Streetsblog New York City

Today, the Regional Plan Association held its 23rd Annual Assembly, gathering many of the region’s transportation and development players under one roof. Unlike recent years, when the buzz was about congestion pricing or DOT’s bicycle and pedestrian programs, this year’s program didn’t have much to excite livable streets advocates.

This afternoon, the Regional Plan Association chose to honor one of the men responsible for the transit-free Tappan Zee Bridge. Image: Thruway Authority

Instead, one particular project had the spotlight during today’s luncheon, when RPA gave a lifetime achievement award to Thruway Authority Chair Howard Milstein. In his acceptance speech, Milstein praised Governor Cuomo and the Tappan Zee Bridge project. “It should serve as a model for public works projects across America,” he said. Apparently without irony, Milstein added that one of the guiding questions for the transit-free project was, “What will best serve the people who rely on this thoroughfare every single day?”

“We recognized the importance of ensuring our project was environmentally sustainable from the start,” Milstein said. In announcing the award earlier this month, RPA Chairman Elliot “Lee” Sander praised the replacement bridge’s expansion of vehicle lanes across the Hudson River.

Although Milstein’s speech was an event centerpiece, the program was headlined by Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy, who spoke briefly about transit-oriented development in Stamford, where he previously served as mayor, and U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who concluded her speech with a full-throated endorsement of the Low Line project, a plan to create an underground park in the former Essex Street trolley terminal below Delancey Street, near the base of the Williamsburg Bridge.

A late-morning forum on the future of Penn Station focused mostly on the immediate political hurdles facing the effort to relocate Madison Square Garden. The arena’s special zoning permit is before the City Council for renewal, and MSG is seeking an indefinite permit. A coalition of groups, including RPA and the Municipal Art Society, are proposing a 10-year renewal instead, to allow the city, state, and property owners to embark on a process that would eventually relocate the Garden and reconstruct Penn Station. A City Council vote is anticipated in June, according to MAS President Vin Cipolla.

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Manhattan Community Board 6 has adopted a resolution in support of a state law to bring back flashing blue lights on Select Bus Service buses. The reso also urges the MTA to explore options to restore the lights in lieu of legislative action.

A bus at the launch event for the first Select Bus Service line, in the Bronx, in 2008. Photo: Brad Aaron

SBS buses went into service in 2008. The buses and their flashing blue lights — which help riders distinguish between SBS and local buses — operated without incident for four and a half years, until the MTA brought SBS service to Staten Island’s Hylan Boulevard. Last January, the lights were switched off after City Council Member Vincent Ignizio complained that motorists, himself included, were confusing SBS buses with emergency vehicles.

Though an obscure state law limits the use of flashing blue lights to volunteer firefighters, no legal action was taken to get the MTA to stop using the SBS lights. A 2010 Daily News story about the regulation provoked no official response. No bus driver was ever ticketed for using the lights. An MTA spokesperson told Transportation Nation that the agency had received all of one complaint from the public, after the launch of the inaugural SBS line in the Bronx.

Ignizio was a leading critic of the effort to bring SBS service to Hylan Boulevard. In 2009 he co-signed a letter to NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan complaining about proposed median bus lanes and boarding platforms on the grounds that they would take away parking. In response, DOT and the MTA altered Hylan Boulevard SBS significantly, nixing the median lanes in favor of non-continuous curbside lanes. Ignizio purportedly approved of the watered down version of Hylan Boulevard SBS, which launched last August.

According to Ignizio himself, his argument against SBS lights amounted to anecdotes and the support of 100 people on Facebook. Ignizio told Transportation Nation that he personally asked then-MTA chief Joe Lhota, currently a Republican candidate for mayor, to have the lights turned off. In January the MTA issued this statement:

Reacting to specific concerns, MTA New York City Transit has agreed to turn off the flashing blue lights that have served to alert riders to the arrival of Select Bus Service buses (SBS) since the speedier service was introduced. This measure is being taken to eliminate the possibility of confusing the vehicles with volunteer emergency vehicles, which are entitled by law to use the blue lights. We are currently in the process of developing an alternate means of identifying SBS buses.

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Today Governor Andrew Cuomo named Tom Prendergast Chairman and CEO of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Prendergast had been serving as interim executive director of the agency for more than three months, since Joseph Lhota departed at the end of last year to run for mayor. Prendergast, like previous MTA chiefs Lee Sander and Jay Walder, brings deep experience in transit management to the job.

Tom Prendergast. Photo: Daily News

Prendergast has a long career at the MTA, where he worked in various positions from 1982 to 2000, before departing for Parsons Brinckerhoff and, eventually, the top position at TransLink, the regional transportation agency in Vancouver, British Columbia. In 2009, he returned to the MTA, where he has run the city’s subway and bus systems as head of New York City Transit.

His tenure at the MTA has some advocates hopeful that Prendergast, who will be the fourth MTA leader in as many years, will end the instability atop the agency. The Tri-State Transportation Campaign, in a statement applauding the appointment, expressed hope that Prendergast “remains in the role longer than two years.”

Calling it “long overdue,” Transportation Alternatives also welcomed the announcement, noting Prendergast’s role in launching recent Select Bus Service routes. Prendergast was also the force behind Fastrack, which began the practice of weeklong nightly closures on subway lines to expedite maintenance.

The appointment was not a surprise to transit advocates, many of whom had quietly expressed their support for Prendergast. What remains notable is that Governor Cuomo took 102 days before making an announcement about the vacancy. After the departure of Jay Walder in 2011, the governor formed a search committee and the Senate confirmed Lhota three months after the vacancy opened.

After Senate confirmation, Prendergast is expected to resume contract negotiations with Transport Workers Union Local 100, which have stalled since Lhota’s departure, and he will have to soon tackle the formation of the MTA’s next five-year capital plan for maintenance and expansion.

Photo: @ChrisCQuinn

Christine Quinn outlined her transit platform at a campaign event at LaGuardia Community College this morning. With a focus on Select Bus Service and ferries — elements of the transit system that the mayor can actually control to a large degree — Quinn’s proposals tie the expansion of transit to the city’s economic health. She also called for local control of the MTA.

Transit users in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island have commute times that average 20 minutes longer than those in Manhattan, Quinn noted, echoing data from a 2009 report by the Center for an Urban Future. Most who commute for more than an hour make less than $35,000 a year.

Quinn said that by 2023 no New Yorker should spend more than an hour commuting in either direction. To that end, she unveiled a five-point plan called “Fair Ride NYC”:

• Quinn says NYC should “be given control of the MTA,” and the mayor should have the authority to appoint the president of New York City Transit. She likened this proposal to mayoral control of city schools.
• Quinn proposed the rollout of 10 new Select Bus Service routes in the next four years, with routes based on potential travel time savings and where the city sees potential for job growth. Quinn specifically called for SBS on Staten Island’s North Shore.
• Ferry service should be expanded with stops at Atlantic Avenue, Red Hook, Astoria, Roosevelt Island, 91st Street, and Ferry Point Park in the Bronx. Quinn has been a big booster of the East River Ferry service that launched in 2011, which is subsidized directly by the city and requires much more public funding per passenger than subways and buses.
• The MTA would extend Metro-North service to Penn Station, with new Bronx stops at Co-Op City, Parkchester, Morris Park, and Hunts Point. This plan is already in the works, and though it isn’t something she could control, as mayor Quinn would be in a position to counter opposition from Long Island politicos who don’t want to share space in Penn Station.
• The fifth spoke of the plan would “bring targeted economic development strategies” to areas with the longest commute times. “It’s not just about getting people to their jobs,” said Quinn. “It’s also about bringing jobs to where people live.”

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Earlier this week, there was good news for transit riders: MTA tax receipts came in higher than expected, providing up to $40 million in additional revenue this year. While the MTA isn’t scheduled to update its budget until summer, there is already talk of using the money to restore cuts or expand service.

That $40 million in extra revenue for the MTA? Cuomo took half of it away. Photo: Governor's Office

But the additional tax revenue is a happy accident. State policy didn’t change; the MTA simply reaped the benefits of an improving economy. In fact, Andrew Cuomo is still using the MTA as a piggy bank: the state budget now headed to his desk also includes a sneaky $20 million transit raid courtesy of the governor himself, which hasn’t made as many headlines.

The raid, first uncovered by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, works like this: The governor’s executive budget declared $20 million of MTA operating funds ”surplus” without explanation, then used it to cover holes in the state budget that would have otherwise been filled by the state’s general fund.

At a joint budget hearing in January, Assembly Member James Brennan asked MTA interim executive director Tom Prendergast how this happened. ”I don’t know,” Prendergast replied.

Despite Brennan’s questioning, neither the Senate nor Assembly fought to have the raid removed from the budget. As a result, it’s survived and now awaits the signature of the man who proposed it.

Although the budget raid takes away “only” half of what the extra tax receipts provide, that’s still $20 million that won’t be available to restore service or fix up decrepit stations. For comparison, major service cuts in 2010 saved the agency $93 million.

The significance of the raid also goes beyond the dollar amounts in this year’s budget. Budget raids in the recent past were far larger, taking hundreds of millions of dollars in 2009, 2010 and 2011. This year’s budget shows that Cuomo, who gutted the transit lockbox bill, still wants the ability to quietly rob straphangers at his disposal.

The next mayor will have to take the lead on transportation funding challenges that, while difficult to address in campaign speeches, are critical to the city’s future, former lieutenant governor and MTA chairman Richard Ravitch said today at a Fordham University infrastructure forum.

Richard Ravitch says the next mayor will have to get behind congestion pricing, whether it's an election topic or not. Image: Wikimedia

Ravitch said that while raising fares to cover the MTA’s operating expenses is acceptable, using fare hikes to cover debt service for infrastructure investment — which is already happening — is highly problematic. “That’s when it begins to hurt,” he told Streetsblog after his afternoon panel wrapped up. There needs to be a new source of revenue for the MTA’s capital program, and congestion pricing is necessary, Ravitch added.

The next mayor will need to make congestion pricing a top-tier priority and work with Albany to make it happen, Ravitch said. (The other top priorities he mentioned are dealing with union contracts and retiree health care costs.) But Ravitch isn’t hopeful that a productive discussion will break out during the mayoral campaign.

“They probably won’t be talking about what they should be talking about,” he said. “It’s hard to get elected on a platform of increasing taxes. The next mayor’s going to have to do that.”

With shrinking federal support for transportation, the burden of investment will fall to the local tax base. “The planning commission has done a great job in rezoning large parts of the city, particularly in the outer boroughs,” Ravitch said, but he wants to drastically ramp up outer-borough growth to help generate revenue. ”There is plenty of space; it’s a question of density and access,” he said.

But there’s one rezoning project that Ravitch remains skeptical of: East Midtown. “I’m personally not yet persuaded that that’s a good idea,” he said, saying that without major investment, the additional subway crowding and traffic congestion will be serious.

Although the city has proposed transit capacity improvements funded by new development, Ravitch is skeptical of geographically-targeted funding mechanisms, such as the 7 train extension, to address challenges that are regional in nature.

He is, however, bullish on the Tappan Zee Bridge’s chances to win a federal TIFIA loan. When Streetsblog asked how the multi-billion dollar loan will be repaid, given the Cuomo administration’s apparent lack of will to raise Thruway tolls, Ravitch said that TIFIA’s low interest rates are enough to keep repayment costs under control. ”They’re going to solve the Tappan Zee Bridge problem,” he said.

Mayoral candidates Bill Thompson, Christine Quinn, John Liu, Bill de Blasio, Adolfo Carrión, Tom Allon, and Sal Albanese gathered to talk transit at a Friday evening forum. Photo: Stephen Miller

Friday’s transit forum hosted by Transit Workers Union Local 100 and a coalition of rider advocacy groups offered an opportunity for a more more detailed discussion of transit policy than this year’s mayoral race has seen so far. While the candidates offered few specifics about how they would improve transit for the millions of New Yorkers who depend on trains and buses, clear differences emerged, especially on the question of how to increase funding for the debt-ridden MTA.

Five Democrats — former City Council City member Sal Albanese, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, Comptroller John Liu, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and former comptroller Bill Thompson — were on hand, as were former Bronx borough president Adolfo Carrión, running on the Independence Party line, and Manhattan Media publisher Tom Allon, running as a Republican. Conspicuously absent was Republican Joe Lhota, whose resume includes a recent one-year stint as MTA chair.

The transit issue that the mayor can control most directly is the allocation of street space. How much real estate should be dedicated exclusively to transit, so riders don’t get bogged down in traffic? More than anyone else, the mayor has the power to decide.

Albanese had the most specific proposal, calling for 20 new Select Bus Service routes by 2018. De Blasio said he wants more Bus Rapid Transit outside of Manhattan, citing a JFK-to-Flushing route as an example. When Streetsblog asked after the forum if the Bloomberg administration has been implementing the SBS program quickly enough, de Blasio said he didn’t know enough to say if implementation was going slowly, but that the implicit answer is “yes” because his vision calls more more BRT in the outer boroughs.

Carrión, who called for a new goal of providing 30-minute commutes from the city limits to the CBD, cited the Select Bus Service route on Fordham Road as a successful transit enhancement, noting that it has won over merchants who were initially skeptical. Quinn and Thompson, meanwhile, spoke about improving bus service, but not specifically about SBS or BRT. And Liu said that Bus Rapid Transit should be part of the city’s transit mix, but didn’t get more specific than that.

On the issue of funding the MTA, the mayor has far less direct control than the governor and the state legislature but still commands a powerful bully pulpit that can set the agenda.

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If you thought Albany had gotten over the habit of raiding the MTA for cash, think again.

Photo: Governor's Office

Nadine Lemmon at the Tri-State Transportation Campaign reports that there’s a $20 million transit raid lurking in Governor Cuomo’s 2013 executive budget:

This $20 million diversion of funds comes from a pot of money that is statutorily dedicated to cover the operating needs of the MTA. The Executive Budget, however, declared that this $20 million diversion is “surplus,” but there is no explanation of  how funds are determined to be surplus.

The 2013 transit raid isn’t as big as other recent Albany raids, which were $100 million or larger. And unlike the 2009 raid it won’t lead to service cuts, since the MTA’s dedicated tax revenues are beating projections. Still, that’s $20 million the MTA won’t have to restore service.

This explains why Cuomo didn’t enact the transit lockbox bill that advocates pushed for in 2011: He still wants to use the MTA as a piggy bank when it suits him.

Transit raids can be tough to pick out amidst all the budgetese, and the way the Cuomo administration cloaked this year’s theft looks especially sneaky. Lemmon flagged it last week in this language in the budget proposal:

“The Budget will use surplus mass transportation operating assistance funds to pay for a portion of the debt service associated with previously issued MTA service contract bonds. (2013-14 Value: $20 million; 2014-15 Value: $0).”

What the budget summary doesn’t say is that the state’s general fund would have paid this $20 million if the administration hadn’t stepped in and diverted the MTA’s $20 million. How transparent!

As Lemmon points out, the transit lockbox bill would have compelled the Cuomo administration to disclose the raid and explain its impacts on the MTA. The way things stand, the governor can continue to sweep it all under the rug.

When it comes to Governor Cuomo and the MTA, no news is bad news, and the governor’s 2013 budget contains nothing new for the transit agency’s operating budget. With debt, pension, and health care costs on the rise, the MTA continues to slowly drown in red ink, relying on straphangers to keep it afloat.

Governor Cuomo released his 2013 budget yesterday. Photo: Governor's Office

Although the governor takes credit for a $358 million increase in MTA revenue in his budget, this is due largely to improved receipts from the dedicated real estate, payroll, and petroleum taxes that help fund the agency. Even the increased tax revenue can’t keep up with the MTA’s rising fixed costs.

The governor’s budget shows that MTA revenues are expected to increase 2.6 percent in 2013, but operating expenses — driven by rising pension and health care costs — and debt service requirements will surge 7.5 percent and 8.4 percent, respectively. (Not all areas of the transit budget are growing: The MTA says that cost-cutting initiatives begun in 2010 will result in $870 million worth of savings in discretionary spending in 2013.) This is entirely expected, but the result cannot be ignored: The MTA’s 2012 operating surplus of $255 million has transformed into a 2013 deficit of $424 million in the governor’s budget.

Without a plan from Albany, the MTA has few options to close the gap — it’s relying on straphangers to make up the difference. The toll and fare hikes approved in December will help close the agency’s projected 2013 deficit.

In a sliver of good news, Cuomo is keeping his promise to make up for the revenue lost when he teamed up with suburban state legislators to slash the Payroll Mobility Tax in 2011. The budget includes $307 million from the state’s general fund for this purpose, although this is $3 million short of the MTA’s estimate of what would be needed to cover the gap.

Overall, the governor’s budget for MTA operations does nothing new for transit riders. As debt, pension, and health care costs continue to grow, the burden is falling square on straphangers.

Following the recent deaths of two subway passengers who were pushed onto tracks, TWU Local 100 is urging operators to slash train speeds as they enter stations, the New York Times reported yesterday. A TWU flier, which you can view here, advises operators that “Preventing a [run-over], and saving yourself the emotional trauma and potential loss of income that go with it, is worth a few extra minutes on your trip.”

There’s no question that watching death unfold through the train windshield and being powerless to avert it can result in trauma and guilt. But the proposed remedy in the TWU flier could be surprisingly costly. Based on calculations from my Balanced Transportation Analyzer spreadsheet model [PDF], if those “extra few minutes” were actually applied as a preventive measure to every subway trip, the lost time could aggregate to millions of hours per year for straphangers, not to mention more street and highway gridlock as the slowdown leads some commuters to drive instead of taking the train.

The city’s subways account for 1.6-1.7 billion passenger-trips a year. Here’s a rough sketch of the leading consequences from slowing all of them by an average of five percent:

• A 2.4 percent drop in subway ridership, as slower service discourages “marginal” train trips
• A nearly 4 percent rise in private auto trips into the Manhattan Central Business District, causing a 4 percent drop in average vehicle speeds there
• 1 percent fewer people coming to the CBD — a net decrease of 34,000 each day
• 55 million hours a year sacrificed to slower travel (35 million for transit users, 20 million for vehicle users), collectively costing them $1 billion a year, based on values of travel time
• A $60 million a year revenue hit to NYC Transit, or a $35 million net loss for the MTA after factoring in higher throughput on tolled bridges and tunnels

These figures do not reflect higher personnel and equipment costs to run additional trains to make up for the slowdown. Nor do they capture macro-economic effects of reduced business from the decline in CBD activity. Even so, they’re not chicken-feed.

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