Half a world away from Albany, Jay Walder has more to smile about.

Speaking at a press conference in Hong Kong, where he just started his new job as chief executive of the privately-owned Mass Transit Railway Corporation, Walder said: “New York, when I arrived there, was in a financial crisis. The system simply did not have enough money to continue to operate. The assets were not being renewed. And the infrastructure was in terrible condition.”

Walder’s understated comments were picked up by the Times and the Wall Street Journal, among others, but nowhere have we seen anyone point out how little power the head of the MTA actually wields over agency funding. Nor did any reporter or editor take Walder’s cue to highlight years of Albany malfeasance.

To read the Times piece, for example, you’d think the MTA is an autonomous operation, free to conduct business without political interference. There is a passing reference to Governor Cuomo’s gutting of $320 million in annual payroll tax revenue, but no mention of last year’s $100 million Albany raid on dedicated MTA funds. Forgotten is how state senators used congestion pricing as a litmus test for Walder’s confirmation. With Albany unwilling to enact a new revenue stream via road pricing, it fell to Walder to cut spending.

Most glaringly, absent is an accounting of the decades of lawmaker thievery and neglect that preceded Walder and Cuomo, though those misdeeds more than anything will saddle transit riders for years to come, in the form of decreased service, fare hikes, or both. Other than raising fares or selling off assets, the chair of the MTA has very little revenue-raising clout. For whatever reason this factoid never seems to make the papers.

As for Walder, you get the distinct sense that there is no looking back.

“I think we have a very different situation here,” Walder said. “We have a first-class railway. We have a sustainable financial model that is supporting that railway. And I think the people of Hong Kong are benefiting tremendously from what we have.

“I don’t think it’s the same situation as what you have in New York.”

Joe Lhota. Photo: SI Advance

Top transit leaders are urging Lhota to use his first day in the spotlight to vocally make the case for a strong, well-funded transit authority. Ignore the advice to “do more with less,” wrote Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign in a pitch-perfect op-ed, urging the incoming MTA chair to advocate for new revenues in the form of congestion pricing. Richard Ravitch, the former MTA chair widely credited with saving the transit system in the early 1980s, said the new chair should push for bridge tolls.

Two years ago, Jay Walder arrived at the MTA emphasizing the importance of investing in the transit system. “We must have a long-term financial solution for the MTA,” Walder said when nominated, calling for a fully funded capital plan. “It’s critically important to have a capital program.” Today, the MTA’s fiscal situation is even more dire. But so far Cuomo has given no indication that he intends to address the problem, identifying no new revenues to invest in the maintenance and expansion of the system. As a result, the MTA is taking on billions of dollars in debt, which riders will be paying off for decades in the form of higher fares.

When he was nominated, Walder brought much more to the table than a call for new revenues. A highly-respected transit official with a long resume at Transport for London and New York City Transit, Walder came to the job with a clear plan to improve the system in cost-effective ways. The day he was nominated, Walder said he wanted to upgrade from the MetroCard payment system to cost-saving smart card technology. Soon after taking the reins, Walder had developed a full-fledged platform for his time at the helm of the MTA.

From day one, Walder made it a priority to improve bus service, install countdown clocks, and modernize the agency’s open data policies — all low-cost improvements to the system. In some cases he was building on programs set in motion by his predecessors, and in other cases (especially the open data initiative) he was charting a new course. The common thread: He identified what could be done quickly and made tangible progress on those initiatives, bringing a measure of credibility to an agency that’s often used as a punching bag by politicians and the local press.

What will Joe Lhota say on his first day? If nominated, he won’t bring the experience that transit professionals like Walder and Lee Sander relied on to advance cost-effective system improvements. Lhota’s resume shows a much more worrisome engagement with transit. While he served as Giuliani’s budget director and deputy mayor, city support for the MTA decreased significantly, according to a report by the Fiscal Policy Institute. While city contributions made up 14 percent of the 1992-1996 capital program, by the year 2000 the city was only paying for two percent of the capital program.

With Walder and Sander in the top spot, subway and bus riders benefited from four years of intelligent MTA governance aimed at improving their experience. Will Governor Cuomo and his MTA chief continue that record?

The MTA has found another $2 billion in capital program savings that it says won't harm riders. Unless the state steps up and funds transit, however, there won't be a way to close the remaining $9 billion capital deficit except at riders' expense. Image: MTA via WSJ

Jay Walder’s surprise resignation announcement last week overshadowed some important news about the MTA’s finances: The agency has identified $2 billion in savings in its capital program [PDF], which maintains and expands the transit system, but expects $1 billion less in federal assistance. That brings the total gap in the five-year, $26 billion capital plan to $9 billion that must be accounted for by the end of the year. This enormous deficit will define the political context in which Governor Andrew Cuomo chooses Walder’s replacement.

First the good news: The cuts do seem to trim fat, not muscle. The $2 billion in savings come largely from reduced construction costs due to the weak economy and more efficient operations. Though the cutbacks will include changes to how tracks and train cars are maintained, the transit agency says that riders should not be negatively affected.

The efficiency-finding is encouraging, but the bad news is that unless Albany fulfills its responsibility to fund transit, enormous fare hikes or spending cuts that will hurt riders are still looming.

The biggest savings, worth $800 million, come from reduced construction costs due to the weak economy. Another $150 million will come from reductions in administrative costs and payroll.

The savings also include 10 percent spending cuts on both transit vehicles and tracks. In the past, the MTA would use broken tracks as an opportunity to work on entire sections of the system; now, the agency will instead fix only the broken piece. That means more frequent but smaller repair jobs. The MTA will also eliminate replacement bus service during track outages where an alternate subway route is available (this change, at least, will affect riders).

The MTA intends to save another chunk by overhauling the way it buys trains and buses. By changing the design standards it puts out to vendors to better match how the MTA actually uses its vehicles, the theory goes, the MTA will be able to reduce maintenance costs.

“Our rolling stock initiative is less about extending the useful life of trains and buses,” explained an MTA spokesperson, “and more about being smarter about how we partner with suppliers and being smarter about how we review design specifications to ensure we’re not making cars too heavy or doing other things that cause other expenses down the road.”

“This $2 billion seems to be all about good management,” said Hope Cohen, the associate director of the Regional Plan Association’s Center for Urban Innovation, who said that these cuts likely won’t hurt riders. “Anything more significant or controversial will be coming later.”

The $2 billion in savings come on top of a previous $2 billion in cuts to the MTA’s current five-year capital program, proof that under Walder, the efficiencies to be found in the transit agency’s spending were being found.

Even assuming these savings materialize as promised, however, an enormous hole remains in the capital program. Albany funded only the first two years of the program after refusing to include bridge tolls in the 2009 MTA funding package.

As things stand today, Governor Cuomo and the state legislature have five months until the essential work of maintaining and expanding the transit system can no longer be paid for. Where the revenue will come from to cover $9 billion in unfunded construction and repairs remains to be seen.

“We recognize that there’s no appetite for new taxes in New York today,” Walder said in a statement last week. But restructuring those taxes in the form of a 32 percent fare hike would prove just as politically toxic, though the howls would come from a different set of New Yorkers. None of the other options — enormous service cuts, a halt to basic repairs and construction projects like the Second Avenue Subway, or road pricing — could be enacted without stirring up significant opposition. There’s a big fight coming no matter what.

The need to replace Walder complicates the politics of the capital plan. In choosing who will run the MTA, Governor Andrew Cuomo will also choose, to an extent, how the agency responds to its enormous deficit. If Cuomo wants to fight for transit riders and secure the needed funding for the MTA, he can entrust a competent leader with the task of making that case to the legislature and the voters. If Cuomo wants the entire capital deficit to fall on relatively low-income transit riders, he can choose someone who will go along with massive fare hikes and absorb the public’s outrage.

Advocates and elected officials alike have called on Cuomo to appoint another experienced transit professional to replace Walder. Cuomo also needs to give the next MTA chief a job description that includes strengthening the region’s transit system, not managing its decline.

Walder had vowed to protect transit riders from higher fares and worse service. This March, he promised that both service cuts and fare hikes were “off the table,” and just yesterday, Walder pledged to cut the MTA’s capital budget “not by deferring vital projects but instead by finding better ways of delivering benefits.” Walder also promised the State Senate, when he was first confirmed, not to push for road pricing as a way to shore up the MTA’s precarious finances. Today, it is hard to see any possible scenario where some combination of fare hikes, service cuts, capital program cuts, and road pricing does not come into play in the near future.

With Walder’s departure, speculation immediately turns to whom Governor Andrew Cuomo will select as a replacement.

While both Walder and his predecessor, Lee Sander, are highly experienced transportation professionals, prior MTA chiefs were often politically connected businessmen allied with the governor. Kate Slevin, the executive director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, urged Cuomo to choose a “qualified professional who understands the transit system” to replace Walder. Given the timing of Walder’s resignation, she said — the capital plan runs dry at the end of the year exactly as TWU Local 100 contract expires — someone who can hit the ground running is particularly necessary.

“I hope the governor appoints somebody who is a devoted mass transit advocate,” said Jim Brennan, the chair of the Assembly Authorities committee. “The person is going to have to be an awfully good manager. The MTA is facing a lot of challenges.” Brennan praised Walder’s ability to manage the authority’s budget during two years of persistent and sizable shortfalls, saying he implemented policies which were difficult but necessary.

He called on Cuomo to appoint a worthy successor. “I hope the governor is willing to step up and be a partner in relation to supporting the mass transit system,” he said.

Walder’s resignation from the agency, effective October 21, came as a shock to staff at MTA headquarters, MTA board members, elected officials and transportation advocates alike. An anonymous source told the New York Times that Walder was not pushed out of his position, but rather felt that he could not refuse the job of running Hong Kong’s MTR Corporation. The Hong Kong job will be far more lucrative for Walder, according to the Wall Street Journal, and MTR’s finances are much healthier than the MTA’s.

The circumstances of Walder’s departure may be clearer after Cuomo makes his pick. If he goes with an experienced and respected transit professional, it will seem less likely that Walder was forced out.

Reactions to Walder’s departure have flooded in since his resignation was announced. With the exception of the TWU, they have been almost exclusively positive, focusing on accomplishments like the introduction of countdown clocks in the subways, real-time bus information, Select Bus Service, and gateless tolling on the Henry Hudson Bridge.

Here are the reactions so far:

Governor Andrew Cuomo:

“For nearly two years, Jay Walder has shown true leadership at the helm of the MTA and been a fiscally responsible manager during these difficult financial times. Riders of the MTA are better off today because of Jay’s expertise and the reforms he initiated will benefit all for years to come. Jay’s departure is a loss for the MTA and for the state, but I thank him for his service and wish him the best in his future endeavors.”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg:

“Jay Walder is a world-class transportation professional and any city in the world would have been lucky to have him. He set a new course for the MTA during an extremely difficult period when the agency was not given the resources required to meet the City’s needs. He expertly shepherded major projects like the 7 line extension and new bus rapid transit lines, and by embracing new technology, he made significant improvements to the customer experience – from gateless tolling on bridges to countdown clocks in subway stations – that the public will appreciate long after his departure. I was proud to work with him on these and many more projects. He is a first-rate leader with big ideas, and I will miss collaborating with him. He is the type of person we can’t afford to lose, and his departure is a real loss for New York City, the metropolitan region, the state and the country.”

City Council Transportation Chair James Vacca:

“This resignation comes at a crucial time. A year after the worst service cuts in the MTA’s history and yet another fare and toll increase, the most serious challenges for straphangers may still lie ahead. While Chairman Walder deserves credit for taking on many structural issues that previous MTA leaders had delayed for a tomorrow that never came, the MTA continues to face a $250 million operating gap and a capital budget that runs out January 1. It’s getting harder and harder to do more with less, and the MTA needs someone at the helm not only who understands the role mass transit plays in the lives of everyday New Yorkers but who is prepared to get to work on day one.”

General Contractors Association managing director Denise Richardson:

“This is not only a loss for transit in New York but for all transit systems in the United States. His resignation says more about our collective unwillingness to properly fund our transportation network than it does about new opportunities for his career. It is ironic that he is leaving New York for Hong Kong, a global competitor set to overtake New York in economic prominence.

We wish him well in his new position. As we approach the 30th anniversary of the first MTA capital program, we hope the next MTA chairman will bring to the table the same spirit that our appointed and elected officials had when they rescued the system during a similarly challenging fiscal crises.

Mr. Walder’s decision says more about the difficulty of gaining public support for transit in New York than it does for new opportunities in Hong Kong.”

TWU Local 100 President John Samuelsen:

“Transit workers won’t miss Jay Walder and quite frankly will be glad to see him go. He has been antagonistic to the union and the workers from his first day on the job. His attempt last year to blackmail the union into major pay and other concessions led to gratuitous layoffs. He ushered in unprecedented service cuts in both subway and bus service, with particular insensitivity to already underserved areas of Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx. He never grasped the notion that our bus and subway systems are the most basic and vital service afforded to New York’s working class. And he was ineffective in dealing with Albany to not only secure new funding for public transportation to avoid service reductions, but to protect the dedicated sources of transit revenue. He attacked his blue collar workforce and his own lower level white collar employees, but never looked to upper management on his “quest” for cost savings.

He leaves New York City transit in worse shape than when he arrived less than two years ago. We will urge the Governor to appoint a new Chair who will view his workers as allies not the enemy, and a person who fully grasps the magnitude of the contribution of the public transportation system to the economic vitality of New York.”

Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Paul Steely White:

“Jay Walder steered the MTA through its toughest challenges since the bad old days of the 70s. Facing a daunting fiscal situation brought on by the governor and state legislature’s repeated budget raids, Walder kept our trains and buses serving millions of New Yorkers 24 hours every day. His work to bring Select Bus Service and Real-Time updates to transit riders is bringing New York City’s transit system into the 21st Century and will help keep the city and region competitive with other global leaders vying for business, talent and capital. Mr. Walder’s commitment to the necessity of transit in the lives of New Yorkers has set a high bar, and his successor must come with equal leadership to steer the MTA and the region through the rough terrain ahead.”

The Regional Plan Association:

“Jay Walder has done a superb job at the MTA during the past two years of extreme economic challenge. New York will miss his deep knowledge of and passion for the transportation network that makes the region’s economy possible. That network, of course, is bigger than any one individual. We have every expectation that Governor Cuomo will appoint an outstanding transportation professional to replace Jay and continue his work on modernizing and investing in the future of the subways, buses, commuter railroads, and river crossings.”

As MTA Chair, Walder brought a wealth of experience to the table, including six years at Transport for London and an earlier 12-year stint at the MTA in the 80s and 90s. His tenure as chair was marked by his response to the agency’s ever-tightening finances. At a time when huge debt loads and Albany transit raids placed big strains on the MTA’s budget, Walder was able to implement substantial efficiencies and bring innovative programs on line quickly, like the real-time bus information project known as BusTime. He also could not avoid enacting the biggest round of service cuts the NYC transit system has seen in a generation.

Walder will be departing at an eventful time for the agency. Its contract with the TWU Local 100 expires at the end of the year, and negotiations are expected to ramp up in the following months. The MTA recently announced $2 billion in cuts to its five-year capital program, which still leaves a $9 billion hole. Some combination of fare hikes, service cuts, and deteriorating conditions looms unless new revenue sources are secured or the MTA abandons mega-projects like the Second Avenue Subway.

There are not many people out there who can bring the same degree of experience and competence that Walder brought to the job. We’ll have more on Walder’s departure as the story develops.

Update: We’re hearing that staff at MTA HQ were taken by surprise by Walder’s departure, though Liz Benjamin tweets that Senator Marty Golden doesn’t believe he was pushed out by Governor Cuomo.

Jay Walder will be retained as MTA chairman and chief executive and Christopher Ward as executive director of the Port Authority, the source said. Both men have been informed that they will be staying on.

Get the full story over at Crain’s.

At a conference at Google's Chelsea office last night, MTA Chair Walder said all the right things about working collaboratively with software developers, confirming the agency's dramatic turnaround on open transit data.

After a longstanding policy of keeping a tight lid on route and schedule information, the MTA reversed course earlier this year and began opening data to developers. The new policy promises to improve the rider experience by putting better information at their fingertips. A closer working relationship between the MTA and developers should bring New Yorkers closer to the day when they can, for instance, find out when the next bus or train is coming by checking their phones.

Last night was a chance for both parties to get to know each other, although Walder was the one with something to prove, reassuring developers that the MTA's new position is for real. "If we can harness the power in this room, we’ll be a heck of a lot better than if we’re doing this ourselves," he said. "Getting information to people in a way that no longer treats our transit system as a black hole will be transformative."

One of the more interesting exchanges came when Nick Grossman of OpenPlans (Streetsblog's parent company) asked Walder about the MTA's wishlist from the developer community. Here's a rundown of the three most important ways Walder believes developers can help the MTA and improve the rider experience.

1. Service advisories. NYC's 24/7 transit system can throw some curveballs at you on nights and weekends. In London, Walder explained, if the Jubilee line isn’t running, it’s not running. In New York, the advisory is that the F train is running on the A/C line from West Fourth Street to Borough Hall, and then you have to transfer to a shuttle bus. "It is enormously complicated to communicate," he said, asking developers to help crack the nut of combining trip planning tools with real-time service info. "Think of that problem. I think it’s one of the most vexing problems we have."
2. Real-time bus information. Walder referred to this as "countdown clocks for buses" and broke it down into three steps. He said the MTA has the first step -- knowing where the bus is -- under control. All the new fare-card readers for the bus system will have GPS units in them. The second step -- figuring out "how long until the bus gets to where I am" -- is where the agency needs developers to step in. "That’s an algorithm that we need an awful lot of help with," he said. As for the third challenge -- how to get that information to people -- Walder asked developers to make apps for platforms besides the latest and greatest smartphone OS, so all New Yorkers can have access to better transit information. "We need it to cut across social and economic boundaries," he said.
3. Maximizing smart card tech. This wish was a little more vague than the first two. Once the MTA makes the transition from MetroCard payment to swipe-less RFID cards, Walder sees a role for developers to play. The example he gave yesterday -- collecting tickets on commuter railroads -- would be more noticeable from a cost-saving standpoint than the rider perspective. "We walk blindly down the car asking if everyone has a ticket," he said. "If I can pinpoint the person who doesn't have a ticket, that makes the job much easier and more efficient."

Video: Elizabeth Press

Sens. Kruger, Diaz Sr. and Espada, three of the Fare Hike Four, giving transit riders the business. Photo: AP/Voice

"Our ability to budget is only as good as our ability to forecast. We were dependent upon data supplied by the Office of Management and Budget with the understanding that it was verified by the MTA's own fiscal staff. Furthermore, our projections were based on the fiscal year rather than the calendar year. This critical point should have been taken into account when the MTA fiscal staff developed its parameters."

Insisting that the new payroll tax will someday do the job, Senate spokesman Austin Shafran accused the MTA of employing scare tactics, while transportation committee chair Martin Malave Dilan lashed out at the new transit chief, then in his ninth week on the job. Again, from the Observer:

[Dilan] is angry that the M.T.A. didn't say anything about its sudden $343 million deficit sooner.

"It is an affront to our burgeoning partnership, often discussed in previous months, to exclude us from this critical information," Dilan wrote in a letter to M.T.A. CEO Jay Walder. "It appears, even under new leadership, that business will continue as usual with Gary Dellaverson assuming the addition[al] role of press secretary for the MTA. Instead of a cooperative exchange of thoughts and information, we may be left with an adversarial relationship played out in the press."

So, who's going to hold these pols to account? Probably not the Working Families Party, whose latest online petition amplifies the MTA-bashing of Kruger and company. The governor, meanwhile, looks to be sitting it out altogether as the engine of the region's economy is threatened with a massive breakdown.

Will any state legislator step up and show some leadership at this critical moment? Eric Schneiderman? Dan Squadron? Liz Krueger? John Sampson? Anyone?

-- MTA Chairman Jay Walder, quoted in the New York Times.

These are heartening words for transit advocates. Incoming MTA Chairman Jay Walder clearly wants to make big improvements to the agency's 250 bus routes. But given his time, budget and authority, there is a big gap between what he can do and what he would like to do for buses.

NYPD cruisers parked in the 34th Street bus lane. When it comes to bus route enforcement, Jay Walder has his hands full.

Let's look at the things that Walder and the MTA can realistically do for buses.

First up: contactless or “swipe less” MetroCards, like London's Oyster card, which are waved over a sensor instead of swiped. These contactless cards speed bus boarding and can save a lot of time over the course of a day. They also help reduce bus bunching by making loading times more consistent on every bus. Contactless cards are a mature technology which the MTA has already funded, and which Walder helped pioneer in London. So, there is every reason to think he can hurry its implementation.

Walder can also help with the long-delayed GPS bus locator system and real-time arrival information for passengers. These are also mature technologies which bus systems around the world use to reduce bunching, troubleshoot delays, and keep riders informed. To date, the MTA has bungled GPS tracking, and insisted on trying to solve the canyon effect caused by Manhattan skyscrapers instead of deploying GPS and passenger information on the huge majority of routes that don't go through Midtown, or even enter Manhattan. This is a highly visible and affordable improvement that Walder would get a lot of credit for.

Fortunately for Walder, when it comes to bus improvements, he has a strong ally in the NYCDOT and the mayor, who are leading the effort to institute Select Bus Service. SBS routes include elements of Bus Rapid Transit, including pre-paid boarding, transit signal priority, and painted bus lanes. Planning for SBS is well-advanced, though the initiative has very modest funding by MTA standards. Currently, DOT and the MTA intend to roll out one or two new SBS lines a year. Walder may be able to accelerate SBS through additional planning and funding, and by making the case for more physically protected bus lanes like the one planned for 34th Street in Midtown.

During Walder's tenure at Transport for London, the agency employed express bus lanes and other BRT features to great effect. So Walder is keenly aware of the need to "prioritize" buses on the street. In his interview with the Times, Walder emphasized the compelling reasons to enforce bus lanes and bus stops more vigorously. Bus riders, advocates and transit experts all agree on the desirability of better enforcement. The need is obvious. But increasing enforcement enough to make a difference in bus service will probably be the most difficult thing for Walder to achieve.

In London, more than 1,000 automated enforcement cameras mounted on buses -- and another 50 or so on utility poles -- help keep bus lanes and bus stops clear of other vehicles. Violations caught by these cameras result in steep fines. Unfortunately, in New York City, enforcement cameras and increased fines for lane blockers require the approval of the state legislature.

In 2008, NYCDOT made bus enforcement cameras its highest legislative priority. But the legislature has a long history of resisting enforcement cameras of all types. It took from 1993 to 2009 for the city to win an increase from 50 to 150 red light enforcement cameras. The MTA and transit advocates first started asking for bus enforcement cameras in the 1990s. Without cameras, enforcing bus lanes and stops is very difficult. You can do it on small numbers of specific corridors, like Fordham Road, but overall, it is extremely hard to keep the thousands of bus stops and hundreds of miles of lanes clear using only police and traffic agents. Which is why most modern BRT systems use enforcement cameras or physically separated rights-of-way. Whether Albany will grant legislative approval in the next year for enough cameras to make a visible impact -- or even any cameras at all -- is a question mark.

The specific approaches Walder pursues to improve bus service will probably meet with different degrees of success. But overall, his interest in better buses will give a big boost to efforts to dedicate more street space to transit and surely result in better service.

This is the second of two posts exploring how incoming MTA Chairman Jay Walder can improve New York City's bus system. Read the first part here.

Photo: cunningsue/Flickr

MTA chief Jay Walder floated the idea of off-peak discounts in an interview in today's New York Times. While Walder didn't offer quantification, the Balanced Transportation Analyzer software model I've developed with Ted Kheel can estimate the effects of time-varied subway fares -- not just how ridership might shift from peak to off-peak periods, but indirect impacts such as the shift of auto trips to transit and the resulting changes to car travel speeds.

The results look promising for this prototype fare structure that I tested with the BTA:

• 1/3-off subway fare from 11:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m.
• 1/6-off subway fare from 5:00 to 7:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and 7:00 to 11:00 p.m.
• 15 percent higher subway fare from 8:00 to 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. (Although Walder referred only to off-peak discounts, the model suggests that forestalling an increase in ridership during the two peak hours, when the system is strained beyond capacity, could require raising fares at those times.)
• No fare change during the "shoulder" hours of 7:00 to 8:00 a.m., 9:00 to 10:00 a.m., 4:00 to 5:00 p.m., and 6:00 to 7:00 p.m.
• 1/4-off subway fare at all hours on weekends and holidays.
• 1/4-off bus fare at all times (not mentioned by Walder but assumed here to preserve overall fare parity).

Here are the results:

• The average price of a subway ride drops by 23 percent, equivalent to a $210 annual savings for a typical straphanger who takes 12 trains a week.
  
• Notwithstanding the overall discount, however, peak-hour subway users who could not change their commute times would pay $100 a year more in fares.
  
• Annual savings of $230 for bus riders, due to the assumed 25 percent drop in bus fares.
• Subway usage increases 3 percent, even as morning and evening peak hour ridership drops by 1 percent and 3 percent, respectively, slightly easing crowding during those critical times.
  
• Bus usage increases 5 percent.
• 15,000 fewer cars enter the Manhattan CBD on weekdays, raising average speeds there by 2 percent.
• Car and truck drivers save six million hours of travel time worth an estimated $230 million that they now lose to gridlock each year -- with a majority of the savings occurring outside the CBD.
• A rise in cycle and pedestrian commuting due to lower traffic, with the resulting increase in physical activity translating into health and longevity benefits worth an additional $116 million a year.
• Fewer crashes and less pollution, with health and related benefits close to $100 million a year.
  

The downside of this program is an estimated $300 million drop in farebox revenues: $134 million on the subways, $162 million on buses.

The logical place to make up the shortfall, congestion pricing, is a subject Walder will obviously want to avoid until he is on even firmer political footing. The synergies are strong from a technical standpoint, since differential subway pricing would help the subways absorb car drivers whom a cordon toll would induce to switch to transit. The political synergies could be strong as well if differential fares help expand the constituency for congestion pricing.

-- Jay Walder, MTA chairman, as quoted in the New York Times

Improvements like real-time arrival displays led bus ridership to grow significantly during Jay Walder's tenure at Transport for London. Photo: King Huang Chung/Flickr.

While it may seem obvious that the chair of the MTA should devote considerable energy to buses, this is rarely the case. The head of the MTA is typically consumed by planning, funding, and managing mega-projects and the capital plan. Historically, the MTA has been heavily oriented toward subways and commuter rail. On the average weekday, the agency's subways carry 5.2 million trips and its buses 2.4 million.

But these are not normal times at the MTA. Walder has one year to make a big impression. After that he will almost certainly have a new boss as governor, who will have two options: fire Walder or rehire him. Bus improvements can be done relatively quickly and cheaply, and by reducing delays can actually save money while resulting in better service and higher ridership.

Buses are also attractive to Walder because the mayor and DOT are already aggressively pushing bus corridor improvements. DOT and the MTA have launched a successful Select Bus Service route on Fordham Road in the Bronx, with new routes planned and funded for First and Second Avenues in 2010. The mayor is a good friend to have. He controls streets, parking enforcement and seats on the MTA board.

But Select Bus Service only helps a handful of the MTA's 250 bus routes. Also needed are system-wide improvements. Walder has identified three of these as priorities.

First is a swipe-free or "contactless" MetroCard like London's Oyster Card, which is waved over a sensor on buses and subways. This would reduce boarding times.

Second is GPS-based, real-time information for riders waiting at bus stops. This would reduce uncertainty over travel times and help reduce bunching. The MTA has struggled with GPS location for years, while similar technology has been adopted by transit systems around the world and in New York City taxis.

Third, but most emphasized by Walder, is improved enforcement of bus stops and lanes, especially with automated enforcement cameras. Enforcement cameras are in widespread use in London. But here, they will require approval by the state legislature. Given that the legislature is struggling with profound internal dysfunction, massive state budget deficits, and a collapsing MTA capital plan, it will likely be a tough lift for bus lane cameras to win approval. It took DOT decades of effort to win its relatively small number of red light cameras.

Regardless of the exact improvements he undertakes, there is a powerful logic steering Jay Walder toward bus improvements. And that is good news for long-suffering bus riders.

At today's hearing, in Mineola on Long Island, Regional Plan Association President Bob Yaro said that Walder's pay is fair (and low, if you compare it based on ridership) and the severance package is justified "given the volatility that is unfortunately associated with the position."

"We are also aware that some have questioned the extra compensation Mr. Walder would receive in the event that his contract were terminated prematurely," Yaro testified. "We would argue that this provision reflects the risk Mr. Walder is taking in coming to the MTA at this time, with little more than a year to go in the current governor's term, and given the volatility that is unfortunately associated with the position. It will also encourage the MTA Board and the governor to think twice before discharging Mr. Walder for frivolous or purely political reasons. Keeping him in place for his whole contract would provide the continuity of leadership that this important agency urgently needs."

If Albany weren't such a cesspool of cronyism, in other words, we wouldn't need to slip such a big hedge into the chair's contract to attract top-tier talent. Meanwhile, is the State Senate even aware that the MTA released its draft capital plan a few weeks ago? There's a $10 billion hole, and the agency is still rudderless. If we're going to have a confirmation hearing, you'd think something like the future of the transit system would figure into it at some point, but I suppose that doesn't have anything to do with "transparency and accountability".

Only a handful of people on the planet have the chops to steer an agency as large and complex as the MTA, and Jay Walder is one of them, by all accounts. We'll know if the State Senate is satisfied on September 10, when they render their final decision.

While in London, Walder earned praise for putting the transit system on sound financial footing. (Note that the city's congestion charge took effect in 2003, while he was finance director at TfL.) To do the same for the MTA, he has his work cut out for him. He assumes the chairmanship at a perilous time for the agency's finances. The state legislature's latest transit funding package left a huge hole in the MTA's capital program, a shortfall of at least $20 billion which Albany will have to address very soon.

"Jay Walder has the experience and credibility that the MTA will require to survive these challenging fiscal times," said RPA President Robert Yaro in a statement. "He'll need all of his many skills to navigate the roiled political waters in Albany."

Transit riders will be well-served if Walder can manage to drive the media narrative about the MTA more successfully than his predecessor, Lee Sander. It's a tall order. Casting aspersions on the MTA is a favored tactic for legislators looking to deflect blame for their own lack of leadership on transit policy, and the press corps often appears to serve as a willing accomplice. The riding public needs someone who not only manages the agency capably, but also shapes the MTA's public image as deftly as possible.