Don't Lift Train Seats - Make Cars Convertibles; How Not to Fix Transit System
By JIM CALLAGHAN
In the face of perhaps the most difficult transit crisis the city has had to deal with since the beginning of the subway system in 1904, New Yorkers were heartened two weeks ago to discover that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's main idea man at New York City Transit, Howard Roberts, had stumbled across an amazingly simple problem to overcrowded trains: remove the seats!

Mr. Callaghan, a staff writer for the New York Teacher, has been writing about city politics since 1978. The views expressed are his own, not his union's. He can be reached at mcalla24@aol.com.

The consultant who authored that report is probably hard at work on the next MTA cost-saving measure, which involves something that no engineer had ever thought of: remove the subway car roofs to save on air-conditioning costs. And, the next logical step would be removing the doors, resulting in fewer delays and, of course, huge personnel savings since the conductors will be given their walking papers.

Governor, Mayor Vague

This seat-removal idea came two days after Governor Paterson made a speech at the National Press Club warning that today's economic picture was on the verge of becoming another Great Depression. Among other things, he highlighted how New Yorkers get shortchanged every year by Congress when it comes to mass-transit funding.

A FEW MODEST PROPOSALS: New York City Transit President Howard H. Roberts is ready to remove the seats from some subway trains to ease congestion, but sounder and more-comprehensive ideas coupled with smarter infusions of money are needed to improve the transit system.

Last Tuesday, Mayor Mike Bloomberg called for "innovative, substantive, and creative ideas" to reduce air pollution and global warming. The Mayor said it was going to "take massive investments and tough political decisions" to reduce global warming but the Mayor wants someone else, preferably someone in Washington, to think creatively — not him.

Both Bloomberg and Paterson have been vague about how to handle the problems of the MTA and how to encourage commuters to switch from cars to a bus or a subway.

Shades of La Guardia

The city is at a historic crossroads in 2008, since apparently the $4.00-per-gallon cost of gasoline has been enough to change the driving habits of New Yorkers, who are flocking to the subways and buses, adding to the overcrowding.

So far, the best the MTA think-tankers can come up with is to remove seats, a hare-brained idea almost as ludicrous as former Mayor La Guardia's idea in 1946. The Little Flower, a basket case after serving 12 years as mayor, wrote a newspaper column suggesting that the way to save the sacrosanct nickel subway fare was to charge nonrush-hour commuters seven cents and rush-hour riders a nickel — the reverse of what we now have, which is to charge off-peak riders less.

New Yorkers, who like to think of themselves as big dreamers, should be demanding that our political leaders not squander this opportunity and not repeat the mistakes of the past. This is the time for Paterson and Bloomberg to declare a clean-air emergency and make those "tough" decisions that will shape the future of our city for generations.

Instead, the Mayor insists that his congestion-pricing idea is still under consideration in Albany.

Hylan Bungled His Chance

We have been down the road of wrong moves before, and decisions made many years ago still haunt us. Mayor John Francis Hylan had a brilliant idea, to build a municipally-owned subway line, but he viewed it more as a way to compete with the privately-owned IRT and BMT and made poor planning decisions about too many of its routes, which run parallel to the other two lines. Hylan, who had been fired by the BMT for falling asleep in the cab of his subway, held a life-long grudge against the "traction interests," and he was permitted to use the Mayor's Office to settle that score.

In the 1950s, planners made a disastrous decision not to run a mass-transit line down the middle of the Long Island Expressway. Robert Moses refused to allow a rail link over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge when it was constructed from 1959 to 1964.

The good news is that we now have a chance to do things differently — immediately — without bankrupting the system.

In remarks not covered by the daily papers, Paterson told the National Press Club that, every three days, the MTA carries more passengers than Amtrak does all year. "The MTA moves 30 to 33 percent of America's mass-transit users," Paterson said, yet only receives 15 percent of the country's mass-transit budget, a royal screwing, which is news only if you have been living in Pago Pago for the last 30 years.

Subway a Boon to Employers

Proponents of more spending for the MTA, which means increased capacity and more service, not less service, also understand that New York already has the infra-structure to move those millions of workers around, and that without a subway system to deliver workers to their employers, we would just be a collection of 500 little villages.

But at the MTA, the same agency that once got caught keeping two sets of books, nearly every major project is over budget, behind schedule, scaled back like the Fulton St. shanda, or — surprise — over budget before construction begins (think of the IRT 7 line extension to the far west side of Manhattan).

Aside from the seatless subway car, the MTA bosses have resorted to a counterproductive answer of raising the fares, when everyone knows that lowering the fare increases ridership. The agency has reduced maintenance, resulting in more-frequent breakdowns; again, the exact opposite of what we need.

Bloomberg seems to get it, on paper at least. In the New York Post of Aug. 4, he said: "The MTA must do more to increase operational efficiencies." The problem with these one-liners is that the Mayor, seven years after his white paper on traffic and transit issued during the 2001 mayoral campaign, has refused to clear the streets of cars and trucks and to institute real Bus Rapid Transit, unlike the half-hearted deal going on in parts of The Bronx and Staten Island, where his bus-only lane ends abruptly two miles into the route.

Mayor: Traffic 'Good'

The Mayor doesn't want to offend car owners who think they have the same right to the streets as a bus carrying 60 passengers. In this, he is back to where he was two summers ago when he said: "We like traffic; it means economic activity, it means people coming here."

But clear the lanes he must if he wants to reduce air pollution. Yes, tough New Yorkers — the drivers who like to be alone with their thoughts in their cars, will have to change their selfish habits and the whining will be heard all the way to Yonkers, especially if Bloomberg has the cojones to impose a two-person per car rule for Manhattan-bound drivers.

But for the rest of us, we will be seeing the buses flying up and down Second and Third Avenues and Broadway and across 42nd St. and other major crosstown routes. Transponders on the bus will turn the light green and the same bus will be able to make six trips a day instead of three — an "efficiency" that the City Hall bean-counters would seemingly definitely point to with pride. It hasn't happened citywide, and it doesn't appear that it will happen in the next 17 months of the Bloomberg era.

Paterson must take drastic steps to stop the financial hemorrhaging at the MTA, starting by asking the State Legislature to replace the politically-wired board members, most of whom have proved incapable of running such a large system. Next, he should ask State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli to explain the MTA "debt'': the expenses, the salaries, the lawyers' fees and consultant fees. He should ask why a firm that paid $400 million to settle a claim in the Boston Big Dig project is still collecting tens of millions of dollars from the MTA for engineering costs.

Can Wait for Payments

We know something for sure that we only guessed at during the mid-1970s' so-called fiscal crisis: the bankers who own our debt are the same folks who were in charge of the banditry in the sub-prime loan scam, which will cost the Federal government nearly $30 billion in a bailout. They can wait for their loan payments.

The Mayor should stop saying silly things like he did last week in this newspaper — that the reason for construction delays and cost overruns on MTA projects is because MTA engineers don't make enough money and find it difficult to hondle with the better-paid big shots at the private companies that have been given a no-limit credit card by the MTA. The reality is that the mob is back in the business, including the delivery of cement, and that on some multi-billion dollar jobs there is only bidder (a red flag for any prosecutor). Projects like the Second Ave. Subway will not be built in our lifetimes because we all know that MTA construction has become a "cost-plus" proposition.

The Long Island Railroad East Side Access project — designed to save 60,000 commuters 30 minutes a day, is already $1 billion over budget, and the latest cost estimate is $8.5 billion. It might be finished by 2013.

No Way to Build a Railroad

Poorly-paid or highly-paid MTA engineers can figure out how to get the 7 line above ground at Times Square and build a light rail system across 42nd St. and down 10th Ave. We already have a train to the plane (A train to Howard Beach, then the Air Train. Seven bucks for a one-hour ride).

The Fulton St. fiasco should end now; after destroying the livelihoods of 50 business-owners, the place is a mess and nothing good will ever come of it.

East Side residents should get their BRT system up and running in a few months while the MTA does a light rail system on Third Ave. Another agency just as incompetent as the MTA is the Port Authority, which wants to spend a few billion to re-build a PATH station which doesn't need re-building, since the one we have now works perfectly well.

Paterson should close down all these money-bleeding deals until the MTA tells him how it will finish the projects without the funding. The way the MTA operates now is akin to building a new deck on your house without knowing how much it will cost or where you will get the money to finish the job while paying the contractor for "unforeseen" costs.

By December, former MTA Chair Richard Ravitch will propose a steady funding source for the cash-starved MTA. The leaks about congestion pricing, which Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver drove a stake into, have already started in the New York Times, the Mayor's favorite newspaper, but don't expect any of the following to be included in the Ravitch report:

1. A tax on millionaires. The Mayor will oppose it, saying the aggrieved rich folks will "move out of town." To where — Allentown, Pa. in a Trump Tower? The income-tax surcharge will be less than one percent a year for five years and will raise $1 billion a year for transit. The Mayor, however, wants to increase the gasoline tax on working stiffs.

2. Re-instituting the commuter tax, which would give the city about $500 million a year.

3. A zoning change to make developers pay for the cost of a new subway station or added bus capacity. Such a rule is also needed for new school seats, for the Mayor's City "Planning" Commission has done little real planning as those new luxury towers go up all over town. Ravitch, a former builder, will not betray his class on this one. When Paterson and Bloomberg say there will be one million more people living in New York in the next 10 years, they forget to say that it will happen only if city government issues permits for the buildings and only if there are major zoning changes approved by the Mayor and City Council.