Commuter pricing will fix this

AM New York  

The MTA Board approved on Wednesday a budget plan for 2025 that includes public transportation fare hikes and toll increases slated to take effect next summer.

The board unanimously voted to pass the plan during its monthly meeting on Dec. 18. The exact amount of the increases has yet to be announced but could go into effect in August 2025. 

In recent years, the MTA approved 4% increases in fares and tolls. Should that trend continue, a base fare for a subway or bus trip would cost $3, up a dime from $2.90, come next summer, according to an article from ABC 7. 

Meanwhile, during Wednesday’s meeting, MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber boasted of “excellent service” and surging subway ridership. 

“Last week, we set a new single-day record for subway ridership, 4.5 million customers,” he said. “Compare that to 2021, when this group began when the average weekday was less than half of that level.”

The most recent fare hike occurred in 2023, when the base NYC Transit fare was bumped up 15 cents, from $2.75 to $2.90. That marked the first such increase in eight years.

 

Despite the fare rise, Lieber remained optimistic and said the agency is coming out “on a high note” for 2024.

“I always look back at the goals we set at the beginning of the year, and when I took the chair a couple of years ago, priority one was recovering ridership to support the region’s comeback and also to help us achieve financial stability,” he said. 

Lieber added that the MTA vowed to deliver “excellent” service to New Yorkers. 

“And we also needed to keep the capital program on track to earn the public’s trust on how the MTA was going to spend money,” he said.

But New Yorkers whom amNewYork Metro talked to Wednesday after the budget vote did not hold back their opinions on the increase, some even calling it “straight-up greed.”

Others said they pay too much for too little service.

“This is absolutely outrageous. That last increase led to subpar service as it is,” said Roger Smith, an Upper West Side resident. 

Carlos Rivera of Harlem questioned what the increases will actually support, as he is often stuck waiting for late trains and buses. 

“I wish us New Yorkers could audit the MTA because this is absolutely ridiculous at this point,” he said. “Track maintenance and the trains and buses are never on time. Where is our money going?”

 

Queens bus redesigns town hall tomorrow night

  

This will be live and on zoom.

23 Slowdoo

 

New York Times

 

Just beyond the reach of New York City’s frenetic, round-the-clock subway, people in a slice of western Queens wait — and wait — to board one of the borough’s slowest buses.

Many of the 2.3 million New Yorkers who live and work in Queens aren’t served directly by the vast network of trains that keeps the nation’s biggest metropolis moving. The borough, the city’s second most populous, has less subway service relative to its size and population than the other four.

So hundreds of thousands of people here plan their lives around the only mass transit choice they have: the buses that lumber along traffic-choked streets.

One of those buses, the Q23, is among the slowest in the city. For the past four years, it has consistently traveled more slowly than the citywide average of about 8 miles per hour — about the speed some people can run — bogged down by an awkward path and riders who swarm two stops that connect to the subway.

It was slower than nearly all of the 76 other buses in Queens in April, and it ranked dead last in the borough in January, when it traveled at 6.5 miles per hour.

 

The Q23’s route curls around the Tudor-style houses and lush yards of Forest Hills, then cuts through the bustling heart of multicultural Corona before turning west toward the edge of Queens to head to its last stop, near La Guardia Airport.

“Each section has its own little demon,” John Breeden, who has driven city buses for 11 years and counts the Q23 among his routes, said as he sat behind the wheel on a spring afternoon. “You need patience.”

More New Yorkers ride buses in this borough than in any other. On a given weekday before the pandemic, 680,000 people took a bus in Queens, making up about 32 percent of the city’s overall weekday ridership of 2.2 million.

Many blue-collar workers rely on the Q23 to reach their jobs, and its frequent delays can derail their commutes and make them late to work. Some riders set out hours early to compensate. When buses are slow, people put off basic needs such as medical care, according to a May 2020 study published in the American Journal of Public Health. They spend longer in harsh weather, and their quality of life suffers because of lost time.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the city’s public buses, wants to speed them up in Queens, in part by getting rid of stops and adapting to modern traffic patterns, making routes straighter and more direct.

“Most of the subway system was built when Queens still had farmlands,” said Janno Lieber, the M.T.A.’s chairman and chief executive.

“Now we have to make the bus system do a lot of the work in Queens that the subway system does for so many other parts of the city that got more heavy rail, because of when they were developed,” he said.

The authority released a draft plan to redesign the borough’s bus network in March, and it is soliciting community input through June.

Critics of the plan say it would not solve problems like drivers who don’t follow the rules, dining sheds that make narrow streets even tighter, and construction jobs like the one that blocked Ms. Mora’s route.

“Realistically, there’s not much you can do,” Mr. Breeden said. “It’s very populated over there. And then you add in the churches, then you add in the deliveries, and the people’s entrepreneurship out there — it’s always going to be crowded.”

Caption Brad Pander annoying a commuter on the day of the mass shooting

This guy is an asshole

MTA resorting to privatization to serve low transit areas

NY Daily News

Night-shift workers living in places with spotty overnight bus and subway service may get a new way home under a MTA proposal.

The agency on Tuesday announced plans to hire an outside company to provide a publicly subsidized on-demand car or van service for riders in places where “bus service is less frequent than subway service or is unavailable.”

Transit honchos intend to use the service in areas outside of Manhattan that are more than a half-mile from the nearest subway or train station, have “limited or no overnight bus service nearby.”

The proposal — which MTA officials note is required by the state law setting up congestion pricing in lower Manhattan — was offered to bidders in January. It appears to be targeted at app-based car service companies like Uber, Lyft and Via, which serve a combined 700,000 daily riders in New York City.

The program’s stated goal is to serve a growing number of people who work non-traditional hours, like medical professionals and service industry employees. It would give riders in the targeted areas subsidized car or van rides — and could be a boon for e-hail companies that have already cut into the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s ridership.

MTA officials also want riders to be able to pay for the late-night rides with OMNY, the agency’s new digital payment system.

“We are seeking to leverage new mobility technologies to enable more New Yorkers to benefit from the public transportation network during the overnight hours, and to enhance the experience of overnight subway customers in low-cost ways," said Mark Dowd, who in November was hired as the MTA’s chief innovation officer, a role created through a state-mandated reorganization of the agency.

The program is scheduled to launch as a temporary pilot in June.

Uber, Lyft and Via have in recent years partnered with other cities to fill their transit deserts.

Via in 2018 launched a program with Berlin’s public transit agency Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe to provide on-demand van rides in an effort to supplement the city’s bus, tram and train routes. Also in 2018, Lyft cut a deal with the Detroit transit officials to offer discounted car rides between midnight and 5 a.m. for riders using one of the city’s bus routes.

Bringing that model to New York may prove tough.

J.P. Patafio, the head of buses at Transport Workers Union Local 100, said transit bosses did not tell him about the idea to outsource transit services. He likened the pitch to unregulated dollar vans.

“They (the MTA) need to invest in more bus service, and if they want a different type of service they should have put it in the (Local 100) contract the board ratified last month,” Patafio said. “We’re certainly not allowing non-union companies to do our work.”

Some transit advocates wondered why the MTA is looking to pay to outsource its services when the agency is in the middle of a “revenue neutral” redesign of each borough’s bus network.

“Isn’t this what a bus is supposed to do?,” Tri-State Transportation Campaign executive director Nick Sifuentes asked. “Buses work well during off-peak hours because traffic is less of an impediment to service.

"That's the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don't work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital." - Noam Chomsky

MTA holds first Queens bus route redesign proposal hearing in a basement and commuters are pissed

PIX 11 News

 Changing bus routes is a guaranteed way to draw a crowd in the city.
MTA New York City Transit is in the process of a complete redesign of all the routes in the city.

The proposal for Queens was released two weeks ago. Elected officials and riders calledfor a meeting with transit officials to discuss the plan.

Additional sessions will be held over the. next month. Comments can be made on line.

Read about the Queens proposals here .

The entire plan for all five boroughs can be found here . 

Looks like commuter rage resonated with Byford and his entourage. Those links are now 404's.

MTA arranges one-year plan to rearrange bus routes in Queens

Patch

 Queens' sprawling bus network will get a massive overhaul.

The MTA on Monday announced a yearlong project to redesign the network of 107 bus lines that move more than 714,000 weekday riders throughout Queens.

The transit authority will work with the NYC Department of Transportation to alter redundant or indirect bus routes and change the spacing between bus stops, according to a presentation shown to the Queens Borough Cabinet on Monday.

The MTA will also collect public feedback on Queens' current bus service and ideas for changes they'd like to see through an online form and a series of open houses, which kick off in May.
The agency aims to finish a draft of the redesign in November 2019 and release the final plan in April 2020.

 "The Queens bus network has not substantially changed in decades and the people of Queens deserve better. I'm immensely proud to begin the process of bus network modernization in the city's largest borough," New York City Transit President Andy Byford said. "Bus network modernization is absolutely critical to the continued success of Queens and I look forward to being a part of it."

Borough President candidate Crowley proposes resuscitation of LIRR passenger train line

 

 NY Daily News

A little-used stretch of train tracks in Queens could be the key to filling transit deserts in the borough, community leaders say.

The Long Island Railroad’s Lower Montauk branch, which runs 8.5 miles between Long Island City and Jamaica, could be used to bring new passenger rail service to communities like Maspeth and Glendale, which do not have subway stops.

The LIRR ran commuter trains along the line until 1998, when the Metropolitan Transportation Authority closed its stops due in part to low ridership. Now, the tracks service freight trains and are used as an extra storage space for Sunnyside Yard.

The chief advocate of the project, dubbed the QNS, is former Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley (D-Queens). She commissioned an independent feasibility study in 2017, which was completed shortly after she left office in early 2018.

Crowley has recently renewed her push for the line — she hosted an event Friday to begin assembling a non-profit to stump for the project.

 Her proposal would bring nine stops to the stretch, and would cost an estimated $2.2 billion to pull off. The 2018 study projects that it would serve roughly 21,000 weekday riders.

Community leaders and advocates of the project disagree with that assessment, noting that the areas it will serve expect to boom in the coming years.

“Look at the growth in Long Island City and the growth in the Jamaica downtown area and at JFK Airport,” said longtime transportation consultant Philippa Karteron, an advocate of the project. “If we could put something like this together, the corridor could be an economic development corridor, bringing in businesses, bringing in jobs.”

Unlike the BQX, another Queens-oriented transit project, Crowley’s idea isn’t supported by real estate developers — she says she’s working to form a grassroots campaign that has community boards involved from the get-go.

This actually isn't a bad idea considering the severe and desperate need for transit in this overcrowded and overburdened city but that rendering of Hillside Ave. in Richmond Hill is a hysterically inaccurate depiction of the citizenry in that area. And very racist in it's prescience of what the designers think it will look like if the station is built there.

A subway signal malfunctions just about every day

From PIX11:

There were subway delays on all but one day during August 2018 because of signal problems, a Riders Alliance analysis released Sunday showed.

The Alliance said it reviewed MTA delay alerts for the month of August from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. They reported delays due to signal problems for every day except Aug. 23.

"It's just painful," said Joe Hetterly of Bay Ridge, about his commutes.

The Riders Alliance said signal delays caused problems on every subway line except the L, which has already received signal upgrades.

The analysis showed the worst delays were on the D and R lines.

So we did all that for nothing?

From the Queens Chronicle:

The launch of Select Bus Service along several corridors in New York City has done little to improve riders’ commutes, a new analysis by the city comptroller claims.

The findings, released last Friday, state the average speed of SBS buses is 8.9 miles per hour, 20 percent better than the average rate for local buses, 7.4 mph.

The fastest Queens SBS route is the Q70, which connects riders from Jackson Heights to LaGuardia Airport, at 11.3 mph.

And the service is not doing much to get people where they need to go in a timely manner either. The average on-time performance for all SBS lines is 62 percent, equal to that of local routes. The Q44 SBS, which runs through Flushing and Jamaica, is on time 54 percent of the time, the Q70 scored a 62 percent and the M60 — which goes from LaGuardia Airport to Morningside Heights in Manhattan — got a 37 percent on-time rate.

The report did not state the speed or on-time performance of the Q52/53 SBS routes on Woodhaven and Cross Bay boulevards, which launched last November.

Queens commutes suck

From Brick Underground: Residents of four different regions of NYC face commutes that rank among the nation’s top 10 longest ones, according to a study conducted by statistician Chase Sawyer and originally reported on by CityLab. Unsurprisingly, outer borough residents have the toughest slogs in the city: Queens residents have an average commute time of 42.6 minutes, Brooklynites have a 41.7-minute commute on average, Bronx residents 43 minutes and Staten Island residents 42.6 minutes on average. By comparison, Manhattanites' average commute time is about 31 minutes, according to the map. Interestingly, both Westchester County and Nassau County residents had shorter commutes than outer-borough residents — 32.9 and 34.9 minutes respectively, though we'd imagine the aforementioned "summer of hell," and recent LIRR woes may skew these numbers a bit the next time around.

Most of Queens has been screwed by the MTA

From the NY Times:

In New York City, about three-quarters of residential units are within a half mile of a subway station, according to a 2015 report by New York University’s Furman Center. The statistics vary widely by borough: In Manhattan, about 94 percent of units are near the subway, compared with about 54 percent of units in Queens.

But we in Queens should not have cars because "you can get everywhere by subway in NYC" (meaning Manhattan).

And let's build a streetcar to connect neighborhoods with subway stops instead of improving bus service.

Long commutes for eastern Queens

From the Times Ledger:

Residents of Jamaica and the Rockaways who commute to work have longer average traveling times than the residents of any neighborhood in the five boroughs, according to a new report from the Center for an Urban Future.

The report, which was released March 31, found that the average commute to work from the Rockaways was 53 minutes, with Jamaica a close second at 51 minutes. These commutes far exceed the national average commute of 26 minutes, the report said.

“Average commutes range from 53 minutes in the Rockaways to 26 minutes in the Financial District and Greenwich Village,” the report stated. “In other words, over the course of a five-day work week, Rockaway residents will spend four hours and 29 minutes more time commuting than those who live in Downtown Manhattan.”

Workers commuting from Bellerose/Rosedale have the third-longest average commute of Queens residents at 47 minutes.

Although Manhattan remains the commuting center for many New Yorkers, most employees who live in the city work in the borough in which they reside. This includes Queens residents, where 41 percent of Queens commuters traveling to a job in the borough. The number of Queens residents who also work in the borough jumped 28 percent from 2000 to 2014. Queens residents are also more likely than the workers of any other borough to travel to a job outside of the city with 13 percent commuting to points beyond the city.

Subway service sucks even more than before

From NY1:

Grab a seat, check your phone, get comfortable - the wait for a train could be long.

"They've been having a lot of track, signal problems and stuff like that. So I find that the timing is off," said one subway rider.

So does a new audit from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. It says riders are enduring longer waits for trains on three quarters of the MTA's 21 major lines.

"Service has deteriorated. I don't think it's any big surprise to most of the riders waiting on the platform for a train that hasn't arrived yet," said Matt Sweeney, a spokesperson for the state comptroller's office.

The audit examined wait times, the MTA's targets for the number of minutes between trains.

The comptroller says in the first half of 2015, the MTA met those targets systemwide 78.4 percent of the time, a falloff from the previous year.

But DiNapoli says the MTA's measurement may make subway performance appear better than it is because the agency tallies each line’s average performance, treating puny shuttle service the same as longer lines like the A train.

"When they average in shuttles with something as major as the Lexington Avenue line, it raises the performance of the Lexington Avenue line," Sweeney said.

In all, 16 major lines saw an increase in wait times last year. Just five lines saw an improvement.

Legislators say MTA should make fares equal across the board

From the Forum:

The City Council’s Queens delegation this week announced its unanimous support for the Commuter Rail Fare Equalization Proposal.

All 15 members of the Queens contingent have endorsed Resolution 670, calling on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to equalize commuter rail fares for riders traveling within city limits to that of New York City Transit subways and buses, and provide a free transfer between all three modes of transportation.

At six hours and 18 minutes per week, city residents currently suffer the longest work commute of any large city in the nation, according to City Councilman I. Daneek Miller (D-St. Albans), who introduced Res. 670 in April. But for those in so-called “transportation deserts” – such as Bayside, Southeast Queens or the Rockaways – commutes can exceed 15 hours per week.

The U.S. Census Bureau classifies this as an “extreme commute,” Miller has said.

Commuter rail fare equalization, according to Miller, will increase access to over 40 Metro North and Long Island Rail Road stations within the five boroughs, and serve to shorten commute times. The former transit union official said he believes that improved access to commuter rail transit will also spur development in communities serviced by the railroads.

Mass transit commuters to save more $

From Crains:

Tucked into the massive federal spending and tax-cut agreement reached by congressional leaders this week is a measure that will save New York mass-transit commuters hundreds of dollars apiece each year. Employers will save as well.

The provision nearly doubles the maximum amount of pre-tax income they can use to pay transit fares. Currently $130 a month, the limit will be raised to match the amount that people who drive to work can spend in untaxed earnings on parking fees—$255 per month in 2016.

Moreover, just like the parking benefit, the transit break will be permanent and will rise annually with the cost of living if Congress passes the mammoth bill as expected.

The biggest beneficiaries will be high earners who regularly take the Long Island Rail Road or Metro-North and spend at least $255 a month on fares. By participating in a commuter-benefit program such as TransitChek offered by their employers, they will be able to spend $3,060 annually in untaxed income on fares, up from $1,560—yielding a tax savings of about $1,200 instead of $625 for someone in the highest income-tax bracket.

The reduction in taxable income lessens employers’ payroll taxes, such as Social Security and Medicare. It adds up to 7.65% of what their workers spend in pre-tax money. It is nearly always greater than the $5 to $7.50 per employee per month that businesses pay a third party, such as WageWorks, to administer the program. But businesses with low participation rates among employees could end up paying more than they save.

Make commuting fair for all?

From op-ed by Council Member Daneek Miller Crains:

New Yorkers suffer the longest work commute of any large urban population in the nation, averaging 6 hours and 18 minutes a week in transit. However, for residents living on the city's perimeter traveling into any of the three largest business districts—midtown, the financial district, or downtown Brooklyn—this burden is even greater: roughly 15 hours a week.

That amounts to 238% more time spent commuting for Southeast Queens residents than other New Yorkers. On a daily basis, they spend three hours per day in transit. The United States Census Bureau deems that an "extreme commute."

We are traveling longer and spending less time at home and with our families. Southeast Queens shares this experience with neighbors in the Rockaways, the North Bronx and the South Shore of Staten Island.

For these reasons I have proposed an easily implemented five-point plan—the five E's—to quickly and efficiently improve transit in "transportation deserts" throughout the city:

• Equalize commuter rail fares and eliminate two-fare zones
• Enact the Commuter Van Reform Act
• Extend express bus service.
• Expand Vision Zero
• Ensure proper funding.

Guess who pays 1/3 of all U.S. tolls?

From the Daily News:

Drivers in New York and New Jersey pay the heftiest price for their commutes — accounting for almost one-third of all tolls collected across the U.S., a new report says.

The report, which was released by the International Bridges, Tunnels and Turnpike Association, indicated that drivers in the two states forked over an astounding $4 billion of the $13 billion in tolls accrued across the country.

“The primary reason (for New York and New Jersey drivers paying the highest tolls) would be the concentration in the region of bridges and tunnels connecting the greater New York metro area,” said Neil Gray, director of government affairs at IBTTA.

“The facilities have been in place for a long time, they were very expensive to build, they are expensive to maintain and they are tremendously expensive to replace.”

Gray added that the greater New York metro area has a very high concentration of commuters, which is likely to account for the costliness.

We spend way too much time commuting

From the Daily News:

New Yorkers aren’t just workaholics - they spend more time working and commuting than residents of any other big city.

The city’s work week and commute together average 49.1 hours - beating the 29 other largest cities in the country, according to an analysis by City Controller Scott Stringer.

“Our transportation network is grinding us down,” Stringer said. “It’s a one-two punch for lower wage workers, who get paid less and travel longer to get to work.”

New Yorkers work only slightly longer hours - with an average work week of 42.4 hours, compared to 42.5 in the other cities - and rank 12th of the 30 spots surveyed.

But with commute factored in, the city’s combined work week of 49.08 outstripped other cities’ average of 46.48 by two and a half hours.

Workers in the finance industry log the longest work weeks, at 47 hours on average. But security guards have the longest commutes, at eight hours a week, Stringer found. Low wage workers tend to have the longest travel times because they can’t afford to live close to work.

This is why it makes me laugh when commenters say that people should live near subways to reduce carbon footprint, not own a car, blah, blah, blah.

A better bus ride for southeastern Queens

From the Daily News:

Relief may be coming to some Rosedale and Far Rockaway straphangers who have spent years suffering through long and crowded commutes.

The MTA wants to create a new, limited-stop bus line — the Q114 — to connect subway riders in Jamaica to those far-flung Queens neighborhoods.

"We have the worst commute," said City Councilman Donovan Richards (D-Far Rockaway). "You can almost get to Florida by plane faster than you can get to Manhattan."

Changes could come as early as Aug. 31 if all goes smoothly at a hearing planned for next Monday at the MTA’s headquarters in Manhattan.

Bus riders currently use the Q111 and the Q113, which has a local and a limited-stop line from Guy R. Brewer Blvd. into Far Rockaway.

The new Q114 route would replace the Q113 local with fewer stops between Jamaica and Rosedale to help hasten the trip.