Fare Beaters To Face $100 Tickets
The news is still coming in with regards to the Select Bus Service coming to the east side of Manhattan later this year. As I noted yesterday, the MTA is not worried about fare evasion on the upcoming service even though the agency admitted it would be a problem back in April.
Pete Donohue of the New York Daily News reports on how fare beaters would face $100 tickets from extra inspectors:
Here’s some bad news for fare-beaters.
While the speedier bus service coming to the East Side is based on an honor system in which riders pay at the curb, officials will hire more NYC Transit inspectors to ferret out cheaters and issue $100 fines when the new plan arrives in the fall.
That already happens in the Bronx, where inspectors on just one route issue more than twice as many tickets as the NYPD does on all other bus routes combined.
Still, some riders on the M15 route are skeptical NYC Transit can keep out the freeloaders under the new plan – designed to cut boarding time and shorten trips that averaged a snail-like pace of one block a minute in midtown yesterday.
“It won’t work here,” Jeff Rigby, 52, a graphic designer, said. “I don’t know if New Yorkers are trustworthy. They will ride for free as long as they can. It’s still a nice idea, though.”
Compliance will depend on enforcement, said therapist Michele Endich. “They need to fear the fine,” she said.
Mayor Bloomberg agrees.
“There always will be a handful of people who cheat,” he said. “When you start fining a few, then they’ll say, ‘Oops! I better not do that.'”
The Select Bus Service will affect the M15 on First and Second Aves. from Houston to 125th Sts.
Click here for the complete report.
Newsflash, $100 fines will not do the trick. It is one thing to issue a fine but will you actually see it paid by the perpetrators? I feel Mayor Bloomberg is living in a fantasy world to think that seeing a people fined will stop people from attempting to beat the fare. Fare evasion has been a long standing issue with buses for years. How many millions of dollars are lost every year from it on buses alone much less all forms of service that the MTA provides.
If they really want to curb fare evasion, real solutions must be put into place & a few extra inspectors are not it. One can’t possibly have enough inspectors to cover every single bus from beginning to end. What they should do is sit down with the NYPD & come up with long term sustainable solutions to address this problem throughout the entire system.
xoxo Transit Blogger
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MTA Statement On Booth & Kiosk Closures
Just a few minutes ago, the MTA issued a statement on the subway booth & kiosk closures which a Manhattan Supreme Court Judge found were closed by improper procedures. Here is the statement they sent me a few minutes ago:
The MTA continues to disagree with the court’s ruling that additional public hearings are required before the station booths and kiosks can be closed, and that the kiosks closed in May need to be re-opened. These closures were necessitated by the MTA’s dire financial situation, and the need for the savings they generate remains.
We believe the prior public hearings fully conformed with the legal requirements and will be appealing the judge’s order as soon as it is entered. The appeal triggers an automatic stay of the lower court’s order, and the MTA therefore should not be required to re-open the recently-closed kiosks at this time.
At the same time as the MTA pursues the appeal, we will be proceeding on a parallel track with the public hearing process. With that in mind, an MTA Board meeting is scheduled for tomorrow at which the Board will be asked to authorize the public hearing process to move this vital cost-saving initiative forward.
I am going to see if I can find a way to attend this meeting tomorrow although it is looking unlikely at this point.
xoxo Transit Blogger
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MTA Not Worried About SBS Fare Evasion
For a few minutes this morning, I could not stop laughing. You are probably wondering what had me in near tears? The article in today’s New York Post by Tom Namako which talks about how the MTA is not worried about fare evasion on the new Select Bus Service route debuting on the east side of Manhattan later this year:
You won’t need a ticket to ride!
Wide-eyed MTA officials are hoping that riders on a new East Side express bus line will buy tickets before they board — even though nobody, except the occasional inspector, will be able to give them the boot for fare-beating.
Drivers will ask to see the tickets from riders on the new express M15 route — who are being trusted to buy tickets before they board in order to speed up the process — but will be powerless to enforce the fare.
Enforcement will be left up to a special MTA team, which has just 30 members.
The new route — which in October will run on First and Second avenues from 125th Street to Houston Street — is supposed to speed up trip lengths by ditching the time-consuming MetroCard dips.Transit officials say the payment system has helped reduce fare-beating on the Fordham Road express line in The Bronx from 13 percent of riders per year — when fares were paid on board — to 10 percent.
Even Mayor Bloomberg is putting his trust in the riders.
“It’s to some extent an honor system,” Hizzoner said yesterday. “People pay. These are New Yorkers and, yes, there will always be a handful of people who cheat. There are a handful of people that cheat right now.
“Most people are honest, and the fact of the matter is, if you improve the service dramatically, you’ll get a lot more people using it, and the revenues will go up even if a handful of people cheat,” he added.
Click here for the complete report.
Honestly, who are they kidding? Fare Evasion has been a big problem with Select Bus Service so far as the New York Daily News has reported on a number of occasions. Even MTA New York City Transit expected fare evasion to be an issue with SBS as they said as much in April.
I hate to bring this up but are the faith sentiments in honesty stemming from the location of the service? It is widely known that fare evasion has been a problem in the Bronx on the Bx12’s Select Bus Service. Are the MTA & Mayor Bloomberg echoing so much faith because this service will be in Manhattan & serving more upscale neighborhoods?
I am not trying to offend anyone but I find it is a fair question considering the resounding faith being showed in the honesty system working in terms of fare collection. Most likely it is just misguided faith & not some underhanded class structure point. This is the same agency spending over $100M to rehab Jay Street yet will not repaint badly needed areas in the station as part of the work. I just wanted to put it out there as I could not be the only person to have seen this potential point.
xoxo Transit Blogger
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Sorry Jay, No Paint For You
In a story that comes as to no surprise to me nor should it you, the MTA will spend over $100M on a station rehabilitation which somehow does not include repainting. The station in question is the Jay St station which has been under extensive renovations for months as anyone who reads the “Service Diversions” would know. Gary Buiso of The Brooklyn Paper has more:
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is spending $110 million to rehabilitate the bustling Jay Street subway station, but it is content to treat the hub’s entryway as an ugly stepchild.
The transit agency said this week it will not repaint the peeling ceilings on either exit on the west side of Jay Street between Willoughby Street and Myrtle Avenue, leaving a moonscape of potentially toxic paint chips raining down.
Straphangers were disgusted by the news.
“They need to fix it — it’s not healthy,” said commuter Anjell Bowers. If Jay Street were Wall Street, it is unlikely the ceilings would be left to deteriorate, she added.
“But Wall Street is where the money is.”
Commuter Norman Chan agreed.
“If this was an apartment building, this would be a major housing violation,” he charged. “You wouldn’t rent a place that looked like this.”
Transit spokeswoman Deirdre Parker insisted that the areas in question are safe, noting that the ceiling was re-painted in the 1990s with a non-lead based paint.
But even so, the agency regards the situation as dangerous: Above-ground station cleaners are instructed to sweep the courtyard area with wet cloths and a HEPA vacuum — which contain specialized filters to trap dangerous lead particles, which can cause serious health problems.
Click here for the complete report.
This kind of stupidity irks me to no end. Why spend millions of dollars to do a station rehabilitation yet choose to not repaint areas that clearly need them? One does not need an Ivy-League education to understand why this is beyond ridiculous. However leave it to the MTA to do such a thing which leaves you scratching your heads & wondering who makes these decisions. I will applaud them when they do well but I will equally trash them when they do something stupid like this!
xoxo Transit Blogger
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Select Bus Service Done Wrong
Select Bus Service or Bus Rapid Transit is a topic I have opined about on many occasions. I happen to be a fan of the idea as I find it serves many solid purposes to help the commutes of many. So one would most likely assume I am thrilled at yesterday’s announcement of the service coming to the east side of Manhattan. Unfortunately I am not as the proposed service is severely flawed.
Let us first take a look at a report from Sunday prior to the announcement by the New York Times’ Michael M. Grynbaum:
Buses in New York are as slow as snails. It is as sure a thing as Yankees wearing pinstripes and congestion on the Cross Bronx Expressway.
But an ambitious $10 million project to bring European-style rapid-transit buses to First and Second Avenues — among the most highly used and heavily congested bus routes in the nation — is aiming to turn that truism on its head.
Starting in October, buses will be granted an exclusive lane to speed up travel on those avenues from Houston Street to 125th Street, a trip that can last an hour and a half — the length of an Amtrak ride from Pennsylvania Station to Philadelphia.
Tickets will be sold at sidewalk kiosks, allowing passengers to board without stopping to fumble for change or a MetroCard.
Riders will be on the honor system: passengers will not have to produce a ticket unless asked. (A $100 fine awaits the dishonest.) And the buses will be equipped with three doors for quicker boarding and exiting.
The plan, to be announced on Monday, represents the latest move by the Bloomberg administration to siphon away space from private automobiles in favor of other forms of transport. Once dominated by trucks, cars and taxicabs, First and Second Avenues will now gain cycling lanes and concrete pedestrian islands, as well as a bus route meant to function more like a subway.
The city’s Department of Transportation and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority hope that bus travel times will improve by about 20 percent.
That could benefit more than 50,000 riders on Manhattan’s transit-starved far East Side, still waiting for its subway line after 80 years.
“New Yorkers are tired of waiting years and decades for changes to make their streets work better,” said Janette Sadik-Khan, the transportation commissioner. “We want to give buses the red carpet.”
Click here for the complete report.
Now let us take a look at an information piece posted by the MTA on their website:
Bus riders will soon have faster and more reliable bus service along the east side of Manhattan with this week’s announcement that new Select Bus Service is coming to First and Second Avenues. MTA Chairman and CEO Jay H. Walder joined Mayor Bloomberg, and Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan to announce the start of construction on dedicated bus-only lanes that will benefit 54,000 daily riders of the M15 bus line.
The first phase of the project will create dedicated bus lanes from 125th Street to Houston Street along the right side of the street on both First and Second Avenues. Select Bus Service along this corridor also calls for use of new articulated three-door buses.
Riders will be able to pay their fare at on-street machines before boarding, some sidewalks will be extended to allow buses to pick up and discharge passengers without having to exit and reenter traffic, buses will be given traffic signal priority and the new service will make fewer stops than the current M15 Limited.
“SBS is the real deal, bringing together faster bus boarding, enforced bus lanes and signal prioritization to improve bus service for New Yorkers,” Chairman Walder said. “It’s a terrific example of the growing partnership between New York City and the MTA, but we’re not stopping there. We’re working with the City to make it clear to drivers that bus lanes throughout the City are for buses only, and a new smart card pilot will pave the way for faster boarding on all of our buses.”
The lack of transit options on Manhattan’s East Side have made the M15 bus on First and Second Avenues the busiest bus route in Manhattan, traveling at less than six miles per hour. The improvement could help increase ridership by more than 10 percent.
Implementation of the bus lanes will begin this month, with street resurfacing starting next week. By October, the dedicated lanes will be completed and in use, while additional improvements continue to be installed.
NYPD enforcement will help keep the dedicated bus lanes clear of vehicles, and taxis will be deterred from using lanes through violations issued by the Taxi & Limousine Commission by using cameras. The City is barred from using cameras to issue violations to motorists using dedicated bus-only lanes, but the Administration has been aggressively seeking the authority utilize cameras to enforce bus-only lanes – a new State law is required to give the City enforcement ability.
The City and MTA will continue community outreach throughout the summer. Phase Two of the project, which will begin in 2011, will include bus priority traffic signals and “bus bulb” curb extensions that will further improve bus lane performance.
Select Bus Service has been highly successful on Fordham Road in the Bronx, where the first route on the Bx12 was implemented in 2008. Travel times improved by as much as 24 percent and ridership increased by 30 percent.
As I said, I support Select Bus Service or Bus Rapid Transit as it is a very smart way to improve the commute for many riders. However I only support these measures when done right & the announced version for the east side of Manhattan is the exact opposite of that.
The biggest issue with this version is the lack of dedicated bus lanes for the project. There is zero debating that the most important aspects of SBS or BRT is dedicated lanes for bus operation along with 100% enforcement of these lanes being for buses only. To say that they will strongly enforce it is nothing but hot air. When the service debuts, the enforcement will be there. However as time passes, non-bus drivers will get away with using these lanes to their advantage.
To put this bluntly, if the MTA & New York City Department Of Transportation think that painting lanes a different color for buses will help this service reach its full potential, they have a rude awakening coming. Don’t come back & complain later as all I will say is I told you so.
xoxo Transit Blogger
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