X13 & X14 Consolidation
With the service cuts only days away, expect the MTA to be issuing reminders of what services will be cut, consolidated, etc… They started this off by issuing a reminder of the X13 & X14 express bus consolidation that will take effect this Sunday. Here are the details via the press release they sent me:
As part of the 2010 service reductions effective Sunday, June 27, 2010, the X13 route will be discontinued. Accordingly, the X14 express bus service will be re-routed to serve downtown Manhattan and then continue service to midtown. The X14 will now provide weekday service on Battery Place, State Street, Water Street, and Pearl Street.
Manhattan-bound, the X14 will travel its regular route to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, then south on West Street, east on Battery Place, south and east on State Street, north on Water Street and Pearl Street, then onto the northbound FDR Drive to resume its regular route to west Midtown.
Staten Island-bound, the X14 will travel its regular route to the FDR Drive at East 23rd Street, travel southbound to the Brooklyn Bridge-Civic Center exit, north and west on State Street, west on Battery Place, north on West Street and through the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. It then resumes its regular route towards Port Richmond.
New stops on the northbound route (all existing X8 bus stops):
Battery Place at State Street
Water Street at State Street
Water Street at Hanover Square
Water Street at Wall Street
Water Street at Maiden Lane
Pearl Street at Fulton Street
Pearl Street at Peck Slip
—-
New stops on the southbound route (all existing X8 bus stops):
Pearl Street at Peck Slip
Pearl Street at Fulton Street
Water Street at Maiden Lane
Water Street at Wall Street
Water Street at Hanover Square
Water Street at Broad Street
State Street at Bridge Street
Battery Place at Greenwich Street
New destination signs will read WEST MIDTOWN, 57TH ST via WATER ST via MADISON going north (Manhattan-bound). The southbound destination sign (Staten Island-bound) will read PORT RICHMOND via WATER ST.
xoxo Transit Blogger
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100 People Rally To Save 2 Brooklyn Bus Lines
The death of numerous bus routes & subway lines inches closer & closer as each day passes. In reality there is nothing that will starve off the cuts from happening for the time being. However this did not stop 100 people from showing up at the Brooklyn Borough Hall to protest the MTA’s plans to cut the B39 & B51, two routes that serve riders between Brooklyn & Manhattan. Ben Kochman for The Courier Life via the NY Post has more:
An MTA plan to cut a key Brooklyn-to-Manhattan bus line would leave disabled people stranded, handicapped people and their supporters charged on Tuesday afternoon.
A crowd of 100 people rallied at Brooklyn Borough Hall to slam the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s plan to cut the B51 and B39 routes, which transport riders from Downtown Brooklyn or Williamsburg to Manhattan, giving people in wheelchairs an alternative to the subway.
The MTA says it must cut the B51 and B39 as part of a larger effort to close a yawning deficit. The B51 line was chosen because it is the 189th busiest bus out of 194 lines total, while the B39 ranked 181st.As if on cue, as protesters and Borough President Markowitz called for the retention of both lines, chanting “Save the B51, save the B51,” a B51 bus pulled over to the curb with just one woman on it.
Markowitz dismissed the empty bus, and the MTA’s ridership statistics, as meaningless.
“What is important here is not the low ridership numbers, but the people who make up these numbers,” he said. “The people aren’t riding [the B51] bus because they want to, because the subway is actually quicker. People use this because they have no choice!”
Click here for the complete report.
I feel for those who need alternatives to riding the subway due to their health conditions. However for Mr. Markowitz to dismiss the empty bus & official MTA ridership statistics as meaningless shows how clueless he is. How can you defend the cost to operate two lines that carry next to no one on a day to day basis? The reality is that in these tough economic times you can’t. Honestly, even if times were good, it would make no sense to run such a service.
You see if the MTA’s finances were good, people like Mr. Markowitz would be the first ones to trash the MTA for making bad financial choices & wasting money. Yet, when they choose to do the right thing for the overall bottom line, they get blasted for it as well. Instead of finding & supporting legitimate funding solutions for the much beleaguered transit agency, people like Mr. Markowitz want to play to their constituents. The sad part is they get applauded by them when in the end if they opened their eyes, they would realized their so called representative is throwing them under the bus.
xoxo Transit Blogger
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State Appellate Division Overturns $2.3M Verdict
In February 2009, I wrote a scathing entry on how irresponsibility earned someone $2.3M. The someone in question was Dustin Dibble, an irresponsible drunk who fell to the tracks at the 14th St-Union Square station & subsequently got his right leg torn off by a N train. The verdict called into question personal responsibility & why the MTA should be faulted for someone who showcased none on his behalf.
The awarded settlement was so ridiculous, it even had Mayor Bloomberg infuriated. Fast forward to June 2010 where irresponsibility met its match in a state Appellate Division court & lost as the verdict was overturned. Dareh Gregorian of the New York Post has more in this report:
Ouch.
A man who lost his leg after taking a drunken tumble onto the subway tracks at Union Square has now lost his $2.3 million jury verdict.
In a decision released today, the state Appellate Division overturned the award to Dustin Dibble and threw out his entire lawsuit, finding the MTA shouldn’t have been held liable for his injuries.
The January 2009 award had infuriated Mayor Bloomberg, who said, “you’d think there’s a personal responsibility here,” referring to the fact that Dibble had been out drinking for hours before he stumbled off the platform and into the path of an N train.
The appeals court didn’t focus on Dibble’s drunkenness – they focused on his assertions from his experts that the train operator, Michael Moore, could have avoided the accident if he’d reacted faster.
One expert testified that Moore’s reaction time was too slow because it was more than one second.
Click here for the complete report.
I would like to congratulate the people responsible for overturning this verdict as it was clearly the wrong one from day one. Some might find it cruel that I say this but Mr. Dibble made his own bed & he should have to lie in it. He & no one for that matter deserves to be rewarded for making idiotic choices. No one told him to drink beyond what he was capable of handling & riding in public transit where he put not only his life in danger but potentially the life of others.
The sad part in all of this is how the decision was not overturned for having a common sense understanding of what was right but the lack of agreeing with one of the defense’s key points. So if they somehow agreed, would they have let it stand? Seriously this decision was a no-brainer & it should have never even reached this point. The original jury should have put the fault where it rightfully belonged & that was clearly with Mr. Dibble.
xoxo Transit Blogger
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Subway Car Cleanliness Has Declined
According to the 2009 Subway Shmutz report, the M has the lowest percentage of clean cars. Resized photo courtesy of Eye On Transit.
Throughout the year, the NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign releases multiple reports involving the state of some aspect of the MTA’s system. This time, it is the release of the 11th annual “Subway Shmutz” report which rates the cleanliness of NYC Subway Cars. Before I analyze the report, let me post a press release from the NYPIRG about the report:
The number of clean subway cars declined since 2008, according to the eleventh annual “subway shmutz” survey released today by the Straphangers Campaign.
Campaign surveyors rated 50% of subway cars as “clean” in a survey conducted in the fall 2009, which was a statistical decline from 57% of cars rated clean in a survey conducted in the fall of 2008.
The worst performing line in our survey was the M, with the smallest number of clean cars at 32%. The best performing lines in our survey were the 6 and C with 65% of cars rated clean, up from 41% for both lines in 2008.
Eleven of the 22 subway lines — fully half — grew worse, while five lines improved and six lines stayed the same.
The 2009 budget contained cuts in cleaning staff, with car cleaners going down from 1,181 with 155 supervisors in 2008 to 1,138 with 146 supervisors in 2009. The 2010 budget for car cleaners is 1,030 cleaners and 123 supervisors.
“It’s as clear as the grime on a subway car floor: MTA Transit cuts in cleaners has meant dirtier cars,” said Gene Russianoff, campaign attorney for the Straphangers Campaign. “And more cuts to come means more dirt for subway riders.”
The car cleanliness survey is based on 2,200 observations of subway cars by the Straphangers Campaign between September 3 and November 24, 2009.
Cars were rated on 22 lines for cleanliness of floors and seats, following MTA New York City Transit’s official standards for measuring car cleanliness. Cars were rated as clean if they were “basically dirt free” or had “light dirt” (“occasional ‘ground-in’ spots but generally clean”).
Cars were rated not clean if they were “moderately” dirty (“dingy floor, one or two sticky dry spots”) or “heavily” dirty (“Heavy dirt; any opened or spilled food, hazardous (e.g. rolling bottles), or malodorous conditions, sticky wet spots, any seats unusable due to unclean conditions”).
The survey did not rate litter. Since 1997, the Campaign has conducted ten largely similar studies for similar periods. (See attached methodology.)
Other key findings of the survey include:
* The eleven subway lines that experienced statistically significant deterioration were the 1, 4, 5, 7, B, D, F, G, J, M and V.
* Five subway lines showed statistically significant improvement: 6, C, N, Q and R.
* Six lines remained statistically unchanged: 2, 3, A, E, L and W.
* The most deteriorated line in our survey was the D, which fell from 80% in 2008 to 38% in 2009.
* The most improved line in our survey was the N, going from 29% clean cars in 2008 to 63% in 2009.
* The survey found major disparities in cleanliness among the lines, ranging from a low of 32% clean cars on the M line to a high of 65% on the 6 and C lines.
“How will subway cleanliness fare in an age of shrinking resources? We will do another survey next fall, compare and find out,” said Cate Contino, the coordinator for the Straphangers Campaign who directed the survey.
MTA New York City Transit conducts its own semi-annual subway car cleanliness survey, which did not report its results on a line-by-line basis until this reporting period. Transit’s survey showed improvement in subway car overall cleanliness for the second half of 2009. The number of clean car floors and seats (those with no or light dirt) “in service” improved from 91% in the second half of 2008 to 95% in the second half of 2009.
The average percentage of clean cars in the Campaign’s 2009 survey was 50% compared to New York City Transit’s 95%. The trend in the two surveys are also far apart: Transit’s survey showed overall improvement and the Campaign’s showed deterioration.
The Campaign acknowledged the different findings, but said that it was not able to point to factors that come to these results.
The car cleanliness surveys by Transit and the Straphangers Campaign’s survey use similar although not identical methodology. For example, the Campaign rates throughout the day and night and on weekends. New York City Transit rates on weekdays between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m.
The Campaign credited New York City Transit for recently providing the public with results broken down on a line-by-line basis. (See MTA New York City Transit Committee Agenda, February 2010, Passenger Environment Survey, page 194. The document can be found at www.mta.info by clicking on “Board Materials.”)
The Campaign urged transit officials to:
* Closely monitor the impact of reductions in resources to cleaning subway cars, as well as to station and track cleaning.
* Expand the use of ‘hand-held’ computers in their own survey to provide more timely information. New York City Transit has been piloting the use of hand held computers and plans to expand in the next few years.The survey findings can also be found on the Internet at www.straphangers.org.
Now here are three .pdf files containing the key information from the report:
Table One: Percentage of clean cars by line
Table Two: Best to Worst percentage of clean cars by line
I took the time to read the report when it first came out & it came as no surprise that cleanliness has declined. It is no surprise that the MTA’s budget woes play a role in this as they had to cut back on cleaners. However I must stress that the cut of cleaners is not the reason for the decline in cleanliness.
The real issue are the disgusting riders who think the entire subway system is their personal trash receptacle. How many times have you seen people scarfing down on a meal & just leave their garbage behind as if it is no big deal? I have lost count of how many times I have seen this. I recall years ago when I saw someone purposely leave a once bitten slice of pizza on the seat as they exited. They got up to get off & thought about it for a second & decided it was easier to leave it there even though there were trash receptacles on the platform.
What really needs to happen is the outright banning of food in the system. It is one thing to snack on a piece of gum or candy which is something I do from time to time & properly dispose of the trash when I get off. It is something completely different to scarf down full food whether it be pizza, soup, chicken, etc…. I would completely support the banning of food in the system as it is something that would benefit all of us in the long run.
Too many riders are quick to blame the MTA for the lack of cleanliness due to a lack of cleaners or effort on the ones they have. Yet they completely ignore how the trash got there in the first place. The MTA does not have people out there throwing trash throughout the system! The problem clearly starts & ends with the filthy pigs who clearly don’t give a damn about the system. Yet when the delays mount up due to trash causing issues with equipment, these same pigs are the first to trash the MTA & its operations. These riders make me sick!
xoxo Transit Blogger
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Service Diversions 06-22-10
I have just updated the “Service Diversions” page by removing all the expired weekend diversions. The latest planned diversions for the week & long term in some cases are listed. The next update will take place on Thursday after the MTA sends me the upcoming weekend’s diversions. Don’t forget to print out a copy to carry with you or access the mobile friendly version of Transit Blogger. As always, stay safe while riding.
xoxo Transit Blogger
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