absolutely—in about a week, if you took every cockamamie scheme that everybody brought to us to improve security.”

Instead, the agency has four engineering firms—the Jacobs Engineering Group, Parsons Brinc- kerhoff, the URS Corporation, and a joint venture of Washington Group International and the HNTB Companies—on contract to supply advice and the accompanying construction. “They give us all the architectural plans and surveys of what we need to do,” said Mr. Kelly, who stressed that the agency has spent tens of millions of dollars out of its operating budget on security-related needs in recent years.

“If they told us we need to put another foot of concrete around the tunnels, then that has been paid for,” Mr. Kelly added. “Look, this is a 100-year-old system that now you have to put in all new technological stuff. We have to do it in the best way possible. Anything you do in New York is going to be taken up by every other system in the world—if it’s good enough for New York City, it’s good enough for every system.”

And Mr. Kelly, who sat and shook his head throughout most of Mr. Liu’s questions and comments during the recent City Council hearing, is angered at politicians quick to attack the behemoth agency. “What I resent is the fact that they make it appear that we are not concerned about the safety of our customers,” he said. “Not only do we use the system, but our families do. And you know that [politicians] would be the first ones to criticize us if these steps prove to be unwise.”

Setting Priorities

Some have criticized the agency’s security staff and spending priorities. “I’m not clear what they’re doing with this money,” said Dave Katzman of the Transport Workers Union. “Most of these high-tech detectors don’t work underground because of the high levels of steel dust. They seem to have spent a lot of money on consultants to tell them what to do instead of taking real security measures like protecting the rail yards which are not properly secured right now.”

The M.T.A.’s director of security, Bill Morange, has been meeting with law-enforcement groups and security organizations to help assess the agency’s needs, but his tenure has gotten a mixed reaction. “Morange is a perfectly pleasant guy, but he doesn’t seem to know much about transit,” said one longtime security consultant. “Why did they hire him? He seems to be taking a wait-and-see attitude, and everyone knows that the subway is one of the ripest targets in the whole country. While you’re sitting there thinking about what to do, someone could set off a bomb—boom!”

But Mr. Morange has earned the respect of his colleagues, including his counterpart in Los Angeles. “I know Bill, and he knows what he’s doing,” said Mr. Lennon. “It requires a lot of focused attention in a place like New York, with all its politics, but he’s capable of that.”

And longtime transit advocates understand the delay in spending on security. “Have they spent enough and on the right things?” asked Beverly Dolinsky, the chair of the N.Y.C. Transit Riders Council, an advocacy organization. “It takes a while to do things. They’ve been increasing the number of police and canine units, hardening the system. First of all, you want to do it right, and you have to figure out the best way to spend it.”

Security experts agree that money shouldn’t be spent when trying to secure a system of the M.T.A.’s size and scope without doing a cost-benefit analysis first. “I’m not terribly worried [about the delay in spending],” said Robert Castelli, a professor of criminal justice and security management at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “My concern is that once they get all the advice, that they won’t spend it. It may be too much of a lag, and you have to ask: How good are these consultants? And how long do you want to wait for your advice? It’s great to hire top consultants as long as you don’t avoid dedicating yourself to the end game—helping secure the subways.”

And, considering the sprawling nature of the subway system and the sheer volume of commuters, the larger question is: Can New York’s subway ever be truly secured? “Will we ever come up with a 100 percent secure system? Probably not,” said Mr. Castelli, looking at the impracticality of security measures such as metal detectors. “You’re going to have to stop every single person with a briefcase or a backpack. It would be so unwieldy, it would be impossible.”

[TonyO]

NYTimes
March 23, 2005

Subways Are Stalling, and the Riders Are Screeching

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/03/23/nyregion/atlantic.184.1.650.jpg
A tunnel near the Atlantic Avenue station filled with smoke from a track fire, halting service on the Nos. 2, 3, 4 and 5 lines between Brooklyn and Manhattan and snarling Long Island Rail Road service in Brooklyn.

By SEWELL CHAN

For the third time in less than a week, New York City subway trains were halted yesterday and thousands of commuters were delayed at the peak of the morning rush, this time because of a fire at the Atlantic Avenue station in Brooklyn that snarled service on the Nos. 2, 3, 4 and 5 lines as well as 13 trains on the Long Island Rail Road.

Two minutes after the fire was extinguished, and before service was even restored, service on two other subway lines, the B and the C, was suspended, at 8:10 a.m., because of a police investigation at the Columbus Circle station in Manhattan, infuriating riders in another major business district. The police said they were looking into reports that a man had run onto the tracks.

Major subway disruptions have occurred with striking regularity throughout the city in the past two months, unleashing a torrent of frustration from riders and elected officials, coming as they have on the heels of the second fare increase in two years.

"They don't notify you before you go into the station that there's a problem, that's the pathetic part," said Joshua Justin, a retired chemist who was caught in last week's chaos.

Last year, weekday on-time performance - a key barometer of subway service - declined for the first time in a decade. But transit officials insisted yesterday that the system was better than ever and that they were victims only of higher expectations brought about by their success.

"It's performing at levels we've never seen before in terms of on-time performance and service reliability," said Lawrence G. Reuter, the president of New York City Transit since 1996.

He dismissed the slight drop in on-time performance - to 96.6 percent from 97.1 percent, after steady increases since 1995 - as an aberration. "Statistically, it's not very valid," he said.

Mr. Reuter attributed any increase in delays to an intensified schedule of repairs and upgrades. "Any slight degradation is because of all the work we're doing on the system," he said. "We've had an active capital program, but we're doing a lot more work now that's on stations, tracks and tunnel lighting."

Among the agency's major projects are a new computerized signaling system on the L line and a signal-replacement project on the No. 7 line. The number of major work projects that require service changes, is perhaps twice as high as usual, Mr. Reuter said.

Yesterday's fire left six riders with minor injuries, and more than 60 firefighters worked to put it out. At 6:58 a.m., loose debris ignited wooden track ties near Atlantic Avenue, one of the busiest stations in Brooklyn, filling a subway tunnel with smoke.

Service on four lines between Manhattan and Brooklyn was shut down until 8:42 a.m. The Long Island Rail Road canceled or diverted 13 trains between Jamaica, Queens, and the Atlantic Avenue terminal, delaying 3,000 passengers.

Yesterday's problems followed three other recent mishaps starting on Jan. 23, when a signal-room fire disabled the A and C lines for nearly two weeks. Last Wednesday, water poured through a concrete hole onto a tangle of electrical wires, disabling signals on the Lexington Avenue lines; the next day, a piece of metal struck the third rail along the No. 7 line and sent smoke through a tunnel under the East River.

The recent disruptions have occurred at an especially sensitive time for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the transit agency's parent. The authority's executive director, Katherine N. Lapp, spent yesterday pleading with state lawmakers for $17.2 billion, the amount officials insist is needed over the next five years to prevent the transit network from declining.

Also yesterday, the City Council said it would hold an emergency hearing next week on the state of the subways. "It is clear that this system is in a state of crisis," declared the Council speaker, Gifford Miller, who is running for mayor.

The disruptions have also begun attracting the attention of the authority's board. "I wouldn't want to presuppose that because we've done a good job, people should be happy about it," said Barry L. Feinstein, a board member since 1989. "I don't come from that school."

Mr. Feinstein, the chairman of the board's New York City Transit committee, said that despite $40 billion in upgrades since 1982, "all the difficulties of the system are just enormous," from outmoded signals to unprotected wiring. "Those are things that only can be handled on a slow, deliberate pace, picking the priorities of things that should be done, so that mega-problems don't develop," he said. "And we've had several mega-problems in recent weeks."

Mr. Reuter offered an apology to his riders but insisted that the proximity of the mishaps was essentially a coincidence and urged riders to keep things in perspective.

"Twenty years ago, we were having these types of incidents basically daily," he said. "We were having catastrophes every day; just pull up the headlines of the papers in those days. For the last 6 to 10 years we haven't had that. Because of the success and how much the performance has improved, people begin to forget what it was like 20 years ago. We've had a string of unfortunate incidents here."

He added: "We don't see anything systemic. We don't see anything of a pattern developing. We don't like these either. We don't want any delays to the system."

In an interview, he addressed two disruptions that affected hundreds of thousands of riders last week.

Last Wednesday, service on the three Lexington Avenue lines was shut down three times after water seeped through a hole in a concrete tunnel roof and drenched a set of electrical cables. The hole appeared to have been one created in 1993 by transit workers to transfer concrete onto the tracks, Mr. Reuter said, confirming an account reported in The Daily News. The workers who created the hole, near the station at 33rd Street and Park Avenue South, have retired, he said. On Thursday, 750 passengers were stranded on two trains in the Steinway tunnel, under the East River, after a repair crew left behind a metal track fastener, which bounced onto the third rail and created electric sparks. "Those people have been called in and they've already been reprimanded, " he said.

Many riders, however, said yesterday that they thought the disruptions seemed less like an accident and more like a pattern.

"It's very, very bad, especially on the weekends," said Kouch H. Kach, who was preparing to board the E train in Jackson Heights, Queens, where a station rehabilitation project has lasted for months. "Sometimes at rush hour, my God, it's very crowded. You can't even walk on the platform sometimes."

Like roughly half of all subway riders, Ms. Kach began paying more last month, when the price of 7-day and 30-day fare cards rose. "It's not fair," she said. "We're paying such a high fare, and not getting the service, especially on the weekends."

Clay M. Dean, an asset manager, said he was considering moving from Long Island City, Queens, to the Upper East Side of Manhattan to save the money he routinely pays a car service when the subways are delayed. "It's very bad, and it's getting worse," he said. He conceded that the system is a century old, but added, "I can't imagine that it has decided to fall apart all at once."

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has been largely silent about the subway woes. The mayor has aggressively lobbied the transportation authority to sell development rights to its West Side railyard to the Jets for a new football stadium. "He voices his criticism when he thinks it's merited, and he's not shy about doing so," a spokesman for the mayor, Edward Skyler, said yesterday.

Despite the transportation authority's growing financial problems, Mr. Reuter said he would resign before he would agree to postpone maintenance, adding that no one had suggested he do so. "We want people to be more efficient and productive, but we're not going to defer maintenance," he said. "I can sleep comfortably every night, every night, telling you we have not deferred any maintenance in the system."

[ZippyTheChimp]

the MTA needs another Richard Ravitch.

[TonyO]

NYTimes
March 24, 2005

As Subways Slow, Riders Play Waiting Games

By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

A barometer of just how bad the recent subway delays have been can be found in Sacha Newley's reading habits. Mr. Newley, a painter from the Upper West Side, has certain books that he reserves only for subway reading. Two months ago, around the time the delays began, he picked up his latest: "Moby-Dick." He's now on Chapter 107.

A great book, Mr. Newley said, but a paltry coping technique when faced with the angst of a serious delay, when a quick hop underground turns into an interminable wait on an ever-crowding platform with no more information than an occasional belch from the loudspeaker. He and hundreds of thousands of other passengers have found themselves in that very situation over the past two months, forced by an epidemic of power failures and track fires to count the tiles, reread Us Weekly, stare forlornly into the abyss or debate whether to give it up and take a cab.

Always popular is the distraction approach. Peter Hitt, a New York University student, was doubly insured, standing on the uptown No. 6 train platform at the Bleecker Street station yesterday, listening to his iPod and reading a book ("Journey to the End of the Night," naturally). Mr. Hitt, as calm as a lighthouse, said he did not get angry until he heard just how bad the delays were going to be.

As if on cue, a voice on the loudspeaker announced: "Ladies and gentlemen, because of a brflig fraptail at 116th Street, the uptown 6 train will frip deet brak croob."

Mr. Hitt ignored the announcement.

But Ulises Ortega, 43, a waiter who lives on the Upper West Side, was adamantly opposed to the use of headphones. Sure, they could make the time go faster, but there is one's safety at stake.

"One time I witnessed a robbery on a train," Mr. Ortega said, explaining that the victim "was wearing earphones." Being vigilant is more important, Mr. Ortega suggested, than being entertained: "You never know, you know?"

One never knows indeed. And when one is still standing on a platform and already 10 minutes late to work, it does not really matter whether the recent delays are just a run of bad luck or the first rumblings of total breakdown. The iPod might work well as a distraction, just as the Rubik's cube did 20 years ago. But more than anything, waiting is a mind game.

"I'm planning my wedding," said Whitney Burrell, 30, a medical student who lives on the Upper East Side. "I think about everything that could go wrong. Every permutation that could go wrong. The photographer doesn't show up. The hairstylist doesn't show up."

When she snaps out of it, Ms. Burrell said, it isn't so bad to be standing on a subway platform. Anyway, it's a way to pass the time.

The feeling of helplessness, which prompted one young man on the F train to muse on the subway's "existential aspect," is a recurring theme brought up by frustrated commuters.

"It's the subway system," said Connie Robinson, 27, a house manager at Studio 54. "There's nothing you can do about it."

Though Ms. Robinson, who lives in the Bronx, said she had been seriously delayed at least once a week in the past few months, she said a Zenlike approach was the only way to cope.

"If you don't have a book you don't have a choice but to zone out," she said.

That's not entirely true. There is the most controversial tactic of all: walking out. Just about everyone who rides the subway has experienced that compulsion to cease the fruitless waiting, to march up the steps and take a cab. That'll show the M.T.A. But few people spoken to yesterday said that they had actually gone through with it.

Gary Fall, on the other hand, is a walker.

"Sometimes if it's really messed up, I'll walk for 20 blocks," Mr. Fall said. "The most I'll wait is 15 minutes."

It's a risky strategy but Mr. Fall, 44, is a professional. He is a messenger. That is why he was waiting in the 23rd Street station on the Nos. 1 and 9 lines yesterday, just as southbound service was being restored to those lines after 2 hours and 20 minutes.

His deliveries are often just close enough to make it on foot if the delay starts stretching out. And anyway, when he's waiting for a local, he has a system.

"I'll watch the express trains," Mr. Fall said. "Usually two expresses go by. If I see two come and then I see another, then I leave."

But isn't that reckless? Just to get up and walk away like that? Wouldn't waiting almost always pay off?

"If I was on the clock, I wouldn't mind," Mr. Fall said. "But I get paid on commission. If I was on the clock it might be a different story."


Colin Moynihan contributed reporting for this article.

[TonyO]

NYTimes
March 25, 2005

Maybe Transit Should Try Some Courtesy

By CLYDE HABERMAN

THIS happened on the No. 1 line the other morning. Any subway regular knows a variation of this story all too well.

Long after the morning rush, a downtown local train sat in the 72nd Street station, its doors open, for two minutes or so. Why? Who knew?

A downtown No. 2 express pulled in across the platform. Some passengers on the No. 1 got up, preparing to hop to the speedier train. But the moment the No. 2 came to a halt, the conductor on the local closed his doors. After having idled in the station, his train started to roll just as the doors were opening on the No. 2.

The riders stuck on the local were frustrated. No doubt, so were some on the express who may have wanted to switch.

You had to ask yourself: What in the name of Mike Quill was going on? During rush periods, the need to get back on schedule is understandable. But at 11:30 a.m., what cosmic harm would have been caused by keeping the doors open 15 more seconds?

Judging from the grumbling, some riders believed that the conductor had gone out of his way to make them miserable. Mild paranoia? Maybe. Then again, maybe not. As we said, this is a sadly familiar tale.

So here is some unsolicited advice for Lawrence G. Reuter, the president of New York City Transit:

Even if some of your loudest critics are politicians capitalizing on your system's recent woes, plenty of your customers are fed up with paying more while sensing that they get less.

Clearly, you need many billions to keep the system in proper shape; the exact amount is for the politicians to hash out. But you might gain a measure of customer sympathy through small changes that cost nothing or close to it.

Hint: gratuitously closing doors on people is not the way to go.

Mr. Reuter's response to his critics is to blame higher rider expectations. The subways, he suggested this week, are so much better than they were 20 years ago that New Yorkers are less tolerant when things go wrong.

No question, service is light-years ahead of what it was in the early 1980's. Subway stations are far more attractive. Back in the day, the system seemed near collapse. If you missed a train, you never knew when - make that if - another would arrive.

Unfortunately for Mr. Reuter, many of today's New Yorkers were living elsewhere or were not yet born 20 years ago. So telling them about the bad old days is limited as a form of persuasion. There are other ways to win friends, though. They involve actions, not words, and would not seem to require gobs of money.

Do the doors between train cars have to be locked, as they are more and more? Locking the doors is billed as a safety measure. But it permits no escape from intolerable smells or balky air-conditioning.

It may also be a safety hazard of its own, as a woman we know discovered while riding the V train one recent night. On the unbroken stretch between Queens and Manhattan, she found herself alone in the car with a man who exposed himself and then tried to force himself on her sexually.

She was not hurt. But she had no means of escape because the doors were locked. She endured three or four frightening minutes, she said, before she could cry for help at the Lexington Avenue station.

OTHER problems are hardly that serious, but they are nuisances that would seem easy to solve, again at little or no expense.

Stations are littered with discarded MetroCards. Can't the storage boxes for them be built in a way that keeps the cards from spilling across the station floor?

Can nothing be done about the drummers in major stations who bang on plastic buckets and make the din unbearable?

Must the trains be turned into freight carriers? Can't station managers refuse to open the gates, at least during peak hours, to people who want to bring oversized objects on board, from steamer trunks to refrigerators?

Do subway announcements have to be garbled? Can't conductors be encouraged to speak straight English instead of insider jargon like, "We're being held by supervision"? And is there a rule forbidding the station clerk to notify riders that there is a problem with the trains before they pass through the turnstiles?

The list could go on. Not that any of it deals with the bigger picture of making the trains run on time. But isn't it just possible that riders would be more understanding about inevitable glitches if stations seem orderly and train doors are not needlessly slammed in their faces?

[TonyO]

NYPost
3/25/05

MIKE PUSHES ALBANY ON SUBWAY REHAB $$

By DAVID SEIFMAN and CLEMENTE LISI

The money train that will pay for subway upgrades over the next five years needs to come from Albany, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday.

The cry for more funding comes after state lawmakers earmarked $16.6 billion toward transit improvements — even though the bulk of the plan could be dependent on more MTA borrowing that would drive fares through the roof.

"I think what is clear is that we for decades have underfunded the kinds of investments that we should be making in infrastructure," Bloomberg said.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority's previous five-year capital program was funded almost entirely through borrowing, leading to the agency's current fiscal crisis and two fare hikes in as many years.

The cash-strapped MTA has said it is willing to borrow up to $4 billion, but lawmakers have proposed that as much as $8 billion come from bonds.

MTA staffers have spent the last week lobbying lawmakers to increase the state's contribution to the program and lower the burden the cash-strapped agency would have to bear down the line.

"Anything over $4 billion becomes worrisome," said Jeremy Soffin, a spokesman for the Regional Plan Association. "That's when the operating budget starts to suffer."

Bloomberg said that it would be "disappointing" if Albany does not come through with more money needed to modernize signal systems, fan plants and other underground equipment that keeps trains running.

"We saw the penalty for that back in the '70s, and today we're catching up," he said.

Another part of funding the program hinges on getting Gov. Pataki's support behind a $2.9 billion transportation bond act that would be put before voters next fall in a statewide referendum.

"I'm going to look at it in the context of the total budget," said Pataki, who has power to approve or veto the MTA package.

Voters rejected a similar transportation bond act in 2000.

Bloomberg said increased state aid would go a long way toward avoiding breakdowns like the ones that have recently plagued the subway system.

"If you don't go and keep your technology up to date, if you don't keep replacing things, you will have more and more breakdowns," he said.

The Legislature's package puts expansion projects like the Second Avenue subway and East Side Access in peril after just $2.5 billion was put aside for them — $5.5 billion less than the MTA requested last year.

Meanwhile, Mother Nature made getting around on the rails yesterday even harder.

The No. 4 line in The Bronx was halted for hours after a large tree fell onto the tracks.

Sleet and heavy winds knocked the 60-foot elm onto the elevated tracks at the Bedford Park Boulevard station just after midnight.

[TonyO]

NYTimes
March 26, 2005

Reversing Trend, Subway Delays Are on the Increase Again

By SEWELL CHAN and JO CRAVEN McGINTY

An analysis of delays on the New York City subway system confirms what many riders have begun to suspect: After years of improvements, the number of delays has started to increase over the last 18 months. The trend has raised concerns among some transit experts that the service improvements achieved over the last decade may be ever more difficult to sustain.

Indeed, according to an analysis by The New York Times of monthly statistics on delays covering the last eight years, a typical weekday rider on the subway today is likely to experience a train delay roughly once every three weeks, compared with about once every five weeks in September 2003, when the number of stalled trains reached a record low. New York City Transit defines a delay as running more than five minutes behind schedule.

The delays - those poorly explained and always frustrating waits on crowded platforms or inside idled trains - have increased across any number of the 49 categories catalogued by the transit agency, ranging from malfunctioning signals and switches to maintenance crews working on the system's more than 700 miles of track. Reports of suspicious packages have become more common. And many of the delays are due to worker error, as when a train's emergency brakes are automatically tripped because the motorman has improperly passed a wayside signal without stopping.

But riders themselves are often responsible for stalled commutes. Sick passengers who require medical attention have been one of the most common causes of delay in each of the last eight years, despite a program that has placed nurses in five of the busiest stations. And the category listed as "Persons Holding Doors" has finished as one of the top 10 causes for delays in 4 of the last 18 months.

On one level, to be sure, the analysis appears to confirm a central assertion that the transit agency's president, Lawrence G. Reuter, has made in the last two months: that seen most broadly, subway service has become far more reliable in the last decade, even as annual ridership - 1.4 billion last year - has soared to its highest level since the early 1950's.

Yet for those riders who have grown increasingly frustrated by a series of four disruptions on major subway lines at the height of the morning commuter rush since January, the most recent statistics come as little surprise.

The breakdowns since January had various causes - an electrical fire, a track fire, a hole in the roof of a subway tunnel and a metal fastener left on a track - but they all met with exasperation from riders and criticism from local politicians. They also underscored the agency's persistent need for cash to finance upgrades and repairs, as well as the heightened expectations held by riders, who have become accustomed to consistent service and have little patience for interruptions.

Andrew B. Albert, the chairman of the New York City Transit Riders Council, a state-sponsored advocacy group, said he had recently heard a surge of complaints from riders about stuck door panels, malfunctioning turnstiles and other devices that required constant maintenance.

"I hope this isn't the start of a downward trend," said Mr. Albert, who is a nonvoting member of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's board. "I hope that these are aberrations I'm seeing and that it doesn't portend something terrible down the track. We don't want to go back to those days of endless delays, people packed in because trains were always taken out of service, and pieces falling off the bottom of trains."

Jack S. Lusk, who was the transit agency's senior vice president for customer service until 1997, said the frequency of the recent disruptions should cause concern for officials like Mr. Reuter, the transit agency's president.

"If you see a spate of this stuff, it's either indicative of some outside issues, like really bad weather; or some loosening of staff attention, which Larry's not going to let slide any further; or, lastly, some fraying that can be a result of underinvestment in certain areas," Mr. Lusk said.

Weekday on-time performance - a major benchmark of subway service - declined slightly last year for the first time since 1994. In an interview yesterday, Mr. Reuter, who has led the agency since 1996, said he believed that most of the increase in delays could be attributed to four factors.

Major track projects are under way, more suspicious packages are being reported as part of an antiterror campaign and the increase in riders has led to more trash that ends up on the tracks, Mr. Reuter said. In addition, he said that the agency had altered its work rules in 2002, after two on-the-job deaths, and that the changes had enhanced worker safety but increased delays.

"We've erred on the side of safety for everybody," Mr. Reuter said. "In doing that, your delays sometimes fluctuate and what you see now is a slight uptick. We have to drill down into each of those categories. Right now, we don't think maintenance is a key driver of these factors."

The analysis by The Times drew from service reliability records that the agency provides each month to the transportation authority's board. The data contains the total number of weekday delayed trains, as well as a tally of the 10 leading causes for each month, from January 1997 to January 2005. In seven of those years, the board took a monthlong summer break so records were not provided for those seven corresponding months.

In January 2005, the most recent month for which records were available, there were 6,294 delayed weekday trains. The transit agency runs an average of 8,077 trips each weekday, or 177,694 trips in a month with 22 weekdays. So a rider had a 1-in-28 chance of being on a delayed train that month. (The month with the fewest delays, September 2003, had 3,635 delayed trains.)

Ten causes have appeared most frequently on the monthly lists since 1997. Leading that list are delays due to work crews. While most work takes place at night or on weekends, if a crew is still on the tracks beyond the scheduled end of its shift, hundreds of trains can be delayed in a matter of hours.

The transit agency frequently attributes delays to trouble with four types of equipment: guard lights, which alert the conductor that the doors have been closed properly and permit the train to proceed; signals, which guide train movements; switches, which allow trains to move across tracks; and track circuits, which detect the presence of a train on a segment of track.

[TonyO]

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com

Subway tests new way to foil thieves

By PETE DONOHUE
Sunday, April 3rd, 2005

Transit officials conducted a secret test last week to see if early-morning trains could be made safer by effectively cutting the subways in half, the Daily News has learned.
The hush-hush experiment by the Transit Authority involved running trains with 10 cars along the Lexington Ave. line - but locking the doors of the last five cars to force passengers to enter the front of the trains.

The test was requested by the Police Department to help protect straphangers against "lush workers" - pickpockets who prey on sleeping, sometimes drunken subway riders overnight, police told The News.

"By restricting the number of open cars, it's less likely for potential victims to find themselves asleep and alone in empty cars," NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said.

Major felonies in the subways are up 14% this year compared with the same period last year.

Despite the increase, police officials say subways, which carry more than 4 million riders a day, are safe.

Roughly 10 major felonies are committed a day, compared with 12-17 daily from 1995 to 2000.

During the TA's early-morning test Wednesday, conductors kept train doors open longer than usual to allow passengers at the back of the platform to walk to the front of the trains, where the doors were open.

The experiment involved 15 trains and caused some delays, transit sources said.

But the delays could be lessened if the TA made a few changes, including placing staffers on platforms to direct riders to open doors, installing signs and launching a public information campaign, a source said.

The TA and NYPD have not decided whether to lock train doors overnight on a regular basis.

If the security initiative goes forward, it likely would target only train lines where lush workers have been a problem, such as the Lexington Ave. line, police said.

The pickpockets' crimes, though mostly nonviolent, are by far the most prevalent problem in the subway system.

But rider advocates have their concerns about locking train doors.

Gene Russianoff, an attorney for the Straphangers Campaign, and Andrew Albert, chairman of the New York City Transit Riders Council, said locking rear doors could force some riders to make longer walks to station exits after they get off the trains - leaving them more vulnerable to criminals.

Locking train doors or running shorter trains also could worsen crowding on subway lines already jammed at night, Albert said.

"This has to be thought out very, very carefully," he said.

[junglizt1210]

I still don't understand that article, so please can smene clarify,... what are these "lush" workers?

And I still don't understand how locking the doors would help, does that mean that the last 5 cars are still accessible, but only through the doors between the cars, as no access can be made from the platform, or does that mean that the last 5 cars are not used altogether and are jsut being dragged around by the front 5..?

Thanks,
Dan

[TonyO]

April 4, 2005

25 Years Ago, Subways and Buses Stopped Running

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/04/04/nyregion/strike.184.1.650.jpg
Subway riders by the thousands walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to get to and from Manhattan. There were restrictions on access by car.

By SEWELL CHAN

Twenty-five years ago this week, a strike by 33,000 transit workers shut down much of New York City and tested the resourcefulness, patience and sanity of more than 3 million subway and bus riders.

No commemoration of the strike has been planned, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which faces a round of labor negotiations in December, would probably prefer that it be long forgotten. But the 11-day walkout - the second of only two general strikes in the subway system's history - remains an indelible memory for New Yorkers who lived through it.

The strike represented the last major effort by New York workers to challenge the fiscal austerity that had taken hold after the city nearly went bankrupt in 1975, according to Joshua B. Freeman, a labor historian at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

The strike began early on the morning of April 1, 1980, after the board of the city's major transit union rejected management's offer of a 6 percent wage increase in each of the next two years. "There was a pent-up feeling on the part of the transit workers, who, because of the fiscal stringencies of the 70's, hadn't had a wage increase in a long time," said Richard Ravitch, the authority's chairman at the time.

The walkout was orderly, but shutting down the country's largest mass transit system, even temporarily, involved complex coordination.

Police officers roped and chained turnstiles and stairways at 458 subway stations with 2,000 entrances. Bus drivers, train operators and conductors were ordered to complete their runs and park their buses and trains in depots.

Edward I. Koch, who was mayor at the time, said the strike was terrifying at first. "We were scared to death," he said in an interview on Friday. "Remember, I had no experience with a strike. I had been in office two years."

But Mr. Koch said he was determined not to repeat the experience of John V. Lindsay, who had endured a 13-day transit strike that began the day he took office in 1966. Mr. Lindsay had urged workers to stay home unless they considered themselves "essential."

By contrast, Mr. Koch ordered all city employees to work and famously stood on the Brooklyn Bridge, cheering on commuters walking across it.

"I thought: There are the municipal workers coming to save the city," he wrote in "Mayor," his 1984 autobiography. "It was like the Russian Army coming over frozen Lake Ladoga to save Leningrad."

During rush hours, cars were not permitted in Manhattan south of 96th Street without at least one passenger. Drivers lined up at bridge and tunnel entrances and competed with one another to pick up hitchhikers.

Entrepreneurs saw opportunity in the confusion. The cost of bicycle rentals, taxicab rides, garage spaces and gasoline - even space on a stranger's couch - soared. The city estimated that 500,000 people stayed in hotels or with friends or relatives in Manhattan.

Hotels, restaurants, theaters and taxi drivers thrived. Some commercial banks ferried employees on chartered buses and boats. But manufacturing firms were hit hard, especially those in the garment industry. Hospitals reported an increase in visits from elderly people who had been left unattended because visiting nurses could not get to them. The City University of New York canceled classes at three campuses.

The sight of people wearing business suits along with sneakers or jogging shoes became common, as did the practice of carrying a tote bag with a pair of casual footwear.

In the end, the strike was estimated to have cost $75 million to $100 million in lost income for workers and companies - and $3 million a day in overtime and lost taxes for the city.

The strike resulted from bitter dissent within the union, Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union of America. Many members believed that the union's president, John E. Lawe, had not stood up to the city in previous negotiations. "We had had two miserable contracts in a row," said George McAnanama, who was on the union's executive board at the time and is now an employee of the union.

Mr. Koch and the city's business leaders were equally adamant that Mr. Ravitch not give in to the union's demands, fearful that doing so would set a costly precedent for future municipal contracts.

In the end, the authority made a new offer that included a 9 percent wage increase in the first year, an 8 percent increase in the second and a cost-of-living adjustment that helped offset the high inflation at the time. The union had been seeking 15 percent in the first year, and 10 percent in the second.

But even after a quarter-century, there is no consensus on whether the strike was necessary.

"It was not the inability of me and the union to agree, it was the external forces - Ed Koch on the one hand and militants in Lawe's union - who prevented a settlement," Mr. Ravitch said yesterday.

Mr. Koch, for his part, said Mr. Ravitch lost at the bargaining table what defiant commuters - by surviving without the subway for 11 days - had won on the streets. "I thought he gave too much, and he did it without telling me," Mr. Koch said.

[TonyO]

NY Daily News

Subways to get big makeover

Station fixes, elevators, new transfers in works

By KATE MEYER and PETE DONOHUE
DAILY NEWS WRITERS

Soon to be leaving a station near you - peeling paint, dirty tiles and crumbling steps.
The MTA will spend more than $900 million in the next five years to make over 44 subway stations and continue its upgrade of the massive hub at Times Square.

An additional $800 million will be shelled out by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to allow riders to transfer to more trains at two stations and install elevators at 17 more stops.

"Everything needs to be redone," Phyllis Hurst, 43, said as she waited for a train at the Elder Ave. station in the Bronx, one of the stops slated for a face-lift.

"Remodel the whole damn thing," she said.

At a minimum, the renovations will include painting ceilings and steel beams, replacing tiles, fixing steps and making stairwells wider to improve the flow of riders from mezzanines to platforms, officials said.

The Bleecker St. station on the Lexington Ave. line is among those that will be renovated.

A new passageway at the station will allow riders, for the first time, to transfer for free from uptown No. 6 trains to B, D, F or V trains at the Broadway/Lafayette station.

"It's a pain in the --- right now," said Sean Mahar, 34, who lives in the East Village and uses the stations frequently. "It only makes sense if you're going to have one transfer in one direction to have it in both directions for free."

The MTA's $21.1 billion capital plan was approved by its board last week. It still must be given the okay by an Albany panel.

The MTA had proposed a larger spending plan but the state budget reduced its scope, forcing renovations at a dozen subway stations to be delayed.

MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow said the station improvements "will provide a nicer environment for our customers" and also "make their trips safer and more reliable."


Lucky Riders


Subway stations to be renovated over next five years:

The Bronx


Whitlock Ave., Elder Ave., Morrison-Sound View Aves., St. Lawrence Ave., Parkchester, Castle Hill Ave., Zerega Ave., Middletown Road and Buhre Ave. on No. 6 line.

E. 180th St. on the Nos. 2 and 5 lines.
Manhattan


96th St. and 59th St. on Broadway/Seventh Ave. line.

59th St., Bleecker St. & Wall St. on Lexington Ave. line.
Brooklyn


Jay St.-Borough Hall

Eighth Ave., Fort Hamilton Parkway, New Utrecht Ave. & 18th Ave. on Sea Beach line of N train.

Ninth Ave., Fort Hamilton Parkway, 62nd St., 71st St., 79th St., 18th Ave., 20th Ave., Bay Parkway, 25th Ave. and Bay 50th St. on the West End Line of the D and M trains.

Avenues H, J, M, U & Neck Road on Brighton Line of Q train.
Queens


Beach 105th, 98th, 90th, 67th, 60th, 44th, 36th and 25th Sts. and Far Rockaway/Mott Ave. on the A line.

Originally published on May 1, 2005

[NewYorkYankee]

Well, its about time!

[TLOZ Link5]

The Bleecker St. station on the Lexington Ave. line is among those that will be renovated.

A new passageway at the station will allow riders, for the first time, to transfer for free from uptown No. 6 trains to B, D, F or V trains at the Broadway/Lafayette station.

YES!!!!!!!!

[mkeit]

The MTAofficially cancencelled the #7 Line extension to the West Side. This may be because of the financial crisis or to put pressure on the stadium project.

[krulltime]

^What??? No way!!!

[STT757]

The MTAofficially cancencelled the #7 Line extension to the West Side. This may be because of the financial crisis or to put pressure on the stadium project.

How can the MTA scrap a project that the City not the TA were going to pay for?

[mkeit]

Solicitation Number Due DateDescription

C-26503 (http://www.mta.nyc.ny.us/nyct/procure/contracts/c26503.pdf)

5/9/05,12:00

No. 7 Line Extension of running Tunnels-CANCELLED



From the MTA-NYCT procurement page

[junglizt1210]

nooooo!!

i think it's financial problems too...

[BrooklynRider]

Perhaps the 42nd Street Light Rail is being given more weight. It is a much better option and would be alot cheaper, while creating a much more pedestrian friendly 42nd Street thoroughfare.

[debris]

I highly doubt this is correct. Note the third paragraph, "the MTA has decided to complete the design process...". Bloomberg is using the 7 extension to leverage his stadium plan, and I really doubt it would be cancelled with no announcement or media coverage.

[mkeit]

The 42nd St Light rail is some ones pipe dream. There is almost no official support for it.

It is at the bottom of a long list of transit projects.

[junglizt1210]

I think it would be a great idea, but i don't see it happening for various reasons, and this thread is going OT....

If the 7 is to be extended, how far to? does it jsut loop around currently, or is the end of the tunnel a little distance from the station, or does the line lead onto another subway line?

[TonyO]

YES!!!!!!!!

That station is very messed. Transfer only one direction to the 6 train. I second that Yes!!

[mkeit]

No connections to other lines. A station at W 41st St between 9th and 10th Aves and one at 34th St to serve the Convention Center and the Stadium.

The tracks would extend to 25th St.

[BrooklynRider]

No connections to other lines. A station at W 41st St between 9th and 10th Aves and one at 34th St to serve the Convention Center and the Stadium.

The tracks would extend to 25th St.

That would work. Hopefully a connection passage to LIRR / A / C / E Lines

[TonyO]

NYTimes
May 24, 2005

MetroCards? Certainly. But DeKalb Avenue? Don't Ask.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/05/24/nyregion/subway.583.1.jpg
Kevin Woods, a station supervisor, gave advice to LaVarta Mattox, a new station customer assistance agent, at the Herald Square station Monday during her weekday debut.

By SEWELL CHAN
Commuters at eight subway stations in Manhattan and Brooklyn discovered a new species of employee yesterday. Outfitted in burgundy jackets, vests and ties, and standing outside freshly painted booths, station customer assistance agents, as they are called, are supposed to be the new public face of the subway system.

At the stations, the agents give directions and help riders use the electronic vending machines that sell MetroCards, which made tokens obsolete.

They are there, first and foremost, to answer questions. It might seem unfair to put the tough questions to them on the first weekday of their debut, but this is the subway, after all.

So in a brazenly unscientific effort, reporters devised a sort of pop quiz for the new agents. The results were mixed.

One agent, Robert A. Carreras, aced the basics: the price of a seven-day unlimited-ride MetroCard ($24), a 30-day card ($76) and a seven-day express bus pass ($41). Mr. Carreras even volunteered that he knew the maximum amount of change the vending machines could return ($6).

But then he was asked how to get to DeKalb Avenue. "DeKalb is in Brooklyn, right?" asked Mr. Carreras, who works at the Herald Square station. Indeed it is. The correct answer was to take a Brooklyn-bound B, Q or R train. The D and N trains, which also stop at Herald Square, go to Brooklyn but bypass DeKalb Avenue.

Fabian Vega, a customer assistance agent at Union Square, was equally stumped when he was asked how to get to DeKalb Avenue. After hesitating, he suggested taking the A to Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, even though the A does not stop at Union Square. (The L, N, Q, R, W and Nos. 4, 5 and 6 trains do.)

And from Atlantic Avenue? "You'd walk it," Mr. Vega said. "It's not too far." He added that he did not take a wide variety of trains, since he lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which is served by the L, which goes directly to Union Square.

Thomas A. Simmons, who was filling in as a supervisor at Herald Square, expertly helped customers operate the touch-screen vending machines, which he noted were particularly confusing for some tourists and elderly riders.

Mr. Simmons correctly identified the longest line in the system (the A), but incorrectly guessed that there were 445 subway stations. (There are 468.)

He knew the year the subway system was created (1904) but thought the three subway companies were unified in 1956. (Consolidation occurred in 1940.)

Nearly every agent was able to identify, of all people, Jonathan Zizmor. "That's the dermatologist!" said Karen A. Ashley, who was working at 34th Street and Eighth Avenue, on the A, C and E lines. Dr. Zizmor's advertisements, which offer relief from pimples and wrinkles, have been a subway fixture for years.

Such trivia aside, riders did have serious questions for the agents. Many sought directions to well-known landmarks. Others did not know how the vending machines worked or had questions about inserting money. (For example, machines will not accept $10 bills if they carry the old design, with the smaller image of Alexander Hamilton.)

Several riders expressed fondness for the old token booths, which the agents can still use to retrieve maps and pamphlets and to operate computers that analyze whether the fare cards work properly.

"It's a pain in the neck," Clarence Adams, 69, of Rockville Centre in Nassau County, said when told that he had to use a machine to buy his fare. "Everybody prefers to deal with a human being."

Nixon Richman, 54, from Chelsea, muttered angrily when he was told that the agents could not make change. "You've got to be kidding," he said. To buy a card from a machine, he said, "you have to wait in line and figure it out. It's a hassle. It's absurd."

Several agents said they appreciated the chance to assist customers directly, without the plexiglass barrier of the token booth to mediate the interaction.

Raymond G. Leffler, a legal adviser to CORE, got a warm hello from a station agent, Karen V. Jones, when he stepped into one of the subway entrances at Union Square.

"I liked the old way because I'm used to it," said Mr. Leffler, 72. But he added that he appreciated the help from Ms. Jones, whom he greets regularly during his daily commute, in using the vending machine. "I still want someone to look over my shoulder," he said.

A final question from the pop quiz: What is the meaning of life?

"To enjoy it to the fullest," Mr. Simmons replied, without hesitation.

Ms. Ashley noted that the question was hardly related to transit but was still willing to venture an opinion: "Common sense. Not everyone has it."

Colin Moynihan contributed reporting for this article.

[junglizt1210]

hehe, nice article,

Thanks for the read :)

[TonyO]

Newsday

Riders losses are MTA's gains

BY TOM MCGINTY
STAFF WRITER

May 27, 2005

They're scattered around the city -- probably around the world, in fact -- hidden in coat pockets and old purses, jammed in wallets between business cards, buried in landfills.

And they once were worth $55 million.

They're the millions of MetroCards that expired over the past three years before their owners used the full balance for subway or bus trips.

The riders' losses are the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's gains -- $21 million last year alone -- and it's possible that many straphangers took that hit because they were unaware of a little-publicized policy allowing the balance from an expired card to be transferred to a fresh one.

"They should make it more public," Herbert Byrd of Long Island City said Thursday as he waited for a train at the Queensboro Plaza Station. "A lot of people throw those cards away and are losing money. It doesn't seem fair."

New York City Transit spokesman Charles Seaton said the MetroCards have expiration dates because they deteriorate over time. The forfeited fares, which were detailed in the agency's 2004 financial reports, all came from either full-price, single-ride cards or pay-per-ride cards, which give one free trip for every five purchased, he said.

The balance on an expired MetroCard can be transferred to a new one up to a year after the expiration date, but it requires filling out a questionnaire and mailing the card to NYC Transit, which provides postage-paid envelopes at ticket booths.

NYC Transit couldn't say Thursday how many riders had done that, but it's clear from the financial reports that millions didn't.

The pile of forfeited fares grew as MetroCards supplanted tokens as the primary method of payment, going from $9 million in 2002 to $25 million in 2003, the year tokens were done away with completely. In 2004, expired cards contributed $21 million to the agency's coffers.

Seaton said the issue of forfeited fares is "really no gain to the transit authority because it doesn't effect the amount of service we put out."

But Martin Robins, director of the Vorhees Transportation Policy Institute at Rutgers University, said the revenue does provide "a net benefit to the MTA.

"I wouldn't call this, by any means, an abuse," said Robins, a former deputy executive director of New Jersey Transit. "I think the one point they could be called upon [to correct] is for the refund process to be posted more conspicuously near the token machines."

Transit advocate Gene Russianoff, staff attorney of the New York Public Interest Research Group's Straphangers Campaign, also said he didn't fault the MTA and theorized that many of the expired cards were bought by tourists who left town before they were used up.

"I have a typical New York attitude toward tourists: They're on the their own," Russianoff said. "The more they help the system out the better, and I don't stay up late at night worrying about them."

He also said he didn't think mailing in expired cards was too onerous.

"I guess you could argue you should be able to hand in your card to the station booth clerk," he said. "There's no system that's going to be perfect and there are going to be people who are going to be unhappy."

[TonyO]

NY1

MTA Converting All Number 9 Trains To 1 Trains To Speed Commute

May 30, 2005

Say good-bye to the Number 9 subway train.

Starting Tuesday, all Number 9 trains will become Number 1 trains in a move that the Metropolitan Transit Authority says will make the former 1/9 line more efficient.

The line runs from Van Cortlandt Part in the Bronx down the west side of Manhattan before ending at the South Ferry terminal in Lower Manhattan.

The MTA says the change is designed to help speed the overall commute time for customers who had to wait for skip stop service, where 9 trains stopped at stations that were skipped by 1 trains.

Starting Tuesday, the 1 will be making all stops.

The MTA will convert all Number 9 trains into 1 trains, which officials say will improve service for all riders.

[TonyO]

NY Times
June 28, 2005

Watch Those Changing Rules: Finish Sodas on the Platform

By SEWELL CHAN
Subway riders afflicted by broken air-conditioning, foul odors, children selling candy bars for occasionally dubious causes and even the random groper have long sought relief by quickly switching cars.

No more.

Moving between cars - as well as resting one's feet on the seats, sipping from an open container (even a cup of coffee) and straddling a bicycle while riding the subway - will be prohibited under a new set of passenger rules adopted by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's transit committee yesterday, the first such rule changes since 1994.

While riding between cars is already forbidden, managers at the authority said they wanted to make clear that even quickly darting from one car to another while the train is in motion is dangerous.

There is only one way, they said, to move safely to another car - exiting the train at the next station and then quickly re-entering it, even if passengers making a such a dash could face other perils, like tripping, smashing a finger or losing a purse between rapidly shutting doors.

And there is the fact that it is simply inconvenient. "Let's say you get on the train in the front, but you're in a hurry, and you need to exit in the back," offered Manny Guzman, a 15-year-old high school student from East New York, who was observed yesterday moving between two cars on an uptown No. 2 train. "It is unsafe, but I do it all the time." Banning this practice, he added, "makes no sense."

The transit committee, part of the authority's governing board, also weighed in on a host of other activities that vex or enrich the lives of riders, depending on one's point of view. Those who like to sip their coffee during their 6 a.m. commute might be annoyed, while others, who find that their commute is not improved by the addition of a man on a large bike, might embrace them.

Taking photographs, an activity viewed with suspicion by the authority last year, is now acceptable, as is registering voters. (But not on catwalks, which extend beyond the end of the platform, or emergency stairs, both of which will be officially off limits.) Sitting on a bicycle, riding a skateboard or wearing in-line skates on a moving train? Out. Drinking a soda on the platform is fine - but not on the train. (Food and drink vendors who rent space in stations would balk at a ban on their products, thus the clause that permits platform sipping.) Putting feet on the seat, once merely rude, is now illegal.

Then there are the sort of people who believe that because they hold a valid MetroCard, they are entitled to jump the turnstile if they are in a hurry or are foiled by malfunctioning equipment. The new rules make it clear that this is not an acceptable defense.

The rules, to take effect on Oct. 1, are enforceable by any police officer, who can issue a civil summons. Violators, who face fines of $25 to $100, can appeal to the Transit Adjudication Bureau.

The new rules were suggested in May 2004; at the time, they included a ban on unauthorized photography and videotaping, provisions that attracted criticism from civil libertarians, tourism promoters, artists and historians. That proposal, made ostensibly to thwart terrorism, created a yearlong controversy that delayed the final rules. The new set, which drops the photo and video ban, is expected to be passed by the authority's full board tomorrow.

Its members, who rarely debate even major spending issues put before them, found themselves in a lively discussion over both the fairness of the new rules and the authority's ability to enforce them.

Mark Page, the city's budget director, who represents Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on the board, observed: "It is, from time to time, convenient to absent oneself from a car or from a particular group of people."

Riders like Beatrice McCants, 30, said they had faced many such occasions. Ms. McCants, who works as a newspaper distributor in Midtown, said she was riding a Brooklyn-bound No. 3 train Wednesday when a man began masturbating in plain sight. "I thought, 'I've got to get off this train,' " she recalled. "Now I'm going to get a fine for that, for running from a flasher? I won't pay it!"

Assistant Chief Henry R. Cronin III, the commander of the Police Department's Transit Bureau, said police officers would use common sense in deciding whom to cite for violating the rules. Nearly three-quarters of the fleet of 6,182 subway cars have unlocked doors between cars; 1,649 cars have locked doors.

Over the last decade, 13 people have been killed, and 117 injured, while riding or moving between subway cars or riding outside them, said Lawrence G. Reuter, the president of New York City Transit, part of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. He said at least two were killed last year alone. Officials said that some riders have successfully sued for injuries suffered between cars, and that explicitly banning moving between cars could strengthen the agency's position in such lawsuits.

[lofter1]

NY Times, June 28, 2005

Watch Those Changing Rules
Subway riders afflicted by broken air-conditioning, foul odors, children selling candy bars for occasionally dubious causes and even the random groper have long sought relief by quickly switching cars.

No more.

I wonder how many of the people who make these decisions EVER ride the subway?

Or stand on platform in the summer where its 95+ degrees and get into a car with no A/C where its also 95 degrees?

Or enter a car where some poor unfortunate soul who hasn't bathed in days has taken up camp?

If these decision-makers took the trains and ever encountered these and other situations where the only sane response is to switch cars STAT, then they would be the first to pull open the doors and step between cars.

Go ahead, arrest me. And the 10 others who got the hell out of a uninhabitable car.

(Interesting to note that there is no mention of baby strollers on trains as a ticketable situation -- even though it is currently against regs to bring an open stroller into a car. I guess they knew that would cause an uproar, so they've conveniently chosen to enforce regs on a piecemeal basis. Typical.)

[BrooklynRider]

And, what about bicycles during rush-hour?

Or, the trombone player after a long day of work?

And, the performances by kids doing parallel bar routines over my head?

Or, those drunk blind idiots who rub their faces against the poles because it is "nice and cold"?

Oh yeah, what about eating a gyro or falafel?

How about NO LEANING on poles during rush hour. I want to hold on too!

Create a $100 fine for unattended brats running all over as mom naps in the corner - wait, better yet, DOUBLE that fine and issue one per kid!

Personally, I think they should forget about fining people for walking between cars and just remove the safety chains and hand rails. How exciting would it become to watch some one walking from one car to another while moving?

Also, we must fine motormen and motorwomen who have failed to master smooth braking techniques. I object to being violented jerked into a station.

[krulltime]

Subways begin getting video security system


September 23, 2005

(AP) — A Manhattan security company on Friday said it started installing a subway video surveillance system in a pilot project for the New York City Police Department.

The news sent shares of MSGI Security Solutions Inc. up $1.93, or 42.5%, to $6.47 on the Nasdaq, where it was the top percentage gainer in the morning session. The stock has traded in a range of $4.02 to $10.20 in the past 52 weeks.

The surveillance system features covert wireless video surveillance aimed at observing criminal activity underground, MSGI said.

Police officials will use the new system over the next 60 days to monitor subway platforms at undisclosed locations throughout Manhattan that were selected based on historical crime statistics. The system has already been deployed in three subway stops and led to two arrests within the first hour of operation, MSGI said.

New York City police also will use the system to combat terrorism in high-profile areas, the company said.

The pilot project with MSGI comes a month after New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority awarded Lockheed Martin Corp. a $212 million contract to build a surveillance system for the city's subway and bus lines and two major commuter rail lines.

The MTA's deal with Lockheed followed the July 7 London subway bombings, which killed 52 people.

Spokesmen for MSGI and the NYPD were not immediately available to comment on where the new surveillance system would be deployed.


©Copyright 2005 Associated Press.

[NoyokA]

Here's what needs to be done with the NYC subway:

http://img392.imageshack.us/img392/332/mta0nr.jpg

Theres all this talk about connecting JFK, have we all forgotten about LGA?

Most importantly it provides a cross town connection above 50th street, it would act as a huge stimulus for upper Manhattan.

[krulltime]

^ I think thats a terrefic idea! A new line that connects to all major stops that connects many other subway lines. Especially LGA. This plan I will put first than the second subway avenue.

I am assuming they will have to dig out a new tunnel. But this is really important. IMO.

[stache]

New York City Transit spokesman Charles Seaton said the MetroCards have expiration dates because they deteriorate over time.

Which doesn't explain why BART cards, using the same technology, never expire. I have saved BART cards for up to six years, gone back to SF and used the value still held on the card. Plus the remaining value is always printed on the card, like DC METRO. So there.

[lofter1]

^ I don't find the expiration to be a problem; when I re-fill the card the machine tells me if it is set to expire and easily transfers the balance to a new card.

[NIMBYkiller]

125th St definately needs a crosstown rail line.

As for LGA service though, I'm thinking the MTA should just say **** you to Astoria and extend the Astoria line to LGA, and maybe even on to JFK after that.

If not that, then perhaps the Port Authority can extend the Airtrain to LGA from Jamaica. Have a branch to the LIRR Flushing Main St station too so the PW line has an airport connection.

Also, continue the line to the planned LIRR Sunnyside station, and then to the underground trolley terminal at 59th and 2nd Av in Manhattan.

[DA SMAZ]

Here's what needs to be done with the NYC subway:

http://img392.imageshack.us/img392/332/mta0nr.jpg

Theres all this talk about connecting JFK, have we all forgotten about LGA?

Most importantly it provides a cross town connection above 50th street, it would act as a huge stimulus for upper Manhattan.


I love it. The 125th St segment could be done concurrently with the 2nd Av Subway which is slated to end at 125st/Lex Ave. Nice use of the Hell Gate and Triboro Bridge. If the Grand Central Parkway were used from the Hell Gate viaduct to LGA and beyond the NIMBYs would shut up. I was also thinking of how we could use a new upper deck on that bridge for an N extension to the Bronx. The LIC Business District and the Hunts Point Hub in the Bronx would greatly benefit from a cross-boro service. Any thoughts on that?

[NIMBYkiller]

I also was thinking of subway service via the Hell Gate, but then I figured it'd work nearly as well with the commuter rail belt idea that I had(from Bay Ridge to Astoria, and then over the Hell Gate and to New Rochelle). Open all the old stops and some news ones, and have full time city ticket($2.50).....or metrocard for this "commuter rail line"(basically, it can't be an actual subway because the line is used by NYA, CSX, and Amtrak, but I guess it can still be part of the metrocard system, kind of like Staten Island Railway).

[BrooklynRider]

I think Stern's idea is a interesting alternative, but "subway" or "subway extension" just doesn't cut is as a airport link. Airport trains need to be design to provide seating, luggage storage areas and on-ging good and accurate airport info. The subway is not and has never been an alternative and can't be considered one for the future.

[DA SMAZ]

I like Nimbykiller's idea of a "commuter belt". It could dovetail nicely with future MNR service to Penn Station once East Side Access frees up space at those platforms. By using it as a commuter route via the NH or Hudson Lines, Hell Gate, NY Connecting and Bay Ridge line it wouldn't run afoul of safety regs barring subway/light-rail trains from freight and railroad lines. If they build the Cross-Harbor Freight Tunnel from Bay Ridge Terminal to Bayonne one could keep this route going to NJ. If they build it from Staten Island it could merge with SIR. Excellent idea Nimbykiller! http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/images/icons/icon12.gifhttp://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/images/icons/icon14.gif

As for AirTrain, I think that that one can use existing and future subway lines to run dedicated AirTrain cars at a rate of 3 or 4 per hour throughtout the boros to the airport terminals. I don't think one could or would even want to run the "A" Train into JFK, the "N" or "7" into LGA or PATH into Newark Liberty. However one can run the traveller friendly AirTrain cars on those routes throughout the city. Does anybody here remember those strange experimental subway cars in the 70s? I was a little kid then and don't remember what they were called.

[Ninjahedge]

NY1

MTA Converting All Number 9 Trains To 1 Trains To Speed Commute

May 30, 2005

Say good-bye to the Number 9 subway train.

Starting Tuesday, all Number 9 trains will become Number 1 trains in a move that the Metropolitan Transit Authority says will make the former 1/9 line more efficient.

The line runs from Van Cortlandt Part in the Bronx down the west side of Manhattan before ending at the South Ferry terminal in Lower Manhattan.

The MTA says the change is designed to help speed the overall commute time for customers who had to wait for skip stop service, where 9 trains stopped at stations that were skipped by 1 trains.

Starting Tuesday, the 1 will be making all stops.

The MTA will convert all Number 9 trains into 1 trains, which officials say will improve service for all riders.

So this should make EVERYTHING MUCH more efficient.

If everyone is waiting for the 1, how does it make sense to eliminate the 1 express?

They SHOULD have put in a gradual phase-out of some of the gazillion stops the 9 makes! Get RID of some of the stations that are only 4 blocks from each other!




As for the article about the vending machines, I noticed a few things.

1. Most of the people that did not like them were old.
2. They are nothing compared to the system in Tokyo, where each stop could have a different fare.
3. Tokyo had agents at EVERY STOP that could, even in broken english, tell you how to get to where you were going.

(OTOH, Tokyo is also a much younger mass transit system).

[Ninjahedge]

Which doesn't explain why BART cards, using the same technology, never expire. I have saved BART cards for up to six years, gone back to SF and used the value still held on the card. Plus the remaining value is always printed on the card, like DC METRO. So there.

Tokoyo does the same as what lofter says.

But PATH here expires and there is no way to get the $$ transfered or refunded. I guess the rules can be different for a system that is predominantly commuter....

[Ninjahedge]

One final thing. I think the top link would be useful, but why stop there? How about taking that loop all the way around?

One of the most frustrating things about the subway, especially when you are in Queens or Brooklyn, is that it is AWFULLY hard to use it to go to anywhere but Manhattan, or places in line with Manhattan along the route.

Try to get from Forest Hills to Park Slope. Not exactly fun, let alone anyplace like Coney Island.

Some places that are only about 15 miles away from each other taking over an hour to get to. It is no wonder why things like the BQE and Belt take so much traffic. There is really no other way to get around!

[NIMBYkiller]

The Bay Ridge line would serve that purpose.


Also, Airtrain can NOT run on subway tracks. Airtrain is light rail, subway is heavy rail. And the whole notion of subways to the airport has been tried and has succeeded in other cities and countries. The idea of extending PATH to EWR and the Astoria line to LGA is to provide BUSINESS travelers with a one seat ride to economic centers. A family of four going to Disney is NOT going to take the train, no matter how roomy it is.

[Ninjahedge]

NIMBY-K....

What about splitting the middle?

I know that in Boston it was a PITA to get to Logan (college student, bags in tow).

Also, it is handy to have space to put things. Even the "light" traveller has the medium sized carry-on bags that are hard to get out of the way. The older Tokyo subway cars have racks above the seats that would allow for that.

[ASchwarz]

The Bay Ridge line would serve that purpose.


Also, Airtrain can NOT run on subway tracks. Airtrain is light rail, subway is heavy rail. And the whole notion of subways to the airport has been tried and has succeeded in other cities and countries. The idea of extending PATH to EWR and the Astoria line to LGA is to provide BUSINESS travelers with a one seat ride to economic centers. A family of four going to Disney is NOT going to take the train, no matter how roomy it is.

Nope, JFK Airtrain is heavy rail. It was specifically built to eventually accomodate subway or commuter rail travel. The LIRR will eventually operate rail along Airtrain tracks from JFK to Lower Manhattan.

[stache]

But PATH here expires and there is no way to get the $$ transfered or refunded.

PATH cards seem to expire very quickly. What I have started to do is to spend down metrocards to multiples of $1.50, and save them for PATH.

[STT757]

Here's what needs to be done with the NYC subway:

http://img392.imageshack.us/img392/332/mta0nr.jpg

Theres all this talk about connecting JFK, have we all forgotten about LGA?

Most importantly it provides a cross town connection above 50th street, it would act as a huge stimulus for upper Manhattan.


There was $680 Million allocated for linking the N Train with LGA, the MTA moved that money to the LIRR's ESA project.

[lofter1]

PATH cards seem to expire very quickly. What I have started to do is to spend down metrocards to multiples of $1.50, and save them for PATH.
When the PATH line first re-opened at the WTC I made the mistake of using my Metrocard (not leaving the station in Jersey, but coming back on the same single fare).

I've been carrying that wayward 50 cents on my Metrocard ever since!

[STT757]

The Port Authority is in the planning stages of extending the PATH World Trade Center line 1.5 Miles from Downtown Newark to the Newark Liberty International Airport rail link station, it would be a bargain at $500 Million!..

That's a bargain compared to the $6 + Billion Pataki is trying to get for the JFK-World Trade Center link, however politics is preventing the PATH project from moving foward more quickly even though it's a relatively affordable project with huge benefits for Downtown.

Pataki and the NY PA Officers have tied the PATH-EWR rail link with the JFK-Rail link, so untill the MTA comes up with the $6 Billion the EWR-WTC rail link will have to wait.

Pataki threw his support (and the NY PA commisioners) behind NJ Transit's new Trans-Hudson Tunnels to a new station to be built underneath 34th street, in exchange for NJ Officials supporting the JFK-Lower Manhattan rail link.

Basically NY wants atleast $2 Billion from the Port Authority for the JFK-Downtown rail link, to get the NJ Politicians to approve the $2 Billion the NY Politicians would vote to allow the PA to pledge $2 Billion towards the new Hudson tunnels for NJ Transit.

[ASchwarz]

^
All three projects need to be built. I would rank the NJ Transit Tunnel as easily the #1 priorty, followed by Manhattan-JFK link and (close behind) the Manhattan-Newark Airport link. These are all economic necessities. LGA is less important but should eventually be funded.

[DA SMAZ]

^
All three projects need to be built. I would rank the NJ Transit Tunnel as easily the #1 priorty, followed by Manhattan-JFK link and (close behind) the Manhattan-Newark Airport link. These are all economic necessities. LGA is less important but should eventually be funded.



Agreed. However I don't understand why a new tunnel needs to be built for Downtown-JFK access. One can run 3-4 Airtrains an hour along the 8th avenue trunk line (A/C/E) on the express tracks from 168th St to Howard Beach and merge it with the existing AirTrain service from there. Except for the track connection at Howard Beach (those express tracks are unused anyway) no new construction would be required. Eureka! Service to JFK from Uptown Manhattan thru Columbus Circle, Port Authority, Penn Station, WTC, Fulton St Transit Center and Downtown Bklyn. It would be like the old "Train to the Plane" except this one would actually get you to the airport terminals and to Jamaica Station too. Any new tunnel from Lower Manhattan to Bklyn should be done in the context of the SAS which under current plans wouldn't go to Brooklyn. If they one day fund LGA Access along the lines of the above map, one could link Jamaica Station to LGA along the Van Wyck and GCP with a stop at Willets Point/Shea Stadium for transfers to the 7 and the LIRR Port Washington branch. This would create one big AirTrain circuit!

[NIMBYkiller]

I like the idea of luggage racks on the subway. Definately possible, and would help an airport line.


ASchwarz: I don't know where you read this, but there is NO such plan to run LIRR on Airtrain tracks. It is physically impossible. Some folks over at SubChat have said the curves on Airtrain are too tight for LIRR cars. There was never the intention of running any subway or LIRR on the Airtrain tracks. They don't even use the same method to draw their electrical power.

They would either have to kick LIRR off the Atlantic Av el or add 2 tracks to the structure.

I think JFK-Lower Manhattan RAIL is the biggest boondoggle. It will not be worth the expenses. It CAN'T run with LIRR and it CAN'T run with the subway


STT57: The Astoria extension money disapeared because Astoria residents would rather have no subway than have the el extended. I figure they could just cut back the el a station or 2, and send it underground until it reaches the industrial area, have it rise up again, and then over to LGA.


I would say just get PATH-EWR done, NOW! It's cheap, the push is there, and it's easy.

As for any new tunnel from Brooklyn to Lower Manhattan, I think it should be double stacked just like the 63rd street tunnel. One level for SAS, the other for LIRR.

And if you want a big Airtrain circuit, just do what RailBlue on SubChat suggested. Extend from Jamaica to LGA, then from LGA to Sunnyside and then over to 59th and 2nd Av and end in the old trolley terminal. Have a branch to Flushing also(Shea doesn't work for the LIRR connection because they only stop there on game days and during the US Open).

[ASchwarz]

NIMBYKiller, the JFK Airtrain IS heavy rail, not light rail. It was specifically designed for LIRR trains. There are literally dozens of articles indicating plans for LIRR trains from the airport terminals to the new Calatrava terminal in Lower Manhattan. Just do a NY Times search.

[BrooklynRider]

I want a Disney style monorail zipping along the center median of the Belt Parkway to JFK and a similar one onlg the FDR drive to LaGuardia.

[ASchwarz]

NIMBYKiller, I've attached the preliminary plans for the LIRR link from JFK to Lower Manhattan:

http://www.renewnyc.com/content/pdfs/LMRailLink.pdf

[NIMBYkiller]

Rule #1: Don't follow ANYTHING the media says. The always make mistakes or have no clue what they are taking about. They can't even get conductor and engineer right, how the hell are they supposed to get entire transit systems compatabilities correct?

And nowhere in that file does it say ANYTHING about the LIRR operating the service. NO WHERE. And do you know why?
1. LIRR can NOT operate on Airtrains tracks. The Airtrain was not designed for the subway. It was not designed for the LIRR. It was designed for Airtrain and Airtrain ONLY. How you can say that is beyond me.

The propulsion systems are completly different. Airtrain does not use 3rd rail, which LIRRs electric fleet requires. Airtrain uses linear induction motors.

The Airtrain cars were specifically designed for the systems TIGHT CURVES. The Airtrain cars are just under 58 feet long. LIRR cars are 85 feet long.


The only thing that plan says about commuter service to downtown is just that, commuter service. Given the physical aspects of Airtrain and the LIRR, the plan pretty clearly shows that AIRTRAIN would be the system that would be used. And since the plan says nothing about adding tracks to the Atlantic Av el, one could assume with a good deal of confidence that this plan would involve kicking the LIRR off the Atlantic el, therefore terminating LIRR service to Brooklyn. So what does that mean? It means folks will now have to transfer at Jamaica and hop on Airtrain to get to Brooklyn and Downtown. And what else does that mean? Well, since LIRR will now be loosing a terminal, it means they'll have to cut back on service because they have no where to send those trains that would normally go to Brooklyn. Yeah, sure, once ESA is done they'll have a place to send them, but where's the improvement? Where are the EXTRA city bound trains? There wont be any more than what there presently is because GCT will be full of those trains that once went to Brooklyn.

BTW, I got my info from the Bombardier website, the company that made both the M7s and JFK Airtrain.


And as far as a monorail goes...why? JFK already has the existing Airtrain. Just extend that to LGA and maybe over to Manhattan.

[DA SMAZ]

I may be wrong on this but when they first opened AirTrain JFK they said something to the effect that the system was built to one day accomodate the possibility to have AirTrain service continue over the subway or the LIRR. It was something about dual purpose cars different from the ones used now.I wouldn't mind them kicking the LIRR off the Atlantic branch and replacing it with SAS. They only run about 10 trains on that route anyway. LI commuters would have a simple cross-platform transfer from Jamaica station to Downtown Bklyn and all of East Side Manhattan South to North and Broadway service on top of that. Talk about access to the East Side! Since the old BMT wisely made bellmouths as a provision for a future tunnel right after Whitehall St Station before the start of the Montague St tunnel one can run the "W" and the "T" (future SAS) thru it. That would more than double the amount of service along that line and better serve LI and Bklyn residents, relieve overcrowding on the A/C and be a boon to the Lower Manhattan economy. The Regional Plan Association (RPA) has developed a plan along these lines called MetroLink. If they ever extend the AirTrain structure to LGA along the Van Wyck and GCP, LIRR's Shea Stadium station would become full time by demand.

Using the 59st trolley terminal would require a new tunnel since the QB Bridge is too weak to support AirTrain cars. On the other hand one could use the 63rd St tunnel lower level after ESA is completed but the 59st location location would still be isolated from the core of city. (that's why they gave Roosevelt Island a subway station...the tramway to 2nd Av/60st St alone didn't cut it).

[NIMBYkiller]

They may have said that, but that was all pipe dreams and fantasies, just like JFK-Downtown rail is.

And kicking LIRR of Atlantic is a HORRIBLE idea. I suggest you take a look at the schedule. They run WELL over 10 trains on that line. In fact, they run TWENTY-SEVEN peak trains to Brooklyn in the morning, and they run even more during the off peak hours. The line provides vital space for the LIRR. If LIRR is kicked off Atlantic, they have to reduce service on many lines.

So you're suggesting inconvinience thousands of daily commuters for a bunch of tourists? I'm sorry, but that aint happening. And would you care to explain how it would better serve LIers?There are better ways to do this.

I've seen the Metrolink plan years ago and think it's a great idea, so long as LIRR remains on the Atlantic. So that means either adding 2 tracks to the el or finding some other way.

And they can't use 63rd St lower level after ESA is complete because ESA is using the 63rd st lower level.

The foot of the 59th St bridge is as far as Airtrain has a shot of getting into Manhattan, if any.

[Dynamicdezzy]

The idea was not to have the LIRR kicked off atlantic ave, but to have both services run at the same time. New track would be added to the fulton terminal to accomodate the airtrain. From there a new tunnel would lead to wtc. And as of now, neither train can run along each other's track which is why a hybrid car is being designed (to run on both airtrain tracks and lirr. this would of course involve a conductor to navigate between jamaica and wtc).

[ASchwarz]

NIMBYKiller, you are spreading false information to spread some sort of weird anti-rail agenda. You either didn't read the PDF or previous articles in this thread or you are maliciously trying to confuse people.

FACT: The LIRR will operate the line through Brooklyn and Queens just as it does today (except it currently terminates at Flatbush Avenue).
FACT: The new tunnel will be for regular LIRR trains from points east and hybrid trains from JFK. This is explained in both the attached pdf and in the previous articles.

FACT: The Airtrain is heavy rail. You need heavy rail gauge to operate on LIRR tracks.

FACT: The JFK link has been promised $2 billion from the Federal Department of Transportation and $500 million from the MTA.

I'm not sure why you think federal funding for an LIRR link to Manhattan is such a terrible idea.

[ASchwarz]

The idea was not to have the LIRR kicked off atlantic ave, but to have both services run at the same time. New track would be added to the fulton terminal to accomodate the airtrain. From there a new tunnel would lead to wtc. And as of now, neither train can run along each other's track which is why a hybrid car is being designed (to run on both airtrain tracks and lirr. this would of course involve a conductor to navigate between jamaica and wtc).

Thank you. You have given an accurate picture of the current situation.

There will be no current LIRR cars on Airtrain tracks. New hybrid cars will be used on Airtrain tracks and will then travel to the Calatrava terminal. The current LIRR trains will use the exact same tracks (except for the airport segment) to travel to Lower Manhattan.

NIMBYKiller, if you want, I can give you a contact at the MTA to answer your questions. I have been to meetings on the LIRR access project.

[Dynamicdezzy]

considering the future link between lower manhattan and jfk airport, I wonder if they (whoever that might be) will push for for an airtrain link to the future moynihan station (considering the usage of LIRR tracks). The future sunnyside rail hub (amtrack, NJ transit, LIRR, Metronorth) could be one potential stop and terminating at moynihan. Just as the lower manhattan link would have flatbush and caltrava. Sunnyside could also be a potential stop for a laguardia link (via a 3rd airtrain link or an extended N train). Just a thought....

[NIMBYkiller]

ME have an anti-rail agenda!? That's funny. I'm probably the biggest rail proponent on this entire site. I have created imaginary transportation authorities such as Island Transit Long Island and Island Transit Puerto Rico which involve a great deal of heavy rail and light rail. I am NOT trying to confuse anyone. I'm trying to get the facts straight. You were the one spewing lies. Go ahead. Take a look back.

And I never said anywhere that federal funding for LIRR to lower Manhattan was bad. I even said any new tunnel should have provisions for LIRR and that kicking LIRR off the line that would get them there would be a horrible idea! You were saying that LIRR will run on Airtrain tracks and that the Airtrain system was designed for LIRR. I proved you wrong and now you are trying to hide behind the hybrid cars that Dynamicdezzy has mentioned. No where did you mention anything about hybrid cars. You need to get your facts straight and stop hiding behind other people.

And Dynamicdezzy, thank you for clarifying the situation. I had not read anywhere of any hybrid cars and have not heard of the proposal for such cars in many years. If this does in fact turn out to be the case, then I am all for JFK-Lower Manhattan rail service.

As for Sunnyside station, Amtrak will NOT be stopping there. They have expressed zero interest in it. And I highly doubt NJT will be making any stops there either. And I suggested Sunnyside as a LGA Airtrain stop in a previous post, but I think that was in another thread.

Basically, if this whole hybrid car thing is in fact true, then hell...run em from JFK to the EWR station.

[Dynamicdezzy]

Well i hope i did....you know clarify things. I was reading up on the east side access (LIRR to grand central) and while the main focus is on getting commuters from long island to grand central there are other doors that will be opened along with that. These cars will have to be rerouted through the sunnyside yards. There the MTA will create a brand new station. Also, some of metro north's passengers will then have the option to go penn station. I beleive that half of the capacity of each station will be swapped with one another. Thus, bringing metro north into the sunnyside yards as well. I have read through many sources that from there an intermodel station will connect amtrack, nj transit (which already keep most of their cars stored for rush hour)Lirr, metro north and the nearby queensboro & Queensplaza train stations. I just figured that a direct connection to laguardia and to JFk would make this station very attractive for future growth.

[DA SMAZ]

considering the future link between lower manhattan and jfk airport, I wonder if they (whoever that might be) will push for for an airtrain link to the future moynihan station (considering the usage of LIRR tracks). The future sunnyside rail hub (amtrack, NJ transit, LIRR, Metronorth) could be one potential stop and terminating at moynihan. Just as the lower manhattan link would have flatbush and caltrava. Sunnyside could also be a potential stop for a laguardia link (via a 3rd airtrain link or an extended N train). Just a thought....



I still don't understand why one has to wait for a new tunnel to Lower Manhattan to have AirTrain go there. If they build an inexpensive connection from the AirTrain terminal at Howard Beach to the express tracks on the "A", they could bring AirTrain to Lower Manhattan, Penn Station and north on the A's tracks. Running just 3-4 trains at rush hour wouldn't take away from "A" service. The "Plane to the Train" of the '80s failed because it stopped at Howard Beach. AirTrain cars would continue into the airport and to Jamaica.This could be built in less than a year. Why can't they use the mythical hybrid cars over this route as early as next year?

[Dynamicdezzy]

Well the reason for a new tunnel is to also bring the LIRR to Lower manhattan, not just the airtrain. Also, it is said that with a new tunnel under the east river, the 2nd ave subway line could be extended into brooklyn with the use of that tunnel.

[Clarknt67]

I still don't understand why one has to wait for a new tunnel to Lower Manhattan to have AirTrain go there. If they build an inexpensive connection from the AirTrain terminal at Howard Beach to the express tracks on the "A", they could bring AirTrain to Lower Manhattan, Penn Station and north on the A's tracks. Running just 3-4 trains at rush hour wouldn't take away from "A" service. The "Plane to the Train" of the '80s failed because it stopped at Howard Beach. AirTrain cars would continue into the airport and to Jamaica.This could be built in less than a year. Why can't they use the mythical hybrid cars over this route as early as next year?

Well, part (most) of the impetus for digging new tunnels is that the A train tunnels are being used at or near capacity, so running LIRR & Airtrains through them would cut into NYC service. (As a regular Manhattan <--> Brooklyn A train rider I can't say I'd be thrilled about my service degrading to improve suburbanite's commute.)

[DA SMAZ]

Well, part (most) of the impetus for digging new tunnels is that the A train tunnels are being used at or near capacity, so running LIRR & Airtrains through them would cut into NYC service. (As a regular Manhattan <--> Brooklyn A train rider I can't say I'd be thrilled about my service degrading to improve suburbanite's commute.)



I would only let AirTrain hybrids run on the A Line not the LIRR. Running just 3-4 (no LIRR) AirTrains an hour wouldn't overtax the existing tunnel. The A/C would stay the same. The LIRR Atlantic branch would also stay as is for now. If they ever build a new East River tunnel for LIRR/SAS then other possibilties would open, but for now they should connect the AirTrain tracks to the subway express tracks at Howard Beach so we can have a new "Train to the Plane (For Real This Time)" in a year. By the way does anybody remember that dreadful Train to the Plane jingle from the '70s?

[NIMBYkiller]

Dynamicdizzy: I'm not sure I understand what you are saying regarding the half capacity thing at GCT. All I know is that ESA will have maybe the capacity of Flatbush Av Terminal...I believe ESA will be 8 tracks, and I believe Flatbush Av is about 6 or 7 tracks. ESA will host a great new opportunity, and I'm looking forward to it, but do not expect it to provide space for dozens upon dozens of extra trains. It will be a stub end terminal providing no where near the capacity of 8 tracks at Penn Station. I just want to make sure that you and everyone else here knows that.

And as far as Metro North comming to NYP, that is NOT a solid plan. It is not up to the MTA who goes to Penn Station, but rather, it is up to Amtrak because they own Penn Station. Right now I think the main idea is just that LIRR will fill up the extra, freed up space at Penn Station with their own trains. I really do hope though that MTA and Amtrak(please notice, there is no "C", lol) agree so that NH can run to Penn Station.

Sunnyside station from all I heard will just be for LIRR, and MN if they do end up comming to Penn Station. I do think it would be a wonderful idea for NJT to stop there, but I have mixed feelings about Amtrak stopping there.

[lofter1]

And as far as Metro North comming to NYP, that is NOT a solid plan. It is not up to the MTA who goes to Penn Station, but rather, it is up to Amtrak because they own Penn Station.
Can you clarify this for me...
Does Amtrak own the land under Penn Station / Madison Square Garden?
And if so does Cablevision merely hold the lease on MSG?
Any particulars on this that you can give would be helpful, as it will clear up confusion regarding how the MSG site could be developed should the arena be moved (as has been discussed elsewhere).

[NIMBYkiller]

I'm not really sure about that. I believe Cablevision owns MSG, and Amtrak owns NYP. I don't think one leases to the other. As for the actual surrounding land....I have no idea.

[lofter1]

^ Thanks...

What confuses me is that MSG and Penn Station are sitting on the same piece of underlying land -- or, put another way: a part of Penn shares the same land as all of MSG.

My guess is that whoever owns the land under Penn did a long-term lease for the area above with MSG.

If anyone has info on this please post it.

[Dynamicdezzy]

I apologize for not being able to post earlier. Just to clarify things. 1st its possible that Cablevision (MSG) owns the surface rights to the area above penn. Amtrack probably just owns the sub-surface rights below MSG. well MSG must own the air rights as well due to the height of the building. Just because one may own a private home it does not mean that the property below is part of it as well. The Sub surface rights might be owned by con ed, or keyspan that run lines underground. The same goes for companies like MTA. I'm not sure what kind of deal MTA (LIRR) and amtrak have in terms of Penn station. In regards to the "half capacity" thing I'm sorry if i didn't make myself clear. (I tend to do that sometimes) What i meant is, the idea is to take (more or less) some of metro north's trains that would have terminated at gct and have the go to Penn. Also, have some of the trains (lirr) that would have ended at penn, terminate at gct. Its not adding capacity to each station. Its pretty much a trade. This way they don't get even more congested. I hope i clarified myself.

[NIMBYkiller]

LIRR to GCT will not take any space away from MN. LIRR is going to have 8 new tracks below the existing lower level of GCT.

And right now, there really is no solid plan in place to send MN to NYP, though I would love to see it. The proposals were up on the site, not sure if they still are, but that's all they were/are...proposals.

[Dynamicdezzy]

Yeah pretty much.... The good thing about a project like this is the possibility of future changes and expansions after its completion. I really hope someone in the near future continues to push for these proposals. NYC really needs a 2nd system to compliment the existing. Its really frustrating as it is.

[DA SMAZ]

I apologize for not being able to post earlier. Just to clarify things. 1st its possible that Cablevision (MSG) owns the surface rights to the area above penn. Amtrack probably just owns the sub-surface rights below MSG. well MSG must own the air rights as well due to the height of the building. Just because one may own a private home it does not mean that the property below is part of it as well. The Sub surface rights might be owned by con ed, or keyspan that run lines underground. The same goes for companies like MTA. I'm not sure what kind of deal MTA (LIRR) and amtrak have in terms of Penn station. In regards to the "half capacity" thing I'm sorry if i didn't make myself clear. (I tend to do that sometimes) What i meant is, the idea is to take (more or less) some of metro north's trains that would have terminated at gct and have the go to Penn. Also, have some of the trains (lirr) that would have ended at penn, terminate at gct. Its not adding capacity to each station. Its pretty much a trade. This way they don't get even more congested. I hope i clarified myself.


What you propose for GCT is also known as the Upper Level Loop Alternative. Under that scenario LIRR would use part of GCT Upper Level instead of the super-expensive Deep Bore new level underneath the existing lower level. The ESA tunnels under MNR tracks on Park Av. would rise to MN's level just where the "funnel" tracks leading into GCT begin. This wouldn't displace Metro-North trains since GCT has plenty of excess capacity. It would however make vertical circulation easier and safer for LIRR commuters. It would also render unneccesary a controversal ventilation shaft proposed to be constructed smack in front of St Patrick's Cathedral. Importantly it would be SO MUCH cheaper to build. They could use some of the savings for SAS. It's safe to say that LIRR would need less trains for PS when ESA is completed. The freed up space could and should be used for MNR NH and Hudson Lines via Hell Gate and Empire lines respectively. (have them thru-run). This would incidentally free up more space in GCT. That extra new space could and should be used by NJT for their "Access to the Region Core" new tunnel project. They should then bring NJT into GCT and thru run it with the MN Harlem Line. I would also have some current NJT trains thru-run with LIRR's Port Washington Line. That would free up some space immedietly.

[NIMBYkiller]

All that would be great, but it will never happen. MTA and NJT are state agencies of 2 different states. They'll never cooperate with each other. Unfotunately, there never will be any regional rail.

Also, they can't thru run the MN trains at NYP because the NH line uses catenary in NY and has a different type of 3rd rail that is not compatible with LIRR 3rd rail. The Empire line is a diesel line except for just before NYP, there is LIRR style third rail.

And besides, MN will never thru run the service.

[DA SMAZ]

All that would be great, but it will never happen. MTA and NJT are state agencies of 2 different states. They'll never cooperate with each other. Unfotunately, there never will be any regional rail.

Also, they can't thru run the MN trains at NYP because the NH line uses catenary in NY and has a different type of 3rd rail that is not compatible with LIRR 3rd rail. The Empire line is a diesel line except for just before NYP, there is LIRR style third rail.

And besides, MN will never thru run the service.

The MTA has already completed a DEIS and study to bring MN's NH and Hudson lines into PS once ESA is completed. They settled for three new stations in The Bronx on the NH and 125 st and 59th St on the Empire Line. I guess they'll have to build MN type 3rd rail on both lines. I think the NH branch would use Amtrak's tunnel under 32nd St in Manhattan and not LIRR's 33rd St tunnel. As for NJT and MTA working together...they can use the same arrangement they already have with MN concerning the lines that originate in NYS west of Hudson. Those are the very lines that NJT wants to bring into Manhattan via Access to the Region Core's "the TUNNEL" plan anyway. I think they all now terminate in Hoboken Terminal. I admit that I've never rode those lines. Do you know if NJT's 3rd rail is compatible with either MN's or LIRR's? Also do they use any dual mode type cars?

[czsz]

Has anyone else totally lost track of all the acronyms in this thread?

[STT757]

Do you know if NJT's 3rd rail is compatible with either MN's or LIRR's? Also do they use any dual mode type cars?

NJ Transit does not operate dual mode trains, nor do they operate trains that use "third rails". NJ Transit trains are either Electric (over head cantenary) or Diesel, all Diesel trains terminate at Hoboken, Newark Penn, Atlantic City or Philadelphia 30th Street. Only electrics to NY Penn.

Under the ARC Tunnel project NJ Transit is going to develop with a manufacturer a dual mode Diesel/Electric locomotive that use over head wires, it would be used to connect Bergen, Rockland and Orange County Trains to Manhattan.

[STT757]

With regards to the JFK Airtrain this is the latest I read, it will not co-operate with the LIRR. No through service from Long Island to Lower Manhattan, the only through service will be from JFK and Jamaica Station.

The Airtrain system will take over the Atlantic Ave branch from the LIRR, it will be converted to Airtrain computer operated system. Trains will run on two routes, JFK-Lower Manhattan and Jamaica-Lower Manhattan. Travelers from LIRR will have to exit and go upstairs to access the Airtrain to Lower Manhattan, trains will operate at 5 minute intervals during rush hour and 15 minutes during off-peak hours.

Basically the Airtrain will become to LIRR riders what the PATH is to NJ Transit riders, NJ Transit riders transfer from NJ Transit-PATH at Newark Penn Station for the ride to the World Trade Center. LIRR passengers will like wise have to change trains at Jamaica to access Lower Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn.

[NIMBYkiller]

"I guess they'll have to build MN type 3rd rail on both lines."

Can't. Amtrak uses the LIRR 3rd rail. Having MN 3rd rail will mean someones 3rd rail shoes are getting ripped off. Even worse will be trying that for the NH line, as LIRR uses that stretch. Basically, they'll probably have to make the new fleet of trains(M8s) with pantographs only and no 3rd rail shoe, which limits them to NYP service only. As for the Hudson line trains, they'll just have to refit the genisis diesel electric locomotives with retractable shoes like the Amtrak engines have. It's really the only way to get around the problem.


"Those are the very lines that NJT wants to bring into Manhattan via Access to the Region Core's "the TUNNEL" plan anyway."

Actually, THE tunnel has nothing to do with those lines. There is no physical track connection between those lines and the hudson river tunnels. They would have to build that rediculous Secaucus loop(which would send the trains through Secuacus Transfer Station twice) in order to do that. Those lines are best off just sticking to Hoboken. God forbid the people that moved to places along those lines have to transfer! Besides, in the push for more downtown commuter rail, NJT could extend from Hoboken under the Hudson to downtown. Then those lines would really have it going on.

And BTW, NJT doesn't use 3rd rail and they don't have any dual mode trains. They use either diesel only trains or electric trains that recieve the power from the catenary(overhead wires).


STT757: That is why I do NOT support the JFK-lower manhattan project. It will screw over commuters for the sake of tourists and business travelers. And BTW, I think most people just stay on NJT to Hoboken and then switch there to PATH.

[Ninjahedge]

NK, the problem is getting the airports connected to where people are coming from or going to.

the most discouraging thing about my trip to Japan was not the vacation or expensive transport there, but the ride home from Laguardia(sp)....

[drlikuid1444]

I read that the MTA will be giving 1 dollar subway and bus rides during the holiday season because of their 50+ million dollar surplus. However why do they not put that surplus money into more reliable, and better train service?


New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com (http://www.nydailynews.com/) Fare-y tale holiday
BY PETE DONOHUE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, October 19th, 2005

Happy Holidays, New York - from the MTA. The agency wants to use part of its huge expected surplus to hand out unprecedented holiday season discounts to riders - including $1 weekend fares on city buses and subways from Thanksgiving through December, the Daily News has learned.
The goodies, detailed in a memo sent yesterday by MTA Executive Director Katherine Lapp to Chairman Peter Kalikow, drew cheers from straphangers, who have been whacked with two fare hikes since 2003.
"This would definitely help me out," said Adriana Kowaliw, 22, of Manhattan, a recent college graduate who works in banking. "It would be a nice treat for New Yorkers."
"We pay full price all year round," said Roslyn Davis, 51, of Queens, a TV studio manager. "Why not a holiday gift during the holiday season?"
The stocking stuffers also include:


A special unlimited-ride Holiday MetroCard that would be good for 39 days - from Nov. 23 through New Years Day - at the 30-day price: $76.
A free 10-trip pass for off-peak trips on the Long Island and Metro-North railroads that would be available to riders who buy December passes. The free trips could be used by family and friends.
Local buses and subways would be half price during the last week of the year. The memo also calls for $100 million for security upgrades, including more surveillance cameras.
There's an additional $50 million set aside for service enhancements - such as adding commuter rail service and more funds for cleaning operations.
The memo was generated after Kalikow requested ideas on how to spend a financial windfall: the surplus is expected to hit $1 billion, thanks largely to taxes from real estate transactions and savings from low interest rates.
Kalikow wants the funds to benefit riders as well as workers, according to the memo.
"I think it's a great idea," said Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign.
"The MTA's fare breaks will get more people to try mass transit at the same time as gasoline bills are going through the roof," he added. "And the more people use mass transit for work and shopping and holiday trips, the more the city hums and its economy grows."
The fare breaks will cost the MTA $50 million, and another $50 million will be set aside to possibly do another round next year, when the financial picture isn't expected to be as rosy.
The memo also recommends using $450 million for unfunded pension liabilities, creating annual savings of $40 million. That could reduce financial pressure to raise fares in the future when large deficits loom.
The MTA has said it plans to hike fares every two years, with the next hit coming in 2007.
MTA spokesman Tom Kelly would not comment on the memo, but said Kalikow would review it and consult board members.
Russianoff predicted the holiday fare breaks would not be derailed. "It makes sense," he said. "It will be popular, and now that world knows about it, it's going to be hard to pull back."


With Derek Rose
Holiday benefits for subway, bus and commuter rail riders:

Rides on local buses and subways would be half price — $1 instead of $2 — on weekends after Thanksgiving and through December.
Local buses and subways would behalf price during the last week of the year.
Riders who start using their 30-day MetroCards between Thanksgiving and the end of December would get four additional days to ride free.
Riders who start using their seven-day MetroCards and seven-day Express Bus MetroCards between Thanksgiving and the end of the year would get one bonus day.
A special Holiday MetroCard — to be sold for cash only at token booths for $76 — would be good from Nov. 23 through New Year’s Day.
Commuter railroad riders who buy weekly passes in December would get a free round-trip, off-peak ticket that could be used by family and friends.
A free 10-trip pass for off-peak trips on the Long Island Rail Road or Metro-North would be given to riders who buy monthly December passes. Passes could be used by family and friends.

[BrooklynRider]

It seems an incredible waste and that the daily riders are subsidizing the holiday hordes. I don't support the decision. Someone let them know.

[NYatKNIGHT]

Fare Cuts for Holidays Are Called Into Question

By SEWELL CHAN (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=SEWELL CHAN&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=SEWELL CHAN&inline=nyt-per)

Published: October 20, 2005

It may seem like a benevolent year-end gift, but fiscal analysts and watchdog groups from both ends of the political spectrum yesterday criticized as irresponsible the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's plan to give subway, bus and commuter-rail riders fare discounts during the holiday season.

The discounts, which would be unprecedented in scope and cost an estimated $50 million this year in lost revenue, may secure some sorely needed good will for the authority, which is urging voters to approve a $2.9 billion state transportation bond act on Election Day.

But the authority faces a grim fiscal situation in the near future, as rising debt payments threaten to devour its operating budget. The authority hopes to balance its books next year, but anticipates a net budget deficit of $128 million in 2007, rising to $880 million in 2009.

Liberal and conservative analysts alike questioned the prudence of the temporary discounts.

"Why is the M.T.A. engaging in feel-good, short-term gimmicks rather than convincing riders and business leaders that it has sensible, long-term plans for a balanced operating budget and a fully funded capital budget?" asked James A. Parrott, chief economist at the Fiscal Policy Institute, a liberal research organization that focuses on New York State (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandpossessions/newyork/index.html?inline=nyt-geo).

Edmund J. McMahon, an expert in New York State fiscal policy at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative policy group, said: "There's no question that the most responsible use of the money would be to pay down the authority's unfunded pension liability. The M.T.A. is a monopoly service provider. If they want to buy good will, they should improve service."

Nonpartisan observers also questioned the extent to which the public would benefit from the discounts, which the authority believes would promote the use of mass transit, relieve traffic congestion and provide relief to residents facing sharply higher gasoline and heating-oil prices.

Elizabeth Lynam, a researcher at the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan group that monitors city finances, predicted that the plan would only confuse riders. "It doesn't do the M.T.A. any favor in the long run with the public, because they will have to turn around and raise fares in the future," she said. "A yo-yo fare policy is ill advised. First fares are down, then they are up. What's the story?"

Preston Niblack, a deputy director of the New York City Independent Budget Office, noted that the authority plans to borrow an additional $9.3 billion in its latest capital plan, for 2005 to 2009. "Whom does this actually benefit?" he asked of the discounts. "It does not really solve any structural issues. It's great from a public relations point of view, but it does not address long-term needs."

The plan, prepared at the request of the authority's chairman, Peter S. Kalikow, would divide a one-time surplus, estimated at roughly $700 million by the end of this year, as follows: $450 million to bolster pension funds; $150 million for service and security improvements; and $100 million for fare discounts this year and next. The plan needs approval from the authority's board, which is expected.

Mr. Kalikow declined yesterday to address the fiscal merits of the discounts. "I think it's a nice gesture that we can do," he said. Speaking at Grand Central Terminal at a swearing-in ceremony for Kevin J. McConville, the authority's new police chief, Mr. Kalikow conceded that fares may increase substantially in 2007, but added, "We don't have to face that issue until the summer of '06."

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/michael_r_bloomberg/index.html?inline=nyt-per), whose re-election campaign could benefit if riders mistakenly give him credit for the discount, issued a statement praising the plan. "Reducing fares will provide much-welcome relief to the millions of New Yorkers who ride our buses and subways every day, and will also be good for tourists, during one of the city's busiest times of the year," he said.

Fernando Ferrer (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/fernando_ferrer/index.html?inline=nyt-per), the Democratic candidate for mayor, lambasted the discount plan as an empty election-year gift to Mr. Bloomberg, a Republican. "They're an attempt to cover up his failure to make real investments in making our subways safe and affordable for the last four years," Mr. Ferrer said in a statement.

Aside from the fiscal consequences, perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the discounts is the idea of charging different prices at different times.

Under the plan, the base fare - for a single ride on the subway, a nonexpress bus in New York City or Long Island, and the Staten Island Railway - will be reduced by half, to $1, on weekends between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day and throughout the last week of December.

The authority will also sell a special 40-day MetroCard, good for travel from Nov. 23 to Jan. 1, for $76 - the price of a regular 30-day unlimited-ride card.

Riders will be able to buy the card, which automatically expires after Jan. 1, only with cash at subway station booths, because the electronic vending machines are not configured to sell special cards. Any regular 30-day card activated between those dates will carry four bonus days, and any regular 7-day card activated between those dates will carry one bonus day.

Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad riders will receive a free 10-trip off-peak pass for each monthly pass, and a free round-trip off-peak ticket for each weekly pass, purchased in December.

Unlike the subway systems in Washington and San Francisco, the New York City subway system cannot charge by distance because it has no way to record where individual riders exit. Given that limitation, some transit planners have urged the authority to charge higher fares during the commuter rush and lower fares at off-peak hours - a practice known as congestion pricing.

Although the MetroCard system, introduced in 1994, allows such a system, it has never been attempted until now.

"Leaving aside serious fiscal issues, it's not a bad idea to experiment with differential pricing - and the weekends might be a good place to start," said Nicole Gelinas, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

But for now, the cheap weekend rides seem to be, as Mr. Kalikow said yesterday, merely a Christmas present.

Copyright 2005 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[TonyO]

NY Sun

French Subway Cars, Owed Under Contract, Are Way Overdue, After Third Deadline

By JEREMY SMERD, Special to the Sun

A French company that received the bulk of a $1.1 billion contract to produce 660 new subway cars for New York has yet to deliver the first prototypes after missing its third and latest deadline of October 3.

The delays are part of ongoing problems for the manufacturer, Alstom Inc., hired by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in 2002 to produce 400 of the 660 new R160 cars. And they are another setback in the authority's plans to upgrade the subway cars on the system's lettered lines.

Alstom, which has also built trains for the Metro-North Railroad, has a checkered past with the MTA.The company reportedly won the MTA contract after hiring Alfonse D'Amato, the Republican senator turned lobbyist, to advocate for it with the authority.

On Wednesday, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration fined the company $130,000 for 22 health and safety violations that took place at the company's plant in Hornell, N.Y., where the new cars are being assembled. The company says that it has corrected some of the issues and plans to contest other violations, according to local press reports from Hornell, which is near Rochester.

Transit officials in London have called for the firing of Alstom after five instances last week when emergency brakes failed on trains main tained by the company.

Alstom was supposed to have delivered the first 10-car train to New York City for testing on July 29, but was granted an extension until September 16, which was later extended until October 3, according to MTA records.The company now is telling transit officials that it will deliver its prototype by the end of the year at the latest, or as soon as the first week in December.

Kawasaki Rail Car, a Japanese company that is under contract to build the remaining 260 cars, delivered its prototype on schedule in two shipments, one of five cars on July 20 and a second of another five cars on August 11.

Damaged car shells, a lack of parts, windows that were not watertight, and an assembly line the company had to create from scratch have all contributed to the delays, a spokesman for New York City Transit, Charles Seaton, said.

Mr. Seaton said engineers from New York City Transit visited the plant in Hornell earlier this week to monitor the company's progress and were happy with what they saw. He added that transit employees who worked in "quality assurance" were stationed at the plant at all times during production.

"It's not unusual that the test train would be late," Mr. Seaton said. "These trains will be in test for about a year before the customers ever see them and this lost time could be made up."

The trains are expected to be in regular use by 2008. The authority has said it would prefer delays rather than receive an inferior product.

A member of the state Assembly, Richard Brodsky,who is the chairman of the state's committee on public authorities, said Alstom has a pattern of not meeting the standards set out in its contract. He cited a yearlong delay in producing trains for Metro-North.This is Alstom's first time producing subway cars.

"I've always been concerned that what we are really dealing with is a company that is no longer fiscally and managerially capable," Mr. Brodsky said. "The assurances we've gotten from the MTA are not good enough."

Alstom did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Mr. Brodsky has been critical of the contact awarded to Alstom. Earlier this year, legislators passed a bill sponsored by Mr. Brodsky to restrict the influence lobbyists have on contract procurements.

Alstom has not been penalized financially for missing its deadlines. Such leniency is part of the transit authority's intent to make sure Alstom, which was only one of three companies to bid for the $1.1 billion contract, stays in business.Transit officials have said competition will keep them from being dependent on any one company.

"It's in their interest that there be a number of interested bidders to compete in future contracts, and slamming Alstom is not going to make that happen," the associate director of MTA's Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee,William Henderson, said.

[BrooklynRider]

It's time to extinguish the cigarettes, put away the wine and baguettes, and get back to work.

The MTA needs to beg a little more for the new Bond Issue. With contract management like this, it reaffirms my position to vote "NO".

[TonyO]

NY Sun

Subway Station Rehabilitations Plagued by Cost Overruns

By JEREMY SMERD, Special to the Sun

Delays and cost overruns are plaguing the rehabilitation of more than a dozen subway stations, including some being outfitted to make the system more accessible for people with disabilities, according to a report released yesterday.

The rehabilitation of several stations - portions of Rockefeller Center, Times Square, Jay Street in Brooklyn, and Chambers Street on the nos. 1, 2, and 3 line - was pared down after $400 million was cut from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's capital plan earlier this year. The work is being delayed because the rehabilitation plans must now be redesigned, the report from the MTA's capital program oversight committee said.

Also, a program designed to meet the requirements of the Americans With Disabilities Act by installing escalators and elevators in 100 of the system's 468 stations has come under the scrutiny of the transit authority's engineering consulting firm, Carter Burgess.

In the report, the company admonished New York City Transit for excessive delays in three projects under way or just completed as part of the last five-year capital plan.

At the Euclid Avenue station on the A line in Brooklyn, the transit authority in 2002 hired Gibraltar Contracting Incorporated to build and install three elevators at a cost of $6.9 million. The company was ill suited for the task, Carter Burgess reported, and the authority had to take over day-to-day control of the project.

After granting the company numerous deadline extensions, New York City Transit was contractually forced to forfeit any damages it may have been awarded, setting a dangerous precedent for the future.

"If there are no actual consequences to be incurred by contractors who willfully disregard their legal obligations and commitments" to the transit authority, then why would any contractor feel the need to satisfy the terms of their contract? Carter Burgess asks in its assessment.

A senior vice president for New York City Transit's Capital Program Management, Cosema Crawford, responded to criticism from MTA board members yesterday, saying that working with the company and losing the right to receive damages was preferable because the project was only a couple of months from completion.

Ms. Crawford said Gibraltar would receive an "unsatisfactory" rating, meaning it will not be able to bid for another contract.

Other stations are facing delays that could stretch to months or years.

The cost of acquiring property in Lower Manhattan to build the Fulton Street transit hub has "skyrocketed" due to the real estate boom since 2002, when the project was conceived. That has slowed progress, a transit official said.

A project to design and install elevators at the 96th Street station on Broadway is scheduled for completion next August, 19 months later than initially planned.

Some of the transit authority's setbacks have to do with meeting stringent federal guidelines on access for those with disabilities in stations that were built as long as 100 years ago, a spokesman for New York City Transit, Paul Fleuranges, wrote in an e-mail yesterday.

Such demands have contributed to a 90-month delay at the station at 14th Street and Eighth Avenue and a 45-month delay at the Eastern Parkway and Broadway Junction subway hub in East New York, Brooklyn.

Since a capital plan was introduced in 1982 to rebuild the subway system, 170 of the 468 stations have been rehabilitated.

LOAD-DATE: October 26, 2005

[BigMac]

NY1
October 27, 2005

MTA Board Approves Holiday Discount Fare

http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/images/live/88/175785.jpg

The MTA's full board has voted in favor of a plan to use the $1 billion surplus to offer a discount to straphangers during the holiday season.

The discount fare plan was approved despite Governor George Pataki's objections Wednesday.

Under the plan, subway and bus fares will drop to $1 on weekends from Thanksgiving to New Year's and all week long between Christmas and the New Year's.

There are also breaks for riders with unlimited MetroCards.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg says he supports the discount and Governor Pataki clarified some comments he had made Wednesday. He said he's not against the fare discount, but he feels other priorities must be met, including ensuring the security, reliability, and financial stability of the transit system.

The governor also wanted the MTA to set aside $250 million out of the surplus for projects in Lower Manhattan, including a planned rail link connecting downtown directly to Kennedy Airport.

Some riders say they appreciate the idea of improvements, but would rather have the immediate savings.

"He should put some more money into the rail into JFK and continue to develop Downtown,” said one straphanger. “But I think fundamentally, giving some of the surplus back to the riders is a better idea."

"There's already tunnels going from Brooklyn to Manhattan. We don't need another,” added another straphanger.

It will cost the MTA an estimated $100 million to implement the fare cut this year and next.

Copyright &#169; 2005 NY1 News

[czsz]

My first impulse is to celebrate a cheaper subway, which will inevitably encourage more economic activity in the city during the period. I realise, though, it'll probably make the platforms and trains far more crowded during an already frustrating time of year to be in the city.

[lofter1]

Stupid plan -- spend down the surplus when more improvements are needed.

Plus weekend service sucks, so now the platforms will be jammed for the long wait between cars.

Maybe it'll be a good time to go to Mexico ...

[TonyO]

Transit Ridership Reaches Highest Since June of 1971

BY JEREMY SMERD - Special to the Sun
November 15, 2005
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/23017

The average number of daily subway and bus riders reached 7.5 million during weekdays in September, the highest average daily ridership of any month since June 1971, according to statistics New York City Transit is expected to release today.

The record benchmark is the result of a perfect combination of one-time and ongoing factors, but is itself a broader sign of confidence in the subway that has been 25 years in the making.

It's attributable in part to a capital plan that injected billions of dollars into a system that went into sharp decline beginning in 1970. A drop in crime that made the system safer for riders played a role, as did the economic resurgence of New York that has drawn more workers and tourists into the city.

The variables that contributed to the unusually high ridership this September included unseasonably warm weather; the shock of exorbitant gasoline prices that kept people's cars in their garages; a Jewish New Year that fell in October instead of September and kept people in school and at work, and, not least, the city's sustained economic growth, which added 43,800 new jobs, a 1.2% increase between September 2004 and September 2005, according to New York City Transit.

Weekend ridership also reached 35-year records in September, the last month for which statistics are available. The average number of riders on Saturdays and Sundays was 7.6 million in September, a 5% increase over September 2004 and a 2.3% increase year-to-date for 2005 over 2004, according to New York City Transit numbers.

The numbers, while positive, do not surprise city planners, who see the increase in daily subway ridership as part of the city's overall growth.

"The city as a whole is doing well, and precisely for those reasons ridership is increasing," the director of strategic planning at the city's Department of City Planning, Sandy Hornick, said. "In the 1970s, the city lost substantial population and has been climbing back from that for a long time."

In May, a similar milestone was reached when 7.4 million average daily riders set a record for the highest weekday ridership since 1971.Last year, annual ridership reached 1.4 billion, a number not seen since the subway's heyday of the 1950s.Transportation experts, however, were not completely sanguine, as they worry that increased ridership soon will overload the system's capacity, making expansion projects like the Second Avenue subway, which received a boost of $450 million when voters approved a statewide transportation bond last Tuesday, critical.

"Our fear is that corporations and individuals are going to move elsewhere because they can live and work more easily in other locations," the director of the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University, Elliot Sander, said. "That's why we need to keep up with those numbers. If we don't continue to modernize and expand the system, there's going to be a disconnect."

Such a crunch may come during the holiday shopping season between Thanksgiving and December, when riders will receive half-fare discounts on weekends as well as bonus days on unlimited ride MetroCards. In an effort to spread the holiday cheer, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority released an advertising campaign yesterday featuring a Santa Claus entering the subway to educate riders about the fare discounts.

Transportation experts believe that the September figures could preface another milestone. This could be the year, some said, when the one-day record set two days before Christmas, on December 23, 1946, when 8.8 million people rode the subway for a nickel a ride, is neared if not broken. "You could see something close to that this year on the 23rd, "the associate director of the MTA's Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee, William Henderson, said. "It stands to reason that with a fare promotion and discount rides all that last week, it's going to be a really good December for ridership."

[NYatKNIGHT]

M.T.A. Expands Its Surplus Estimate for the Third Time This Year, to $1.04 Billion

By SEWELL CHAN (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=SEWELL CHAN&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=SEWELL CHAN&inline=nyt-per)
Published: November 17, 2005

In February, it was $76 million. In July, it ballooned to $833 million. Yesterday, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced its third - and, it hopes, final - estimate for the size of its surplus this year: $1.044 billion.

The wide variation in budget predictions vividly illustrates how the authority seems to lurch unpredictably between dire insolvency and sudden windfalls.
The authority does not expect its good fortune - soaring proceeds from real estate taxes and unusually low interest rates - to last. It anticipates a net deficit of $152 million in 2007, rising to $934 million in 2009, and that projection assumes fare and toll increases in both years.

"We have good news in this budget, but I ask the board to just continue to focus on those out years, because those deficits are substantial," the authority's executive director, Katherine N. Lapp, said after presenting board members with the final proposed operating budget for 2006. The board is expected to adopt the spending plan next month.

The plan confirmed that the authority has jettisoned an idea it floated in July: using part of the surplus to build a giant platform over its West Side railyards, which it could then sell to developers for office and apartment towers.

The plan made no mention of a proposal last month by Gov. George E. Pataki (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/george_e_pataki/index.html?inline=nyt-per), who suggested that $250 million from the surplus be dedicated to transit projects in Lower Manhattan and to a proposed rail link to Kennedy International Airport.

Mr. Pataki's chief of staff, John P. Cahill, who oversees downtown redevelopment, recently called the authority's chairman, Peter S. Kalikow, to discuss the surplus, but the board has disregarded the proposal - a rebuff, since Mr. Pataki appointed Mr. Kalikow in 2001 and controls 6 of the 14 votes on the panel.

Mr. Kalikow declined to characterize his talks with the governor's staff, saying, "We have a big commitment to rebuilding downtown." Of the airport rail link, he said, "We'll be getting to that in due course."

He praised the state's voters for approving a $2.9 billion transportation bond measure last week. Half of the money will go to the authority, bolstering its five-year capital program for 2005 to 2009.

"Anybody who underestimated the intelligence or the tenacity of the voters to do what they think is best for them is making a big mistake," he said. "Mass transit is a big deal down here. It's important, people want it, and they want us to expand it."

The plan outlined the use of the $700 million portion of the surplus that is seen as nonrecurring because it stemmed from the unusually high real estate taxes and low interest rates.

The biggest portion, $450 million, will go to reduce an unfunded pension liability, which will save the authority $42 million a year. And $100 million will finance holiday fare discounts this year and next.

In an acknowledgment of dissatisfaction with breakdowns and delays, the authority is using $50 million of the surplus for service improvements, including better cleaning and more service on two commuter railroads. It would also include more patrols and bomb-sniffing dogs for the authority's police force. A proposal to reduce the frequency of off-peak bus service in the city is being put off until 2007.

The authority will also spend $100 million for security improvements, including closed-circuit television cameras in 60 subway stations and buses; locks to secure subway car seats that could be lifted to create a space for a dangerous package; and emergency-exit release devices on floor-to-ceiling turnstiles.

The automated turnstiles -known as high entry-and-exit turnstiles and used at entrances without a station booth - have been criticized as dangerous because they allow riders to leave only one at a time, unlike exit gates by station booths. A release device is being tested at the Lawrence Street station, on the M and R lines in Brooklyn, a development first reported by The Daily News.

The budget plan also revealed that the authority has given up, for now, a plan to eliminate 71 conductors' positions on the L subway line. In June, the authority stopped using conductors on the L on weekends, but it was forced to restore them in September after an arbitrator ruled that the action violated a union contract.

Copyright 2005 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[TonyO]

11/18/05
Downtown Express

The PATH to rebuilding / Progress Report

UPDATE

Work at the Fulton Street Transit Center, located on Broadway between Fulton and John Sts., is currently being concentrated on the new southbound and northbound entrances at the 4,/5 station as well as on the stairways and fare control areas at Cortlandt St., Maiden Lane and Broadway. Renovations to the 2/3 station on the east side of William St. between Fulton and Ann Sts. continues.


The goal of the $785 million project is to make sense of the maze of subway platforms and connections to the 4/5, A/C, J/M/Z, 2/3. The center will have an underground connection to World Trade Center area stops of the R/W, 1 and E subway lines as well as the new PATH terminal. The original complettion date of December 2007 has been pushed back to July 2009.


The Cortlandt Street N/R/W station, which was closed to allow a connection between the Fulton Street station and the PATH station, is still slated to re-open in February and, according to Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesperson Mercedes Padilla, no other long term station closings are anticipated in the coming months.


At the new South Ferry stop , construction of the new station immediately west of the current station is underway. The new station, a $450 million project, will include a turn-around loop. Other improvements include two straight, full-length tracks, a free transfer connection to the R/W line Whitehall Street Station and three new entrances.


Construction of the 1 line tunnel which runs beneath Battery Park began in late October. The construction only “slices off a sliver of the lawn,” said Steve Lagerstrom, Operations Assistant of the Battery Conservancy of the construction’s impact on the park. Further intrusion into the park to appease construction work is not expected nor is in agreement with earlier discussions. No portion of the park will be taken permanently. Once the walls of the underground tunnel are complete sometime next summer, construction will migrate entirely below ground, Lagerstrom said. According to a Metropolitan Transportation capital construction update Tuesday, the station completion is still on target for December 2007.

—Caitlin Eichelberger

[lofter1]

Before new buildings go up on the SE & NW corners of 42nd / 8th great consideration should be given to better access to both the underground subway station and Port Authority Bus Terminal.

The crowding of both people and vehicles at this intersection is ridiculous at almost all hours of the day. Why they haven't switched to an "All Red" mode which would stop traffic in every direction and allow pedestrians to cross through the intersection here is beyond me.

The SE corner desperately needs access to the subway lines -- even better would be a large entry point with a tunnel beneath to PABT. The same could be constructed on the NW corner.

The city / state should do what is necessary -- including subsidies / bonuses to the developers of these sites -- so that these needed amenities are included in their buildings.

[NYatKNIGHT]

New Subway Cars Promise All Kinds of Information

By SEWELL CHAN (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=SEWELL CHAN&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=SEWELL CHAN&inline=nyt-per)
Published: November 30, 2005

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/11/30/nyregion/car.583.1.jpg
Shimeeka Foy of Brooklyn took a tour Tuesday of the next generation of New York City subway cars. A test train will go into service next summer to try out the new R160 cars and iron out any problems.

Nicholas Malave, a senior at Pacific High School in Brooklyn, entered a subway car yesterday and let out a cry of delight. This is not something he normally does during his regular trips on the A and J lines.

But those older cars lack what the new R160 subway car has: a Flexible Information and Notice Display, or FIND, with a liquid crystal display screen like the ones in television or computer monitors. The FIND panel will also have light-emitting diodes that will constantly update information about the train's progress.

After each stop, the display will change to show the next 10 stops, along with stops farther along the line. The video screen can be used to show the route symbol (like the letter "N" or "Q") or advertising.

Mr. Malave was one of dozens of curious riders who attended an "open house" sponsored yesterday afternoon by New York City Transit to show off and receive feedback on a five-car test train, a prototype of the R160, the newest generation of subway cars.

Next summer, the test train will be put in use so that engineers and mechanics can conduct technical tests, see how the cars hold up and iron out any problems before the rest of the order - a $952 million contract for 660 cars, awarded in October 2002 - is completed by a joint venture of Kawasaki Rail Car and Alstom Transport.

The cars will be delivered starting in 2007. Although the agency has not decided yet, the new cars may be used on the N or Q lines, which currently use some of the oldest cars in the system.

The test train yesterday was fully functioning, but it was not available to ordinary riders trying to get home. It was parked for five hours at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station in Downtown Brooklyn.

The R160 is 60 feet long and 85,200 pounds when empty. It comes in two versions: one with a train operator's cab at the end, which can seat 42, and one without the cab, which can seat 44. Except for the new display system, the R160 is almost identical to the R143, which has been in use since 2002 on the L line.

Riders yesterday, told to focus on the FIND panel, were asked questions like, "Do you feel reassured that the train is going to your station?" and "How easy or hard is it to read the words and letters on the sign?"

But riders seemed to be paying less attention to the sign than the rest of the car. Some of them said they did not regularly take the Nos. 2, 4, 5 and 6 lines (which use R142 cars, similar in design to the R143) or the L line and so were not familiar with the latest design.

Asked to compare the new car with the F train that she normally rides, María Romero, 72, a retired nurse's aide from Gravesend, Brooklyn, said, "This is three times more advanced!" Jared M. Skolnick, 34, an Internet marketer from the Upper West Side, said he admired the bright fluorescent lights, since he often took photographs in the subway.

James V. Sears, the agency's senior director of marketing research, said the results of the surveys - along with comments from focus groups convened in 2003 - could be incorporated into the final design of the FIND panel.

Among the transit specialists who crowded the test car yesterday was Masamichi Udagawa of Antenna Design New York. He was partly responsible for the bluish-gray color of the seats on the R142 and future generations.

Asked whether he missed the red, orange and yellow seats used in many cars built in the 1970's, he said, "They were good for disco, but not for everyday commuting."

Copyright 2005 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[TonyO]

I found these pics on SSP:

http://be.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/find00_1.jpg

http://be.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/find23.jpg

http://be.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/find01_1.jpg

http://be.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/digital19.jpg

Exterior:

http://images.nycsubway.org//i42000/img_42857.jpg

[TLOZ Link5]

Yes, please.

[Ninjahedge]

The B and the C have the same first 5 stops?

[TLOZ Link5]

The B and the C have the same first 5 stops?

They both stop at West 4th and Sixth Avenue, but branch off from there, with the C following the Eighth Avenue IND and the B following the Sixth Avenue IND. There are separate stations for each line on 14th Street (though the B doesn't stop at 14th), but the rest of the map is inaccurate for both stations: the next stop on the C is Spring Street, while the next stop on the B is Bleecker/Broadway-Lafayette.

The map that they're showing is likely for the A Train.

[TonyO]

more photos:

http://www.transitspot.com/gallery2/v/user/G1Ravage/R-160B/

[ZippyTheChimp]

Cheap seat (http://www.transitspot.com/gallery2/d/41039-2/Train+Pics+2225.jpg)

I guess they don't want the motorman getting too comfortable.

[lofter1]

^ It looks cushier than the hard molded plastic.

[TLOZ Link5]

I say bring back the comfy wicker seats from the days of yore.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Right outta Yore.
http://mishuna.image.pbase.com/u35/zippythechimp/upload/23096820.transit_museum026a.jpg

Transit Museum (http://www.mta.nyc.ny.us/mta/museum/)

[ZippyTheChimp]

New subway conduct rules start Monday

BY JONATHAN SCHIENBERG and CHUCK BENNETT
STAFF WRITERS

December 5, 2005

Stay put, stow the skateboard, and keep your feet off the seats Monday because new "rules of conduct" for New York City Transit go into effect Monday morning.

Subway and bus riders now face ejection from the system, up to $100 in fines and 10 days in jail for walking between subways cars, skateboarding or using in-line skates, resting one's feet on seats, and more.

Riders along the N, R, W line in Manhattan Sunday had mixed feelings about the new regs.

"I think the rules sound good but I don't know how or if they have anyone that can really enforce them," said Bentley Gaffney, 29.

But her husband, Brendan, 30, disagreed.

"Instead of focusing on conduct, they should be focusing more on safety and terrorism in the subways," he said.

Under the new rules, it is a violation to:
•Jump turnstiles even with a valid MetroCard
•Straddle a bicycle, wear in-line or roller skates, stand on a skateboard or scooter
•Move between subway car end doors -- even when the train is stopped
•Place feet on subway, bus and platform bench seats
•Place bags on an empty seat when the train or bus is crowded

"I wish they'd focus their energies on making the trains run more efficiently and on trains being on time," said Stephen Vider, 24, a rider from Manhattan.

Safety was the motivation for the changes, says Lawrence Reuter, president of New York City Transit.

The Straphangers Campaign senior attorney Gene Russianoff gave cautious approval to the rule changes and noted most are common courtesy or sense. "I'm sounding a lot like my mom," he quipped.

"The bags on the seat and putting your feet up on the seats should be common sense things," said Susan Leopold, 40, of Manhattan. "Wearing rollerblades, that obviously seems pretty dangerous. But so is being drunk on the platform."

Meghan Slattery, 22, a graduate student, added, "Some of the rules seem kind of unfair. ... Sometimes it smells really awful in the car and you need to move."

Several riders said their biggest gripes were homeless people and wondered if rules would get them out of the subway. Edmond Leary, a 40-year-old homeless man, said none of the rules "sound too unreasonable."

But he added, "I know about homeless people lying down across the seats and sleeping on the subways with their bags ...I respect that that is unacceptable and I think other homeless people should respect that too."

Jonathan Schienberg is an amNew York contributor. Chuck Bennett is an amNew York staff writer.

Copyright © 2005, Newsday, Inc. (http://www.nynewsday.com/)

[ZippyTheChimp]

Bringing back straphanging

BY CHUCK BENNETT
amNEW YORK STAFF WRITER

December 5, 2005

Hang on! Two competing entrepreneurs want to make New Yorkers straphangers again.

Their inventions -- personal portable straps that attach to subway hand poles -- are slowly picking up momentum at a time of increasingly crowded trains and avian-flu scares.

"People are buying them for stocking suffers 15 at a time," said Christine Goulden, the Brooklyn model who invented the Metrogrip.

Her simple device, a synthetic suede strap set with a no-slip nylon center, sells for $5 on her Web site and with a few retailers. It was, she said, inspired by a particularly dirty-looking rider on the Q train in 2002.

The man "gets on, runs his hands from the top to the bottom of the pole and walked out. Then kids come on the train put their mouths on the pole playing and it really grossed me out," she said. She put her strap on the market the next year.

Meanwhile, Boston-based computer consultant Stan Dolberg put his rival TranStrap on the market earlier this year after noticing people struggling to keep balance on crowded trains. His invention, a loop of nylon webbing with a hook for the pole, sells for $14.95. He likens it to the ubiquitous umbrella.

"Before the umbrella people used to walk around wearing clothing that shed water. Now everyone carries a portable canopy that is collapsible," he said.

Only a few thousand of the Metrogrips and TranStraps have been sold.

"The challenge is people don't want to use it unless they already see other people using it," Goulden said.

On the 2/3 line in Manhattan Sunday, amNewYork asked riders to give the straps a test hang.

"I'd probably use it." said Jaleel Meggett, 21, of Flatbush while using a Metrogrip. "It would be good for turns and curves."

Bronx resident Joseph Flemming, 39, tried both straps. "I'm not a germophobe," he said. "But this is good for people who don't want to touch the pole."

Not everyone, however, was as enthusiastic.

"It's crazy. I feel like it is going to fall off," said Maxine Robinson, 30, testing the TranStrap.

Jason Attruia, 25, of Park Slope, wasn't impressed either. "I wouldn't use it, I'd just wash my hands," he said.

http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2005-12/20807483.jpg
Maxine Robinson tried two subway grippers, but wasn't too thrilled.
(Photo by Jefferson Siegel)


Copyright © 2005, Newsday, Inc. (http://www.nynewsday.com/)

[TonyO]

NY Times

A Test at 25 Stations: Subway Riding Without the Swiping

By SEWELL CHAN
Published: January 31, 2006

It is too early to predict the demise of the MetroCard, but yesterday the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced what could be a step in that direction: an experiment letting riders enter the subway by tapping or waving a credit card or payment tag.

The six-month trial, scheduled to start this spring, could lend momentum to efforts toward a "smart card" valid on subways, buses and commuter trains throughout the region. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has championed that concept, but the transportation authority has been reluctant to embrace it.

The experiment will involve a commercially available technology, the MasterCard PayPass, which can already be used at parking lots, fast-food restaurants, drug stores, gas stations and movie theaters. The PayPass comes in two forms — a standard-size card or a tag that can be hung on a keychain — and has an embedded microchip and radio antenna.

The Citibank MasterCard PayPass will be accepted at 25 stations where turnstiles will have specially equipped readers. The PayPass functions like a normal credit or debit card, and the turnstile will be activated instantly, as with a MetroCard.

Citigroup, the country's largest financial services company, and MasterCard International, which first tested the PayPass in 2003, are paying for the experiment, with no cost to the authority. MasterCard has also issued PayPass credit cards with J. P. Morgan Chase and with MBNA America, but only the Citibank cards can be used in this experiment.

Citibank began issuing the payment devices to New York City customers last fall and plans to start making them — and the card readers that go with them — available across the country this spring.

Katherine N. Lapp, the executive director of the transportation authority, said that "contactless payments" — waving or tapping a card instead of swiping or inserting it — "hold the promise of simplifying fare payment for customers who travel throughout the M.T.A. network, while also providing for operating efficiencies and cost savings."

It took nearly nine years for the MetroCard, unveiled in 1994, to completely replace the token, which had been in use since 1953. Riders have not been clamoring for more technological innovation in fare payment.

The MetroCard is flexible and has been partly credited for record-high ridership. Riders get a 20 percent bonus for purchases of $10 or more and can also buy unlimited-ride cards good for 1, 7 or 30 days.

On the other hand, subway riders are often frustrated by the "Please Swipe Again" message that appears when a card has not been swiped properly or the machine malfunctions.

The PayPass will be accepted at the 23 stations from 125th Street to Bowling Green on the Nos. 4, 5 or 6 lines in Manhattan; the 23rd Street-Ely Avenue station on the E and V lines in Queens; and the Jay Street-Borough Hall station on the A, C and F lines in Brooklyn.

Riders who use the PayPass will get every sixth ride free, the equivalent of the MetroCard bonus, but will not have the unlimited-ride options.

[TonyO]

Track record: 1.5B rode subway

BY PETE DONOHUE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

If you fix it, they will come.

Despite a February fare hike and a three-day transit strike, subway ridership last year hit 1.45 billion - the highest in more than 50 years.

New subway cars and other upgrades have made tube travel more reliable and have helped lure more than 23 million new riders to the rails in 2005 compared with the year before, Transit Authority officials and rider advocates said yesterday.

The record ridership "is an indication of the strong commitment we at the MTA have made to provide our riders with the finest mass transportation network in the country," MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow said in a statement.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has allocated more than $48 billion since the 1980s for high-tech subway cars, track replacement, station renovations and other improvements. MetroCards and new fare-paying technology now reduce the per-trip cost as more riders use the system.

"Twenty-five years ago, your trains broke down all the time, they were covered in graffiti and you had no incentive to use transit," Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign said. "Billions of dollars later, your trains are reliable and you get discounts the more you use the system. The lesson of all this is, if you invest in transit, the riders will come."

The average fare last year was $1.27 per trip, which is lower than the average fare in 1996, according to TA reports.

Bus ridership dipped slightly last year.

[ZippyTheChimp]

The record ridership "is an indication of the strong commitment we at the MTA have made to provide our riders with the finest mass transportation network in the country," MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow said in a statement.

Bus ridership dipped slightly last year.
Or maybe it was the record number of tourists in the city last year.

[BigMac]

New York Times
February 21, 2006

New at PATH Stations: Wave, Don't Swipe

By PATRICK McGEEHAN

Commuters are about to move one step closer to using a single card to pay fares on transit systems throughout the region.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has started distributing a card called SmartLink that allows travelers to enter the PATH train system with a wave of the wallet. Pads built into turnstiles in all PATH stations can read the cards, which have computer chips embedded in them, as they pass by.

The technology was developed by a consortium of transit agencies with the hope of eventually having a single fare-payment system that will work on buses, subways, commuter trains and ferries. That degree of coordination among the various transit agencies in New York and New Jersey is a long way from being realized, though.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, another member of the consortium, plans to test a different payment system in 25 subway stations this spring. In that test, Citigroup and MasterCard International will fit turnstiles with readers that will accept Citibank MasterCard PayPass cards for payment. Those cards, already used at gas stations and grocery stores, are linked to the user's credit card or bank accounts.

So far, the experiment on the PATH is closest to fruition. The Port Authority is spending $73 million to develop the card and to install the readers on its turnstiles and vending machines that allow commuters to load money onto the cards.

Riders who register their Smart-Link cards with the Port Authority will be able to replenish their accounts automatically by linking them to bank accounts, as drivers do with the E-ZPass toll collection system. Registered cards will be protected against loss or theft.

But customers who want to maintain their anonymity will be able to buy and refill cards with cash. The Port Authority has not decided whether it will charge customers a fee to obtain a card, a Port Authority spokesman said.

The SmartLink card, which is scheduled for broad circulation this summer, will be accepted only on the PATH system, which, for a fare of $1.50, links Newark, Jersey City and Hoboken to Manhattan. The Port Authority is making the first bunch of cards available to a select group of several dozen older people who are receiving applications by mail.

"The smart card will provide people with a more convenient way to travel," said Charles A. Gargano, vice chairman of the Port Authority. "This is also an important first step toward the development of a regional fare-payment medium that will greatly improve the commute for those who travel by rail, bus or subway throughout the region."

The Port Authority expects the smart card to replace the QuickCard, which it started selling in 1989. Like a MetroCard, the QuickCard has an embedded value that is depleted with each use but can be replenished. Since last year, PATH turnstiles have also accepted MetroCards.

Late last July, the Port Authority, the transit authority and New Jersey Transit, which operates commuter trains and buses, signed an agreement to work together to develop "a payment solution that is mutually acceptable." The test of the PATH equipment is just the first step toward that goal, said Anthony R. Coscia, chairman of the Port Authority.

"What we're doing now is working the bugs out," Mr. Coscia said.

Extending the system to include New York's subway and buses will be the big leap toward a regional network, he said. But the estimates of the cost of doing so run as high as $300 million, he said. Linking New Jersey Transit to the system would probably cost at least $100 million, he said.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

April 2, 2006
West Village
Tales of Woe Along the Other 'Big Dig'
By JOHN FREEMAN GILL

To hear the residents of West 13th Street tell it, there is a blight upon their land. For nearly four years, a major subway construction project, nicknamed the Big Dig, has severely disrupted the serene and leafy Village streets between Fifth and Seventh Avenues. Noise and dust fill the air. Rats roam freely. Graffiti abounds.

"It's been a terrible, terrible ordeal for everyone on the block, and particularly for the businesses," said Gary Tomei, president of the West 13th Street 100 Block Association.

The goal of the Big Dig (a massive road project in Boston has the same nickname) is to ventilate the Sixth Avenue subway in case of fire. The project was originally scheduled to end last October, but New York City Transit has pushed back that target at least twice.

Last week, residents bemoaned the latest snag, which Mr. Tomei said the block association learned about from a transit official in March.

Charles F. Seaton, a transit spokesman, said the delay was caused by the agency's discovery in November that it did not have enough power to run the fans. He added that the agency told the local community board in December that the power problem would mean the street-level work would not be finished until late spring.

"It's an unforeseen circumstance," he said, adding that the latest schedule was to finish the street work by June 30, with the entire project wrapping up by year's end.

Residents are also angry at the loss of several trees. "I came out one day and I saw a stump, and I kind of found my inner activist," said Matthew Conlon, an actor who lives on the block.

Some trees have, in fact, disappeared. According to Warner Johnston, a Parks Department spokesman, the transit agency and Con Edison received permission to cut down four trees in exchange for paying to plant 31 others.

Business owners on the block, however, fear that their lost revenue may never grow back entirely.

"I had escalating business after 9/11," said Lloyd Feit, who with his wife, Ardes, owns Cafe Loup, a candlelit bistro that has been a fixture for 26 years on West 13th Street. "Then — poof! — the construction began, and I started losing 10 to 20 percent of my business."

To get by, the couple refinanced their apartment three times and took out a home-equity loan. And although the couple still hope the transit agency will compensate them for some lost business, keeping the restaurant afloat long enough to find out will be a struggle.

"I still have it in the back of my mind that somewhere down the line they'll do the right thing," Mr. Feit said. "But in the meantime, I'm having to finance my own misery."

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

April 4, 2006
Subway Track Project to Cause Minor Delays
By THOMAS J. LUECK

For riders of the Lexington Avenue line, a particularly harried breed of Manhattan straphangers, now comes something new — a skeletonized track.

Such is the term used by the engineers of New York City Transit, the keeper of the subways, to describe work that is being performed along 850 feet of downtown express track on the No. 4 and No. 5 lines, from south of Grand Central Terminal to north of the 33rd Street station. Minor delays are expected during peak travel periods on weekday mornings and early evenings.

It is radical surgery, indeed. Tons of steel rails, wooden ties and rocky ballast that form the track bed are being replaced. Although most of the work is on weekends and after midnight, weekday service is being maintained on a framework of temporary track resting on temporary wood pilings that cannot support subway trains running at their normal speed or frequency.

So, beginning at 7 a.m. yesterday, and continuing to 7 p.m. on May 22, downtown express service on the No. 4 and No. 5 lines will run slower from 86th Street to at least Union Square. According to the transit agency's projections, weekday riders can expect the worst delays — up to 10 minutes — from 7 to 10 a.m. and from 3:30 to 7 p.m., because there are fewer trains than normal.

As if that were not bad enough, the delays come on what is already the most heavily traveled, and arguably the most congested, stretch of track in the city's 656-mile subway system.

"This is a necessary consequence of maintaining the system," said Gene Russianoff, staff lawyer for the Straphangers Campaign, the subway riders' group. He said the Lexington Avenue line carried about 40 percent of all four million riders on the subways each weekday.

Nowhere is the popularity of the line more apparent than at 86th Street, 59th Street, Grand Central Terminal and Union Square, where the worst delays are predicted.

"People are joking, 'How can you tell the difference?' " Mr. Russianoff said yesterday. In interviews, riders said service was noticeably slower during the morning rush, but about normal in the evening rush.

The section of track that is being replaced is part of the city's oldest subway line, which opened in 1904. Transit officials said the section was last refurbished in 1957 and must be replaced because of water damage and wear. In an interview yesterday, Al Wojcik, the chief officer for tracks and infrastructure at New York City Transit, said the Lexington Avenue track bed was among the last 80 miles of track made of a crushed rock ballast instead of concrete. Eventually, the entire system will be concrete, he said.

The job, in the end, is not much different from pouring concrete for a building foundation. But doing so in a tunnel beneath Midtown Manhattan, and under subways that must keep running, is no small task.

Mr. Wojcik said the project began in earnest over the weekend, when about 40 workers removed steel rails and laid them alongside their heavy wood ties, then removed the ties and carried them by hand, four workers per tie, using heavy "tie tongs" to shoulder the load.

Payloader machines are being used to scoop and remove the rocky ballast, Mr. Wojcik said.

With the ballast removed, he said, the workers use thick wooden planks to support a temporary system of ties and rails, sometimes piling plank upon plank to support elevated sections of track. He said the concrete track bed would be poured on the weekends of April 15 and April 22.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[antinimby]

Would this mean that the creakiness and noise created when the trains go over the tracks will be gone or at least silence a bit?

[lofter1]

Sorry ... I'm standing on the 6 Platform at Spring St. and there's an Express going by ... can't hear you ...

[czsz]

Construction of the 2nd Avenue subway starts in 40 months!

[BigMac]

New York Daily News
May 15, 2006

Mining for ad dollars

MTA sees network of tunnels as a cash cow

BY PETE DONOHUE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

http://www.nydailynews.com/images/editors/rope0515.jpg

Coming to a dark and dank subway tunnel near you: commercials.

The MTA is considering using its warren of underground tubes as advertising space, eying electronic panels that are capable of broadcasting commercials to straphangers - a captive audience, to be sure.

The ads would feature a series of changing images, similar to early silent movies or kiddie flipbooks. They would be displayed at rates determined by train speeds - ensuring the ads are not mere blurs to peering riders.

"The technology is amazing," Roco Krsulic, who heads the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's real estate and advertising department, told the Daily News.

The tunnel technology, which has been tried on PATH lines, in Chicago and elsewhere, will be tested in the city's tubes before officials decide whether to go with a full-blown campaign, Krsulic said.

The first tests in the nation's biggest subway system could begin this summer.

Other underground - and aboveground - transit ad ideas being mulled by the MTA include:

- Projecting silent ads onto walls behind subway tracks that bored riders stare at while waiting on platforms.

- Illuminating the poster ads on the sides of buses at night to reel in the attention of pedestrians.

The commercial possibilities mark the latest twists in the MTA's successful drive to increase advertising revenues, which are then reinvested in the maintenance of the transportation system.

Last year, the money ad train hauled in $90 million - $60 million more than 1996.

The increase in revenues has come as transit officials have undertaken such ventures as selling all the ad space in a given station or train to one company, and experimenting with electronic billboards at station entrances.

MTA spokesman Tom Kelly said that soaring revenues also are a direct result of improving conditions in the mass transit network as the authority continues an overhaul launched in the 1980s, involving station rehabilitations, new subway cars and buses.

Ridership has soared - and so has advertisers' interest.

While the number of ads has decreased, the price the MTA can charge for space has gone up, Krsulic said.
Officials stressed that no decisions on new strategies have been made. The authority doesn't want to overwhelm riders, officials said.

Commuter advocates gave advertising in the system mixed reviews.

"I don't like it all, but in these times, when you need every dollar you can get, aesthetics takes a back seat to economics," said Beverly Dolinsky, executive director of the New York City Transit Riders Council.

But Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign believes the ads are worth it if they help reduce fiscal pressure to raise fares - especially with a hike being mulled for next year.

"I give [transit officials] good grades" on ad sales, he said. "They have managed to increase revenues without punishing riders with [too many] ads in their face."

&#169; 2006 Daily News, L.P.

[Ninjahedge]

They have to get rid of the etchers first.

Although I do not know which I would find more revolting....

[TonyO]

NY Daily News
5/16/06

'05 subway ridership is highest in 50 years

If you can't get a seat on the subway or the bus, there's a good reason.
An average 4.9 million straphangers rode the subways on a typical weekday in March - the highest since the Transit Authority started keeping the monthly statistic in January 1970.

Adding in the bus riders, and the system carried nearly 7.5 million people a day in March - a 3.1% increase over the same period last year.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Peter Kalikow and TA President Lawrence Reuter credited upgraded bus and subway equipment and MetroCard discounts with spurring much of the increase.

TA spokesman Paul Fleuranges said officials suspect high gas prices also are playing a role in the ridership boost.

More than 1.4 billion riders took the subway last year, the highest annual total in more than 50 years, transit officials have said. That milestone was reached even though there was a fare hike in February - the second in two years - and a three-day transit strike in December.


Pete Donohue

[krulltime]

It is awesome that people are getting back to taking public transportation more seriously these days.

Although I do want to get a freaking seat evertime!!!

[krulltime]

http://www.nydailynews.com/images/editors/rope0515.jpg

Coming to a dark and dank subway tunnel near you: commercials.

The MTA is considering using its warren of underground tubes as advertising space, eying electronic panels that are capable of broadcasting commercials to straphangers - a captive audience, to be sure.

The ads would feature a series of changing images, similar to early silent movies or kiddie flipbooks. They would be displayed at rates determined by train speeds - ensuring the ads are not mere blurs to peering riders.




This might actually sonds kind of interesting. I just hope they don't crapped up too much. I don't want to have a Times Square whenever I need to take the train.

[krulltime]

The Dirt on the Subways? They're Dirtier, Survey Says

By THOMAS J. LUECK
Published: May 17, 2006

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/05/17/nyregion/17subway.600.jpg
The subway cleanliness survey did not count litter, like the paper marring this E train, or graffiti, but dirt, like sticky floors and coffee spills.

For those who cringe at a dirty floor or a sticky seat, consider what is inside New York's 6,200 subway cars.

"The grimy bottom line," said Gene Russianoff, staff attorney for the Straphangers Campaign, "is that subway cars are becoming dirtier."

That is the conclusion of an annual subway cleanliness survey released yesterday by the Straphangers, the riders' advocacy group. After inspecting 2,200 cars on 22 subway lines, the group found that fewer than half met routine standards for interior cleanliness, and that conditions had worsened for the second year in a row.

Two lines, the E and the M, set a new low, the survey found, with fewer than 5 percent of their cars meeting cleanliness standards similar to those used by the transit agency's own inspectors. The Straphangers examined subway seats and floors for dirt and grime, but did not count graffiti or litter.

New York City Transit, the arm of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that runs the subways, immediately challenged the survey's findings yesterday, releasing a statement that said in part, "These figures defy both logic and common sense."

Still, the Straphangers' findings come at a rough time for the transit agency, which is trying to combat a fresh wave of subway graffiti and struggling to hold on to improvements in the system's appearance that have been made since the 1980's.

"Sometimes you do have to wonder if we are going backwards," said Helen Campbell, 48, a Manhattan office manager, as she rode an uptown E train yesterday. Her car's seats appeared clean, but its black floor was smeared with an unidentifiable goo, and its windows marred by indelible graffiti made with etching acid.

Transit officials said the challenges faced by their cleaning crews may stem from a greater good, that the system is attracting more riders. New York City Transit said on Monday that its average weekday ridership in March was the highest since it began keeping track in 1970.

Charles Seaton, a transit agency spokesman, said crews routinely cleaned subway car interiors several times a day when trains began or ended their routes. But he said the highest priority for the cleaners was removing graffiti and litter.

The Straphangers Campaign said it conducted its survey from Sept. 2 through Jan. 5. Cars judged to be dirty had things like sticky spots and spilled food.

"We think you know schmutz when you see it," Mr. Russianoff said.

Overall, the survey found that 47 percent of the subway cars were clean, compared with 61 percent in a comparable survey last year. "This continued to reverse an earlier trend of improvement found between 2000 and 2004," the report said.

The worsening conditions appear to have resulted from a cutback in money budgeted for scrubbing and mopping, the Straphangers said. Although the transit agency's budget this year calls for increased spending on subway appearance and safety, the main focus is on cleaning stations and removing refuse from tracks, where it poses a fire hazard.

The survey found that cleanliness varied widely on different subway lines, and from year to year on some of the same lines. The No. 4 line, with 94 percent of its cars rated as clean, led the list this year, and the No. 1 line was most improved. Seventy-six percent of the No. 1 cars were clean, compared with 14 percent last year.

The Straphangers, an affiliate of the New York Public Interest Research Group, said its survey was paid for by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

The Straphangers recommended that more resources be devoted to cleaning car interiors, and said the transit agency should make more information from its own inspections available to the public.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/05/17/nyregion/0517-met-webSUBWAYch.jpg

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[ablarc]

More bad news?

Well, not for everyone; I guess the admirers of grunge are getting their hearts' desires. And the connoisseurs of tags.

Maybe in time, New York will regain its late-Seventies glory. Folks with a highly-refined taste for the grubby and the mavens of sleaze will cheer, but those with dull mainstream preferences will start dreaming of Suburbia again.

City planning with etching acid.

Maybe, in time, we'll get the porn shops back in Times Square. And the three-card monte. Miss that monte.

[Ninjahedge]

One of the easiest ways (although hard to enforce at first) would be to ban the sale and consumption of food/beverages on the subways. That would be difficult with a system so large and so many places to buy even IN the system itself, but it works pretty well with the smaller PATH train system.

The other is to find some way to monitor the trains so they know who is leaving behind all this stuff and who is etching the cars. Although I am not too in favor of big brother watching, I do favor him sticking his nose in the door every so often....

[stache]

They should only allow the sale of unflavored water in the stations.

[mkeit]

The E is the dirtiest because it has a large population of homeless people who live in it and ride back and forth all day.

[NYatKNIGHT]

The E also has the squeeliest, ear-splitting brakes, but I digress.

[Ninjahedge]

The homeless might like it because of the sleep-friendly side benches......

[krulltime]

CRIME-CAM PLAN FOR SUBWAY CARS


http://www.nypost.com/photos/news052306002a.jpg


By JEREMY OLSHAN
May 23, 2006

Next stop, candid camera.

Closed-circuit TV cameras may be installed on thousands of subway cars to deter graffiti and other crimes, transit officials said yesterday.

The MTA is considering a variety of technologies currently used by transit systems in London, Paris, Hamburg, Munich and Australia, said Mike Lombardi, vice president for subways.

With major incidents of graffiti, window "scratchiti," and acid etching up nearly 400 percent since 2004, and much of it being done while the trains are in service, the digital cameras could save the agency millions, Lombardi said.

Although much of the subway system still employs 19th-century technology, the MTA has slowly been working on a variety of upgrades, from automatic train control to cellphone service to real-time train information.

The cameras are a natural fit, MTA board members said.

"It could probably stop other crime as well, and perhaps they could catch a terror suspect," board member Andrew Albert said.

Straphangers may also get an added sense of security from knowing the cameras are there.

"Some people feel insecure in a lonely subway car, and perhaps a camera will make them feel a little better," Albert said.

The agency has been quoted prices by various companies, but is looking for ways to narrow the scope of the system and cut down on the cost, officials said. Lombardi cautioned the project was still in the very preliminary stages.

"We still want to see what's out there and whether they really work," he said. "And then how much money that will be. Then we might put it out for bid."

The system would complement the 2,328 cameras already in use at 276 subway stations, officials said.

Additional cameras are also being added near the turnstiles at 60 stations.

Installing cameras in trains is no problem - the project is focusing on establishing a means of digitally recording and cataloging the data.

Unlike the MTA's $300 million anti-terror camera project, these cameras would not transmit unusual activity as it happens, but provide a record for later investigation.

Several hundred cameras have already been installed as part of that anti-terrorism project, which is due to be completed in 2009, MTA officials said.

The subway-crime camera initiative has been prompted in large part by the scourge of graffiti inside and outside of the cars. Glass-etching paste, which can be purchased in art-supply stores permanently damages windows.

Windows on the 1,800 newest cars have been lined with Mylar, which can be replaced much more cheaply.

The agency is considering a program to replace the windows on more than 5,000 subway cars, at a cost of $10 million, and then include an annual $5 million in the budget for the Mylar.


Copyright 2006 NYP Holdings, Inc.

[BigMac]

McGraw Hill Construction
May, 2006

New York's Subway System Finally Starting Major Expansion

By Tom Stabile

Infrastructure designers and contractors around New York endured a tense wait for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's new capital program to take shape last year, but the bumpy ride may have been worth it. The MTA's subsidiaries have since unleashed dozens of projects, including major jobs to expand the region's transit capacity.

The logjam broke after New York's state legislature and Gov. George Pataki agreed to fund a $21.2 billion 2005-09 capital program for the MTA last year. Voter approval of a $2.9 billion transportation bond on the ballot last November provided an extra boost, said Mysore Nagaraja, president of the MTA's Capital Construction Co., which oversees large-budget efforts, including two - East Side Access and the Second Avenue Subway - that split $900 million from the referendum.

"That was voted for overwhelmingly - by 55 percent - and gave a mandate that the projects are important," he said. "The confidence level for funding from both the state and federal perspectives is up."

New York City Transit is another busy MTA division, with more than $2 billion a year in the new capital program for bus depot, rail yard, fan plant, station rehabilitation, signal, track, and tunnel lighting projects in the five boroughs, said Cosema Crawford, the agency's chief engineer.

"It's good work across all disciplines - a lot of deep excavation work, complex logistics work," she added. "It's a great capital program for contractors of all sizes."

New Work Expands System's Reach

The MTA's docket has three high-profile projects, two to expand the city's subway system for the first time in decades, and the third to transform commuting patterns for thousands of suburbanites.

One is an extension of the Flushing line, known as the 7 train, from its terminus at W. 42nd Street and 7th Avenue. It will head west and south to the Jacob K. Javits Center on W. 34th Street and 11th Avenue. New York City is footing the $2 billion bill, which does not include funds to acquire land, such as a planned staging site on W. 26th Street, Nagaraja said.

The MTA plans to award a $350 million to $400 million contract by year's end to tunnel from 26th Street north to W. 41st Street and 10th Avenue. A contract to build the 34th Street station would follow next year. The agency is also hiring a construction manager consultant this fall.

"My goal is by 2011 to finish the whole thing," Nagaraja said.

The 7 line will have to work around various underground features, said David Donatelli, project manager for New York-based Parsons Brinckerhoff, the design consultant. Those include the 8th Avenue subway; Amtrak's West Side rail yards, access tunnels, and open tracks; infrastructure for the Lincoln Tunnel and Port Authority Bus Terminal; the viaduct supporting 11th Avenue; and a planned $6 billion commuter rail tunnel under the Hudson River from New Jersey that would end at 34th Street and 7th Avenue.

"We will have to make sure that the other features are shored up properly," Nagaraja said. "But we will be digging deep."

Another subway expansion has a much larger reach - the $16 billion Second Avenue line planned to one day stretch 8.1 mi. from 125th Street and Park Avenue in East Harlem down to Hanover Square near Wall Street. Aimed at easing congestion on the Lexington Avenue line on Manhattan's East Side, the four-phase project would start next year with construction of a leg from E. 96th Street to E. 63rd Street, where it would link to an existing station, said David Palmer, a principal with London-based Arup, a lead firm on the joint-venture design team.

The job will involve a cut-and-cover dig for a station at 96th Street and mining with TBM and other deep excavation equipment for stations at 72nd and 86th streets, Palmer said. Three tracks heading south into the 72nd Street station will fan out to four on the other side, added Don Phillips, an Arup principal.

"You have to plan for crossovers between the tracks at both ends, which means you have to mine larger caverns," he said.

Preliminary engineering and environmental approvals are complete on the first $3.8 billion, 2-mi. phase, Nagaraja said.

"My hope is that next spring we'll have the tunnel contract," he added.

The first leg would finish in late 2012 or early 2013 to serve an expected 202,000 riders, Nagaraja said. The design effort so far has cost $400 million, and funding for the rest of the first phase would come from $1 billion left over from the 2000-2004 capital plan, $450 million from last November's referendum, $1.5 billion in federal money, and future MTA funds.

The significance of adding a new line led the MTA to ask its design team to also develop modern systemwide station construction guidelines. The template will also apply to the 7 line expansion.

"One of the things we tried to do is make the space as attractive as we can - it has to function well day and night," Phillips said. "For instance, the platforms will be column-free spaces so that people can see all around the train arrival area."

The project brought together DMJM Harris and FXFowle, both based in New York, Arup, and others. They took roost in an MTA office, drafting preliminary and conceptual designs over three years, said Sudhir Jambhekar, a FXFowle principal.

"It was an amazing collaborative process," he added. "Projects of this nature are led by serious engineering decisions, so we had to be cognizant of that as we designed stations and streetscapes."

At some point, the teams on Second Avenue may cross paths with crews working on another MTA project - the $6.3 billion East Side Access program that will bring Long Island Rail Road trains, which currently head straight to Pennsylvania Station on Manhattan's West Side, into a new station complex deep under Grand Central Terminal on the East Side.

The busiest phase is approaching with the planned award next month of a $380 million contract to bore 1 mi. southward from the existing 63rd Street rail tunnel - which connects to Queens under the East River - in order to reach Grand Central in a deep dig under existing subway lines. Nagaraja said he also expects to award a $90 million contract next month to build rail infrastructure under Amtrak's Sunnyside Yard rail complex in Queens.

Nagaraja said he hopes to clear up East Side Access funding by locking in an expected federal contribution this year. His agency has spent about $1 billion so far and has $1.1 billion on hand in funds from the last capital plan and the November referendum. He expects the federal government to contribute $2 billion.

Another East Side Access contract for a $150 million chilling and ventilation facility on E. 50th Street in Manhattan, set for award next year, will end a bitter fight with neighbors, who objected to the planned seven-story height. Nagaraja said the solution to move three to four floors underground and add a park added $50 million to the tab.

"It was frustrating," he said. "But it's a good design that's friendly to the neighborhood."

Upgrading the Core Infrastructure

Expanding a 100-year-old transit system may capture the imagination, but the MTA is also deep into efforts to maintain or upgrade its bus and rail infrastructure. That translates into scores of big projects.

A signature effort is New York City Transit's $260 million Grand Avenue Bus Depot in Queens, which began in December 2003 under the last capital plan. The work is under a design-build contract with Granite Construction Northeast of Mount Vernon, N.Y., as contractor and Gannett Fleming of Camp Hill, Pa., as engineer, said the transit agency's Crawford.

"We wanted to go quickly, and design-build allows that," she added. "We like to use it when we're off the right of way."

The 560,000-sq.-ft. depot, slated to open in August, will hold 200 buses and 27 maintenance bays and have green features, including a 200,000-gallon underground rainwater collector tank to supply bus washing water, a 200 KW fuel cell on the roof, and natural lighting.

Another big upgrade in Manhattan is creating the Fulton Street Transit Center - an $847 million subway complex that will greatly ease transfers, said Arup's Palmer, whose firm is designing the project.

"Now, you have 11 lines and six stations where you go through a rabbit warren to get around," he said. "The goal is to open up the space and make it all visual."

The 215,000-sq.-ft. job will open up the maze by demolishing old corridors, adding new passageways and mezzanines, and building a grand entry hall with a glass-domed atrium designed by London-based Grimshaw Architects - all while keeping the stations open for 275,000 riders. The construction managers, Bovis Lend Lease and Parsons Brinckerhoff, are both based in New York.

Nagaraja's office scaled back the project last year after work had begun. The original $750 million budget is now $847 million, but includes $150 million for land buys, he said. It is funded by federal redevelopment money for Lower Manhattan.

Two contracts are under way. Citnalta of Bohemia, N.Y., is general contractor on a $35 million reconstruction of two station areas, and Slattery Skanska of Whitestone, N.Y., is general contractor on a $133 million pedestrian tunnel to connect the complex to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's planned World Trade Center transit hub. A contract to demolish several buildings to make way for the main hall is slated for award in June.

"By the end of this year, almost all of the contracts will be out," Nagaraja said.

A $106 million rehabilitation of the Columbus Circle subway station in Manhattan is also starting this spring. It entails rebuilding the roof, upgrading platforms, and adding a new entrance, which alone will require digging up W. 60th Street, driving soldier piles, and installing a precast deck to temporarily support the road, said Rich Ocken, vice president for Judlau Contracting of College Point, N.Y., the general contractor.

"There's a lot of staging and mobilizing on this job because at Columbus Circle you can't close anything," Ocken added.

Other big jobs wrapping up include:

- a $192 million overhaul of 4 mi. of elevated track and 10 stations on the White Plains Road line in the Bronx. Judlau is rebuilding mezzanines, canopies, wind screens, and guard rails, while also installing several elevators, Ocken said.

- installation of communication-based train control on the Canarsie line, known as the L train, to replace 70-year-old signal systems. CBTC will run trains by computer for parts of routes, allowing for closer train spacing, while funnelling train location data to the agency's command center and eventually to passengers. A Siemens, Union Switch, and Railworks joint venture is adding train and switch equipment, software, and systems for the $287 million job finishing in August.

&#169; 2006 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

[TonyO]

^ That's a great article. I didn't know Columbus Circle has a station upgrade in the works.

[lofter1]

Per Columbus Circle Station: As of this week it seems that work has started on the west side of Broadway between 60th / 61st -- big highway barriers topped with cyclone fencing have been placed along that entire block, taking up 1/2 of the sidewalk and extending out into the first lane of Broadway.

[Eugenious]

They didnt mention anything about the Smith/9th St station rehab on the F culver line, is that still going forward?

That station is in need of MAJOR repairs, they have a prime opportunity there because it's the highest elevated station in the system and it awards views of the whole ny skyline that you cant get anywhere else.

[pianoman11686]

New York Daily News (http://www.nydailynews.com)

Oh, L, not enuf trains!

BY PETE DONOHUE

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Friday, July 7th, 2006

The $443 million fleet of subway cars on the L line is just 4 years old - but it's already too small to handle a growing ridership.
The Transit Authority had projected that 212 Kawasaki-made R143 subway cars would be enough to accommodate ridership demands for years to come, according to a TA report.

But L-line ridership - fueled in part by the popularity of Williamsburg, Brooklyn - has risen higher than the TA expected, leading the agency to conclude that the "R143 fleet is now not large enough," according to a TA report.

Scrambling to find a solution, the TA plans to put an older subway-car model on the L line to supplement the existing Canarsie, Brooklyn, fleet, and also divert another batch of cars being built to the Canarsie line.

A TA spokesman couldn't say when service would be boosted. It will take at least several months - and at least $320,000 in signal-related work - before the older cars can operate on the rails along with the newer high-tech rigs that were put in service between February 2002 and July 2003.

The L line runs between Eighth Ave. in Manhattan and Rockaway Parkway in Canarsie.

Neighborhoods along the route, including Williamsburg, have become increasingly popular as rents in Manhattan have steadily risen. Between 2000 and 2005, ridership on the line increased by more than 16%.

But service has not kept pace, resulting in jam-packed trains. The frequency of trains during rush hours and many off-peak hours has remained unchanged.

"It's horrible," said Teresa Toro, chairwoman of Community Board 1's transportation committee. "It's just too crowded."

She blames the TA and the city, which has encouraged development in Brooklyn, with not accurately projecting the strain on the subway system and ensuring enough trains could be placed in service.

"They dropped the ball," Toro said.

L-train riders, meanwhile, will not get real-time arrival information via platform message boards until September or so, the TA said. The TA had previously said the communications upgrade, which would take away some of the uncertainty associated with subway travel, would go online this month.

L line track record

Annual ridership for the L line, not including major transfer stations:

1994 . . . 16,968,025

1996 . . . 18,107,243

1998 . . . 21,196,693

2000 . . . 26,155,806

2005 . . . 30,452,319

Time between scheduled trains:

Morning and evening rush hours: 4 mins.

Midday: 8 mins.

Overnight: 20 mins.

Five busiest stations in 2005:

First Ave., Manhattan

Bedford Ave., Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Rockaway Parkway, Canarsie, Brooklyn

DeKalb Ave., Bushwick, Brooklyn

Graham Ave., East Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Copyright 2006 The New York Daily News

[TonyO]

Inside the MTA's Fight Against Subway Flooding

By BRADLEY HOPE, Staff Reporter of the Sun

If anyone despairs when reading the weather report first thing in the morning, it's assistant chief Peter Velasquez, Jr. the head of the hydraulics department of the New York City Transit Authority.

On a dry and sunny day his department's 700 or so pumps, at about 280 locations, push 13 million gallons of water out of the subway system and into New York City's sewers. That's the equivalent of all the wastewater produced by the city of Boca Raton, Fla., every day.

And on a wet day?

"It's more water than I can measure," Mr. Velaszquez said.

This year, 9.63 inches of rain have fallen in Central Park, about five inches more than the average rainfall for the city. For the 170 workers in the hydraulics department - one of the smallest in the authority's force of 34,000 workers - this spells hours of scrambling to floods and overflows.

When water rises near the electrically charged third rail, it creates dangerous conditions for trains. There are no sensors in the subway tunnels to notify transit officials that there is flooding, so the hydraulics department relies entirely on reports called in by conductors, platform personnel, and customers. This was the case on the morning of July 5, when an inch of water fell on the city, resulting in suspensions on three subway lines for more than an hour.

The first problem for a responding hydraulics gang is just getting to the location of the "water condition," a supervisor, Gliden Arroyo, said.

"You have to remember, we are using the same system that delays customers," he said. Workers may move to a flood by taking trains, trucks, buses, or by walking. "We have to get there by any means necessary," he said.

With water touching the third rail, a puddle can become a 600-volt landmine. Transit workers follow strict procedures to avoid getting hurt.

Most "conditions" like last week's are caused by a backed-up drainage pipe or water coming in at a rate faster than the pumps can get rid of it. Lately the influx of free newspapers at subway stations has compounded the problem by clogging drains throughout the system.

A condition like last week's is meager in comparison with some floods in the city's history. The worst condition Mr. Velasquez has seen was in Harlem in the early 1990s, where a broken water main flooded a station at 125th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue up to the stairwell. Scuba divers had to be called in to shut down the main, and the Transit Authority had to bring in its most powerful weapon: one of two diesel-powered train cars outfitted with pumps that can get rid of 2,700 gallons of water a minute. It took an entire weekend to pump out the water, Mr. Velasquez said.

The department has an arsenal of smaller pumps as well, from special lightweight aluminum 100-gallon pumps, to the 600-gallon pumps that take an entire gang to pull onto a subway platform.

Thunderstorms they can handle, Mr. Velasquez said. It's the unexpected and the expansive disaster that he fears most. A hurricane could cause massive flooding throughout the subway system.

"At some point, it would be too much to handle," he said. "You've got rain plus wind. It basically would shut down the system. You hope not. You pray that it doesn't."

A terrorist threat like the plot against the PATH train tunnels reported last week are yet another concern. Mr. Velasquez said the Transit Authority has detailed plans for dealing with all types of emergencies.

"All we can do is prepare," he said. In the meantime, his workers are continuing their 24-hour a day maintenance of the pumps, some of which are more than 100 years old.

[Kris]

July 12, 2006
New Subway Payment Method Is Tested
By THOMAS J. LUECK

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, working with Citigroup and MasterCard, began a six-month experiment yesterday that will allow subway riders to use specialized bank cards or payment tags instead of MetroCards. The test, paid for by the two financial service companies, is taking place in 30 stations on the Lexington Avenue line between 138th Street in the Bronx and Borough Hall in Brooklyn. At the stations, customers can tap or wave their Citi credit cards, MasterCard debit cards or bank-issued payment tags to gain entry through specially equipped turnstiles. The test is intended to “evaluate the potential of contactless payments to simplify fare payment for customers,” said Peter S. Kalikow, the authority’s chairman.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[TonyO]

NY Post

TRAIN-TRACKING HQ

PEEK AT SUBWAY SYSTEM'S NEW $100 MIL NERVE CENTER

By JEREMY OLSHAN Transit Reporter

http://www.nypost.com/photos/news08142006019.jpg
IN THE CONDUCTOR'S SEAT: The Rail Control Center on Manhattan's West Side, where operators will eventually be able to determine trains' precise locations in the city's subway system.

August 14, 2006 -- This is the subway's brain.

Tucked inside a building on Manhattan's West Side, the new $100 million Rail Control Center looks more like NASA's Mission Control or the Pentagon's situation room.

But from this massive football-field-size nerve center transit officials can monitor - and soon will be able to control - the entire subway system.

When it is fully operational - in 2010 at the earliest - dispatchers will be able to track the precise location of every train, communicate directly with operators and conductors, or reroute a line, transit officials said, in a process called Automatic Train Supervision.

"Currently, console dispatchers have to contact field personnel over the radio," a transit official said. "ATS will be a sea change in rail-control operations - for the first time in the IRT's [numbered lines] 102-year history [dispatchers] will have real-time information on train movement."

Dispatchers will know instantly when a train is behind schedule, or when the distance between trains needs to be adjusted to increase service.

Transit officials are highly secretive about the center - which would be the largest and most advanced rail-control system in the world - because it could be a terror target, sources said.

The subway has always depended on its three rails - two to guide the path of the train, and the third to deliver the 600 volts necessary to power the trains.

But the subway of the future will depend on an imaginary fourth rail - a data line - to provide the rail-control center with live information.

As a bonus, it will tell straphangers when the next train will arrive.

At the old subway-control center in Brooklyn, there was no way to identify trains or tell their precise location.

And it allowed only one train at a time onto 600-foot blocks of track, giving dispatchers just a vague idea of each train's location and preventing trains from being run closer together.

Right now, the new center is running much the way the Brooklyn one did, while its more advanced functions are being tested.

The subway's number lines are set to go online this fall. The letter lines will take longer to complete, officials said.

The new center will work to automate much of the subway functions currently performed by hundreds of employees, transit workers said.

"They are going to be able to cut back on a lot of dispatchers," one union member told The Post. "But what happens if the system goes down?"

Getting the Rail Control Center up and running has not been easy. When Rapid Transit Operations initially moved to the new center last year, technological snafus forced them to retreat to Brooklyn.

But a successful test on May 20 allowed a return to the new digs.

jeremy.olshan@nypost.com

[Eugenious]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/18/nyregion/18cars.html?ex=1156132800&en=12ad9581e24daece&ei=5087%0A

By THOMAS J. LUECK (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/thomas_j_lueck/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Published: August 18, 2006

City Subways Put New Cars Into Service as a Test Run


New York City Transit (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/new_york_city_transit_authority/index.html?inline=nyt-org) showed off its newest subway cars yesterday, putting a newly minted 10-car train into passenger service for a 30-day test on the N line.


The cars, costing $1.44 million apiece, and manufactured in Yonkers by Kawasaki, are the first to be delivered as part of a $952 million order by the transit agency for 660 cars. Kawasaki is to produce 260 of the cars, and Alstom, a French conglomerate, is to make the other 400.


A similar 10-car train of Alstom cars is scheduled to begin a 30-day test on the Q line on Aug. 25. If the tests are successful, the transit agency said it would schedule delivery of the rest of the cars with the goal of having all 660 cars in operation by 2008. The new cars would replace outdated equipment that has been in service for 40 years, but no decision has been made as to which lines the cars will be assigned.


“It feels really good,” said Shawn Daley, 24, among the first to board a new car yesterday as he traveled home to East Bushwick from his job in Manhattan as a night shift supervisor for United Parcel Service.
“I just want to see how fast it gets me home,” he said.


The new cars, identified by the transit agency as R160’s, are similar in many ways to R142’s, which are already in service on most of the system’s numbered lines, and the R143’s, which are in use on the L line. With advanced suspension systems and sound-absorbing materials, they are quieter and smoother than older cars in the subway fleet, and they supplant crackling, hard-to-hear announcements with automated voices.
Computer chips that monitor the R160’s should enable workmen to make repairs more quickly than on older subway cars, officials said.


“The idea has been to come up with a car that is easy to maintain, efficient to operate and offers a bright, customer-pleasing environment,” said Lawrence G. Reuter, the president of New York City Transit, a division of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which has the option to buy up to 912 more R160’s.


A new feature in the R160’s is a system of three display panels in each car indicating the station where the train is stopping, which stops are next and which connections are available. Instead of the digital panels in some other cars, which plot the line’s entire route and indicate station stops with flashing dots, the R160’s have a digital map display that scrolls through the names of stations and can be reprogrammed for use on any subway line.


They also have video screens that Mr. Reuter said would be used to display public service announcements. There have been relatively few problems with delivery and use of cars built by Kawasaki, but Alstom has been plagued with setbacks in the manufacture of its cars.


Last year, Alstom was given a seven-week extension to deliver a test train to New York City Transit engineers after two of its car shells were damaged during shipping from a plant in Brazil to another plant used by Alstom in Hornel, N.Y. Other shells that were made in Brazil were rejected after inspectors for New York City Transit found welding defects.

[ablarc]

The cars, costing $1.44 million apiece, and manufactured in Yonkers by Kawasaki, are the first to be delivered as part of a $952 million order by the transit agency for 660 cars. Kawasaki is to produce 260 of the cars, and Alstom, a French conglomerate, is to make the other 400.

...There have been relatively few problems with delivery and use of cars built by Kawasaki, but Alstom has been plagued with setbacks in the manufacture of its cars.

Last year, Alstom was given a seven-week extension to deliver a test train to New York City Transit engineers after two of its car shells were damaged during shipping from a plant in Brazil to another plant used by Alstom in Hornel, N.Y. Other shells that were made in Brazil were rejected after inspectors for New York City Transit found welding defects.
The French trains are defective, the Kawasakis are not. Why are they buying more Alstoms? Why buy any at all? Doesn't Kawasaki have the capacity to make them all? Or is this a sweetheart deal for Alstom?


“It feels really good,” said Shawn Daley, 24, among the first to board a new car yesterday as he traveled home to East Bushwick from his job in Manhattan as a night shift supervisor for United Parcel Service.

“I just want to see how fast it gets me home,” he said.
The feelgood aspect is taken care of by the fact the cars are new --that is until the vandals etch the windows.

But why can't technology be applied to making these things go faster and more often? Signalling systems?


The new cars, identified by the transit agency as R160’s, are similar in many ways to R142’s, which are already in service on most of the system’s numbered lines, and the R143’s, which are in use on the L line. With advanced suspension systems and sound-absorbing materials, they are quieter and smoother than older cars in the subway fleet, and they supplant crackling, hard-to-hear announcements with automated voices.
We need to content ourselves with modest improvements.


“The idea has been to come up with a car that is easy to maintain, efficient to operate and offers a bright, customer-pleasing environment,” said Lawrence G. Reuter, the president of New York City Transit
Not a word about speed.


A new feature in the R160’s is a system of three display panels in each car indicating the station where the train is stopping, which stops are next and which connections are available. Instead of the digital panels in some other cars, which plot the line’s entire route and indicate station stops with flashing dots, the R160’s have a digital map display that scrolls through the names of stations and can be reprogrammed for use on any subway line.
Hot dog!! Just what we've been waiting for!

[TonyO]

The feelgood aspect is taken care of by the fact the cars are new --that is until the vandals etch the windows.

You'll notice that the mylar coverings (same for these new trains) on the 4-5-6 trains work well...I haven't seen any etched windows on those trains.

[ablarc]

You'll notice that the mylar coverings (same for these new trains) on the 4-5-6 trains work well...I haven't seen any etched windows on those trains.
How long do you figure it'll be before the vandals scope out how to get past the vinyl?

Or cook up some new horror?

Anyway, my point was that the newness will wear off the cars in time, and then what will we have left to admire? The message boards?

Oh...maybe the vinyl guarding the windows!

[Eugenious]

How long do you figure it'll be before the vandals scope out how to get past the vinyl?

Or cook up some new horror?

Anyway, my point was that the newness will wear off the cars in time, and then what will we have left to admire? The message boards?

Oh...maybe the vinyl guarding the windows!

The reason they have Kawasaki and Alstom making the cars is to theoretically make sure there is more then one supplier so there is no monopoly and some kind of competition out there, I think this works more in theory as in practice as both companies have no incentive to compete with each other as both are guaranteed orders.

The Subway system is archaic at best, the trains are slow, the stations are dirty and ugly. If you expect anything else you're dreaming, this is new york buddy.

[BigMac]

AM New York
August 24, 2006

Subway riding pals beat record

By Chuck Bennett
amNewYork Staff Writer

http://www.amny.com/media/photo/2006-08/25009434.jpg

Two college pals beat a riding record time Thursday morning for traveling the entire New York City subway system. At 6:06 a.m., the pair arrived at the Pelham Bay station on the No. 6 train, clocking in at 24 hours, 2 minutes.

The duo, Matt Green and Don Badaczewski, broke the standing record set in 1998, which was 25 hours, 11 minutes.

Wednesday, the pair's entree into the world of competitive subway riding sparked a media frenzy. Reporters raced along behind the pals as the train-hopped across the five boroughs on their self-described "moronic" quest to traverse all 468 subway stations in record time.

"It's ridiculous," Badaczewski, 24, said via cell phone at the above-ground Franklin Avenue station Wednesday afternoon while waiting for a connecting train. "We never thought anyone would care about it."

The duo's adventure began Wednesday at 6 a.m. at Rockaway Park in Queens.

In addition to amNewYork and Newsday, their adventure was featured in The New York Times, Metro, WABC, WCBS, NY1, and FOX 5. Even The Seattle Times ran a piece about them. Reporters and cameramen followed the duo onto the trains Wednesday and ran with them as they dashed between connecting trains.

But it wasn't random chance that got the two all the attention. Green, a 26-year-old Brooklyn resident, e-mailed reporters a press release days before their adventure.

It was clear from the release that they weren't trying to break the record to raise awareness about an issue or to promote the transit system.

"It probably has something to do with a need for attention or perhaps blunt head trauma sustained at a young age," Green wrote.

"Which may be part of why it works," said Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. "It wasn't something you had to pick up from a press release from the Transit Authority or a pediatric center. It is two guys on a lark."

Thompson said a "complex calculus of forces" allow wacky stories like Green and Badaczewski's quest to become big news especially during the slow month of August.

"Sometimes a story like this comes along just when editors need stories like these. Part of it was timing. I bet if the news cycle was blowing a certain way there'd be no response. ... The barometric pressure was right for the story."

Wire reports contributed to this story.

Copyright 2006 AM New York

[lofter1]

Clanging New York Subways,
Screeches Intact, Go Miniature


http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2006/09/20/nyregion/21train600.1.jpg
Richard Perry/The New York Times
Bruce Koball’s microphone soaks up the subway system’s noise.


NY TIMES (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/nyregion/21train.html?hp&ex=1158897600&en=188d3e1dbe8c2282&ei=5094&partner=homepage)
By MICHAEL BRICK
September 21, 2006


The New York City transit system has been filmed and photographed, drawn and chronicled in hardback and in newsprint. Soon it will be heard.


All week, a man with a microphone has walked the subway platforms to collect the clattering of the rivets and the whistling horns, the distortion in the loudspeaker, the hush in the compressor’s song and the dying of the brake like some wounded thing.


Even in that racket, some find value. The recordings are the chief selling point of a new reproduction of a subway train by the Lionel model train company made under a license from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for completion by year’s end.


Other companies have made models before, but this one pays unparalleled attention to sonic detail, recreating the subterranean soundscape in elaborate hi-fi to win the favor of collectors and self-styled train geeks, keepers of a nostalgic anachronism to rank alongside comic books and baseball cards.


Among their number count the musician Neil Young, so devoted that he conceived a control system to reproduce the sounds of the rails, then acquired a minority interest in Lionel more than a decade ago.


“Realism is the byword,” Mr. Young said by telephone. “It’s a heavy thing moving down a track, like a real thing even though it’s a miniature.”


The system he championed has been used to recreate old steam engines, the historic diesels of the short lines and the Acelas of the Atlantic seaboard.


The subway model will combine the sounds of vintage cars with recreated station announcements from the Brighton Local, a predecessor of the Q train, which runs from Midtown to Coney Island.


To capture the sounds, the company dispatched the man with the microphone, Bruce R. Koball, a Queens native who long ago decamped to Berkeley for its institutionalized counterculture. Mr. Koball, who has a thin white beard and thick glasses, dressed for his assignment with multiple belt accessories and a bulky headset wired to a recording device inside a fabric bag hanging from his neck. His microphone was fastened to the end of a long black pole and covered with a conical silvery reticulum like some futurist’s mosquito net. He looked like a hiker spaceman.


http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2006/09/21/nyregion/21train650.2.jpg
Richard Perry/The New York Times
Bruce R. Koball recorded a passing train at a station in Brooklyn. His journey also
took him to railyards and the New York Transit Museum.


Recording began below Brooklyn on Monday, in the tunnels of the New York Transit Museum. There Mr. Koball was joined by a few transit supervisors and Mark Wolodarsky, an off-duty conductor. Mr. Wolodarsky was standing in the cab of Car 9306, a model R33s introduced in 1963 to run the 20-minute route from Times Square to the 1964 World’s Fair in Queens.


“I’m more or less ready to rock and roll here,” Mr. Koball declared.


Mr. Wolodarsky activated the train’s generator to charge the batteries, then opened and closed the doors. The men on the platform deemed the action too fast, and Mr. Wolodarsky tried again.


“There was no puff of air,” lamented a supervisor, James Harris. Mr. Wolodarsky tried again. In this manner they recorded the compressors and the generator, the brakes and the brake release. There were two long buzzes and two short, signals between conductor and motorman, then a low whistle, a guttural rumble and a high lonesome sound.


Mr. Koball moved his microphone from the platform across the tracks, then through the doors and inside the car, a perspective that will be unavailable in the Lionel version. As a rattle died away, Mr. Harris held up a palm, waving deliberately as though conducting in some other sense.


One at a time came a high horn you could feel in your heart and a low one like a ship’s warning, each emanating from a common diaphragm. Someone asked for another low horn, but Mr. Wolodarsky said the pitch was beyond control.


“I can’t,” he said. “It’s up to the train.”


Then the men emerged from the tunnels with their gearboxes and their tripods to walk the Brooklyn sidewalk like some sonic spelunkers from an alien world, bound for another station, another yard, another car and the sound of a hundred tongues talking and the quack and the hum and the clack and the thud calling one to another while the trains go by.


Outside a railyard near the Green-Wood Cemetery, the party was stopped by a security detail, held up for an hour to wait by a razor-wire fence.


A cellphone rang and Mr. Koball answered.


“Neil!” he said. Then he paced by the tracks for a good long piece, speaking of switches and routers and circuits, happy as a schoolboy. By and by he passed the phone along, and the familiar voice on the line grasped at the grandeur of the city trains.


“It’s a symphony of motion and sound,” Mr. Young said. “New York City. What’s more American than that?”


John Schwartz contributed reporting.


Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[Fahzee]

The reason they have Kawasaki and Alstom making the cars is to theoretically make sure there is more then one supplier so there is no monopoly and some kind of competition out there, I think this works more in theory as in practice as both companies have no incentive to compete with each other as both are guaranteed orders.

The Subway system is archaic at best, the trains are slow, the stations are dirty and ugly. If you expect anything else you're dreaming, this is new york buddy.

Well - you're definitely right about the dirty stations - but I'd have to disagree on the archaic system. For 100 year old infrastructure, there are a number of innovations that are fairly cuting edge - like express tracks, which can double as break down lanes when there's a problem - this basically means that the subway system itself rarely has to shutdown when there's stuck train - this may seem simple enough, but ask any London tuber, or Bart rider, about stuck trains and they'll tell you about the relative chaos it causes.

in terms of subway speeds - I've always read that the NYC subway trains are among the fastest in the world, averaging around 50mph (as a comparison, the Paris metro averages 25 mph)
that being said - there are certainly portions of track that are excruciatingly slow

certainly don't mean to argue - and there are a lot of things that NYC transit could do better. Still, I like to think that our subway is among the best in the world

[Eugenious]

Well - you're definitely right about the dirty stations - but I'd have to disagree on the archaic system. For 100 year old infrastructure, there are a number of innovations that are fairly cuting edge - like express tracks, which can double as break down lanes when there's a problem - this basically means that the subway system itself rarely has to shutdown when there's stuck train - this may seem simple enough, but ask any London tuber, or Bart rider, about stuck trains and they'll tell you about the relative chaos it causes.

in terms of subway speeds - I've always read that the NYC subway trains are among the fastest in the world, averaging around 50mph (as a comparison, the Paris metro averages 25 mph)
that being said - there are certainly portions of track that are excruciatingly slow

certainly don't mean to argue - and there are a lot of things that NYC transit could do better. Still, I like to think that our subway is among the best in the world

Wel I was born in Saint Petersburg in Russia (left when I was 10yo but still remember much) where the Metro was always the best in the world with some of the nicest stations.

Obviously NYC has a fine subway system, I just think it's run more or less as a statement that Americans just prefer cars. It's definitely a class thing where you see most of the people using the subways that are immigrants or poor. NYC has more millionaires then any city in the world, there's no excuse that it does not have the latest train and subway technology, its a testament that the people in power dont much care nor use the subways. If they did it would be sparkling clean, the trains would all be high tech, and there would be no barely litirate conductors making life more difficult for everyone.

Again, just good is not enough for this city. We really must have the best and riding the subway should be a pleasure not something you try to avoid. Just think of how many times you've heard people say: " I'm trying to avoid taking the subway, so i'll walk" or " I'll take a car service/taxi to the club or restaurant" because your friends from out of town are scared to go into the subway. The reasons might have changed but to me its just as important to have clean subways and pleasent rides as for it to be safe and free of muggers and rapists.

anyway, I guess you get what you pay for...and subway is the cheapest mode of transportation.

[pianoman11686]

That's a bunch of hyperbole. The main reason anyone - including myself - would prefer to not take the subway, is simply to avoid the crowds. That, in itself, is a testament to the system's success.

There are just as many suits riding in the subways during rush hour as there are blue-collar workers. There are just as many private-schooled kids as public-schooled. Off hours, in certain parts of the system, yes - you'll see predominantly immigrants and members of the working poor. But that doesn't mean you should extrapolate anything from what is essentially, a logical fact: since many subway lines serve predominantly immigrant, poor neighborhoods, why should you be seeing wealthier people? They don't even live there.

The subway - like the rest of the city - is predominantly safe. Every now and then, a maniac (like the guy from Boston a few months ago) will go on a stabbing spree. Doesn't mean that on the same day, you couldn't be riding in a cab and get held up at an intersection in a sketchy neighborhood.

Advancements are being made: some lines don't have conductors, or at the least, have automated announcement systems. Two new subway lines are in the works, and there are almost regular updates of new cars being ordered for the MTA. What you seem to be suggesting is that New York's entire system be fully modernized, which would be almost impossible to do, even in the extremely unlikely scenario that somehow, the MTA had walked into untold billions of dollars of extra cash.

Get real.

[lofter1]

Manhattan: Bigger M.T.A. Surplus Seen


NY TIMES (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/27/nyregion/27mbrfs-006.html)
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
September 27, 2006

The budget surplus for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is likely to be even larger this year than previously predicted because of continuing strong tax revenues tied to real estate sales, officials said yesterday. The office of State Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi said the surplus would probably be $140 million greater than the authority’s earlier estimate of $711 million. The authority acknowledged this week that revenues from taxes related to real estate were currently $46 million ahead of projections but declined to give a new estimate for the year-end surplus.

Peter S. Kalikow, the authority’s chairman, said last week that subway and bus service cuts and a 5 percent fare and toll increase that had been planned to help balance the 2007 budget would not be necessary.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[Fahzee]

from the PLANYC website, a good map on the current state of subway restorations (scroll down on the link)

http://www.nyc.gov/html/planyc/html/about/maintainyc_transportation.shtml

[ZippyTheChimp]

January 3, 2007

A Man Down, and a Stranger Makes a Choice

By CARA BUCKLEY

It was every subway rider’s nightmare, times two.

Who has ridden along New York’s 656 miles of subway lines and not wondered: “What if I fell to the tracks as a train came in? What would I do?”

And who has not thought: “What if someone else fell? Would I jump to the rescue?”

Wesley Autrey, a 50-year-old construction worker and Navy veteran, faced both those questions in a flashing instant yesterday, and got his answers almost as quickly.

Mr. Autrey was waiting for the downtown local at 137th Street and Broadway in Manhattan around 12:45 p.m. He was taking his two daughters, Syshe, 4, and Shuqui, 6, home before work.

Nearby, a man collapsed, his body convulsing. Mr. Autrey and two women rushed to help, he said. The man, Cameron Hollopeter, 20, managed to get up, but then stumbled to the platform edge and fell to the tracks, between the two rails.

The headlights of the No. 1 train appeared. “I had to make a split decision,” Mr. Autrey said.

So he made one, and leapt.

Mr. Autrey lay on Mr. Hollopeter, his heart pounding, pressing him down in a space roughly a foot deep. The train’s brakes screeched, but it could not stop in time.

Five cars rolled overhead before the train stopped, the cars passing inches from his head, smudging his blue knit cap with grease. Mr. Autrey heard onlookers’ screams. “We’re O.K. down here,” he yelled, “but I’ve got two daughters up there. Let them know their father’s O.K.” He heard cries of wonder, and applause.

Power was cut, and workers got them out. Mr. Hollopeter, a student at the New York Film Academy, was taken to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center. He had only bumps and bruises, said his grandfather, Jeff Friedman. The police said it appeared that Mr. Hollopeter had suffered a seizure.

Mr. Autrey refused medical help, because, he said, nothing was wrong. He did visit Mr. Hollopeter in the hospital before heading to his night shift. “I don’t feel like I did something spectacular; I just saw someone who needed help,” Mr. Autrey said. “I did what I felt was right.”

[antinimby]

The man's a hero.

Should be given some kind of good samaritan award.

Here's a photo.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/01/03/nyregion/03life.1901.jpg
Wesley Autrey.

[antinimby]

Fainting dieters delay New York City subways

Passengers ill from not eating are a top reason for disruptions, study finds


http://msnbcmedia1.msn.com/i/msnbc/Components/Sources/sourceAP.gif
Updated: 7:33 p.m. PT Jan 2, 2007 (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16444534/)

NEW YORK - Sick subway passengers, most of them dieters who faint from dizziness, are among the top causes of train delays, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

After track work and signal problems, ill passengers rated among the main reasons for subway disruptions between October 2005 and October 2006, according to an analysis of MTA statistics, AM New York reported Tuesday.

Asim Nelson, a transit emergency medical technician, told the paper that fainting dieters topped the "sick customer" list.

"Not eating for three or four days, you are going to go down," Nelson said. "If you don't eat for 12 hours, you are going to get weak."

Although the agency doesn't keep an official record of the nature of each rider's illness, the paper said that an average 395 delays each month are caused by sick customers.

The notion that fainting dieters are causing transit delays was previously reported by the newspaper Metro in a 2005 article.

Fainting spells caused by missed meals topped other "sick customer" causes, including flu symptoms, anxiety attacks, hangovers and heat exhaustion, according to Nelson.

Nelson is part of the MTA's "sick Customer Response Program," which consists of emergency medical technicians and registered nurses. When a rider becomes sick, the train conductor must stay with the passenger until emergency responders arrive.

&#169; 2006 The Associated Press.

[bmc]

The man's a hero.

Should be given some kind of good samaritan award.

Here's a photo.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/01/03/nyregion/03life.1901.jpg
Wesley Autrey.
He truly is a hero.


Fainting dieters delay New York City subways

Passengers ill from not eating are a top reason for disruptions, study finds


http://msnbcmedia1.msn.com/i/msnbc/Components/Sources/sourceAP.gif
Updated: 7:33 p.m. PT Jan 2, 2007 (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16444534/)

NEW YORK - Sick subway passengers, most of them dieters who faint from dizziness, are among the top causes of train delays, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

*snip*

Here's a TransitTrax Podcast that talks about sick passengers and the delays about it: http://multimedia.mtanyct.info/audio/SickCustomers.mp3

[antinimby]

Construction Worker One Day, Celebrity Subway Hero the Next


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/01/04/nyregion/600_life.jpg
Larry Hollopeter, left, with Wesley Autrey, who saved his son from a train on Tuesday.


By TRYMAINE LEE and CASSI FELDMAN
Published: January 4, 2007 (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/nyregion/04life.html)


Wesley Autrey teetered back and forth on the edge of a subway platform yesterday, re-enacting how he dived onto the tracks of a southbound No. 1 train in Manhattan on Tuesday to save another man’s life.

A little boy with black hair and a bowl cut followed each of his moves. Other passers-by at the 137th Street station let loose the occasional hurrah or hand clap. Still others riffled through newspapers, which featured Mr. Autrey’s picture and headlines like “Subway Superman.”

A few subway stops away, at St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital Center on 114th street near Amsterdam Avenue, Cameron Hollopeter underwent a second day of medical evaluation. Police said Mr. Hollopeter, a first-year film student at the New York Film Academy, had suffered a seizure, which sent him convulsing off the platform and onto the tracks, where Mr. Autrey held him down as the train rumbled just inches above them.

Moments after the train came to a halt, Mr. Autrey recounted yesterday, Mr. Hollopeter asked if he was dead. “I said, ‘You are very much alive, but if you move you’ll kill the both of us.’ ” Both men emerged from the episode with little more than bruises, but Mr. Autrey also emerged a star.

Mr. Autrey, a 50-year-old construction worker, said he knew something was different when he showed up for work later on Tuesday. His boss, he said, bought him lunch — a ham-and-cheese hero — and later told him to take yesterday off.

Then yesterday morning, as he walked to his mother’s apartment in Harlem, “a stranger came up and put $10 in my hand,” he said. “People in my neighborhood were like, ‘Yo, I know this guy.’ ”

Once at his mother’s apartment, he held interviews in the living room with some of the national morning news programs.

After that, it was back to the scene, where he recounted Mr. Hollopeter’s backward tumble off the platform and into the path of the oncoming train.

Throughout the day, Mr. Autrey’s sister, Linda, 48, played the role of administrative assistant, logging invitations for the talk-show circuit, including requests from the David Letterman, Charlie Rose and Ellen DeGeneres shows. Phone calls from well-wishers came pouring in, including one from the mayor’s office. Mr. Autrey said he had been offered cash, trips and scholarships for his two daughters, Syshe, 4, and Shuqui, 6, who watched as he dived to the trackbed.

“Donald Trump’s got a check waiting on me,” he said. “They offered to mail it; I said, ‘No, I’d like to meet the Donald, so I can say, Yo, you’re fired.’ ”

By the end of the day, the president of the New York Film Academy, Jerry Sherlock, had personally handed him a $5,000 check.

Yesterday afternoon, Mr. Autrey and Mr. Hollopeter met again. The meeting was closed to reporters, but afterward Mr. Autrey described how he stepped into Mr. Hollopeter’s hospital room, where they shared a few laughs as Mr. Hollopeter’s father stood by with tears in his eyes.

Shortly after 4 p.m., Mr. Autrey walked out of the hospital with Mr. Hollopeter’s father, Larry, and into a throng of more than 30 reporters and camera operators who jammed microphones into their faces.

“This is Cameron’s father,” Mr. Autrey began. “He’s a very, very, nice, nice man and, you know, I’m not used to this press,” he said, as reporters shouted at them to lean closer to the microphones and camera shutters popped like party favors.

Mr. Hollopeter was nervous, his hands shaking, as he read from handwritten notes.

“Mr. Autrey’s instinctive and unselfish act —— ” Mr. Hollopeter said, hesitating, as reporters inched closer. “There are no words to properly express our gratitude and feelings for his actions. Cameron is recovering and stable. Now he needs his rest, and our wishes are that you respect his privacy. May God’s blessings be with Mr. Autrey and his family.”

The teary father then slipped back into the hospital, apparently overcome with emotion.

“Me and the families are trying to make some plans so his family can meet my family and we can have a little gathering,” Mr. Autrey said, before breaking into a hearty laugh. “Without the media!”

Mr. Autrey was asked to reflect on the experience.

“Maybe I was in the right place at the right time, and good things happen for good people,” Mr. Autrey said.

Then he hopped into his brother-in-law’s tan Toyota Corolla. As the car pulled away, Mr. Autrey had some final words: “All New Yorkers! If you see somebody in distress, go for it!”


Copyright 2007The New York Times Company

[ablarc]

An amazingly courageous act. How did he know there was enough clearance under the train?

...Or did he?

He could have ended up like the guy who dove into the icy Potomac to save airplane crash victims.

[ManhattanKnight]

How did he know there was enough clearance under the train?

...Or did he?

From today's Times article:

http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2007/01/04/nyregion/0104-met-webLIFE.gif

http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2007/01/04/nyregion/0104-met-webLIFE.gif

[lofter1]

My hat is off to you, Mr. Autley.

A different view of the NYC subway experience from a recent New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/online/slideshows/slideshows/070108onslpo_cover_50) :

http://www.newyorker.com/images/online/070108onslpo_48_061211_p400.jpg

“Rush Hour,” by Peter de Seve, December 11, 2006.

[TonyO]

January 15, 2007 Edition

Leaning Over Tracks Could Become a Thing of the Past

BY ANNIE KARNI - Special to the Sun
January 15, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/46641

It is a quintessential subway platform pose — the slight lean over the edge, peeking to see the light indicating when the next train will arrive. But this weekend, passengers waiting for trains looked not into the tunnel but up in the station, where, for the first time in New York, screens displayed "real time" information about subway train arrival times. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority rolled out the first of its new train-arrival message screens at 14 stations along the L line.

The technology brings New York up to date with cities like Washington, London, and Tokyo, whose subway systems already have train-arrival message boards. But it caused some confusion for New Yorkers over the weekend.

The screens, which display departure times for two scheduled trains in each direction, regularly overestimated the time until a train's arrival or else announced only a "Delay." At some stations, the screens were not working at all, and displayed just one generic message: "This is a test. May not be accurate."

Many riders said they found confusing a series of changing numbers displayed between the destination and minutes until arrival. A New York City Transit spokesman, Paul Fleuranges, said that the inexplicable digits that flash on the screens are "for internal purposes for the test" and are temporary.

Delays have plagued for years the MTA's plan to bring train-arrival message boards to the subways. The $160.6 million contract to install the screens at 157 stations on the numbered lines was awarded to Siemens in 2003, but technical difficulties held up the project. Mr. Fleuranges said yesterday the train-arrival screens will be "installed in stages over time, with an eventual completion sometime in '08 or '09." That date is for the numbered lines; except for on the L, there is no plan to extend the notification signs to the lettered subway lines, whose nicknames — "Forever" for "F," "Never" for "N" and "Rarely" for "R" — indicate that such signs might just encourage riders to surface and walk or take a taxi.

Some passengers said that after so many delays, they expected something that looked less drab and provided more information. The MTA is displaying the new messages on old electronic signs that have until now remained blank and gone generally unnoticed by passengers.

"More useful information would be if it told you which train car is less crowded so you would know where to stand on the platform," a construction worker, Patrick Dub, said while boarding the Manhattan-bound L train at the Lorimer Street stop.

Some riders said that they might use the information about long delays to duck out of the station for smoke breaks, while others said knowing the arrival time only fed their anxieties by making them more aware of how late they might be to work.

The L line, which travels across 14th Street in Manhattan into Williamsburg in Brooklyn, was chosen as the guinea pig for train-arrival screens because it is the only line in the system with Communications Based Train Control, a signal system that gives operators information about train movement and makes train-arrival information possible.

The senior attorney for the Straphangers Campaign, Gene Russianoff, called the new screens "positive" for their ability to reduce passenger anticipation and anxiety on the platforms. "But the displays are kind of the icing on a rotten cake," Mr. Russianoff said, referring to the technology that makes the displays possible, but will also be used to cut the number of conductors needed on the L line.

Some riders this weekend waxed philosophical about the new information screens. "Seven minutes feels longer when you know from the start it's going to be seven minutes," a publicist who lives off of the Bedford Avenue subway stop, Reshma Patel, said.

"If it were conceivable to walk when the wait was going to be long, I might leave," said a designer, Christian Rudder. "But in Brooklyn, there's no other option, so what's the point of even knowing?"

"It's nice to have the option to know," said Megan Foley, who works in marketing and lives near the Lorimer Street station. "But is it going to be accurate? That's the real test."

The screens will be dark today. "We're still in a test mode. Should be back by Tuesday," Mr. Fleuranges said.

http://www.nysun.com/pics/46641_main_large.jpg

[New Yorker 06]

What a great idea!

Now only if they can tell us which cars have the smelly bums in them. LOL

[nick-taylor]

Christ, only 157 stations?


First two pics by moi, last one from nycsubway.org (good piccies!)


http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/7358/img0264bx9.jpg




http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/8863/img1013cr6.jpg




http://images.nycsubway.org/i54000/img_54084.jpg

[Ninjahedge]

One ADDITIONAL thing should be added.

A listing out at the train station entrances that tell you when a train is coming/going.

Although the MTA might be a bit much to do that with, testing it on something like the PATH trains might be good.

Why?

Well, the "why" for the PATH is easy, it is smaller. The "why" for the system is not much more complicated...

How many times have you looked at the station and wondered if you should take the train? You are only 10-12 blocks from where you want to go, will you be lucky and catch a train, or will it be late and you could have made it back faster just by walking?

Are you talking to your friend, GF, wife on the phone and do not want to cut the conversation off, but do not want to miss the train?

Are you further out in the boroughs and do not know (late night) if you just missed the N and will hace to wait 35-40 minutes for the next one? Would you rather wait in the coffe house across the street than outside on the platform?


I think the schedule boards are LONG overdue, but I hope they do not see them as the be-all end-all.

[nick-taylor]

One ADDITIONAL thing should be added.

A listing out at the train station entrances that tell you when a train is coming/going.

Although the MTA might be a bit much to do that with, testing it on something like the PATH trains might be good.

Why?

Well, the "why" for the PATH is easy, it is smaller. The "why" for the system is not much more complicated...

How many times have you looked at the station and wondered if you should take the train? You are only 10-12 blocks from where you want to go, will you be lucky and catch a train, or will it be late and you could have made it back faster just by walking?

Are you talking to your friend, GF, wife on the phone and do not want to cut the conversation off, but do not want to miss the train?

Are you further out in the boroughs and do not know (late night) if you just missed the N and will hace to wait 35-40 minutes for the next one? Would you rather wait in the coffe house across the street than outside on the platform?


I think the schedule boards are LONG overdue, but I hope they do not see them as the be-all end-all.I can't think of any transit network that has such a system, presumably because people take longer to get from the entrance to the platform (buy tickets, go down lifts/escalators, etc...).

London does however have signs outside stations giving the time, operating conditions and other bits of information. On the 7th July when the attacks happened, the London Underground was closed and the screens used to relay information about the entire system being out of action:


http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/3902/urban75ig7.jpg
urban75.org

[TonyO]

^ Good point, people do have different walking times. I'm sure they don't want to cause a panic either and have people stampeding towards the turnstiles.

That said, I would like to think that if they can have television advertisements on the billboards at station entrances, then they can tell us above ground when the next train is coming.

[Ninjahedge]

I know, stampedeing would be a byproduct of the scheduling, but what is teh use of knowing when a train is coming if you have (in the case of intermittant riders) already paid to be there?

Also, walking XXX flights/ramps down to get, say, the 7 on the east side is a chore in itself. Save the trip!

It is just good to start thinking of an integrated system. Aboard outside that would tell you the next few trains would be very helpful (as helpful as it is at a depot).

A bit of moderation, such as removing the listing, or calling it "departed" after it is impossible, without sprinting and jumping the turnstile, to get to there form where it is listed would also be handy, but that would require more integration and absolute knowledge of each signs placement.

And we all know how great civil services of ALL kinds are when it comes to advanced technical implimentation and operation!!! ;) (Don't even start me on maintainance!)

The only thing I fear for this system will be that one group of kids that would think it was funny to break, deface, or otherwise defile them.

Scratchiti/acid/gum whatever would be SUCH a class act, and I can see it happening on a platform at 3am.....

[nick-taylor]

Install CCTV; vandalism and violence against staff and passenger on London transport has rapidly reduced because the rate of successful convictions has shot up (ie repeat offenders aren't around to commit the acts again).

Only today in-train footage of the one of the would-be 21st July bombers was shown in court, unfortunately in-court cameras aren't allowed, but artists are allowed to depict 'scenes', you can see the drawn view of Ramzi Mohammed with his (thankfully faulty) bomb in a Northern Line tube train.

CCTV doesn't stop the original incidents, but they do help to stop recurring acts.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42457000/jpg/_42457265_court_bombcctv_2_203.jpg


Also all stations that have trains over a certain length (usually more than 2 carriages), be it London or a small village have cameras dotted along platforms so that the driver (who has a screen by his end of the platform) can see whether everyone is on the train or not having problems, ie stuck in the door, fallen between the train, etc... infact they tend to be located attached to the electronic display boards.

[DOUGLASTONQUEENS]

The NYC Subway compared to the subway systems in Asia and Europe is so much older and grittier. True NY'ers love it but the new comers smell the air and avoid the walls in disgust. I believe our subway is perfect the way it is. However, more efficient maintenence for the tracks would be nice (less delays)!!

[nick-taylor]

The NYC Subway compared to the subway systems in Asia and Europe is so much older and grittier. True NY'ers love it but the new comers smell the air and avoid the walls in disgust. I believe our subway is perfect the way it is. However, more efficient maintenence for the tracks would be nice (less delays)!!While that might be true for Asia, quite a few European networks are as old or older. The Paris Metro is just as old as the New York Subway, while the London Underground goes back several decades before then!

With the right investment injected into the right projects, changes can be made. London and Paris have done it, why not New York?

[TonyO]

NY Sun

Surges in Ridership at Stations Reflect Neighborhood Dynamism

BY ANNIE KARNI - Special to the Sun
January 22, 2007

The Bowery subway station on the Lower East Side, once one of the city's leading havens for the homeless and considered unsafe for subway passengers, has seen its ridership more than quadruple over the past decade. As condominiums sprout along East Houston Street, and residential and commercial activity spreads through the nearby neighborhood of South Williamsburg, the Bowery station has become the fastest growing station in the subway system in terms of ridership.

At that station, ridership has soared to 1,771 people a weekday entering the turnstiles to access trains on the J, M, and Z lines, compared to just 308 passengers who passed through the station during a weekday in 1995.

The subway station ridership statistics are one way to get a glimpse of New York City's dynamism. The changes in the city's neighborhoods are mirrored by increases in the numbers of people passing through the turnstiles.

"There's literally development going up on every single block on the Bowery between Houston and Sixth Street," the chair of the Coalition to Save the East Village, Anna Sawaryn, said. "The parking lots are disappearing one by one as hotels and condos go up."

A 260-foot-tall boutique hotel is being constructed on the Bowery between Fifth and Sixth streets, and the city's largest Whole Foods is slated to open in the Avalon Christie Place building on East Houston Street this spring. Ms. Sawaryn said that subway ridership is likely increasing as more residents and fewer parking lots make driving in the neighborhood more trouble than it's worth.

Miles east of the Lower East Side, near the end of the A line in the Rockaways, the subway station at Beach 98th Street has experienced a 40% increase in weekday ridership since 2001, making it the second-fastest growing station in New York.

The open-air station, which offers from its platform a view of the Manhattan skyline in the distance, is packed during morning and evening rush hours, but becomes the abandoned domain of seagulls during the day, according to the station agent, Steven Lewis.

While 978 riders swiping into the station on the average weekday may seem like comically small business for a subway station, compared to a mega-station like Times Square, where 169,000 passengers enter the station daily, the increase in ridership is significant for a neighborhood that has historically been considered an undesirable residential location.

"There is an incredible population shift underway," said Council Member James Sanders, who represents the Rockaways. "This is the only place on the East Coast with 300 acres of continuous city-owned vacant land that the city is now using for mega-developments." Two large development projects that will add 4,000 new housing units near the station are currently under construction. A growing Russian community has established itself by the waterfront, and Rockaway homes are selling for upward of $500,000, with beachfront properties going for as much as $1.2 million, Mr. Sanders said. The subway stations along the Rockaway line are scheduled for a major rehabilitation in 2008.

"You can feel the vitality here," a New York City Transit employee, Henry Jefferson, who lives one block from the Beach 98th Street station, said. "People are building and buying new houses out here, and there's all ethnicities coming in."

At Bronx Park East station, accessible by the 2 and the 5 lines, average weekday ridership has climbed to 2,277, up by 21% since 2001.

Council Member James Vacca, who represents Pelham Parkway, said the growth in ridership at the station is not the by-product of new development, so much as it is an indicator of a population that is growing younger. "Immigrants are now replacing elderly people who have passed on," Mr. Vacca said. "Now there are more working adults taking the train to work in Manhattan."

Each weekday, 4.7 million passengers move through the subway system's 422 stations. Just 15 stations, many of which are hub stations that serve as connections between train lines, account for 25% of total ridership. The remaining 3.15 million riders are split among smaller stations, where passengers come to recognize each other during their morning and evening commutes. "These days, there is no cold community," Mr. Sanders said. "Every place is hot."

[Kris]

February 2, 2007
Metro Briefing | New York
Manhattan: Subway Maintenance Criticized
By WILLIAM NEUMAN

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has routinely fallen behind in its plan for bringing crucial areas of the subway system up to a state of good repair, according to a report released yesterday by the city’s comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr. The report warned that the authority might backslide further if it is forced to cut its long-term spending budget because of increasing construction costs. The document cited goals set by the authority in 1992 and showed how they have been pushed back over time. For instance, the original target for full renovation or replacement of all the subway’s fan plants, which draw smoke out of the system during a fire, was 2007, but over time it was postponed to 2028, according to the report. The authority said in a statement that it would look into the report’s findings.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[lofter1]

Finally ...

New UES Subway Entrance To Open This Weekend


http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/images/live/111/221477.jpg

ny1.com (http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=1&aid=66444)
February 02, 2007

After two years sitting dormant, a new subway entrance will finally open to the public this weekend.

The entryway at the corner of 59th Street and Lexington Avenue has been closed since its construction.

It remained locked because of a safety dispute between New York City Transit and building owner Vornado Realty Trust.

Councilman Daniel Garodnick says the disagreement has been resolved and the entrance will open this Sunday.

The station serves uptown Number 4, 5 and 6 trains, as well as the N, R, and W lines.

Copyright &#169; 2006 NY1 News.

[TimmyG]

NY Post
CALL FOR HELP IN SUBWAYS
By JEREMY OLSHAN

February 9, 2007 -- More than a quarter of all subway pay phones don't work, an advocacy group said yesterday.
The Straphangers Campaign tested 886 pay phones at 100 stations and found 29 percent out of order.
Part of the problem is that the MTA has made Verizon's contract more lenient, the group said. Instead of being required to keep 95 percent of pay phones working, Verizon now needs only to respond to 95 percent of problems within 24 hours.
"Given the importance of being able to communicate with the outside world . . . we're disappointed with the MTA and Verizon," said Straphangers spokeswoman Neysa Pranger.

[ablarc]

Councilman Daniel Garodnick says the disagreement has been resolved and the entrance will open this Sunday.
Notice he doesn't say they actually changed or did anything, just that they agreed to stop disagreeing. They could have done that anytime.

(Like maybe two years ago).

[undertoes]

im a straphanga and i'm proud of it:cool:

[BigMac]

New York Sun
February 12, 2007

Idea of Making Subways Free Advanced by Theodore Kheel

By ANNIE KARNI
Special to the Sun

If New Yorkers don't pay a fee to use the police and fire departments, they should not have to pay to use the city's mass transit system.

That's part of the thinking of Theodore Kheel, who last Thursday donated $100,000 to the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility to study how a free mass transit system could save money for the city. Mr. Kheel, a 92-year-old philanthropist, environmentalist, and labor relations lawyer, says charging a fee to drive on the city's most crowded streets would create an incentive for drivers to switch to mass transit. The revenue earned on the streets could be used to subsidize free subways and buses.

"Drivers would get a great benefit, too," Mr. Kheel said. "Instead of getting stuck in traffic, they'd be able to move. We must treat traffic and transit as inseparably related." Incentives to switch to subways from cars would improve public health and reduce time lost due to traffic congestion, as well as the price of all goods and services delivered in the city, he said.

Mr. Kheel's critics argue that the already crowded subway system could not handle the influx of passengers if it were made free, but he describes the subway system as an underutilized facility. In 1943, when the fare was five cents, average weekday ridership was more than 8 million, almost double what it is today.

The president of the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility, George Haikalis, said no one is studying the cost implications of mass transit. "Vertical transportation systems like elevators are free," he said. "The horizontal transportation system is as much a part of our system as the vertical."

Mr. Haikalis' nonprofit organization, which focuses on reducing automobile use in the metropolitan area, is also the group behind vision42, a proposal to build an auto-free Light Rail boulevard along 42nd Street.

Mr. Kheel, who represented Christo and Jean Claude in their legal battle with the city to erect "The Gates" in Central Park in 2005, founded a nonprofit organization, Nurture New York's Nature, in connection with the art installation. Under the symbol of the orange gate, Mr. Kheel through his foundation funds environmental projects, such as studying the effects of a free subway system.

The four-month long study, titled "Price Matters," will be conducted by professional transportation consultants Brian Ketcham and Carolyn Konheim. Mr. Kheel, a lifelong New Yorker who describes himself as a "catalyst on a hot tin roof," said he has always been an advocate of mass transit because "it is the single most important step that can be taken to improve the quality of life in our city."

While Mr. Kheel said he is chauffeured through the city in a private car because of a back problem, he said he is willing to pay for that privilege. "I'm exercising a privilege that's costing other people money," he said. "Free mass transit will be very costly for me, but I will get the privilege of being driven around in my car."

© 2007 The New York Sun, One SL, LLC.

[Eugenious]

New York Sun
February 12, 2007

Idea of Making Subways Free Advanced by Theodore Kheel

By ANNIE KARNI
Special to the Sun

If New Yorkers don't pay a fee to use the police and fire departments, they should not have to pay to use the city's mass transit system.

That's part of the thinking of Theodore Kheel, who last Thursday donated $100,000 to the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility to study how a free mass transit system could save money for the city. Mr. Kheel, a 92-year-old philanthropist, environmentalist, and labor relations lawyer, says charging a fee to drive on the city's most crowded streets would create an incentive for drivers to switch to mass transit.

© 2007 The New York Sun, One SL, LLC.


hahahahaha....oh my god that was the funniest article I have ever read in my life...

[MikeW]

I used this entrance Friday on the way home

:)


Notice he doesn't say they actually changed or did anything, just that they agreed to stop disagreeing. They could have done that anytime.

(Like maybe two years ago).

[ZippyTheChimp]

MTA Shoos Pigeons From Subway Stations

BY ANNIE KARNI - Special to the Sun
February 15, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/48760

Hundreds of pigeons that make some subway stations in Queens resemble zoo birdhouses will have to find new, outdoor roosts.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is implementing Operation Bird-B-Gone at three of the most avian-friendly stations on the no. 7 line. To prevent birds from reproducing underground and leaving behind unsanitary and unsightly droppings, the stations are being wired to zap birds when they go to roost on ledges in the stations.

Today, the MTA and state representatives will announce the completion of station refurbishments, including the electrical wiring, at the 103rd street station. The MTA will next tackle the pigeon woes at the 90th Street station.

"It's an ongoing process to keep them from roosting," an MTA spokesman, James Anyasi, said. "We've tried installing spikes to avoid them from settling in and making a mess."

Birds are more attracted to dirtier stations, where they can find a steady source of food, according to another MTA spokesman, Paul Fleuranges. The stations at 90th, 103rd, and 111th streets on the no. 7 line have long been some of the more decrepit in the system. The New York State Department of Health found that pigeon droppings at 103rd Street created harmful health effects for passengers.

After pressuring the MTA to clean up these dirty Queens stations for more than three years, Assemblymen Jose Peralta and Jeffrion Aubry successfully lobbied for $1.5 million in state money to refurbish the stations. The MTA has agreed to chip in another $50,000 a station to implement Operation Bird-B-Gone.

Pigeons and their droppings have also been a problem on the red line in Queens, Mr. Anyasi said. Only a handful of the system's 468 subway stations are wired with electricity to fend off birds, Mr. Fleuranges said.



If this works, they should install the devices on the seats in the MTA boardroom.

[bigkdc]

New York Sun
February 12, 2007

Idea of Making Subways Free Advanced by Theodore Kheel

By ANNIE KARNI
Special to the Sun

...charging a fee to drive on the city's most crowded streets would create an incentive for drivers to switch to mass transit. The revenue earned on the streets could be used to subsidize free subways and buses...

© 2007 The New York Sun, One SL, LLC.

Crazy idea but I do agree that people need to start using the subway more. Maybe the interim step is to raise the cost of registering a car in NYC or to jack the tolls higher. There are too many cars in the city and the subway is a wonderful way to travel.

[MikeW]

You obviously haven't been on the 6 at rush hour. There ain't too much more room in there.


Crazy idea but I do agree that people need to start using the subway more. Maybe the interim step is to raise the cost of registering a car in NYC or to jack the tolls higher. There are too many cars in the city and the subway is a wonderful way to travel.

[ZippyTheChimp]

I have no data, but Mr Kheel's statement that ridership in 1943 was 8 million and the system is underutilized ignores two facts:

1. The 3rd Ave El was closed without the 2nd Ave replacement after 1943.

2. In the 1940s, job concentration in Manhattan was much less than now. More people were traveling within or between the outer boroughs.

While I agree that there should be more emphasis on mass transit, the idea that you could have a free subway system supported by vehicle charges seems a little crackpot.

[MikeW]

Especially if it's successful in chasing away the cars.


I
While I agree that there should be more emphasis on mass transit, the idea that you could have a free subway system supported by vehicle charges seems a little crackpot.

[Ed007Toronto]

1. The 3rd Ave El was closed without the 2nd Ave replacement after 1943.

The 2nd Ave El came down in 1942. The 3rd Ave El lasted until 1955.

[Dynamicdezzy]

^That's what he was implying.

[lofter1]

A New Condom in Town, This One Named ‘NYC’


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/02/15/nyregion/15condom600.1.jpg
Robert Caplin/Bloomberg News
The city distributed 150,000 of its own brand of condoms Wednesday


nytimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/15/nyregion/15condom.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin)
By SEWELL CHAN
February 15, 2007


With the government’s imprimatur and a wrapper inspired by the subways, New York City’s first municipally sanctioned condom arrived yesterday, and it was hard to miss, given that city workers and volunteers handed out more than 150,000 of them across the five boroughs.


In June 2005, the city started an Internet-based Free Condom Initiative to provide community and social service organizations with condoms. Since the start of the initiative — intended to reduce the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases — the number of condoms distributed has soared to 1.5 million a month from about 300,000.


On Valentine’s Day last year, the health department announced that it was developing the first New York City-branded condom. That effort culminated in yesterday’s mass distribution of the condoms, timed to Valentine’s Day, which also happened to be Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s 65th birthday.


The new condoms do not bear the official seal of the city, an image of a big apple or an outline of the city’s skyline. The black plastic wrapper simply says “NYC condom” on the front, with each letter in a circle, like the letters used by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to denote subway lines. (The authority gave the city permission to use the letters, which are the intellectual property of the subway system.)


Distributed by Ansell Healthcare Products of Dothan, Ala., the condoms handed out yesterday were made in Malaysia and expire in September 2011.


The condoms were handed out at numerous subway stations, including Columbus Circle and Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan and Church Avenue on the Q line in Brooklyn. The condoms will be available at more than 100 night spots and retail outlets and are also available in bulk orders to clinics and community groups. Information is at nyccondom.org (http://nyccondom.org/).


The fashion designer Kenneth Cole joined AIDS advocacy organizations and the city health commissioner, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, for an announcement at Mr. Cole’s store in Rockefeller Center about the release of the condoms.

While Dr. Frieden noted that condoms can prevent the spread of H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted infections, as well as unintended pregnancies, he added, “Abstinence is fail-safe, and reducing the number of sexual partners reduces risk of infections. But for sexually active people, using a condom is key to staying healthy.”


Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, a conservative group based in Tupelo, Miss., said, “By and large, I agree with what he said. It’s a statement that conservatives and liberals should be able to embrace.”
He added, “Obviously, from a Christian perspective, I would say sex should be saved for marriage, but I understand what he’s trying to do.”


Tom Zeller Jr. contributed reporting.


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[ZippyTheChimp]

Take the A Train

Hurry, get on, now it's coming
Listen to those rails a-humming.

All aboard, get on the A train
Soon you will be on Sugar Hill in Harlem.

[Eugenious]

Take the A Train

Hurry, get on, now it's coming
Listen to those rails a-humming.

All aboard, get on the A train
Soon you will be on Sugar Hill in Harlem.






lame

[ZippyTheChimp]

Catholic leaders say NYC's free condom handout is immoral

By SARA KUGLER
Associated Press Writer

February 15, 2007, 6:02 PM EST

NEW YORK -- New York's top Catholic leaders on Thursday sharply criticized Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration for distributing free condoms, accusing it of promoting promiscuity and degrading society.

Cardinal Edward Egan, head of the Archdiocese of New York, and Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn released a joint statement rebuking City Hall leaders a day after the city unveiled its newly designed official condom. Together, Egan and DiMarzio serve more than 4 million Catholics from Brooklyn to the Catskill mountains.

The launch of the subway-themed condom on Valentine's Day began with volunteers distributing free samples throughout the city, including on a street corner near St. Patrick's Cathedral in midtown Manhattan.

The idea, the Catholic leaders said, "is tragic and misguided," adding that the only way to protect against sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV and AIDS is through abstinence before marriage and fidelity among married couples.

"Our political leaders fail to protect the moral tone of our community when they encourage inappropriate sexual activity by blanketing our neighborhoods with condoms," the statement said.

Egan and DiMarzio accused the administration of hypocrisy, by encouraging condom usage while also acknowledging abstinence is fail-safe.

"By their actions, they ignore that truth and degrade societal standards," the leaders said.

The mayor's spokesman, Stu Loeser, said: "With all due respect to Cardinal Egan and Bishop DiMarzio, we feel differently."

Free condom programs have been in place for years in New York and many other U.S. cities.

Before the new condom was launched, the health department already was distributing 1.5 million free condoms each month. By comparison, the Los Angeles County health department gives out just over a million condoms per year, according to Peter Kerndt, director of the department's STD program.

New York officials revamped the condom wrapper in hopes that a distinctive design _ featuring the words "NYC Condom" in the fonts and colors used in the subway system _ will let them track usage with their annual community health survey. Respondents will now be asked whether they used condoms in their most recent sexual encounters and what the wrappers looked like. Their responses will be used to determine the effectiveness of the distribution.

More than 100,000 of New York's 8.2 million residents are living with HIV or AIDS, and Bloomberg has been focused on reducing those rates and overall instances of sexually transmitted diseases.

The city negotiated a deal with the maker of the LifeStyles brand for 4 cents per condom, putting the expense to the city at just $720,000 annually, health officials said.

Egan and DiMarzio chided them for that use of taxpayer money.

"The taxpayer money that is being spent to distribute condoms and promote the attitude that 'anything goes' would be far better spent in fostering what is true and what is decent," their statement said.

Copyright 2007 Newsday Inc.

[ZippyTheChimp]

February 19, 2007

Amid Squeal of Trains at Times Square, Melody of a Store’s Rebirth

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

A lot of things have changed since 1999, when a legendary store that sold Latin music in the Times Square subway station shut down to make way for a major station renovation, but few things have changed as drastically as the music business.

So it is with a noteworthy combination of bravado, recklessness, nostalgia and faith in the future that the store, once a mecca of Latin music that drew aficionados from around the world, plans to reopen this spring after an absence of eight years.

The signs announcing the store’s revival appeared this month on a shuttered storefront inside the station, and to old customers who had never forgotten, it was like hearing a favorite song from long ago: “The return of Record Mart!” the signs trumpeted. “(That store in the subway.)”

Yes, it is true. In an age of iPods and music downloads, Record Mart is coming back.

Of course, this time around, there are not likely to be any actual records (the vinyl kind) at Record Mart.

“I don’t think so, as much as I would like to,” said the store’s once and future owner, a very sprightly and energetic 73-year-old named Jesse Moskowitz. “It would be more symbolic than anything.”

Now, he said, the store — on the station mezzanine, between the stairs that lead down to the No. 1, 2 and 3 platform and those that lead to the N, Q, R and W — will carry CDs, specializing in the Latin sounds it was always known for. But in a nod to the changing times, he also plans to sell DVDs and iPods and other digital music players and their accessories, like headphones.

When Record Mart dropped its metal gate for the last time in 1999, its passing was widely chronicled and lamented.

For nearly 40 years, Mr. Moskowitz had sold music — first records, then eight-track tapes, cassettes and CDs — out of a cramped, narrow shop perched above the BMT platform in the Times Square station (“Three customers and it was full,” Mr. Moskowitz joked). It became famous for its vast array of Latin sounds and as a gathering point that drew musicians and aficionados.

Now, in a newly renovated spot some 50 feet away, Mr. Moskowitz hopes to recapture some of that feeling.

“The store really represented the whole magic of New York,” recalled Harry Sepulveda, who was legendary in his own right as Record Mart’s longtime buyer and floor general.

Fans of the store invariably mention Mr. Sepulveda, who during close to 30 years there acted as teacher and guide, introducing hundreds of people to new musicians or styles of music. Where other stores would start and stop with Ricky Martin, he said, Record Mart would steer customers to classic bands like La Sonora Ponceña and great musicians like Ray Barretto.

“It was the real vibe of New York City, the real sound,” Mr. Sepulveda said. “That was the most important part, that’s what made the store so important. It really captured it. People went in there and said, ‘Wow, this is really what I’ve been looking for, this is really New York.’ ”

Mr. Sepulveda grew up among musicians and brought many into the store. He said musicians visiting the city for gigs stopped in — even from Cuba, where, he marveled, word of a little shop in the New York subway had spread. Collectors came from Japan, Europe, South America.

Mr. Sepulveda was so closely associated with the store in the minds of its customers that many of them referred to it as “Harry’s record shop,” Mr. Moskowitz said.

Mr. Sepulveda now works as a concert promoter and assembles compilation albums of Latin music. But Mr. Moskowitz said he hoped he could lure him back to the store, if only on a part-time basis.

“I think it would not be the same without him,” Mr. Moskowitz said.

Mr. Sepulveda said a return was possible, but he was noncommittal, saying that he had not yet discussed it with Mr. Moskowitz.

But with the signs up in the subway, word has already begun to spread among former customers. “On occasion I did leave my entire paycheck there,” said Roberta Singer, an ethnomusicologist, recalling the days when, after clocking out of her job as a clerk at the Stern’s department store on 42nd Street, she began to expand her knowledge of Latin music under Mr. Sepulveda’s tutelage.

“That place meant so much to so many people,” Ms. Singer added. “It was almost like an insider’s place, but in the middle of Times Square.”

Of Mr. Sepulveda, she said, “He was a walking discography.”

“Harry was there to be able to tell us what is the difference between a guaracha and a mambo and what’s the montuno and who is really the top-notch danzón band,” she said.

When Mr. Moskowitz was forced to close in 1999, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority wanted to move him into another storefront in the station, he said. But that turned out to be impossible, because the space was beneath the spot where a new building was to go up, and he was told it could be inaccessible for years during the construction. Of course, when that was done, well, maybe something could be worked out.

Mr. Moskowitz said that he thought the store would never reopen. But about two years ago, the transportation authority called and said that the space had become available. (The spot where his old store had been was converted during the station renovation into a walkway. An elevator to the BMT platform also runs through it.)

So Mr. Moskowitz signed a 10-year license for the new store. The wheels of commerce turn slowly in the subway, and Mr. Moskowitz is only now moving ahead to build out the space.

He hopes to be able to open this spring, perhaps in time for his 74th birthday, on April 1. Mr. Moskowitz’s son, Lou, and another associate will handle much of the day-to-day work in the store.

The music business is not the only thing that has changed in the eight years since Record Mart last sold a compact disc. The subway has changed too.

When Record Mart shut down, the Times Square station was a decrepit mess, festering with dingy, peeling paint and tangled wires. Today, the station is much cleaner and more spacious, and Mr. Moskowitz’s new store faces a bright mural by Roy Lichtenstein. In 1999, Mr. Moskowitz was paying about $1,000 a month in rent, the transportation authority said. Now he will be paying close to four times that.

Mr. Moskowitz recalled how the music used to play all day long in his old store, competing with the squeal of subway trains. The Times Square station was something of a warren then, cobbled together at the junction of what had once been competing subway lines, and customers sometimes had a hard time finding the store.

Mr. Moskowitz recalled: “People would call and say, ‘We can’t find you. We’re somewhere in the station.’ And we’d say, ‘Listen for the music.’ ”


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[lofter1]

New York's top Catholic leaders on Thursday sharply criticized Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration for distributing free condoms, accusing it of promoting promiscuity and degrading society ...

"The taxpayer money that is being spent to distribute condoms and promote the attitude that 'anything goes' would be far better spent in fostering what is true and what is decent," their statement said.

Speaking of true and decent ...

What of the use of church-goers money to settle multi-million dollar lawsuits regarding wayward priests who had been sheltered and protected by the Catholic Church for years :confused:

[clubBR]

lofter,
i think the catholic are gonna have a long and hard time shaking that off the publics mind!!

[ablarc]

Subway ridership highest in 55 years


By Chuck Bennett, amNewYork Staff Writer
February 23, 2007

Not since the days when President Harry Truman was in office has New York City had so many subway riders.

Ridership last year hit its highest levels since 1952, with 1.5 billion trips, according to data obtained Thursday by amNewYork.

When buses are factored in, ridership hits 2.2 billion, the highest since 1969, when the fare was 20 cents and the Mets won their first championship.

Average weekday ridership, meanwhile, hit 7.2 million, a 1.9% jump from 2005.

Transit officials said the continued gain stems from the city's strong economy and the growing popularity of discounted MetroCards.

The average fare when bonus rides and unlimited passes are factored in is $1.29. Almost 85 percent of all riders use some form of discounted cards and nearly half use weekly or monthly unlimited MetroCards.

The Brooklyn segment of the N line saw the most growth, a 13 percent increase for an estimated total of 12 million trips.

Officials credited population growth in the neighborhoods served by the line along with faster trips along the Manhattan Bridge.

New York City Transit is also testing its brand new high-tech R160 trains along the N.

Significant increases of between 6 and 8 percent were reported along the White Plains Road segment of the No. 2 and 5 lines, the Myrtle Avenue section of the M line, and the Central Park West portion of the A, B, C an D lines.

Bus ridership, which dropped significantly during the crime-ridden decades of the 1960s and 1970s, hasn't seen as dramatic a comeback. Last year there were 741 million bus trips, a .7% increase over 2005. Weekend bus ridership actually declined to 2.5 million trips, about 47,000 less than 2005.


Trips, Percent Increase Over 2005

Total Average Weekday Ridership 7.2 million +1.9%

Total Subway Ridership
1.5 billion trips +3.4 %

Total Bus Ridership
741 million trips +0.7 %


Copyright 2007 Newsday Inc.

[Eugenious]

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com (http://www.nydailynews.com/) The rail scoop on late trains
BY JOE BABCOCK and PETE DONOHUE
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Tuesday, February 27th, 2007

Subway riders behaving badly is a leading cause of train delays, transit statistics reveal.

More than 4,270 trains were thrown off their schedules last year because riders blocked subway car doors from closing in stations, according to Transit Authority statistics. It's now the fifth-leading cause of delays, up from 20th place just five years earlier.

Unruly behavior as a cause for sluggish trains, meanwhile, spiked in December, moving into the top 10 reasons for tieups.

Transit officials said they couldn't explain what appears to be an increase in boorish behavior on the rails.

"It's really annoying," door-hold victim Steve Cunning, 24, said yesterday at the Union Square subway station. "Just this morning at 51st St., this guy put his foot in the door to hold it for his friends, who were like a minute behind him."

Cunning, a stockbroker from Manhattan, said most of his fellow riders meekly accepted the slowdown.

"He was gigantic, so there weren't that many comments, and if there were, they were from way in the back," he said.

Daryl Johnston, 46, who was waiting for an uptown No. 5 train at the Wall St. station, called for aggressive enforcement of TA rules against impeding the flow of trains.
"It's wrong," he said. "They should be given a ticket."

The TA records a train as delayed if it arrives at its terminal station at the end of the line more than six minutes late.

Ridership has continued to rise in the past several years, resulting in more crowded trains. But TA spokesman Charles Seaton said he couldn't say whether there was a connection to the number of door blocks.

Classifying delays is not always an exact science. Transit officials say that the "holding doors" category includes instances where riders try to squeeze onto crowded trains as opposed to intentionally trying to prevent a train from departing.

"We don't want to make a blanket statement that everyone is out there holding doors," Seaton said.

There are more than 100 categories for delays. Maintenance work or system upgrades on subway routes is the leading cause, resulting in 1,640 delayed trains in December. Nearly 350 trains were delayed by riders holding doors that month.

"Sometimes it annoys me, but it makes me happy when someone holds the doors for me," Jessica Meier, 36, a telemarketer from Manhattan, said as she waited for a train at Union Square.


With Brendan Brosh




The Daily News printed a list of the "top 10 reasons why your train was late" (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/501091p-422572c.html), so memorize them the next time you're late to work:
1. Track work/work crews - 1,640 incidents in one month
2. Signal trouble - 532
3. Guard-light trouble - 415
4. Sick customers - 392
5. Customers holding doors - 346
6. Emergency brakes triggered/no cause found - 332
7. Broken rail - 316
8. Unruly customers - 313
9. System maintenance equipment - 262
10. Emergency brakes triggered by cause - 229

[Eugenious]

http://www.gothamist.com



Virgin Vacations created a list of the 11 Top Underground Transit Systems in the World (http://www.virgin-vacations.com/site_vv/11-top-underground-transit-systems-in-the-world.asp), complete with photographs and YouTube videos to give readers a sense of what mass transit might be like on their trip. The number 1 underground transit system is the oldest - the London Underground. After that, it's the Paris Metro. Then the Moscow Metro. Then Madrid, Tokyo, and Seoul, until you finally see New York City's subway coming in at number 7.
Highlights: Offers express services that run on separate tracks from local trains. The MTA is currently testing out LED displays in subway stations to let commuters know when the next train is expected to arrive. 24 hour service. Unique and distinct artwork (mosaics) throughout the system.We suppose it came in at 7 because the MTA's subways aren't particularly clean or frequent, unlike other systems abroad, but NYC Transit is the only 24 hour one. The other subways on the list are Montreal, Beijing, Hong Kong and Sao Paolo. Where would you rank NYC in terms of the world's subway systems? And last week, amNew York reported (http://www.amny.com/news/local/transportation/am-subway0223,0,6593083.story?coll=am-transportation-headlines) that NYC subway ridership averages out to 7.2 million riders on weekdays. Which is just confirmation of how crowded the subways are.

You thought NY was bad with homeless people, in Moscow which has the fastest Subway (75mph avg) the begging street kids are everywhere the video on the link shows a barely 8 year old kid that just broke my heart.



1. London, England
http://www.virgin-vacations.com/site_vv/images/london_tube.jpg


2. Paris, France


http://farm1.static.flickr.com/32/51651824_6976b475cd.jpg?v=1163974518


Moscow, Russia
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/38/98188477_ecd817c5ed.jpg


4. Madrid, Spain


http://farm1.static.flickr.com/26/44394809_2f84a779f8.jpg?v=0


5. Tokyo, Japan


http://farm1.static.flickr.com/114/298424998_3eed6508b0.jpg?v=0


6. Seoul, Korea


http://farm1.static.flickr.com/57/180013242_d4c5700a4f.jpg?v=0


7. New York City, USA


http://www.virgin-vacations.com/site_vv/images/nyc_l_train.jpg

[Fahzee]

although I haven't rode them in about 4 years, my experience in Paris was that the Metro was incredibly dirt, and incredibly sloooowww.

I remember waiting in the stalingrad station at night, and watching some of the biggest rats I've ever seen run around on the platform. And the stalingrad station is above ground!

plus, most lines on the paris metro average 25mph - way too slow for a big city, where you have to cover a lot of distance to get from one end to another

but who knows - maybe it's improved since then.

[nick-taylor]

although I haven't rode them in about 4 years, my experience in Paris was that the Metro was incredibly dirt, and incredibly sloooowww.

I remember waiting in the stalingrad station at night, and watching some of the biggest rats I've ever seen run around on the platform. And the stalingrad station is above ground!

plus, most lines on the paris metro average 25mph - way too slow for a big city, where you have to cover a lot of distance to get from one end to another

but who knows - maybe it's improved since then.The Paris Metro is slow, but that is down to the fact that the stations are so close together. Some of the stations are so close together, that you can visibly see the platform of the next station! The RER and Transilien lines do help for journeys across the rest of Paris.

[ablarc]

The Paris Metro is slow, but that is down to the fact that the stations are so close together.
Since even 25mph is a lot faster than you can walk (4mph), this promotes faster point-to-point travel.

Better than fast trains and long walks. Do the math and see for yourself.

[nick-taylor]

Since even 25mph is a lot faster than you can walk (4mph), this promotes faster point-to-point travel.

Better than fast trains and long walks. Do the math and see for yourself.From what I recall, most travel on the Paris Metro is in the form of hop-on, hop-off journeys, and not much A-to-B travel because it simply takes too long. In this respect its more like a high capacity tram/bus network.

The RER on the other hand is far faster, covers a wider area, and is more suited towards A-to-B journeys. For instance, if your TGV train terminated at Gare de Lyon, and your final destination was La Defense, you wouldn't hop on line 1 - because that is a 17 stop journey. RER line A however follows the same route of line 1 and stops only 3 times.

[TonyO]

The Paris metro fits into the culture very well in my opinion. You get there when you get there.

[Ed007Toronto]

I remember waiting in the stalingrad station at night,

There's a station in Paris named after Stalingrad?

[lofter1]

well ^^^ you know how those French folks are :cool:

[Fahzee]

There's a station in Paris named after Stalingrad?


yeah believe it or not. It's on the 2 line, and it ain't a great neighborhood. Parisian stations tend to be named after the plaza's they're located in or near - so the Stalingrad station is in (actually above - it's elevated) the Place Stalingrad.

edit: Wikipedia says that the Place Stalingrad is named after the Battle of Stalingrad

[TimmyG]

DERAILING FARE HIKE
By LEONARD GREENE

from www.nypost.com
March 8, 2007 -- Gov. Spitzer yesterday vowed to increase state transportation spending - and put the brakes on any plans that include a fare increase.
Spitzer said he would do "everything possible" to avoid a hike, adding that would be done only as a last resort.
The governor's remarks came in response to comments made by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority chief Elliot Sander, who warned riders to brace themselves for a possible fare hike in 2008.
Sander blamed state and city cutbacks for the gloomy financial outlook.
But Spitzer promised, "We will increase the state investment in transportation, both capital and operating sides of the budget."

[Fahzee]

an increase in funding from the state? That's some excellent news. Maybe Spitizer can help restore some of the funding that that was stripped from the station renovations budget.

[Dynamicdezzy]

Rush hour: Trains, pains and automobiles

Your Money examines how New Yorkers choose
between MetroCards and E-Z Passes

BY ELIZABETH LAZAROWITZ
DAILY NEWS BUSINESS WRITER

Monday, March 12th 2007, 4:00 AM


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Print Email Suggest a Story

Subways can be crowded and rife with delays ...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

... but former car owner Michael Fram finds they're a big bargain.

Rush hour traffic on the Long Island Expressway. For many drivers, scenes like this ....

... can lead to emotions like this.
Read also: Wheels only when you really need them


To drive or not to drive?

That is the question for countless New Yorkers divided by a love/hate relationship with the automobile and the high cost of having your own.

For owners, a car is essential for getting to work, picking up the kids, lugging bags of groceries, visiting relatives or friends in the burbs, and heading out of town for the weekend. It's also a major financial drain.

For nonowners, a car is replaced by trains, buses, taxis, relatives or friends with cars, and the occasional visit to a car rental agency. Commuting bills definitely add up.

Whether a car is a necessity or a luxury you can live without is a personal decision. It involves multiple factors, such as where you live and work, what you do for a living and how much money you make.

But which is most cost-effective?

To help readers decide, Your Money took the example of Michael Fram, a 46-year-old from Brooklyn who has been in both camps.

Fram was unexpectedly forced out of the category of car owners in 1999 - his Ford Taurus was stolen from his office parking lot.

Having grown up near Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, where auto owner-ship was considered the norm, he got his first car when he was 18 and had trouble imagining life without one.

"I really thought I needed it," Fram said.

Even in a place where 24/7 public transportation is among the most plentiful on the planet, people are very attached to their automobiles.

And in 2005, for the first time in about five years, New York City car owner-ship increased, boosted by a growing population and more households with multiple vehicles, said transportation consultant Bruce Schaller. About 1.7 million vehicles are registered in the city, according to the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

Still, less than half of the city's 3 million households have a car, U.S. Census data found.

While worries about the environment and a growing frustration with traffic jams and finding parking spots weighed on Fram's mind back when he had wheels, it wasn't enough to get him to give up owning a car.

One daunting factor: The thought of using public transportation to get from his home in Park Slope to his office in Morris Park in the Bronx. His job, fitting amputees with artificial limbs, requires trips to hospitals and patients' homes.

The car theft, however, prompted a major lifestyle change. "It was both a shock and a relief," he said.

The subway commute turned out to be unexpectedly easy. What took between 30 minutes and 2 1/2 hours by car, depending on unpredictable traffic, now consistently takes just over an hour. During work, he takes buses or taxis, or borrows a colleague's car. But perhaps the happiest discovery he made was how much money he was saving.

His car, which he'd bought about six years before for about $17,000, was already paid off. Even so, he was shelling out $320 a month for a spot in a parking garage near his home, plus $70 to $100 a month for gas. That alone cost him $5,000 a year, and there were also the bills for repairs, maintenance, tolls and parking away from home.

Now, he buys an unlimited monthly MetroCard that totals $912 a year. For occasional family trips, he rents a van. While renting might add up to $2,000 a year including gas, that plus his MetroCard still leaves him with an extra $2,000 a year, he figures.

For some people, that savings isn't worth it if it means losing some convenience or the privacy of their own vehicle, or having to rub shoulders with the masses. Then again, mass transit ridership is near an all-time high in the city, and even Mayor Bloomberg takes the subway to work most days.

For car owners, paying for the vehicle itself is, of course, just the beginning, said Philip Reed, consumer advice editor at Edmunds.com.

"People go shopping and look at the price of the car and think, 'I can afford that,'" Reed said. "There are a whole bunch of related costs that they don't foresee."

There's registration fees, insurance, upkeep and fuel. For many, there's parking and tolls and, for some, the occasional parking ticket or moving violation.

All in all, keeping a car in the city can cost $3,000 to $5,000 a year, heading up to as much as $10,000 or more, according to Transportation Alternatives, which advocates fewer autos on the road.

And since a car is an investment that loses value over time, you've got a money sponge on your hands. Edmunds.com has a feature called "True Cost to Own," which helps consumers determine total auto ownership expenses over five years, comprised of such factors as maintenance, insurance premiums, interest on financing, depreciation and taxes.

A 2007 Cadillac Escalade you could get for about $53,000, for example, will end up costing another $81,000 over the course of five years, including financing, Edmunds.com reports.

To help make your money go furthest, Reed recommended driving a car as long as it remains reliable.

"I drive a 1996 Mitsubishi Gallant, and it does most of the things that new cars do," he said.

[Dynamicdezzy]

MTA to sign 2nd Ave line contract
By Chuck Bennett, amNewYork Staff Writer
cbennett@am-ny.com


March 12, 2007

It's almost "T" time.

On March 29, the MTA is finally expected to sign a contract for construction of the long-awaited Second Avenue Subway, amNewYork has learned. The new line will be known as the T line.




Elliot "Lee" Sander, the MTA's new executive director, and Chairman Peter Kalikow will approve the $333 million contract for the first phase of the project that critics thought would never happen.

"All of the sudden it turned from doubtful to inevitable and nobody quite knows when it happened," Kalikow said at the last MTA board meeting.

Almost immediately after the contract is signed, construction trailers will start to line parts of Second Avenue in the East 90s, MTA officials said.

The groundbreaking ceremony, along with actual digging, is scheduled for late April or early May. The exact location has not been determined.

"I think it will be a significant event because of the history of the project," Sander said of the groundbreaking.

"It will be a real groundbreaking, we have the funding, we have the contract. We are looking forward to getting it going, it will be an historic moment for New York."

First proposed more than 80 years ago, the Second Avenue Subway was dubbed "the most famous project never built." It will be the city's first new subway line in 60 years.

This first phase will be a joint-venture among Skanska USA Civil, Schiavone Construction and J.F. Shea Construction, whose bid of $333 million was almost $20 million less than the MTA predicted.

Work on this part of the T line, which is expected to finish in 2013, will connect East 96th Street to East 63rd Street. Three new subway stations will be built during that time. By 2020, the line should run from 125th Street to Hanover Square in the Financial District.

A top Republican fundraiser for years, Kalikow and his behind-the-scenes negotiations were crucial in winning federal and state funding for the project.

An estimated 202,000 people are expected to use the T line on its first day of operation, the MTA predicted.

"We're very excited," said Charles Carrier, a spokesman for the Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan), one of the project's leading advocates. "It will ensure we have a modern transportation infrastructure."

The project already went through two groundbreaking ceremonies. The first was in 1925 but work stopped in the face of the Great Depression and World War II. In 1972, Mayor John Lindsay held his own groundbreaking at 102nd Street. More of the tunnel was dug, but then work had to be abandoned during the city's fiscal crisis.

The third groundbreaking ceremony will be the charm, MTA officials said. Details are still being finalized, but one possibility is bringing dignitaries and a ceremonial pickax to one of the unfinished tunnels from the 1970s.

These days subway service on the East Side, where riders feel like sardines, is at capacity.

"The Lexington Avenue line is very overburdened," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan), who represents the East Side. "It has 1.3 million riders a day, that's more than San Francisco, Boston and Chicago's [transit lines] combined."

Yorkville residents, however, better brace themselves for major construction disruptions.

Two lanes of traffic on Second Avenue between 96th Street and 92rd Street will be closed to vehicles while workers relocate utility pipes and cables, according to Mysore Nagaraja, president of MTA Capital Construction.

Then six to eight months later at 93rd Street, workers will dig a massive hole to lower a tunnel boring machine 70 feet down. All the while, trucks will be delivering supplies such as steel, timber and cement while hauling away tons and tons of dirt and rock.

Aboveground work is authorized between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. while tunneling will continue 24-7 below ground.

"We're making sure the impact is minimized, unfortunately I can't hide the construction," Nagaraja said.

Timetable of the T
2007-13: Phase 1: Three new stations, 96th, 86th and 72nd streets, with connection to Q station at 63rd Street
2014-18: Phase 2: 125th Street to 96th Street
2015-18: Phase 3: 63rd Street to Houston Street
2017-20: Phase 4: Houston Street to Hanover Square

[ZippyTheChimp]

http://nymag.com/news/features/30636/

This Is the Part Where the Superhero Discovers He Is Mortal

Wesley Autrey jumped in front of a speeding subway train to save a man’s life. Then things really got tricky.

By Robert Kolker

http://nymag.com/news/features/subway070423_1_560.jpg
Wesley Autrey, in a fur he received as a gift.
(Photo: Gillian Laub)

The inside of Wesley Autrey’s brand-new four-door Chrysler Sebring smells of aftershave, and the CD player is blasting The Best of the Gap Band. We’re squinting straight into a blinding rush-hour sunset, hurtling west on the Cross-Bronx Expressway, out over the George Washington Bridge, on our way to see Jason Kidd and the Nets get clobbered by Allen Iverson and the Nuggets. Wesley is behind the wheel; in the back is his 15-year-old nephew Elias, a basketball fan whom everyone calls La-la and who is glad tonight to be in on his uncle’s good fortune (if not his uncle’s eighties sound explosion). The car is a gift to Wesley from Chrysler, a loaner until he gets the 2007 Jeep Patriot he was promised in January on the stage of The Ellen DeGeneres Show. The tickets are a gift, too, from the Nets—season tickets for two years. When you’re the Subway Superman, some people just like giving you things.

Later tonight, we’ll talk about the downside of instant fame. But right now, Wesley is talking about the good things. Like Beyoncé. When he was on Ellen, the diva appeared to him in a vision—via satellite, actually—promising backstage passes to an upcoming show. Just thinking about Beyoncé, with the soundtrack to his younger years pumping on the Chrysler’s speakers, makes Wesley break into a sweet, wistful smile.

“I’m gonna meet Beyoncé?” he asks. “I can’t wait. I always tell my nieces and nephews I’d like to have a woman like Beyoncé.”

I laugh. But Wesley is serious. He’s making a point.

“She would be the ideal woman,” he says. “She’s got a good head on her shoulders, her own business. She’s someone I wouldn’t mind signing a prenuptial agreement with, know what I’m saying? What possibly could I do for her financially that she don’t already have?”

As we cross into New Jersey, Wesley talks about the emotions he’s cycled through in the past few months—euphoria, confusion, anger, disillusionment, hurt. It’s not that Wesley regrets throwing himself in front of a speeding No. 1 train to save the life of a stranger. He’d do it again in an instant, even if no one heard a word about it. And it’s not that he doesn’t appreciate the good things that have come from what he did. It’s just that the whole experience has proved to be a lot more complicated than he expected. “I thought I’d have fifteen minutes of fame and that’s it,” he says. “Hollywood? The political arena? Movie deal? Book deal? I’m just letting the good Lord guide me. I’ve never dealt with this.”

Wesley veers off the turnpike at Exit 16, the entrance to Continental Airlines Arena. The last time he was here, he tells me, he sat with the team’s owner. He rolls down the window.

“Wesley Autrey, subway hero,” he tells the attendant, flashing his tickets. “Where can I park at, so I don’t have to walk far?”

The attendant waves him through— “Up the hill to the left.” Wesley taps the gas pedal and laughs. “That’s the greatest thing about all of this. They recognize me!”

The arena’s lots are a maze. With every turn comes another gatekeeper. The next one waves him through. He’s two for two. “I love it!” he says.

There’s another attendant. “Yeah,” says Wesley. “Where can the hero park at?”

This one takes his time. He examines the tickets, then checks with a co-worker with dark sunglasses. The man looks at the tickets and slowly shakes his head. “K-20,” he says. Siberia.

For a rare moment, Wesley is silent.

Then La-la starts ribbing him. “Oh, my God! We are so far away!” he says with a teenage groan.

And Wesley just laughs his loudest laugh of the night and starts singing along again to the Gap Band: “I said oops-up-side-your-head, I said oops-up-side-your-head!”


Being the Subway Superman, it turns out, is a lot harder than it looks. Yes, since saving 20-year-old Cameron Hollopeter after he collapsed and fell onto the rails at the 137th Street subway station on January 2, Wesley Autrey has been showered with adulation and no small amount of material goods. Donald Trump wrote him a check for $10,000. He was jetted for free to the Super Bowl. He’s received cars and vacations, fur coats and expensive meals. He’s been honored by Mike Bloomberg, Eliot Spitzer, and Hillary Clinton, and was singled out by George Bush at the 2007 State of the Union address (that’s when Wesley blew kisses to the nation that morphed into peace signs—the gesture became his trademark, and something everyone in Harlem, where he lives, mimics back to him now). He captivated the famously unsentimental David Letterman, and brought his little girls on Ellen. B.B. King literally dropped to his knees and thanked him for what he did. One woman on the street told him she was glad she didn’t abort her unborn child because the Subway Superman showed her that the world isn’t so cruel after all.

http://nymag.com/news/features/subway070423_4_560.jpg
Wesley and his family at his mother's home.
(Photo: Gillian Laub)

Those are the happy aftereffects of overnight megastardom. Then there are the crushing demands on his time, the friends and family looking for handouts, the money problems, the identity questions, and the lawsuit.

On a sunny Tuesday afternoon in March, Wesley Autrey is sitting on the couch with his sister Linda at his niece Quiana’s two-room apartment in the Bronx. Since reporters started staking out his tiny studio on Riverside Drive in Harlem, Wesley has used Quiana’s home as a sanctuary—somewhere to escape to without having to leave town. Wesley and Linda have always been close, but the last few months have made them closer; he’s come to rely on her and Quiana to handle his scheduling and a large part of his business affairs. “I don’t know what I’d do without Linda,” he says. “I’ve got to go somewhere and find an award for her.”

Before he came to the attention of half the Western world, Wesley was known to his friends and family as a modest, hardworking construction worker and something of the family patriarch. He was born in Pensacola, Florida, in 1956 and brought up on a farm in Alabama with an older brother and two younger sisters until he was 12, when the family moved north to Harlem. The second-oldest of four kids, he’s never not been the man of the house. His father, Robert Autrey Sr., also a construction worker, left the family when Wesley was a toddler, and while his devout Christian mother, Mary, never divorced him, Wesley hasn’t seen his father’s face for 30 years.

Wesley joined the Navy at 17; had a son, Wesley Jr., now 33, whom everyone calls Boo; and had his two daughters, Shuqui, now 6, and Syshe, 4, with a different woman, who left him when Syshe was a baby. Wesley says he would have married her, but she wasn’t interested. “I thought we had a great thing.” He’s determined to support his kids the way his father never did. “The world looks at black men as deadbeat dads,” he says. “But that’s not me.”

After the Navy, Wesley worked for the Postal Service, then switched to construction. Recently, he’d been working for an outfit called T&S Management on a school project in Williamsburg. A shop steward in the Local 79 Laborers Union, Wesley had achieved a certain amount of seniority but was still living paycheck to paycheck. To varying degrees, he supports not just the girls but also his mother, Mary, a retired school-cafeteria worker; Boo’s daughters, Jéahni, 10, and Wesli, 1; and his sister Lucile’s three sons—Erroll, 28, Darius, 18, and La-la—and Quiana’s 2-year-old boy, Keyon.

Wesley’s life of quiet working-class anonymity came to a full stop on January 2. What happened that day has already taken on the quality of legend: the man with the seizure on the platform; Wesley’s shout to a stranger to watch his daughters and his dive onto the tracks; the split-second decision to grab the man and roll into the 21-inch gutter between the bottom of the train and the rails; the train’s abrupt halt, its first five cars passing over the two men; the twenty-minute wait for the MTA to cut the power to the third rail. On Letterman, and later on Ellen, Wesley explained why he did what he did. “Fool, you got to go in there,” he recalled thinking. (“I like that your mind called yourself a fool,” Ellen said.)

Had Wesley ever given any hint that he was the type of guy who’d jump in front of a speeding train to save a stranger? No, but to those who know him best, his act of selflessness wasn’t really surprising, either. “We always knew he was this great guy,” Linda says. “The world is just getting to know the brother we knew all along.”

It took time for Wesley to recognize the magnitude of what had happened to him. At first, he wanted to go straight to his job in Brooklyn. “I didn’t think nothing of it,” he says. “If anything, I thought it was going to make the paper, but that would probably be it. I had a family to support and maintain, and in construction, if you don’t go to work that day, you don’t get paid.”

As soon as he was outside of the subway station, he realized this was bigger. The News and Post reporters were wrestling over who got to drive him to the hospital. Inside Edition and CBS wanted him to go back to the station and reconstruct what happened. Within a day, Letterman, Ellen, Oprah, Charlie Rose, and Montel were calling. Hillary Clinton wanted to make a resolution on the floor of the Senate commending him. Trump sent his check. The MTA offered a year’s worth of free subway rides. One guy stopped him on the street and handed him a $10 bill.

“People wanted to hug me, they wanted to kiss me,” Wesley says. “It was an honor and a privilege to save a man’s life.”

He did Letterman, then flew with the girls to L.A. for the Ellen taping. The show put him up at the Sheraton Universal under an assumed name—Clark Kent. There was Disneyland and the Universal Studios tour for the girls, and babysitting so Wesley could go out on the town. On the show, he got the Jeep, the Nets tickets, and the hello from Beyoncé. The girls got free iMacs. “These are usually the people I see on TV when I’m sitting in the living room,” he says. “These awards, and the gifts me and my kids were getting? It was all good.”

At the State of the Union, Wesley hung out with the president in the greenroom. “We took pictures and laughed,” he says. Wesley’s a Democrat, but “didn’t get into the political thing. I’m an honorably discharged veteran. He’s the president of this country.”

Soon enough, though, there were problems. The five-minute walk from his apartment to the subway took twenty minutes now. People stopped him for pictures, hugs, and solicitations for donations—“I need, give me, I want,” Wesley says.

On January 9, when Wesley came home from the Ellen taping in California, he wanted to go back to work (he’d taken what he had intended to be a brief leave of absence). But there was too much to do. The American Stock Exchange wanted him to ring the opening bell on January 11. Spitzer wanted him on the 16th. The union local was honoring him on the 17th. His niece Quiana grabbed him by the arm. “Uncle Wesley,” she said, “I think you might have to realize that the construction worker—he died on the 2nd. There’s a new you. The public wants this new you.”

Wesley’s new life started to feel like a job, and one he wasn’t well prepared for. “It’s scary. I’m not used to this constant fame. I have people pushing me straight in front of a podium with a thousand eyes on me. Everybody’s looking at you and wondering, What is he gonna say?”

Wesley became exhausted. He told Linda he lacked time to savor even a little of his good fortune. His new life was cutting into his weekends with the girls. “They don’t like that,” he says. “I don’t either. I try to explain, ‘Daddy’s got kind of a new job, and I’m trying to make things happen and maybe get a house and a better way of life.’ But they don’t understand.”

He started to worry about money. You can’t pay the rent with a Jeep. And given the value of some of the gifts, the IRS would be watching. A friend at the union told him people could sue him now. His custody and support arrangement with the girls’ mother could be called into question. He might have to think about setting up tax shelters, and trusts for the kids. “Some people think I’m a millionaire,” he says. “So I’m a little worried about my own life and even worried about my kids, you know—someone might try to kidnap them.”

Women were running up to him in bars, plopping into his lap—but fame complicates that, too. On Valentine’s Day, he got a call from a woman who dumped him fifteen years ago. Without skipping a beat, he asked where she’d been the last fourteen Valentine’s Days. “So it’s like that?” she asked. The conversation trailed off.

At the end of February, Wesley heard from Robert Autrey Sr. for the first time in three decades. His father had been living in Pensacola, in sporadic touch with Wesley’s mother but never with him.

“He had a mild heart attack,” Wesley says. “He ended up in the hospital, and his sister called my mom’s house, and I picked up the phone.”

Wesley called his father at the hospital. “I don’t hold no grudges.”

What did his father say?

“That he was happy for me doing what I’d done, you know?” Wesley pauses. “Then him, like everybody else, ‘I need, I want, give me.'"

“Never once did he say, ‘Are you all right? Are the little girls okay?’ He just said, ‘There’s a family reunion coming, and if you’re coming, bring me some of that money you got.’ That’s how that went.”

The day after the State of the Union, Wesley attended some meetings in Washington. He had decided he needed some professional help to manage his affairs, and his older brother, Robert, an accountant for FEMA, had found him a lawyer, James McCollum, and an accountant, Robert Davis, who in turn had recommended a PR consultant named Doris McMillon. McMillon told him she saw Wesley becoming a motivational speaker. She also had endorsement ideas. “I contacted the president of Subway to talk about maybe using him as a spokesperson,” she says. “You know—‘The next time you stop at Subway, pick up a hero.’”

Making money off his heroism had never been a priority for Wesley. But the president had just saluted him on national television, and he started to wonder if failing to capitalize on what happened wasn’t noble but foolish. It had been almost four weeks since Wesley had taken home a paycheck. He’d paid some bills but hadn’t even bought a new suit for the White House. What kind of a son and father would he be if he didn’t make the most of this? “I wanted to surprise my mom with a house,” he says. “There’s a lot of things I wanted to do. There was a possibility of that happening if a book or movie thing jumps off. And I’m dying to just get a house for me and my family.” He laughs. “And my dream car is the Bentley coupe. I can’t park it on the street. So I need the house first.”

McMillon accompanied Wesley to appearances on CNN and Fox News Channel, but when he came home from the Super Bowl on February 5, he decided he needed a new management team. “Somebody from New York,” he says. “Somebody that I could touch base with like that.”

The night after the Super Bowl, Wesley met his new team—and started his trip down the rabbit hole.


At different times in his life, Mark Anthony Esposito says, he has worked as a celebrity photographer, an Internet mini-mogul, a trial consultant, a Formula 1 race-car driver, a documentary filmmaker, a licensed investment banker, a rock and blues musician and music producer, an unproduced screenwriter, and an unpublished novelist. He also says he has a Ph.D. in divinity. He is in his fifties and solidly built, with aquamarine eyes and a tightly wound, slightly unhinged affect—Joe Pesci with a mod haircut.

On February 5, the day after the Super Bowl, Wesley was a special guest at the Citizens Committee for New York’s annual gala at the Waldorf-Astoria. Ray Kelly, Pete Hamill, Wynton Marsalis, and David Dinkins were there. So was Mark Esposito. He says he was there as a journalist, shooting a video documentary about another honoree. But he knew who Wesley was. He’d been following his story with something of a proprietary interest. Ever since the London Tube attacks, Esposito says, he had been fiddling with a screenplay about terror on the subway. He’d spent some time in Hollywood years earlier, taking a two-day filmmaking course. Now he had the idea to use Wesley’s true-life story as a jumping-off point to make his project more marketable. He introduced himself briefly to Wesley, but his partner, Diane Kleiman, did most of the talking that night.

In her mid-forties, with a striking head of long red hair, Kleiman is a former Queens criminal prosecutor turned Customs agent who is best known for declaring herself a whistle-blower against corruption and lax security in the U.S. Customs Department. Fired in 1999, she spent several years speaking out about her allegations (she was the subject of a 2003 profile in this magazine). Last year, Kleiman met Esposito through a mutual friend, and the pair began working together. Kleiman is a member of the New York bar, and Esposito is not; he has experience in the entertainment business that she lacks. In the past year, Esposito and Kleiman say they’ve worked on behalf of a Korean singer named Jung Min Kim, a Manhattan church that was in a lease battle with its landlord, and a doctor who was accused of sexual harassment. That night, after making her way past a throng of well-wishers, Kleiman introduced herself to Wesley.

Kleiman’s credentials seemed impressive enough to warrant a meeting, so Wesley agreed to host one. On Friday night, February 9, Esposito and Kleiman went to Quiana’s apartment in the Bronx to make their pitch. Over the course of the five-hour visit, Esposito presented himself as a show-business veteran who’d worked with Bruce Willis once and made deals in Hollywood as a matter of course. He was energetic and aggressive: Wesley wasn’t just a news story, he said—he was a commercial and intellectual property that could and should generate revenue. Wesley had to make the transition from hero to brand, and Esposito said he and Kleiman were the ones who would take him there. Wesley liked them, and decided to work with them. “They seemed real,” Wesley says. “They said they can make stuff happen.”

Esposito and Kleiman both say that they brought with them a four-page contract for Wesley to review. Wesley now disputes this, saying he never saw a contract that night. That following Monday, Wesley and the girls were expected at the White House again, for the Black History Month celebration. They agreed that Mark and Diane would join him there. Wesley was reaching what could be the height of his public profile. The time to strike was now.

For several weeks prior, I had been talking with Linda about interviewing Wesley for this story, and she had agreed that I could shadow Wesley in Washington and interview him there. On Saturday morning, I called her to finalize the arrangements, but she asked me to speak with Wesley’s new lawyer, Diane Kleiman—“just as respect.”

When I called Diane, she spoke of Wesley as if he were a stray puppy who needed saving. The people around him at the Waldorf “were like leeches,” she told me. “He was inundated. He looked like a fish out of water. I went up and said, ‘If anyone asks you for money, they should be paying you money.’”

Diane told me she was fine with my interviewing Wesley in Washington, but a half-hour later, she called back. She said Wesley would now cooperate only if the magazine guaranteed him the cover, a minimum word count, a particular release date, final approval of the text, and the payment of expenses. These conditions, she said, were articulated by her partner, “executive Mark Anthony Esposito,” whom Wesley would require to be with him at all times during the interview.

I called Mark. “Wesley is like a Hollywood star or athlete,” he said. “Wesley has signed over intellectual-property rights for film and video.” To do this story, Mark insisted, Wesley would need some sort of compensation and control over the final product.

I told Mark his demands weren’t realistic—that it’s against the magazine’s policy to guarantee its subjects covers, show them the story first, or pay them. He laughed and said he’d already lined up major magazines that were willing to pay; at one point, he threw around the figure $100,000. “Everybody pays something,” he said.

Before long, though, Mark radically lowered his price: He’d grant me access to Wesley, he decided, if I would pay for plane tickets to Washington for him and Diane. When I said the magazine couldn’t do that either, he said, “How about train tickets?” When I refused that, Mark vowed never to allow me access to Wesley. And if he didn’t like what I wrote, he said, he’d sue me. Then he hung up.

I called Diane. She tried a softer tack. “We didn’t think we were asking that much from you,” she said. “Even if you took $1,000 out of your pocket and paid us, and New York Magazine wouldn’t pay you back, this would be a big story for you. It would sell thousands of copies.” But then her tone turned: “We’re gonna be down there, and Mark is gonna be all over you if you try to get close to Wesley.”

Linda got a call from Mark on Sunday. He was furious, she says, that she’d considered letting Wesley talk to me without compensation. “It was like he was the husband and I had just burnt the pork chops,” Linda says. She started having doubts about Mark. “We’d have doors shutting in my brother’s face, opportunities shedding, because you’re showing him this snub-nosed, I’m-better-than-you, reach-me-through-my-lawyer attitude. My brother’s not like that.”

That Monday morning, Wesley woke up at his brother Robert’s house in Washington and realized he’d forgotten to bring Shuqui and Syshe’s dresses. The closest mall didn’t open until 10 a.m., and the family needed to be at the White House shortly after 12:30 p.m. He dashed to JCPenney and bought two matching canary-yellow dresses with stockings and shoes, then hightailed it back to Robert’s. “I think better when I’m on my feet,” he says, “just like I was thinking when I saved Cameron.”

When he returned, Mark and Diane were at the house. They presented Wesley with the four-page contract. He had to get to the White House right away. Wesley signed the contract without reading it, and they left. “They were rushing me,” Wesley says. “The word was, ‘If we don’t hurry up and sign this, Wesley is going to be yesterday’s news, because when this Sean Bell case hit, that’s gonna knock you out of the box, so we need to do this—we need to sign these papers.’” (Mark and Diane insist Wesley had all weekend to review the contract and that he was eager to sign it.)

In the gilded East Room of the White House, Wesley stood beside Condoleezza Rice, Charlie Rangel, two space-shuttle astronauts, and a football coach. “I told him, ‘You’re a hero!’” the president said to the assembled guests and media. “He told me, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Wesley, I disagree, as do millions of our fellow citizens.’” Wesley, dressed in a Navy uniform, kissed the president on the cheek; the picture was picked up everywhere. Then, on Mark’s instructions, Wesley grasped the president’s arm and turned him so his back was to the audience—out of view of the camera crews—and asked Bush to pose for some snapshots with Wesley’s mother and the girls.

Mark took those pictures with his own camera. They’re his intellectual property. A week after the White House event, Mark applied to trademark the phrase “subway hero” and “subway angel American hero,” then registered the same phrases as book and movie properties with the Writers Guild. But those trademarks and titles aren’t registered in Wesley’s name. They’re in Mark’s.

The contract Wesley signed that morning in Washington wasn’t a management contract or a retainer. It was a partnership agreement, entitling Wesley to just 50 percent of “any revenues from any and all commercial exploitation” of his “name, personality, story and reputation” in the next three years. The other half would go to any potential producing partners, including Diane Kleiman and Mark Anthony Esposito.

On February 19, I had lunch with Mark and Diane at Odeon to try again for access to Wesley. (I’d covered the Black History Month event with a press pass from the White House.) Mark began the lunch by sharing more of his personal history (“I saw Jimi Hendrix have sex!” he said—twice), but he spent most of the meeting detailing the ways he had dreamed up to make money off the Subway Superman. He said he came up with the idea of dressing Wesley in a Navy uniform so that Bush would gravitate toward Wesley at the Black History event. He said he made sure that the family kept their backs to the media so that he had exclusive pictures. He also said that he and Diane believed that as a black celebrity, Wesley could keep his name out there all through 2008 by dangling the prospect of his endorsement in the presidential race. Mark’s plan: Come out for Hillary now, then switch to Obama next year, citing racial loyalty. Then Mark and Diane hinted that Wesley was concealing a secret about his personal life that would make his story even more marketable. They wouldn’t reveal what it was, they said, until the right offer came along.

A few weeks later, on March 1, at yet another meeting to wrestle over access, Mark suddenly seemed to imply that access was no longer a problem. I was free to talk to Wesley anytime, he said. He spoke as if he and Diane had never been an obstacle.

What I came to find out a few days later was that Mark and Diane had been fired earlier that week. Wesley and Linda had come to believe that Mark and Diane weren’t acting in Wesley’s best interests, and that the 50 percent share they had staked out for themselves was unreasonable.

But Mark didn’t seem to care about being let go. He had his trademarks, and he and Diane had their contract. “Wesley could be living or dead now, it doesn’t matter,” Mark told me. “He is an intellectual property now, and we are protecting our interests.”


On March 22, Wesley filed court papers against Esposito and Kleiman, accusing the pair of embarking on an “unconscionable scheme” that began at their first meeting. The lawsuit alleges that when Wesley met her at the Waldorf, Diane had said she wouldn’t charge for her legal services; that she falsely said she was an entertainment lawyer; that the duo promised nothing would be done without Wesley’s input; that they sprung the contract on him in Washington and took advantage of him. The suit also argues that Diane signed the contract a day before everyone else, giving Wesley the impression that she had reviewed it to make sure his best interests were represented—and that Diane misrepresented herself as Wesley’s attorney when in fact she was signing on as his business partner. He also claims that Diane never mentioned a section of the contract that makes Wesley pay for Diane’s legal expenses in any arbitration.

Finally, the lawsuit claims Diane and Mark were never working in Wesley’s best interests, citing two examples: that Diane tried to get a public elementary school to pay for an appearance by Wesley, and that Mark and Diane tried to get this magazine to pay for their airfare to Washington.

The day the lawsuit was filed, I called Diane. She was furious. She’d been taking calls from reporters all day. “His argument is, ‘I’m an uneducated black man who didn’t read the contract so the contract shouldn’t apply to me because my attorneys are smarter than I am’?” she asked. “I don’t need this shit in my life right now.” She insisted Linda was the one who wanted to charge the elementary school. “She told me, ‘Wesley don’t do nothing for free.’” (Linda denies this.) Diane also denies that she had a conflict of interest—she says it was clear she was his business partner, not Wesley’s lawyer. She also revealed that she was no longer on speaking terms with Mark. Now both Mark and Diane say they’re considering filing countersuits.

I asked if she thought 50 percent was a little too much to ask of Wesley. “It is actually extremely low,” she said. “Look at recording artists—they have all these people around them taking fees. In the end, they get something like 3 percent. Besides, Wesley didn’t have to do any work. He wasn’t paying any money. If we didn’t cut the deal, we didn’t get paid. So how doesn’t he benefit from that?”

I decided to ask Diane what the secret of Wesley’s life story was—the piece of his bio they were hanging on to, to exploit for a book or movie. She exploded. “There was nothing. We were making it all up. It was gonna be taking some of the stuff—like a fictional-type movie—and just taking some aspects of it and try to sell that into something that would make money. He had fifteen minutes of fame. There was nothing more than that. Nothing.”

The next day, Mark invited me to his apartment-office in Tribeca. When I arrived at noon, the TV was tuned to NY1 with the sound off. Every ten minutes, the same B-roll of Wesley would flash onscreen accompanying a report about the lawsuit. After a quick tour of his memorabilia cabinet—featuring photos of Bruce Willis (Mark directed a promo for the original Die Hard) and porn star Taylor Wayne (“She’s a friend,” he said)—Mark showed me a producer contract from fifteen years ago he signed with a singer. “I’m not some con man who read about Wesley in the news and jumped on this,” he told me. Then he showed me the trademark certificate for the phrase “subway hero” in his name. “I don’t represent Wesley,” he told me. “I am a partner with Wesley. He doesn’t own any of the intellectual property. I do.” Divorcing Wesley from Mark, Mark said, would cut Wesley out of any deal.

Mark has already written a movie treatment, which he showed me—Wesley’s tale, tarted up to be a Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise vehicle. It starts with an ex–Navy man named Wesley who saves a stranger on the subway tracks when a terrorist named Abdul stages an attack and kidnaps his children. In this version, the kids are a boy and a girl, and they turn out to be secret agents. Then they have electronic devices implanted in their heads. Wesley foils the plot in the end—and gets the girl too.

“He sues, he doesn’t get paid,” Mark said. “I’m so happy he sued it’s not even funny! He’s done everything wrong. Every single thing. They think they’re rap artists, and when the time comes they’ll not pay the man and that sort of thing. And when the time comes, he’s gonna be broke. He can leave. But he has to pay.”

On my way out the door, Mark was laughing. “I don’t mind even getting slammed in the press. Getting slammed helps my material! Don’t be surprised if Wesley and I are having dinner tonight. We might be doing this for the publicity! Don’t underestimate me. Don’t underestimate me!”

It’s Easter Sunday, three months since Wesley jumped onto the tracks, and the whole family is gathered at Mary’s tiny apartment on 135th Street. Later, there will be a turkey, but right now, Keyon and little Wesli are wandering underfoot; Darius is singing in his fine tenor voice; Wesley is grabbing a cigarette in the hallway with Linda and Quiana.

Wesley’s getting used to being recognized everywhere he goes now. “When you’re in the public eye, you can’t be mean,” he says. “I love people, you know what I’m saying? That’s why I did what I did for that man that day.” There are still scores of requests for appearances and interviews, but he and Linda have set limits now: No more than one event, appointment, or interview a day. The rest of the time, Wesley can rest, be with his family, be anything other than the Subway Superman.

Short of Beyoncé’s walking through the door, the woman thing is on hold, too. “I’m in no rush at the moment. I’ve been in the Navy, so I know how to do without a woman. You just have to put it out of your mind till you hit port.”

With Easter supper waiting, Linda says she is focusing on the spiritual rewards of what Wesley did—what he taught us all. “Wesley grabbed Cameron—grabbed him, touched him, squeezed him. We don’t do that anymore. Computers, cell phones, Palm Pilots—we don’t touch. I think there’s a message in that—bigger than a movie deal, book deal, you know what I mean? There’s a human message for all of us.” Wesley says he too wants to use his fame “for some good.” He is thinking of starting an after-school program for kids in his neighborhood.

But Wesley’s still not getting a paycheck, and pressure is still building for him to make money. “I’m on a leave of absence, but I have bills. I need an income. There’s fourteen, fifteen of us. I’ve got to make something happen.”

The catch is, the lawsuit hangs over everything. Signing a movie or book deal now could mean Mark and Diane would get half of the proceeds. Any lawsuit takes time, but now Mark and Diane are at cross-purposes, making everything, including a possible settlement, that much more complicated. “You got to have lawyers to watch the lawyers,” Wesley says (he says he’s happy with his new lawyers, who were recommended by his union). “Once the papers were signed, Mark and Diane just wanted to knock my family out. Everybody that me and Linda were on good terms with, they didn’t like. That didn’t seem ethical. And I didn’t feel good about them wanting to keep that 50 percent. To me, that’s greed. They were too greedy.”

About the best Wesley can do for now is keep his name out there for as long as he can. The family is appearing soon on Deal or No Deal. The producer of Heroes is talking about a walk-on. Subway is interested in the hero thing, too. Maybe he’ll be their next pitchman. Oprah still wants him—and has asked him to contact the Hollopeter family to see if Cameron is ready for a tearful reunion. No dice, yet. Wesley has visited Hollopeter in the hospital twice and has stayed in touch with his family on the phone, but Hollopeter has shown no appetite for being in the public eye.

I ask Wesley if he ever wishes he could have somehow saved Hollopeter but still remained anonymous himself. Which life does he prefer, the life of Wesley Autrey or the life of the Subway Superhero?

He’s silent for a long moment, then laughs. “That’s a Catch-22,” he says. Then he settles on an answer. “This is better. Now I’ve got a chance, you know?”

Wesley didn’t save a life to become famous, of course. It’s just that now, what’s the use of pretending none of this happened? “I feel like the black prince of America,” he had told me earlier. “I just don’t have the money yet.”

Recently, Wesley had business cards printed up. He hands them out everywhere he goes now. They read WESLEY AUTREY SR., “SUBWAY HERO.”


THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN
An anatomy of overnight celebrity.

January 2
Wesley talks with reporters after jumping on the subway tracks to save the life of 20-year-old Cameron Hollopeter.

January 3
Wesley recounts the rescue at the 137th Street subway station; receiving a $5,000 check and scholarships for his two daughters; and holding his Post cover.

January 4
Wesley receives the Bronze Medallion, the city’s highest civic award, from Mayor Bloomberg; accepting a $10,000 check from Donald Trump; and appearing on the Late Show With David Letterman.

January 8
Goes on set with Ellen DeGeneres.

January 11
Wesley rings the opening bell at the American Stock Exchange.

January 23
Wesley acknowledges George Bush after being honored at the State of the Union address.

February 10
Wesley soaks up applause at a Washington Capitals game.

AP)

February 12
The president hugs Wesley as he celebrates Black History Month in the East Room of the White House.

April 3
A free 2007 Jeep Patriot.

[ZippyTheChimp]

May 20, 2007

Looking at the Subway From Every Angle

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/05/20/nyregion/650-train.jpg
Stephen Chernin for The New York Times
An axle assembly sat on rails near people on a tour of the M.T.A.
maintenance facility in Corona, Queens.


By ANTHONY RAMIREZ

There was a time — before the automobile, the airplane and the rocket — when the transcontinental train was rich with romance, a miracle emerging from tons of steam and steel.

When the train turned electric, moved underground and became the subway, there were those who remained enraptured.

These days, a few hew to the old ways. One of their Valhallas is in Queens at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Corona maintenance facility, where a sign reads “Home of the 7 Train.”

Yesterday, 40 railroad buffs — adults, families, toddlers, hand-holding couples, but mostly men — paid $25 each ($20 for members of the New York Transit Museum) for a three-hour tour of the facility, next door to Shea Stadium.

Known to insiders as “the barn,” the Corona operation is where subway cars are serviced. Lined up end to end, like so many silver loaves of bread, their wheels are repaired, their parts maintained and their grungy carcasses sprayed down in the giant “car wash” in a nearby building.

Most visitors yesterday were entranced by close-up looks at undercarriages, wrenches the length of a man’s leg and opportunities to sit in the worn red seat of a subway cab, the part of the car where the motorman leans out the window.

Some visitors even took photographs of a pile of metal shavings, for no particular reason other than that they were transportation authority metal shavings.

Greg Orlando, 50, who grew to love the subways as a child in Howard Beach, Queens, is now a firefighter in Staten Island. He took the tour with six friends, who are members of The New Jersey HiRailers in Paterson, N.J. They are building a miniature reproduction of the subway, complete with a Times Square station and a Washington Heights repair yard at 207th street. Each of their cars is the length of a lunch pail.

Mr. Orlando and his friends love being close to the trains.

“The only way you’re going to know,” about the trains, Mr. Orlando said, “is if you come on this tour or if you’re under the wheels about to die, and you don’t want to be the latter.”

James Weider, 17, a senior at Fort Hamilton High School in Brooklyn, chose the subway as a senior research topic. He said New Yorkers took for granted the subway’s speed, convenience and beauty.

“I wanted to give the system the respect it deserves,” he said.

In the Corona barn, the visitors got an earful of subway arcana. Parmanand Beharry, superintendent of the car equipment division, led the tour. He explained that the facility runs 24 hours a day, employs 162 workers and services 409 subway cars, nearly all of them No. 7 trains.

Each car is checked every 70 days or 11,000 miles, whichever comes first, Mr. Beharry said.

On a catwalk, the visitors gasped at their first panoramic view of “the shop floor,” where 45 cars sat on tracks.

The visitors walked into a trench, so the bottom of a subway car’s door, at foot level in a station, was about a foot or so above their heads. Every so often, Eric Koon, 4 ½, would say in a loud Who-ville voice, “What’s that?” And his father, Craig Koon, 42, would whisper in his ear and explain.

The Corona facility, about 11 months old, has the look and feel of a clean room where computers are assembled, except for the undercarriages of the cars, which are coated with soot, and, up close, have the whiff of stables.

On one track was a set of clean subway wheels, 34 inches in diameter and lacking a car above them. They looked like barbells that a giant wrestler had just set down.

“This is S1, our primary track,” Raymond DelValle Jr., deputy superintendent of the division, told the visitors. “We cut our own wheels here.”

A wheel, he explained, can develop flat spots, and the barn’s special “truing” machine can restore the wheel to working order.

A big plastic tub with piles of metal shavings carries the sign “Wheel Truing Machine Chips Only.” The chips look like cheese shavings, though cheese shavings with the density of bullets.

A woman exclaimed, “I love that word ‘truing.’ ” Two men photographed the chips.

One woman on the tour confessed to being a “closet geek.” “Being interested in trains seems to be like a supergeeky kind of thing, and kind of a boy’s thing,” said Hadassah Max, 30, laughing. “But I’m just obsessed.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[pianoman11686]

Straphangers’ Warning: Fares May Have to Rise

By WILLIAM NEUMAN
Published: June 6, 2007

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will have to raise revenues significantly to stave off looming deficits in the next several years, increasing pressure on the authority to increase transit fares and bridge and tunnel tolls, according to a study by the city’s Independent Budget Office.

Unless it can substantially cut costs, the authority will need to increase total revenues by about 20 percent over the next three and a half years, the report said.

If revenues from the authority’s sources rise by 20 percent across the board, that would mean that by 2010 the basic subway and bus fare would increase to $2.40 from $2, and a 30-day MetroCard to $92 from $76. Commuter rail fares and bridge and tunnel tolls would see similar increases.

The report was produced by the budget office at the request of the Straphangers Campaign, a transit rider advocacy group, which released it yesterday.

Asked about the report, Elliot G. Sander, the executive director and chief executive of the authority, would not say whether he believed a fare increase was imminent. He said that in July the authority would release its proposed budget for next year and that a fare increase “remains a possibility.”

Speaking yesterday morning at a forum in Midtown sponsored by Crain’s New York Business, Mr. Sander said, “The last thing, literally, that we want to do is increase fares and tolls.”

But he added, “The one thing that we will not do is let the system go to hell, as it did in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and so we must ensure that the system remains viable in terms of its infrastructure.”

Though dire warnings of budget deficits at the authority are not unusual, the fact that the report was released by the Straphangers Campaign gave it a different cast. In the past, the riders group has accused the authority of using gloomy financial projections to scare the public into accepting a fare increase. That was no longer the case yesterday.

“We definitely see ourselves at this moment as Paul Revere,” said Gene Russianoff, staff lawyer for the group. “It’s like a warning, an alarm for the governor and the state legislative leaders that there’s this huge financial problem.”

Mr. Russianoff said he hoped that any increase in fares would be accompanied by an increase in other forms of revenue to the authority, which include taxes and direct subsidies from the state, the city and other local governments in the area served by the authority’s trains and buses.

Roughly 40 percent of the authority’s $9.4 billion revenues come from fares, including those for subway, bus and commuter rail.

The budget office report was based on the authority’s projections of growing budget deficits beginning next year. The authority has said that largely because of increased interest payments on its debt, it is facing a budget shortfall of $799 million next year, $1.5 billion in 2009 and $1.8 billion in 2010.

The report pointed out that the authority had been projecting financial calamity for years, only to have run substantial surpluses instead, thanks largely to an unexpected surge in taxes from real estate transactions. But the report concluded that next year might be different because growing debt payments would begin to outpace the windfall from real estate taxes.

The authority has not raised fares and tolls since 2005. At that time, it left the base subway and bus fare at $2 but increased the price of unlimited ride MetroCards and raised tolls and commuter fares.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/06/nyregion/06fare.html)

[bkmonkey]

Some Subways Found Packed Past Capacity
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/06/26/nyregion/mta600_2.jpg Kitra Cahana/The New York Times
Passengers packed into a No. 4 train at Grand Central Terminal Monday.




By WILLIAM NEUMAN (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=WILLIAM NEUMAN&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=WILLIAM NEUMAN&inline=nyt-per)
Published: June 26, 2007
They are just lines on a graph, but for many subway riders they will provide unique insight into one of the great aggravations of life underground: why trains on some lines are so often both crowded and late, while on other lines the trains seem to cruise along on schedule with almost no one on board.
Skip to next paragraph (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/nyregion/26mta.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin#secondParagraph) Multimedia

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/06/26/nyregion/26mtagraphic_promo.jpgGraphic (javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/06/26/nyregion/26mtagraphic.ready.html', '552_882', 'width=552,height=882,location=no,scrollbars=yes,t oolbars=no,resizable=yes'))Track Performance (javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/06/26/nyregion/26mtagraphic.ready.html', '552_882', 'width=552,height=882,location=no,scrollbars=yes,t oolbars=no,resizable=yes'))






In an unusually candid effort at self-examination for a habitually insular agency, New York City Transit (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/new_york_city_transit/index.html?inline=nyt-org) yesterday presented what could be called an index of straphanger frustration. It made an analysis of each subway line that shows at a glance how often trains run late, how crowded they are and whether more trains could be added to ease the problems.
What is revealed is both predictable and eye-opening. Many subway lines are simply maxed out, meaning there is no room on the tracks they use to add trains that could carry the swelling numbers of riders. And that has implications that range from day-to-day decisions about how trains travel through the system to long-term planning on how to best move people around a growing city.
“From my point of view, this is scary,” said Howard H. Roberts Jr., the president of New York City Transit, who presented the data to members of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s board. “This is scary in the sense that right now, on a lot of these lines, we’re several years and a big capital construction project away from being able to provide what I consider adequate service. We’re constrained.”
Mr. Roberts said the data had particular significance in light of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/michael_r_bloomberg/index.html?inline=nyt-per)’s proposal for a congestion pricing system that would charge most drivers who enter Manhattan below 86th Street — with the intent of moving people out of their cars and onto mass transit.
Mr. Roberts said that on many subway lines, especially the heavily used numbered lines, there is little or no room to accommodate more riders.
“It’s bad news,” Mr. Roberts said. “There’s no room at the inn.”
If congestion pricing becomes a reality, planners will have to rely on additional bus service as a way to increase the transit system’s capacity.
Mr. Roberts had his staff compile the data to solve a mystery he encountered after taking over the nation’s largest transit system in April. He said that he noticed that the subway’s A division (the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 lines) regularly operated with about 7 percent more late or canceled trains than the B division, (all the letter lines and the No. 7 line.) The 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 trains are part of the old IRT system, the city’s first subway.
What Mr. Roberts discovered was that most of the A division lines are being stretched to their limit in two ways: no additional trains can be added to the schedule during rush hours because the tracks they use are already handling the maximum number possible, and most of the rush hour trains are already crammed with an overflow of riders.
Crowding is so bad that on the 4, 5, 6 and L lines, trains during the morning rush exceed the transit agency’s loading guidelines, which posit that every rider should have at least a three-square-foot space to stand in (that translates to a square patch of car floor 20 inches on each side).
Crowded trains can lead to delays because it takes people more time to get in and out of the cars.
But the real squeeze results from the crowded tracks. Trains must operate with enough space between them so they have room to stop to avoid a collision. That limits the number of trains that can fit on a stretch of track. And when a track is operating at full capacity, even small delays —like those caused by a passenger who is ill or someone holding a door open while a friend races down the stairs — can have a big impact.
“You get to the point where the slightest deviation in schedule causes a backup and what is sometimes referred to as ‘the wave,’ ” Mr. Roberts said. “One train slows down for any reason and it starts a wave back up the system.”
He compared the most heavily used tracks to a highway with bumper-to-bumper traffic, where someone slowing down or changing lanes can force drivers far behind to put on the brakes.
The information presented yesterday brings the problem into clear focus.
The No. 4 and 5 trains share the express track on the Lexington Avenue line in Manhattan. The track is at full capacity, with a total of 27 trains an hour running during the morning peak. In addition, peak ridership on both lines exceeds the guidelines, with more people jamming onto cars than the cars are meant to hold.
It is no wonder, then, that in April, riders on the No. 4 line suffered through the greatest number of late trains, with only 83.2 percent of trains running on time. The No. 5 train was not far ahead, with 87.2 percent of trains on time.
It was a far different story on another set of tracks. The J, Z and M trains, which run from Queens to Manhattan and Brooklyn, are far from using their full capacity, both on the tracks and inside the cars. All three lines had an on-time performance close to 99 percent in April.
Mr. Roberts said that he is trying to find solutions to these problems. He has asked the agency’s engineers to study the feasibility of extending the length of the platforms on the most crowded lines, to allow for longer trains. On the Lexington Avenue line, that could mean running 12-car trains instead of the current 10-car trains, a 20 percent increase in capacity. But a project of that magnitude would take several years to complete.
Other long-term solutions are also years away, including a new Second Avenue subway and expansion of a computerized signal system that would allow the trains to run closer together, increasing the number that could run on the tracks.
Next Article in New York Region (3 of 30) » (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/nyregion/26bowery.html)

[BrooklynRider]

Why do I find that report kind of anti-climactic?

[Ninjahedge]

Wow, big surprise. A 50 year old control system is inefficient?

Clue, look at the trains that people ride the most and see what stations are used the most. Sometimes you need to limit service to make service better for all. If people need to walk an extra 5 blocks, the net difference might be a gross savings in commuting time for all.

Make the trains go local again after rush.

[Eugenious]

re: control system

I posted on gothamist comments and some guy replied.



The signal system is only one constraint on capacity. The Queens Boulevard Express is the only line maxed out on that basis -- at 30 trains per hour.
The Lex Express is constrained by dwell time Grand Central. It takes people so long to squeeze in and out that you can't run more than 27 trains per hour there.
The L and 6 are constrained by terminal capacity. It takes to long to get trains in and out of 8th Avenue/Brooklyn Bridge to run more of them.
The 2/3 is constrained by the merge at Eastern Parkway and Nostrand. There are only so many trains that can be run through there, even though there is room for more elsewhere on the line.
And there aren't enough cars, or places to store them overnight. But that is the easiest to fix.
Off peak? Plenty of capacity all ways around. They should let people work 1/2 day at home.

[Ninjahedge]

I am all for teh shift in the work day. You get some companies to make their work day the 7-3 or 10-6 (in theory, most work longer than that) you can expand the rush and get rid of that lump.

People will start doing that too, and probably have been due to the unpleasant nature of the system now.

As for dwell/linger time, they have to look for more efficient design for the train systems. That is harder. How do people get in and out of the trains in Japan? How can we get people to stop blocking doors? How can we get mothers to fold up their daamn strollers during rush hour commute? How can we get backpackers to take OFF their bag when they are in the train?

But so many times I have seen trains lagged behind because of signals, or lag it is rediculous. Everyone wants the first train, the next could be half full, and 2 minutes later, but to hell with that!!! We want the first one!!! (Same goes for busses, they get clumped too).

We have to find some valid way to allow train "skipping" or additional express routes to be developed for primetime. If the main problem is lag, you need to get stations that allow people to get off of both sides of the train at once, or a load/unload pattern (one side with no entry opens first, then the other side opens, similar to what they used to have on the 33rd streed station for the PATH train on the far right facing the subway tunnel direction).


You are right though, I think more than one thnig needs to be done to alleviate this. Maybe they should offer a prize to teh first person/group able to model commuter flow and make a working model. It would be a GREAT exercise for students and engineers studying urban planning. A group PHD project with a cash payout at the end!!! ;)

[Eugenious]

NYC Transit 2008 Service Initiatives

Continuing the massive effort to upgrade and improve mass transit services to its seven million daily bus and subway customers, MTA New York City Transit plans to offer a series of initiatives funded through the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s 2008 budget. When combined with the ongoing investment in rehabilitated stations, new vehicles and improved accessibility these service improvements will provide tangible benefits for our customers.
The service initiatives reflect the NYC Transit’s ongoing commitment to meeting the needs of the city’s bus and subway riders. Customer needs and changes in travel patterns are being addressed with new, speedier bus services, route extensions and service increases along Staten Island express routes.
Increased subway use will be addressed by service additions on several lines, including the L, which has seen huge ridership gains over the past several years.

http://mta.info/mta/news/newsroom/images/NYCB_0023_1.jpg (http://mta.info/mta/news/newsroom/images/high-res/NYCB_0023_1.jpg)
Hybrid Electric Bus in Front of the
NY Public Library

http://mta.info/mta/news/newsroom/images/NYCT_0219.jpg (http://mta.info/mta/news/newsroom/images/high-res/NYCT_0219.jpg)
New R160 Subway Car at 42nd Street Station
Selected Planned Service Increases for 2008


Bus
Bus Rapid Transit initiative scheduled to begin with implementation along two routes.
B83 bus route extended to Gateway Shopping Center in Brooklyn
B61 and B77 routes extended to Ikea in Red Hook section of Brooklyn
Increased Staten Island express bus service on weekends, weekdays, middays and nights.
Subway
Additional rush hour, weekday off-peak and weekend service on the L Line to provide shorter waiting times and more comfortable travel conditions.
Additional evening service on the Nos. 1, 4, 5 and 7, and additional weekend service on the No. 7.
New R160 cars to be delivered for service on the J, Z, L, M, N and Q Lines. (We expect board approval of the first of two contact options for 620 cars)
ADA accessibility at South Ferry (new No. 1 Line terminal), Union Turnpike-Kew Gardens on the E and F, and 47-50/Rockefeller Center on the B, D, F and V.
Longer hours of weekday service on the B and W and extended service (on the G) to Church Avenue, Brooklyn In addition to these operational upgrades, several capital improvements will be either begun, completed or remain underway in 2008. Customers will benefit from the ongoing delivery of aforementioned R160 subway cars, which are brining 21st century amenities to subway lines that are currently being served by 40-year-old equipment.
NYC Transit has been taking delivery of a 660-car order of new technology R160 cars, manufactured by Kawasaki and Alstom. The final 198 cars of the initial order are scheduled for delivery by May 30th, 2008. These cars, like the new cars serving the numbered lines, are providing customers with unparalleled levels of reliability, comfort and customer information.

http://mta.info/mta/news/newsroom/images/NYCT_0051.jpg (http://mta.info/mta/news/newsroom/images/high-res/NYCT_0051.jpg)
Newly Installed Accessible Elevator
at Utica Avenue Station in Brooklyn
Next year, a total of 12 subway station rehabilitations are scheduled to be completed, and five of those stations will be made accessible. During the same period, 23 station rehabilitations will be in construction and six of those jobs will include the addition of ADA features. Additionally, nearly 60,000 feet of new track will be installed in the subway.
Several hundred new buses are scheduled to hit the streets next year, providing more comfort for our customers and cleaner, more efficient operation. NYC Transit is scheduled to take delivery of 106 Hybrid/Electric buses, 82 high-capacity articulated models and 66 express coaches.
The opening of a new bus depot at Grand Avenue, Brooklyn will help improve bus maintenance and quality control efforts, benefiting bus customers in Brooklyn and Queens.

[gradvmedusa]

In Tokyo and Hong Kong they have marking on the floor of the station for where you should stand to board, they allow for people to be ready to enter as soon as the train stops and people exit through the middle of the two lines for each door. Its very orderly. The doors are also wider and the trains are open all the way through, no doors or individual cars increases standing space by probably 15%

[NewYorkDoc]

The subway here needs A/C BAD. It's ridiculous that in New York, the proclaimed "Capital of the world", we don't have a comfortable mass transit system in the summer.

[Eugenious]

Someone made a great map showing line extensions which would "complete" the Subway system without building new lines. I found this fascinating.

http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x266/guypak/futuremta.gif

[Ed007Toronto]

Missing the 7 extension.

[Eugenious]

Missing the 7 extension.

No it's not :)

[NYatKNIGHT]

He means to the West Side.

[Eugenious]

He means to the West Side.

yeah I know, but I think extending it in queens is also important

[NYatKNIGHT]

Yes, I like the extensions. While you're at it, extend the "T" train down 125th Street.

[OmegaNYC]

^^^ How far down 125th? I think all the way down to the 1 would be perfect.

[NewYorkDoc]

^^^ How far down 125th? I think all the way down to the 1 would be perfect.

Anything shorter would make it incomplete, although better than nothing.

[NoyokA]

The subway here needs A/C BAD. It's ridiculous that in New York, the proclaimed "Capital of the world", we don't have a comfortable mass transit system in the summer.

Well, all subway cars are airconditioned. Because of the age and how the subway system was constructed it is impossible to aircondition the stations themselves.

[OmegaNYC]

Anything shorter would make it incomplete, although better than nothing.

Yeah, by making the T line start/stop at 125th on Broadway would be great. Manhattan doesn't have that many crosstown lines, and having one Uptown would GREATLY ease congestion

[NoyokA]

Yeah, by making the T line start/stop at 125th on Broadway would be great. Manhattan doesn't have that many crosstown lines, and having one Uptown would GREATLY ease congestion

I’ve advocated this for a while. To quote myself many posts back:


Here's what needs to be done with the NYC subway:

http://img392.imageshack.us/img392/332/mta0nr.jpg

Theres all this talk about connecting JFK, have we all forgotten about LGA?

Most importantly it provides a cross town connection above 50th street, it would act as a huge stimulus for upper Manhattan.

I told a friend of mine who is a huge subway buff about this, he actually designed a subway map out of construction paper that is spot on, and he reminded me of an obvious oversight of this plan, that is in connecting with the 1 would be impossible because at 125th the 1 goes above ground, meaning there would have to be an enclosed staircase or the like to allow for subway transfers, if that’s even possible. He then reminded me that the 1 is elevated because of the steep dip in topography and that it is impossible or at least very difficult again to bury it, also meaning that it would probably be impossible to run this proposed line to west 125th because of the topography. I still think it is very important that a cross town connection be made above 50th street; one is not needed across the park because the cross-town busses are effective and short because of the park. I would say that the line should maybe run at 116th from the T to the 1, but the expresses are at 125th and changing the express stations I would imagine would be a huge headache, if not technically impossible. Instead I think the line should still run along 125th until the C and then either divert to City College or to Columbia, the question then becomes who should get cross-town priority, students receiving a public education or those receiving an overpriced private education, my biased opinion has the City College students receiving the benefit, although by that time the stop would already be 137th City College/Columbia.

[NoyokA]

Here we are:

http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/6062/35397865qs0.jpg

[NewYorkDoc]

Not to nitpick Stern...but that both E trains (to Queens and back) didn't have air conditioning. ;)

But, most do I'll admit...which is a great relief when walking into them.

[ramvid01]

I like those additions. I never understood why there wasn't a line down Woodhaven Boulevard as it seems to be sorely lacking a line and is very populated. What bothers me more though is that even though the 2nd ave subway is getting built (and finished I hope) there isn't any real planning for new subway lines/extentions.

I am also wondering if there is any news on the 7 extension. Doesn't seem like anything has been said on that front. :confused:

[Hamilton]

Instead I think the line should still run along 125th until the C and then either divert to City College or to Columbia, the question then becomes who should get cross-town priority, students receiving a public education or those receiving an overpriced private education, my biased opinion has the City College students receiving the benefit, although by that time the stop would already be 137th City College/Columbia.

Not to go too far off-topic, but I just wanted to mention that lots of students at Columbia (me included) pay less than City College tuition, after financial aid is factored in. You can't paint everyone at Columbia with the same broad brush. As a Columbia (or other Ivy League school) student, you are made to pay only as much as you (or your parents) can afford. For a lot of students here, that's $45,000 a year, but several students I know go for free. In a way, the "overpriced" education for the Rockefellers and DuPonts subsidizes a free ride for kids from the General Grant Houses.

[Ninjahedge]

Ham, that is not true.

My parents had to mortgage their house to the eyeballs to send me to college.

My father was out of work for 6 months during the recession, and my mother was a school teacher. The house was partially built by them and family, but since it had equity, the school (and others) determined that my non-minority, non-corporate butt was not worth any financial aid OR scholarship (despite academic honor).

Hell, we had to fight to FIND a National Merit Scholarship! (I was awarded the "Merit" without the actual "Scholarship". We had to hunt down a sponsor!!).

Schools are very selective about who they give money to. And it is not always about need or merit.

[Hamilton]

Ham, that is not true.

My parents had to mortgage their house to the eyeballs to send me to college.

My father was out of work for 6 months during the recession, and my mother was a school teacher. The house was partially built by them and family, but since it had equity, the school (and others) determined that my non-minority, non-corporate butt was not worth any financial aid OR scholarship (despite academic honor).

Hell, we had to fight to FIND a National Merit Scholarship! (I was awarded the "Merit" without the actual "Scholarship". We had to hunt down a sponsor!!).

Schools are very selective about who they give money to. And it is not always about need or merit.

The two important questions are, where and when did you go to school?
Good-but-not-great private schools with smaller endowments (like NYU) usually offer less financial aid. The schools with billions of dollars in the bank have recently beefed up financial aid. Harvard and other top private schools, for instance, now offer free rides to all students whose parents make less than $40,000 a year, no exceptions. For what it's worth, Ivy League schools don't give merit scholarships to anyone.

Also, it sounds like your parents were upper middle class, or white collar, who seem to be the most hard-hit by college tuitions at private schools. My parents are blue collar, lower-middle-class, which results in more financial aid. The kids from the projects or rural South Dakota or Alabama come for free, while tuition is chump change for the jet set and blue bloods.

[NoyokA]

I didn’t mean to open a can of worms in suggesting the “T” should veer to City College in my hypothetical plan, I was joking more than anything. I personally have no problem with my public education, instead of searching for scholarships and financial aid for a private school, not necessarily Columbia, my education has been more than adequate at a cost for two semesters in what I make in a month. But I regress, this is all off-topic and belongs elsewhere.

[Ninjahedge]

Hey Ham. I know what you are saying, but know that my family was solid Blue at the time. My siblings and I have come out of that, but at the time, money that was spent was all held above our heads in the form of debt.


The school I went to was not tops, but its tuition was in the top bracket.

They are still asking me for money too!!!! (If I ever give it will be a fund for scholoarships based on merit, not race, creed, and only loosely based on need).

As for this going OT, yeppers.


'nuff said! ;)

[eddhead]

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/07/24/nyregion/subwaygraphicFull.gif



Great find, Rap but the results puzzle me. I take the 2/3 back and forth to work daily and I cannot imagine a line that runs more frequently. Litterlly every 2 minutes or so during rush.

I stopped taking the A which is listed above it because it does not run nearly as frequently.

Ah well... to each thier own.

[ablarc]

^ These tabulations always contain anomalies and errors. Only those who have personal experience can recognize these errors --and then only some. Do we mostly run on misinformation?

[NoyokA]

As far as the efficiency of trains, I’m wondering if anyone can answer my question as to the existence of the ghost garbage trains that run late at night. I’m sure other people have experienced this, you’re sitting at a subway station and five other trains going the other direction pass by, a half hour later you finally see a train slowly chugging along, only to find that the first few cars are empty towing behind it barges of garbage. If you wait for a real train to follow it you’re screwed because it’ll be at least a half hour until a regular train follows, meaning you waste an hour of your night waiting for a subway; every time I see the ghost train arrive I curse and walk out of the station and take a cab or a bus, no matter how good my night might have been, these garbage ghost trains always put a damper to it.

[Schadenfrau]

I've certainly seen them and experienced the same thing, but what's the question, Stern?

[NoyokA]

I've certainly seen them and experienced the same thing, but what's the question, Stern?

Why do they exist, are they really necessary ?

[Empire State]

Why do they exist, are they really necessary ?

Considering garbage has been known to start track fires that can destroy infastructure, I'd say they're quite necessary.

[NoyokA]

Did some research and found out these work cars do more than just picking up garbage:

http://www.nycsubway.org/cars/workcars.html

Its obvious these cars are essential for keeping the subways running smoothly, though I would like it if there was a warning that these cars were at work berfore entering the subway station.