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Presidential Visit Leads To Potential Detours

Posted by
on May 13th, 2010 at 4:43 pm

Due to tonight’s visit by President Obama, riders should expect potential delays on certain bus routes & station closures. Here are the complete details courtesy of a press release sent to me earlier:

President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit Manhattan this evening. As a result, based on street closures (frozen zones) instituted by the U.S. Secret Service and the New York City Police Department, many local and express bus routes in Lower and Midtown Manhattan are expected to be either severely delayed or detoured between 4 and 9 p.m., especially the M1, M2, M3, M4, M5, M6, M9, M15, Q32, M42, M50, M101, M102, M103, M104, BxM1, BxM2, BxM3, BxM4a, BxM4b, BxM6, BxM7, BxM7a, BxM7b, BxM9, BxM10 and BxM18.

In addition, some subway station entrances/exits may be temporarily closed. These include but are not limited to Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall 456, Chambers Street JMZ and 5th Avenue-53rd Street EV.

xoxo Transit Blogger

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NYC & NYS Comptrollers Announce Joint Audit

Posted by
on May 13th, 2010 at 12:52 pm

Earlier this morning, the New York City Comptroller John C. Liu & New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli announced a joint audit. The audit is scheduled to look into the impact of service diversions on multiple levels along with how effective the MTA was in planning these changes. Here is the press release that was released this morning:

New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli and New York City Comptroller John C. Liu today announced their offices would conduct a joint audit of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). The comptrollers said the audit would review the fiscal and community impact of subway and commuter rail service disruptions, as well as how effectively and efficiently the MTA managed the planned service changes.

“New Yorkers need the MTA,” Comptroller DiNapoli said. “But they don’t have a lot of confidence that the MTA is doing its best to provide the service the city needs. Today is the first day of a new partnership. Comptroller Liu and I are going to make sure the MTA is doing everything possible to keep the city moving. These are tough fiscal times, but tough times make it even more imperative that the MTA step up and do better.”

“It often seems that the MTA is most reliable for its perennial shutdowns of subway service, citing necessary track work,” said Comptroller Liu, former Chairperson of the City Council Transportation Committee. “There’s little question that repairs and upgrades are needed throughout the system. But people need far greater assurance that the MTA is planning the shutdowns and actual track work tightly so as to minimize the disruptions to riders and the economic impact to small business owners. Our examination of the MTA will shed light on whether ‘necessary track work’ has become an overused black hole of an excuse.”

The audit partnership announced during a City Hall press conference today is the first joint effort between the City and State Comptrollers in more than 10 years.

In addition to addressing the fiscal impact upon communities directly affected by MTA service disruptions, the audit will also answer the following questions:

* Is the maintenance and capital work scheduled to promote efficient, cost effective maintenance?

* Is the maintenance and capital work scheduled to minimize service disruption? And,

* Is the riding public adequately informed of potential service disruption?

The audit period will cover January 2009 until the end of the audit field work, scheduled to begin next week.

DiNapoli’s office has several other MTA audits underway, including a review of the MTA’s use of overtime, its salary compensation, and its cash management practices. DiNapoli’s office is now authorized by the recent Public Authority reforms to review the MTA’s big-ticket contracts, which will serve the public interest by providing greater oversight, accountability, and transparency.

Let me start off by saying this is a complete waste of time. I feel the MTA does a solid job in planning out the service diversions to impact as few riders as possible. The system is unlike most in our world which as it runs 24×7. There is no “quiet” time in where they can get work done & effect zero passengers. There is no perfect time for the agency to do the work.

This joint audit is nothing but a complete waste of time. I must say it is shocking that Mr. DiNapoli would waste his time on such an audit. He seems to focus on legitimate critiques of the MTA & how they run things. This is a definite reach for him & takes away from what should really be done. How about looking into why the city & state continue to rob the MTA of the funding it not only deserves but needs? How about focusing on the agency which promised x amount of dollars in a commuter tax but fell hundreds of millions short? Overall focus on what matters & not trivial stuff like this!

xoxo Transit Blogger

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Taxi Surcharge Revenue Comes Up Short

Posted by
on May 13th, 2010 at 12:16 am

When the New York State Legislature passed a “rescue bill” last year, it contained different funding mechanisms which were to help the MTA have a source of revenue to use. One of those funding mechanisms came from a 50 cent taxi surcharge that the majority of taxi drivers were against. This past Tuesday, the New York Post had an extremely brief report on how the surcharge funding fell short of expectations by $1.4M. Tom Namako has more in this report:

The city’s 50-cent additional charge on every cab ride in the city — money that’s supposed to be sent to the state to support the MTA — came in about $1.4 million short in the first quarter, records show.

Taxi medallion owners were expected to fork over about $14.2 million from November 2009 to March 2010, but instead only sent about $12.8 million to the state’s tax man, the department of Taxation and Finance said.

The money goes to the MTA’s operating budget, part of the 2009 bailout package that is supposed to keep the subways and buses running day-to-day.
Officials said the reason for the shortfall is likely compliance issues, as taxi owners are still getting used to the new charge.

The rider automatically pays the surcharge. If the driver doesn’t own the medallion, he then passes on the collections to the owner, who then passes it on to the state.

Collections of the tax did rebound in recent months, though.

Net collections starting at the beginning of April were $20.3 million.

By year’s end, the state is expecting the surcharge to bring $85 million to the agency’s coffers.

This is not exactly surprising or alarming considering the amount in question is a drop in the bucket as compared to the overall deficit the MTA faces. However something needs to be done to verify all the money is being collected as it should be. Even if the overall amount is small, the last thing the agency needs is to be shortchanged. They have experienced way too much of that over the years.

xoxo Transit Blogger

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NYDN Editorial: Unions Should Follow MTA Lead

Posted by
on May 12th, 2010 at 12:58 pm

It is extremely clear that the saga between the MTA & Transport Workers Union Local 100 will continue to dominate this blog for quite some time. The latest in this saga stems from an editorial in today’s New York Daily News about how it is time for the unions to follow the MTA’s lead by cutting costs & jobs:

The chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is laying it on the line to the agency’s unionized labor: Now is the time to increase productivity for the good of both the public and the workforce at large.

Confronting an $800 million budget deficit, Jay Walder has slashed headquarters management personnel by up to 20%, renegotiated vendor contracts, imposed service cuts and begun to eliminate 3,000 jobs. Some 1,500 will be laid off.

Now he is seeking cost savings by rewriting contract rules that, for example, bar the MTA from consolidating maintenance tasks, such as locomotive or air conditioning repair, in single shops.

Meeting with the Daily News Editorial Board, Walder was characteristically blunt: “We should have a well-paid and well-compensated workforce. I’m not actually taking anything away from that, but I think the quid pro quo of that is we should have a productive workforce, and I think we have a series of work rules and practices that have developed over many years that are all about how people effectively get paid for not working, and I think that’s really where the shame of the system is, and if we want to really attack what has to be changed today, we have to be attacking this.”

Right he is.

At a time when riders are paying more for less and the MTA is throwing station agents and others out of jobs, featherbedding and restrictions that promote idleness are unconscionable.

Transport Workers Union President John Samuelsen said Walder has yet to provide a list of proposed work rule changes. Which should be all the invitation Walder needs to open, it is hoped, a fruitful dialogue. The two men have a great deal to discuss, because there are many inefficiencies in the depots and workrooms of the MTA’s subway, bus and commuter line operations.

Click here for the complete editorial.

Some of the proposals listed make some common sense. Don’t get me wrong, I tend to defend unions when it is called for, but I will also admit that they too could play a role in helping out with the budget deficit while not hurting their members.

I do take a bit of an issue with whomever wrote this editorial though. He or she seems to be blindly defending the MTA in thinking the unions are a big obstacle for solving these budget woes along with thinking the MTA has done enough. Believe me, they have not done all that they could do. There are still layers upon layers of unnecessary management positions & redundancy that could be eliminated.

It should be interesting to see how long it will take for MTA Chairman Jay Walder to sit down & communicate with union leaders instead of fighting the battle through the media. If real solutions are to be found, real dialogue needs to occur. Anything less is doing a disservice to both sides.

Lastly, I am getting sick & tired of the idiotic comments or beliefs rather that MTA workers do not possess much intelligence or skill sets. Some of the smartest people I know happen to work for the MTA & not because it was the only job they could do. This notion that driving a bus, train, etc… is so easy that anyone could do it is ludicrous.

When having such a job was the “in thing”, where were all these experts lining up for what they feel is higher than average pay for such easy work? These same clowns who write such idiocy are the same people who probably could not change their oil or a flat tire properly much less operate a bus or train.

xoxo Transit Blogger

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MTA Goes Ahead With 250 Job Cuts

Posted by
on May 11th, 2010 at 11:53 pm

The saga of am I laid off or not continued on Tuesday with an unfortunate end for 250 employees. As you know the MTA had plans to lay off hundreds of workers starting a few days ago. However this past Thursday, a judge issued a temporary restraining order barring the MTA from closing the booths.

Fast forward to Saturday where the MTA announced that even with the temporary restraining order in place, they were still going to lay off 250 workers as they were not needed to keep the booths open until the litigation is finished. Tuesday was the unfortunate end of the road for those 250 workers as they were forced to hand in their uniforms. Pete Donohue of the New YorK Daily News has more:

Hundreds of token booth clerks were laid off Tuesday – essentially for the second time in a week.

The 250 clerks were hours from turning in their uniforms and badges last Thursday when NYC Transit was forced by a court order to slam on the brakes.

Over the weekend, transit officials issued another round of pink slips – and this time, a judge refused to intervene.

“It’s like a yo-yo,” said Laurenia Jarrett, 27, carrying a plastic garbage bag holding her uniforms into a NYC Transit building in Brooklyn.

Jarrett, who is seven months pregnant and has an 8-year-old daughter, is her family’s sole breadwinner, she said. She plans to file for unemployment and look for work.

“It’s a horrible situation to be in,” she said. “I took this job for security, and that security is now gone.”

The MTA was set last week to lay off 475 clerks and close 42 token booths. The union, however, filed a lawsuit alleging state law requires additional public hearings to shutter booths, and a judge issued a restraining order to stop the closures.

But over the weekend, transit officials decided that 250 employees were not needed to keep the booths open and moved forward with those layoffs while the lawsuit proceeds.

Click here for the complete report.

This was an unfortunate end for these workers who I hope are not unemployed long. On a different note, I just want to say that it is pretty ridiculous that some workers & union leaders feel that the MTA is not in a financial crisis. The agency has some major cleaning up that they can do but even with that aside, they are clearly in a financial crisis.

The numbers are there for everyone to see. The problem for those in denial is that they refuse to see. If these are the kinds of leaders in charge of representing me as a transit worker, I would be highly concerned. They obviously are clueless about the current financial reality.

xoxo Transit Blogger

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