[Transportation Stories] Or, why I hate the MTA
mmm simply put… I hate the MTA. It is a bloated organization that should be downsized. it’s run by unions, which I normally don’t have any issue with, that protect lazy, under-educated and poor performing employees that seek to protect the status quo.
The communications system and protocols are atrocious. God forbid any of us gets stuck in a accident, what the hell would we do? you can’t understand a word anyone is saying on the public address systems! Some subway stations don’t even have public address systems!!!
MTA exists to waste our time. Why can’t anyone realize that it’d be a hell of a lot NICER if you would put the signs that indicate that the train ISN’T running, in a prominently situated place BEFORE you pay your fare and walk down several flights of the stairs to an empty platform?
Why is the Station Attendant at High Street A Station always standing OUTSIDE of the subway station smoking a cigarette and talking on her cell phone when the sign she’s posted in the empty booth says she’s IN the station helping customers?
The MTA should be responsible for 1 thing only: Running the trains. The rest of the transportation experience should be privatized to the extent possible. It’s painfully obvious that the MTA can’t do any of the following:
- properly maintain (ie, clean), secure and consistently upgrade subway stations
- appropriately communicate in multiple formats (and languages) basic system information as well as changes
- provide effective communications channels to its riders such as public phones, wifi/internet access, cell
phone use
- provide a consistently comfortable riding experience with weather-appropriate climate controls (a/c and heat)
- take advantage of the captive audience of passengers to provide an effective advertising experience that would generate additional revenue to the system
I’ve long believed that the Subway Stations should be offered up for privatization or some variation of the
Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) that definitely changed the crime and cleanliness of the Giuliani era.
BIDs are made up of local businesses who contribute to a budget that funds security, street cleaning and other things for that particular district. So let’s do the same thing… create BIDs for Subway stations.
I’m willing to believe the various BIDs in major areas did more to change the safety of this city than any other policies enacted by Giuliani and Bloomberg.
Bring back vendors into the subway stations and give them responsibilities for cleaning and securing it.
Give the subway rider the opportunity to purchase and accomplish things while she’s waiting for the subway.
Heaven forbid you don’t feel well on the subway and need a bottle of water… where would you buy it from? Wouldn’t it be nice if you knew at every stop there was vendor of such goods?
Suggestions:
- Establish the job of Information Officer whose singular responsibilities are to be a source of information for the general public and responsible for remaining on the subway platforms 24/7.
- Let banks put ATMs in the subway stations in exchange for putting up security cameras all over the station.
- Bring interactive screens into the subway stations, so that BEFORE I leave the station, I know exactly
what will be in my nearest vicinity (shops, food, etc.) once I leave the station. Embed these applications into the ATM interfaces if necessary
- Designate one evening of every week that a subway station is closed for maintenance and repairs. Make this permanent. It will suck when it first happens, but then like Alternate Side of
the Street Parking, New Yorkers will learn to live with it, especially when they realize how much stations will improve when they have the time to do so (example: DC Metro)
Quick question: where’s your closest Police Station? Does anyone know this off the top of their head? I certainly don’t. But I DO KNOW where the closest subway stations are. Why not
combine these two? Put more smaller police stations IN subway stations!
In addition to all of the above, the Bus system sucks too. Here’s my suggestions:
- Create hybrid transportation solutions. Question: What’s a compromise between a public bus and a taxi cab? A smaller bus that goes in more specific yet general destinations with a larger amount of people than a taxi and smaller amount of people than a large bus. Why not take the vehicles that are
typically used for transporting the disabled or for party vans and make them “Collectives.” Put GPS and wifi in the vehicles and have it based on an on-demand principle.
For example: 5 people are distributed in various locations on the Upper West Side. All of them have indicated via an app on their mobile phone that their intended destination is the general vicinity of the NYU area. Have this smaller vehicle (that is more agile on city streets) pick up those individuals and bring them to the location. MTA Buses are too big and take up too much street space…
There’s evidence for the effectiveness of this type of solution. They’re called “Dollar Vans” and are in action every day in the farthest sections of the outer boroughs underserved by the MTA.
The first place I’d enabled a Collective system would be to have one go back/forth in the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. This would reconnect residents of the Red Hook area to downtown Manhattan in a
heart beat and revitalize that area tremendously.
That’s it for now… I could go on and on… But let me end with this. There is a damn good reason that
it was made a Federal OIffense to assault an MTA employee punishable with years in prison…
Good luck riding the rails,
J.Ro (for Mayor)