Cite Subway Improvements
'Transit' Cleaning Up Its Act

By ARI PAUL

New York City Transit President Howard H. Roberts Jan. 10 told the City Council's Transportation Committee that the agency was taking gradual steps, including the institution of two Line General Managers, to improve the subway system after last year's rider survey yielded poor grades.

The Chief-Leader/Katie Orlinsky GETTING BACK ON TRACK: New York City Transit President Howard H. Roberts updates the City Council's Transportation Committee Jan. 10 on what the authority is doing in response to poor grades for the subways on rider surveys.

NYC Transit conducted a rider survey on the system's 22 subway lines with a paper ballot and an on-line form beginning in the summer of 2007. Grading several categories, the overall average was C-. Committee Chairman John Liu said the results were not surprising.

An Influx of Cleaners

"At least there were no failing grades," he said.

In response, NYC Transit increased train service on the L and 7 lines in addition to creating a new Line General Manager for both lines last month, something Mr. Roberts said he hoped to do on all lines. The authority has also hired 250 more Cleaners to address the cleanliness of stations, a top concern in the reports.

NYC Transit spent $360,000 on the surveys and distributed more than 800,000 report cards, getting back more than 141,000 responses. Mr. Roberts said he hoped to do a similar survey on the bus system in the spring and that he wanted to make rider surveys an annual occurrence.

"You really are letting customers drive this system," he testified.

He added that improvements won't come quickly, and that he would be satisfied if the overall grade of the system went up to C in a year's time.

Transport Workers Union Local 100 Train Operator Division Chairman Steve Downs has complained that Train Operators and Conductors are overworked as it is. After the hearing, Mr. Roberts told reporters that the agency would be adding train crews on lines where it increases train service.

'Need Recovery Time'

"Depending how long you operate the train, you may be adding multiple crews because they can only work eight hours," he said. "In terms of the time that crews have between trains, obviously we want to make sure that they do have adequate recovery time, but in a lot of places we're physically constrained. At the end of the L at 8th Ave. and 14th St. and the end of the 7 at Times Square there are only two tracks there, and so a train comes in and that train physically has to go back out. So what we usually do is not have the same crew take the train back. They drop back to a subsequent train."

Council Members G. Oliver Koppell and Darlene Mealy, a former NYC Transit worker, used their question time to complain to the authority president about excessive trash build-up at stations in their districts.

"Maybe I have the Cleaners out there and they are not being adequately supervised," Mr. Roberts said. "We are adding Cleaners."

He also told reporters that it was unclear whether or not the new Line General Managers, who took their positions in December, had a positive effect on the L and 7 lines' service.

"I can tell you they have great ideas and both of them are aggressively looking at what changes they can make and they are pressing people elsewhere within the authority to support those changes," he said.