Straphangers Asked To Grade The D Line
205th St. bound D train approaching Bay 50th St. station. Resized photo courtesy of Eye On Transit.
Continuing with the catchup theme, NYC Transit issued a press release on Halloween. The press release was to announce that the 
would be the next line up for grading in the 2008 Rider Report Cards. Here are the complete details:
In our continuing effort to solicit feedback from our customers, MTA New York City Transit is again distributing Rider Report Cards throughout the system. Riders on the D are next in line of NYC Transit’s over five million daily subway customers asked to rate the progress of their line since the initial round of report cards was distributed in July 2007.
The report cards are being distributed to riders during the morning rush hours from Monday, November 3rd through Thursday, November 6th. The cards will be handed out at several different stations along the line each day over the four days. Grades will be used to identify rider preferences and to gauge how much improvement customers along the D line have noticed since last year’s report card.
Again, the Rider Report Card will ask subway riders to grade 21 specific areas of service from an A (Excellent) to an F (Unsatisfactory). Among the areas riders will grade include: car and station cleanliness, safety, security, quality of announcements, and the courtesy and helpfulness of front line customer service staff. Riders will also assign an overall grade for D line service. From this list of 21 service attributes, riders are also going to be asked to rank the top three improvements they would like to see made to this line.
The Rider Report Card is once again being distributed in a mailer format, designed to be returned at no cost to the rider. Customers will also have the option of completing the survey on-line, on the MTA website at www.mta.info, where it will be available in 3 languages: English, Spanish and Chinese. From the time the survey begins, riders will have two weeks to mail in their response or to complete the survey online.
Rider Report Card results are posted on line for riders to review once they have been tabulated.
Report cards are being distributed between 7:30 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. at each station. The schedule for distribution of Rider Report Cards along the D line is as follows:
• Monday, November 3rd – Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue, Bay 50th Street, 25th Avenue, Grand Street, Broadway-Lafayette Street, West 4th Street-Washington Square, and 34th Street-Herald Square.
• Tuesday, November 4th – 47th-50th Streets/Rockefeller Center, 7th Avenue, and 59th Street-Columbus Circle.
• Wednesday, November 5th – 125th Street, 135th Street, 145th Street, 155th Street, 161st Street-Yankee Stadium, 167th Street, 170th Street, 174th-175th Streets, Tremont Avenue, and 182nd-183rd Streets.
• Thursday, November 6th – Fordham Road, Kingsbridge Road, Bedford Park Boulevard, and Norwood-205th Street.
I wonder if the ridership is that low at many of the stations that they are not included in the list of locations for report card handouts. I feel they should hand them out at every station or at least have a display where a straphanger can pick one up when entering or leaving the station.
xoxo Transit Blogger
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MTA Officials Seek Federal Assistance
Catching up with stories from Halloween & the weekend, comes this story about MTA officials seeking federal assistance. NY1 Transit Reporter Bobby Cuza has more in this report:
Just when it seemed the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s financial picture could not get any worse, it now appears a fare increase planned for next year could be even bigger than expected – thanks in part to the growing budget deficits in Albany.
“We are extremely concerned about what has occurred with the state’s revenues,” said MTA Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer Elliot “Lee” Sander.
While not technically a state agency, the MTA does receive state aid. Next year, it was counting on $300 million in new funding from both the state and city to help close a roughly one-billion-dollar deficit.
Like the state, the MTA is now looking to the federal government for help – hoping to cash in on an economic stimulus package, which the MTA hopes will include money for infrastructure projects.
“We have given them a laundry list of things that we think would be helpful to us – station painting, cleaning, cars, that kind of stuff,” said MTA Deputy Executive Director Christopher Boylan. “So it would be things that you could actually create jobs with in 60 to 90 days.”
Click here for a video & the complete report.
Any regular reader of this blog knows how I feel about the role elected officials on all levels played in the MTA being in the hole it is in financially. It is refreshing to see MTA officials seeking federal assistance. If the government can bail out banks, it should be able to do the same for transportation agencies which are just as important to this country as any bank would ever be. If the country’s transit infrastructure collapses, so will this country. This isn’t just an opinion from a passionate transit advocate but an actual fact.
While I doubt the federal government will provide the money necessary to avoid a fare hike, it should look to provide an enormous amount of funds to the MTA as it is the most important transit agency in the country bar none. Lets see i f they will step up to the plate & provide the timely financial hit that is desperately needed to continue the game.
xoxo Transit Blogger
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MTA’s Global Bond Investments Backfired
Yesterday’s print edition of the New York Times contained a must read piece which talked about how global bond investments by the MTA & others have backfired. The piece focuses on bonds known as “Collateralized Debt Obligations” or “C.D.O.’s”. These bonds are considered an asset backed security/structured credit product. They come in the form of adjustable rates which changed from day to day. Charles Duhog & Carter Dougherty have more:
On a snowy day two years ago, the school board in Whitefish Bay, Wis., gathered to discuss a looming problem: how to plug a gaping hole in the teachers’ retirement plan.
It turned to David W. Noack, a trusted local investment banker, who proposed that the district borrow from overseas and use the money for a complex investment that offered big profits.
“Every three months you’re going to get a payment,” he promised, according to a tape of the meeting. But would it be risky? “There would need to be 15 Enrons” for the district to lose money, he said.
The board and four other nearby districts ultimately invested $200 million in the deal, most of it borrowed from an Irish bank. Without realizing it, the schools were imitating hedge funds.
Half a continent away, New York subway officials were also being wooed by bankers. Officials were told that just as home buyers had embraced adjustable-rate loans, New York could save money by borrowing at lower interest rates that changed every day.
During the go-go investing years, school districts, transit agencies and other government entities were quick to jump into the global economy, hoping for fast gains to cover growing pension costs and budgets without raising taxes. Deals were arranged by armies of persuasive financiers who received big paydays.
But now, hundreds of cities and government agencies are facing economic turmoil. Far from being isolated examples, the Wisconsin schools and New York’s transportation system are among the many players in a financial fiasco that has ricocheted globally.
For years, municipal agencies like the M.T.A. had raised money by issuing plain-vanilla bonds with fixed interest rates. But then bankers began telling officials that there was a way to get cheaper financing.
By 2006 Depfa was the largest buyer of last resort in the world, standing behind $2.9 billion of bonds issued that year alone. It backed a $200 million bond issued by the M.T.A.
But as Depfa grew, it became more reliant on enormous short-term loans to finance its operations. Those loans cost less, and thus helped the bank achieve higher profits, but only when times were good. Indeed, some employees were worried about that debt.
Then, in mid-September, the American investment bank Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. Short-term lending markets froze up. Ratings agencies, including Standard & Poor’s, downgraded Depfa, citing the company’s difficulties borrowing at affordable rates.
That set off a crisis in Germany, where officials worried that Depfa’s sudden need for cash would drag down its parent company and set off a chain reaction at other banks. The German government and private banks extended $64 billion in credit to Hypo to stop it from imploding.
“We will not allow the distress of one financial institution to endanger the entire system,” Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said at the time.
That crisis spread almost immediately to the M.T.A.
The transportation authority, guided by Gary Dellaverson, a rumpled, cigarillo-smoking chief financial officer, had $3.75 billion of variable-rate debt outstanding.
About $200 million of that debt was backed by Depfa. When the bank was downgraded, investors dumped those transportation bonds, because of worries they would get stuck with them if Depfa’s problems worsened. Depfa was forced to buy $150 million of them, and bonds worth billions of dollars issued by other municipalities.
Then came the twist: Depfa’s contracts said that if it bought back bonds, the municipalities had to pay a higher-than-average interest rate. The New York transportation authority’s repayment obligation could eventually balloon by about $12 million a year on the Depfa loans alone.
On its own, that cost could be absorbed by the agency. But, as the economy declined, the M.T.A. had lost hundreds of millions because tax receipts — which finance part of its budget — were falling. And its ability to renew its variable-rate bonds at low interest rates was hurt by the trouble at Depfa and other banks. The transportation authority now faces a $900 million shortfall, according to officials. It is “fairly breathtaking,” Mr. Dellaverson told the M.T.A.’s finance committee. “This is not a tolerable long-term position for us to be in.”
In a recent interview, Mr. Dellaverson defended New York’s use of variable bonds.
“Variable-rate debt has helped M.T.A. save millions of dollars, and we’ve been conservative in issuing it,” he said. “But there are risks, which we work hard to mitigate. Usually it works. But what’s happening today is a total lack of marketplace rationality.”
Click here for the complete report.
This sounds like a case of the MTA being stupid & greedy at the same time. I would assume they studied all the risks & executed potential projected return scenarios out so what made them go through with such a risky proposition? I invest so I fully understand that risks are involved. I love to take risks but only if they are legitimately worth my time. If the returns from a standard & safer strategy produce similar results with a more riskier one, common sense tells me to stick with what works. Was the minimal difference in additional money really worth putting yourself in such a hole?
I understand that the MTA & others could not have seen such a huge market crash leading to the closure of companies such as Lehman Brothers but still. these “investments” should have set off an alarm & led to a smaller investment in them or none at all. Who would sign a contract agreeing to get raped on interest if the bonds defaulted? When I see an agreement that protects the side I might do business with that much, the red flags immediately go up for me. The same should have applied to the MTA.
Maybe it is time for the MTA to clean house & bring in new financial “experts” who can make more sound judgments that not only affect the agency but the riding public as well.
xoxo Transit Blogger
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Service Diversions 10-31
Let me apologize for not getting these posted sooner. I was out all day & night. I did not get home until after 6am due to having an amazing Halloween. Anyhow let me not digress anymore & get to the main point which is to say the service diversions page has been updated. As usual, the diversions cover this weekend, into next week, & sometimes beyond. Remember to print out a copy for your own use or browse the site via your cell phone. The site is optimized to work perfectly on all cell phones. Have a safe weekend!
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Penn Station LIRR Waiting Room Closed This Weekend
The Long Island Rail Road has sent out a press release to announce to customers that its waiting room in Penn Station will be closed this weekend. The closure is due to work on restroom renovations. Here are the complete details:
The Penn Station customer waiting room will be closed this coming weekend from 3 AM, Saturday, November 1 through 5 AM, Monday, November 3 as work is done related to the renovation of the nearby customer restrooms. A temporary customer waiting/seating area will be located in the Connecting Concourse. Both the men’s and women’s
rest rooms will be open during this phase of the work.The $5 million restroom renovation project includes doubling the size of the women’s room, installation of new heating and ventilation systems along with new walls, floors, ceilings, lighting and plumbing fixtures in both restrooms. Work is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2009.
xoxo Transit Blogger
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